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

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

#61

Post by nawgz »

handrous wrote: post #55
nawgz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unironically true that GraphQL in combination with database introspection & query tools like Hasura is a far superior pattern to REST-based CRUD. Additionally, as a UI developer, I understand you are trying to make it seem like GraphQL promotes anti-patterns, but being able to make a single query which is deeply nested and therefore can maintain state for an entire sub-tree of your app is a really good state man…

Hasura is great. GraphQL on its own, unless you're offloading all of it to something well-maintained and capable like Hasura which will (hopefully) automagically save you from the time cost and risk of GraphQL, is almost always a bad idea.

"Using a protocol you don't understand without a tool that implements it is a bad idea"

Listen, I get it, we all want to hate on NIH and cutting-edge stuff, but what you've said is not an objection. GraphQL is a complicated protocol, but it offers a very clean interface between clients & servers, and when you put in a strong implementation you can generically access data that before you needed to specifically access.

I don't even know what else to say. There's a time cost and risk of every single thing you'll implement, you haven't given any insights into what tips GraphQL into a superbly expensive and risky area... Especially because Hasura is completely free and open-source...

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

#62

Post by wvenable »

Jensson wrote: post #54
jrochkind1 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say your discussion style in this thread is "meeting halfway", and typical of your discussion style at work? What would you say characterizes a "toxic" discussion style, or "being so bad at talking to people"?

No, I am much more aggressive online since I want to point holes in things. I doubt many people talk the same way online as they do at their job. It isn't like you expect a sales person to be all happy when he is at home. > What would you say characterizes a "toxic" discussion style, or "being so bad at talking to people"? People who can't talk normally due to some of the following reasons, if these are issues you ha…

You have a strange idea of what talking normally is. Fears, concerns, having different priorities, working under their own deadlines, and so on are all normal for other people.

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

#63

Post by Jensson »

wvenable wrote: post #50
Jensson wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My argument is that you can meet them halfway rather than dumping all the responsibility on the developer like this guy does. But as a consultant I guess his job is to help toxic managers hire people they can work with, if that is the case he doesn't have a choice to change the manager.

Nowhere does it say all the responsibility is on the developer. But being able to ask questions without putting people on the defensive is hugely important. Many software projects directly involve fundamentally changing someone else's work (hopefully for the better). You might not think that's a big deal but I can assure you it's a big deal for them. And for your project to succeed, you're going to need to recognize…

Doesn't sound like any of the tech jobs I've had. But I agree if your job is to replace people with technology rather than build new products for end users then your social skills will matter much more, but this article didn't made it clear that he wanted to hire engineers for that specific purpose.

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

#64

Post by wvenable »

Jensson wrote: post #63
wvenable wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowhere does it say all the responsibility is on the developer. But being able to ask questions without putting people on the defensive is hugely important. Many software projects directly involve fundamentally changing someone else's work (hopefully for the better). You might not think that's a big deal but I can assure you it's a big deal for them. And for your project to succeed, you're going to need to recognize…

Doesn't sound like any of the tech jobs I've had. But I agree if your job is to replace people with technology rather than build new products for end users then your social skills will matter much more, but this article didn't made it clear that he wanted to hire engineers for that specific purpose.

If you never talk to your end users obviously you don't need social skills for talking to end users. Lots of development/tech jobs don't require talking to users.

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

#65

Post by Jensson »

wvenable wrote: post #62
Jensson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I am much more aggressive online since I want to point holes in things. I doubt many people talk the same way online as they do at their job. It isn't like you expect a sales person to be all happy when he is at home. > What would you say characterizes a "toxic" discussion style, or "being so bad at talking to people"? People who can't talk normally due to some of the following reasons, if these are issues you ha…

You have a strange idea of what talking normally is. Fears, concerns, having different priorities, working under their own deadlines, and so on are all normal for other people.

But a manager dumping those feelings on their developers is still toxic. They are coming from a position of power, asks the technologist to solve a problem, all the while demanding the technologist assures the manager that the technologist will do the job and that now the technologist will ask questions so the technologist can perform the job well instead of just wasting the managers precious time.

I don't see how anyone can think this situation isn't toxic.

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

#66

Post by Jensson »

wvenable wrote: post #64
Jensson wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't sound like any of the tech jobs I've had. But I agree if your job is to replace people with technology rather than build new products for end users then your social skills will matter much more, but this article didn't made it clear that he wanted to hire engineers for that specific purpose.

If you never talk to your end users obviously you don't need social skills for talking to end users. Lots of development/tech jobs don't require talking to users.

Btw, you might not have realized but the article was talking about a manager going with a request to developers. So it is absolutely the managers fault here, nothing you say can convince me otherwise, a manager shouldn't demand this from developers.

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

#67

Post by kickopotomus »

You could sum up this whole article to "don't hire assholes" but I am not sure why that should be limited to tech? You probably don't want assholes in your business/ops side of the organization either. Most of the gripes in the article sound like management/culture issues as opposed to developer issues.

> Many business folks begin by asking for a specific feature or function. For example, maybe you want your billing system to send out customer payment reminders as text messages. Sounds straightforward. But a good technologist, before rolling up her sleeves, flexing her fingers and firing up a text message cloud service and a windowful of code, will ask questions.

If every company is now really a tech company as the article claims, why is it only the responsibility of the developer to extract requirements/intent? I am not saying that developers should not try to clarify problems but why is the onus of clarity on the implementer instead of the requester? Should business folks not be expected to clearly communicate the business goal that they are trying to accomplish?

> One bad actor can do more damage than you can imagine. I have seen a multimillion-dollar, high-stakes initiative almost derailed by one jerk who didn’t think he needed to prioritize a colleague’s project above his own and masterfully exhibited passive-aggressive behavior for weeks before getting called on it.

A single point of failure in a multimillion-dollar, business-critical project sounds like a management issue to me.

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

That is going to be a mixed bag. My GitHub account is a graveyard of half-finished toy projects in different technologies I felt like trying out. I would not say it is representative of my proficiency.

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

#68

Post by ericb »

blueslurpee wrote: post #51
Oddskar wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

REST? Didn't you get the memo? We've all moved on to GraphQL because Facebook use it and that means we all should use it. It also enables our UI components to easily fetch data themselves . Because that's a great architectural pattern that we've discovered.

I haven't read enough about GraphQL (or even used it) to debate its relative merits, but I find it very interesting from "business architecture" point of view. For instance, assume the future of IT looks like it does today, only ramped up x10. Imagine the majority of business value is driven disparate API's/Services managed by companies or organisations, with numerous and diverse clients that can "plug in" for their…

Ugh, no. The problems of just exposing your database really come out after you try living with it.

We wanted to make schema changes on the back-end, but the front-end queries were tied to it. Those queries were in apps run by different groups, with different goals and timetables, but we couldn't break them. If we had a defined API, we could be free to modify any back-end implementation details that weren't directly exposed. We couldn't because every detail was baked into consuming apps. What was our API, and where did it end? Now it was the entire database!

When we had to source data from elsewhere, or provide it via logical abstraction, we ended up piling hacks on top of the data structure's "API" from the back end that was now replicated in the front-end in order to "maintain it". Maintaining it really meant "providing an API that was the haunted ghost of our previous database schema "API" because now other apps/clients expected that "API".

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

#69

Post by Jensson »

bob1029 wrote: post #47

Our interviews for tech hires have gradually evolved into an interrogation regarding a person's attitude towards work/peers more so than their knowledge about how to do specific tech things. Teaching a willing participant how to do virtually anything with a computer is feasible in 2021. We need people who are willing to engage difficult, fast-changing things substantially more than smart-asses who think they know eve…

> Teaching a willing participant how to do virtually anything with a computer is feasible in 2021

You could become a billionaire in the coding bootcamp space if you know how to do this.

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

#70

Post by wvenable »

Jensson wrote: post #66
wvenable wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you never talk to your end users obviously you don't need social skills for talking to end users. Lots of development/tech jobs don't require talking to users.

Btw, you might not have realized but the article was talking about a manager going with a request to developers. So it is absolutely the managers fault here, nothing you say can convince me otherwise, a manager shouldn't demand this from developers.

The example is too vague to really make a conclusion.

However, I was really just replying to that sentences that you quoted and disagreed with. In my opinion, those two sentences are perfectly valid.

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