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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

#111

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

daemoncoder wrote: post #94
softfalcon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have the opposite problem: colleagues who don't want to learn how to do anything new.

I work alongside a principal engineer who refuses to learn anything beyond what they learned 5+ years ago. It seems they got to the Senior level and just gave up learning. Makes no sense to me and is a detriment to all the more junior engineers in our team.

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

#112

Post by heurisko »

pydry wrote: post #91
softfalcon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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 is a classic defense mechanism for engineers trying to shore up their position. There's a tug o' war going on between many companies and their employees wherein the companies are try…

> I found it mostly went away when I worked in companies where most people treated their current job as a stepping stone to the next rather than as their final destination but in companies in 2nd/3rd tier cities where everybody is married with kids and looking for stability....yea

My experience of this, is that working with colleagues with families meant things were more stable and predictable.

In comparison, the people treating the job as a stepping stone developed things for their CV, rather than for the good of the organisation.

I can see how your experience can also be true however.

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

#113

Post by Zababa »

opportune wrote: post #105
Zababa wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a problem I also deal with working with junior team members who would rather ask a question about how something works rather than read the source. Even if I do try to explain it, I can’t explain it to the fidelity and nuance encapsulated in the actual code. Nor can I explain the context as well as clicking “find references” does. As a junior, this is a problem for me too. I don't know when it's the right mo…

Yeah, knowing when to ask questions is itself a skill. I didn’t mean to insinuate in my comment anything negative towards junior engineers or imply I hate when they ask questions. But I’d say knowing how to read code and understand it on your own vs recognizing when something is almost unknowable without asking someone is a hallmark of a more mature engineer. But I stand by my insinuation that people aren’t deliberat…

> I didn’t mean to insinuate in my comment anything negative towards junior engineers or imply I hate when they ask questions.

That's not how I took it, sorry if this wasn't very clear but my point is that it's difficult on both sides, and it's interesting to share our struggles to see if we can find better ways to transmit knowledge.

> . In general the more something is an “emergent” property or itself only a high level concept (eg “Why do we use Mesos?” “How do we implement load shedding?”) the better it is to ask. The more implementation specific (“Why won’t this compile? What does this error mean?”) the worse it is. It’s not only about the time to find something out but also how it can be found out - whether it’s a web search or codebase search away, or not.

That's a great heuristic.

> The other problem is the senior people you ask may not always know the answer of the top of their head, and in answering your question will have to answer it themselves - typically you want to avoid that too.

I think that may be a good thing in some cases, as long as you don't demand/need the answer now and the question is good. If there's something that even senior people are not clear on, that's an opportunity to clarify things for everyone. I think that's what people mean when they talk about the value of new hires being able to see surprising stuff that feels normal to the people inside.

> For one I would always be more than happy to truthfully answer a mentee’s question regarding if they are asking too much.

That's great!

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

#114

Post by breckenedge »

angrais wrote: post #103
breckenedge wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Let's play a game. Imagine you're s senior dev and interviewing another Dev today. They do well technically, but write comments in their codebase that critique your decisions (such as choice of tool, questions asked, framework used, etc). What's your thoughts on this person? I'd not say jerk, but I would think they're not taking the process seriously. A technical test certainly isn't a place to make jokes as you don'…

I fully accept my responsibility for my actions. Don’t know how else to reply to your comment except to say that.

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

#115

Post by sershe »

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…

I dunno about 10x engineers, but there definitely tends to be a person who knows everything on many teams. I noticed over time that if I need to ask a random question about project A, I always ping the same 1-2 people from team A for most As... then I feel bad that I'm always bothering them, start asking someone else, get vague/incorrect/lazy answers, and go back to the same person anyway ;)

I don't think it is always a senior person though... it's often a junior engineer who's been there a while.

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

#116

Post by ryanmarsh »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #40
ryanmarsh wrote: post #35

I’ll hire the crazy yet brilliant people any day of the week. It’s a leadership challenge and the work output is worth the time investment.

Genuinely asking what do you mean by crazy, because I think there’s a level of toxic that no leadership should be tolerating. (I’m thinking HR violating stuff like “can’t resist assaulting co workers”)

I meant crazy as in "tortured genius" not "a criminal".

Assaulting someone is a crime, don't call HR, call the damn police.

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