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The case for language agnostic hiring

alphalist.com

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Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#51

Post by another-dave »

bluetomcat wrote: post #12
another-dave wrote: post #9

In a perfect world, you'll always hire great generalists who can turn their hand at anything and have enough time to onboard them. In reality though, you're going to have different 'holes' in your team shape at various times that will drive who's a potential fit as a hire. And conversely, you're going to find different candidates in your search — if your codebase is primarily in Java, would you really turn down a str…

A generalist would be someone who is fluent in C, Python, Java, JavaScript and probably Haskell/Clojure/Scala. This would mean that they have been exposed to static and dynamic typing, manual and GC memory management, class-based and prototype-based OOP, and all the important functional programming concepts.

I guess it depends on what you mean by generalist who's fluent in all of those things — is it someone who has broad rather than deep experience, someone who has both broad _and_ deep experience, or someone who's willing to pick up whatever needs to be done and learn where they have gaps.

I think you're describing #2 and the article is describing #3.

Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#52

Post by gpjanik »

oytis wrote: post #34
gpjanik wrote: post #32

Can't wait to hire that C developer to sort out my webpack config.

I am a C developer and would probably be able to do that, but definitely not something I enjoy (so you won't be able to hire me :) )

I don't doubt C programmers' ability to understand or use webpack (it's tedious, annoying, and often hard to debug, but not conceptually difficult - definitely easier than day-to-day problems solved by C programmers), the question is this the best use of their time & the most cost efficient way to do it (and IMHO the answer for both is that it's clearly not). It looks like we directionally agree.

Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#53

Post by wiseowise »

schroeding wrote: post #8

Elixir, Haskell et al. require concepts that are not required at all in e.g. Java. The functional programming module at my university had the highest failure rate after the math and statistics classes. Even something like C can require new concepts. I was a tutor for a university C programming course and students that had no problems with Java struggled hard with direct memory manipulation, pointer arithmetic etc., b…

> You can't expect Devs to self-teach each other those concepts on the side, that (advanced, third-year) CS students struggle with hard.

You imply that Devs are lower on a hierarchy level than third-year CS students.

Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#54

Post by wiseowise »

_tardigrade wrote: post #44
imgabe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A working dev should be well beyond the understanding of a third-year CS student. This is not "advanced" from the perspective of someone in practice, it is the requirement to get in to the practice. (I know people get programming jobs without CS degrees, but if you can do that, you can teach yourself how pointers work)

I don't have CS degree but I do have 7 years commercial experience with Python/Django Rest Framework and I have no idea how pointers work.

That’s not something to be proud of.

Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#55

Post by wiseowise »

schroeding wrote: post #30
imgabe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A working dev should be well beyond the understanding of a third-year CS student. This is not "advanced" from the perspective of someone in practice, it is the requirement to get in to the practice. (I know people get programming jobs without CS degrees, but if you can do that, you can teach yourself how pointers work)

Right, "advanced" into their studies, they weren't freshman but almost done with their bachelors degree. And yeah, I believe that most developers can learn pointers and FP, sure, but on the side with pair programming and "mob programming", while still working a full time dev job ?

Yes.

Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#56

Post by matt_craig »

julik wrote: post #35

>You might be looking for a specialist but you don’t want to attract people who are only interested in particular languages. Because that person’s narrow focus will hinder their growth. Exactly what I have been witness to was this taken to the test. Result: * You hire devs who do not like (or worse: hate) working in the language of the shop. They scold at the application they have to maintain and run, they do not con…

I like the suggestion of having an explicit hard requirement that employees be willing to use and engage with the existing tech stack. It makes it easier to point to the requirements and say “you signed up for this”.

I’m surprised, perhaps naively so, that devs apply for roles featuring languages they actively don’t like (or even hate).

What’s more understandable is a dev picking up a new language/tech stack on a job and discovering they don’t like it. (In that case they still shouldn’t actively fight against it, unless it’s actually detrimental to the company’s progress.)

Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#57

Post by AlchemistCamp »

schroeding wrote: post #42
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit overblown, IMO. I'm currently in the process of interviewing and hiring for a dev to work on an Elixir code base and I barely care at all whether or not a candidate has ever used it before. Last year I worked with an (excellent) ex-Bridgewater dev whose experience was mostly JVM and JS and he ramped up on Elixir and Phoenix very quickly. We pair programmed a couple of hours a day and he was productive i…

> some slack during paid hours for people to learn and improve A key ingredient missing in the blog post, IMO. :)

Yeah... short-termism is a real problem.

Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#58

Post by wiseowise »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #37
nonasktell wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you only know java are you even a real (professional) dev? I'd expect any dev wanting a job using a language he doesn't know to have some understanding all of the concepts you're talking about. It's not language specific, it's just the basics of programming.

> If you only know java are you even a real (professional) dev? I'm a polyglot but Java is the language I used the most and I can guarantee you there are many professional dev I met and worked with that only know Java and make their comfy living writing only Java. Java is powering the real world since more than two decades now and the JVM is some rock solid tech with extensive tooling, so they can get away with only…

Nobody said frauds can’t live comfortably.

Re: The case for language agnostic hiring

#60

Post by hardware2win »

nonasktell wrote: post #46
tester756 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you only know java are you even a real (professional) dev? lol, if I were java dev I'd be pissed off. honestly this unsound argument that dev which knows more languages is better just because of that needs to die. Concepts are above languages You don't have to know languages in order to be familiar with the concepts. Additionally certain languages do not offer real value to the other For example I've been writing…

"You don't have to know languages in order to be familiar with the concepts." If you only ever coded in a language that doesn't even offer you the ability to tinker with some concepts, you can't be familiar with those. Reading one article about it without ever touching code, is not being familiar with a programming concept. I'm not saying you should know 10 languages, but if you want to be anything more than a fronte…

>but if you want to be anything more than a frontend dev or a bad web dev,

Ive jumped from web/desktop dev

to semiconductor industry and worked with the same language.

And the biggest problem was lack of the domain knowledge, not langs.

You can find various langs being used in various places to the point that sometimes you'd be shocked

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