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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

#81

Post by 908B64B197 »

blueslurpee wrote: post #7

>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…

Any article that uses the terms "coders" and "IT" is a red flag to me. I've never seen that terminology inside organizations that are actually capable of shipping software.

> Then of course there are the stories of small engineering teams with Unicorn exits, e.g. Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.

I'm surprised the author didn't consider these as well. Some of these stories are almost a decade old at this point, they should be well known by now.

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

#82

Post by 908B64B197 »

DeathArrow wrote: post #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.

> portfolio site for coders

So many red flags here.

It's true that some of the best devs in the world are active on GitHub. So what I started seeing are bootcamps trying to emulate that by having their grad work on (basically their homework) on github and the whole bootcamp becomes structured around building this "portfolio".

Then when you interview more than one candidate from said bootcamp and actually pay attention to the repo they show you, you realize it's 80% similar. Actually, everyone from that bootcamp has almost the same code checked-in...

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

#83

Post by breckenedge »

throwaway19170 wrote: post #43

I sometimes worry that I'm somehow becoming more and more of a jerk as my career progresses, instead of less. Maybe I'm just sick of this career.

I hate the term "jerk". It's really just not specific enough to categorize, or correct, bad behavior. I am always concerned about coming off as a narcissist or elitist.

I was turned down recently after a well-executed technical interview because the company was concerned that I might be a jerk, which is actually great feedback. They based this on a "vim-mode sucks" comment I left in the notes section of online editor they were using to conduct the technical round when it froze up. Whoops.

I’ve definitely been a jerk sometimes in the past, and it’s something I work on frequently with a psychiatrist. I’ve also worked for some very successful narcissists in the past, so I don’t have a lot of great examples to reference. And my socialization skills sometimes come off as stilted since one of my parents is on the spectrum. Emotionally it can be hard to tamp down on frustration, but I’ve gotten a lot better since I started seeing a psych a few years ago.

I really hope people can get back to treating each other like human beings rather than labels.

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

#84

Post by 908B64B197 »

softfalcon wrote: post #32
blueslurpee wrote: post #7

>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…

I want to preface my thoughts with that I wish the "team sport" mentality was more common in the dev world. Unfortunately, I have to agree with blueslurpee here. I frequently join a team and find there are 1 or 2 devs who "know everything" and it is near impossible to pull the information out of their heads and into mine or someone else. This might be isolated to the areas I work in, but I do find that the "10x engin…

The issue is, it's faster to build a feature yourself than to coach a new hire to build it.

So if an org doesn't value mentoring and growing engineering talent, you'll end up with a few engineers doing most of the work and an org that magically can't scale.

Then you'll see the hiring side buying in on the cargo cult and trying to hire seniors with resumes matching their existing devs, then whining they can't hire them for cheap. At this point the business velocity has reached it's top speed.

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

#85

Post by dang »

zabzonk wrote: post #13

> I’ll expand that to include prima donnas, misanthropes and garden-variety narcissists. Pretty much the definition on an "entrepreneur".

"Don't be snarky."

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#86

Post by nawgz »

handrous wrote: post #80
nawgz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, a tl;dr that says implementing a heavy protocol poorly is a bad idea is once again a non-statement. > It's also of dubious benefit Laughable. Comparing to the silly comparison of "direct SQL queries", both have lots of dangerous pitfalls, sure, but direct SQL queries give you no wins in-and-of-themself. For implementing GraphQL on the other hand, you get schema definitions, discoverability, strict typing across…

My assertion, broadly, is that GraphQL is incidental to the good things that have grown up in its ecosystem, that GraphQL is per se not especially good or interesting, and that attempting to replace a traditional REST interface with it, without also bringing in a large stack of supporting tech that you didn't need before, is almost certainly a bad idea that will end in tears, because it is heavily dependent on those…

> [I assert that] attempting to replace a traditional REST interface with it, without also bringing in a large stack of supporting tech that you didn't need before, is almost certainly a bad idea that will end in tears

I literally brought in Hasura, and completely replaced my REST interfaces with it. There is no "large stack of supporting tech", I added a docker container to my small set of services (which already included PostgreSQL). Again, Hasura is free and open-source, and incredibly powerful while still easy-to-use. Setting up authentication is also a breeze.

Further, to imply that a query GENERATOR is in any way comparable to a query RUNNER is just foolish. Cut it out. You can't claim that it's a "sucker's bet" the whole ecosystem is just exposing unsecured databases, especially not without a single link supporting this having happened.

To conclude, I guess I find that I would strongly disagree with your approach to things and your reasoning behind it, and I find your claims like "JSON and other non-statically-typed boundary-crossing data structures are practically always god-awful" hilarious when I just told you I can treat GraphQL data as a statically typed boundary-crossing data structure thanks exactly to the GraphQL & implementation thereof you rail against.

Take care, good luck with whatever solutions you are using.

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

#87

Post by littlestymaar »

ericb wrote: post #68
blueslurpee wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

You're not exposing your database though (or at least you shouldn't be): you're exposing views. The set of views that you expose are your API. But it's not tied to your database schema than any kind of API (not less either though, if your database schema really doesn't match your API, your performances are likely to suffer sometimes, but that's true with any kind of API).

(I am in no way a GraphQL evangelist btw)

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

#88

Post by rikroots »

dehrmann wrote: post #60
DeathArrow wrote: post #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.

I suspect most profiles are either toy projects people desperate to get into the industry wrote or prolific open source developers who are only a fit for a handful of roles at a big company (think Linus or Guido) and will continue doing essentially the same work, but for a patron. A handful of companies develop in the open (Gitlab), and some roles work on public SDKs. My profile is a grab bag of forks for PRs and lib…

I first started with GitHub because a recruiter told me I needed a portfolio of some sort to demonstrate my skills to potential employers. Given that I'd been applying for graduate/junior roles in the industry for over three years with frustratingly little success at getting to face-to-face interview stage, I decided to build some side projects to show people what I could do.

I got my first professional coding job a year later. I lucked out by finding an employer who not only looked at my GitHub, but was also willing to take a risk on hiring a 49yo junior.

The side-project is still on-going: developing it keeps me entertained when the grind of regular work drains my enthusiasm for coding.

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

#89

Post by Daishiman »

Jensson wrote: post #69
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.

You need to put a lot of energy into teaching a candidate to fit into a job. That's Ok. You don't get that in a bootcamp with a bootcamp grad teaching 150 equally clueless students. You get it through hours of hands-on experience with veterans.

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

#90

Post by whoomp12342 »

kickopotomus wrote: post #67

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…

unfortunately, its hard to spot an asshole cross business. Lots of assholes are smart enough to not be an asshole to the right people
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