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In-demand tech skills are the last thing to look for in IT hires

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11–20 of 116 posts

Re: In-demand tech skills are the last thing to look for in IT hires

#11

>Sure, in the ’80s, it might have been possible for one person to do it all: systems administration, database, coding, design. But in today’s world, database administrators, infrastructure engineers, coders, designers, project managers and others — whether on staff, on contract or with a vendor or service provider — must work together to execute projects quickly, securely and reliably. Tech today is a team sport. I f…

We didn't have APIs 10 years ago?

I agree with the article. As we build more complex products we need to be more specialized and work together.

Maybe not the case if one is working at a startup trying to cobble something together that looks like a working product by customers and investors.

Re: In-demand tech skills are the last thing to look for in IT hires

#12

>Sure, in the ’80s, it might have been possible for one person to do it all: systems administration, database, coding, design. But in today’s world, database administrators, infrastructure engineers, coders, designers, project managers and others — whether on staff, on contract or with a vendor or service provider — must work together to execute projects quickly, securely and reliably. Tech today is a team sport. I f…

>stories of small engineering teams with Unicorn exits, e.g. Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.

Are there others? Seems to be a common theme with those 2.

Re: In-demand tech skills are the last thing to look for in IT hires

#14
post #5
post #2

> Entrepreneurs need to guard against the temptation to hire an antisocial or unempathetic talent, no matter how brilliant I think the same about the products of antisocial or unempathetic companies. Hence my “no Oracle” policy.

People work at companies for a variety of reasons. You never know if you're hiring someone who hated the culture of Oracle but wanted a job in their region working on DB technology. Or they come in via acquisition, or Oracle was simply the only job which would take them at their current pay - or they were ignorant of the reputation.

I think the poster you replied to may have meant "no B2B contracts with Oracle, etc"

Re: In-demand tech skills are the last thing to look for in IT hires

#15
post #11

>Sure, in the ’80s, it might have been possible for one person to do it all: systems administration, database, coding, design. But in today’s world, database administrators, infrastructure engineers, coders, designers, project managers and others — whether on staff, on contract or with a vendor or service provider — must work together to execute projects quickly, securely and reliably. Tech today is a team sport. I f…

We didn't have APIs 10 years ago? I agree with the article. As we build more complex products we need to be more specialized and work together. Maybe not the case if one is working at a startup trying to cobble something together that looks like a working product by customers and investors.

We can build very complex products today so much more easily than 10 years ago.

There are services that will give you everything, from a managed DB to distributed CDN around the world, to one-command deploys... I feel like, if I only knew a business idea that didn't totally suck, I could create a whole new product that could scale to millions of users on a weekend.

Re: In-demand tech skills are the last thing to look for in IT hires

#16

>Sure, in the ’80s, it might have been possible for one person to do it all: systems administration, database, coding, design. But in today’s world, database administrators, infrastructure engineers, coders, designers, project managers and others — whether on staff, on contract or with a vendor or service provider — must work together to execute projects quickly, securely and reliably. Tech today is a team sport. I f…

Found the engineer that needs a project manager. :)

I think most devs just haven’t had a good product manager. It can be shockingly effective, but only when they care about you, rather than managing you.

Re: In-demand tech skills are the last thing to look for in IT hires

#17
post #11

>Sure, in the ’80s, it might have been possible for one person to do it all: systems administration, database, coding, design. But in today’s world, database administrators, infrastructure engineers, coders, designers, project managers and others — whether on staff, on contract or with a vendor or service provider — must work together to execute projects quickly, securely and reliably. Tech today is a team sport. I f…

We didn't have APIs 10 years ago? I agree with the article. As we build more complex products we need to be more specialized and work together. Maybe not the case if one is working at a startup trying to cobble something together that looks like a working product by customers and investors.

We had APIs since Sun RPC, they just keep being rebooted.

The 2021 version is REST/gRPC for SaaS products.

Re: In-demand tech skills are the last thing to look for in IT hires

#18
>Hiring a developer? Check out the GitHub “repository,” which is essentially the portfolio site for coders.

I have almost nothing in my Github repo and I code for 20 years. Neither do most of my colleagues. Artists might have portofolios, programmers most likely won't have.

Re: In-demand tech skills are the last thing to look for in IT hires

#19
post #15
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We didn't have APIs 10 years ago? I agree with the article. As we build more complex products we need to be more specialized and work together. Maybe not the case if one is working at a startup trying to cobble something together that looks like a working product by customers and investors.

We can build very complex products today so much more easily than 10 years ago. There are services that will give you everything, from a managed DB to distributed CDN around the world, to one-command deploys... I feel like, if I only knew a business idea that didn't totally suck, I could create a whole new product that could scale to millions of users on a weekend.

Somehow it feels like a marketing leaflet for a CORBA/DCOM based product.
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