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Hire talent, not five years with Java

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Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#31

Post by RandallBrown »

I used to complain to the HR department at my last company about this kind of stuff all the time.

Even after working at the company for almost three years, I wasn't technically qualified for any of the job postings on the site. I had friends who didn't apply just because they didn't have all the skills in the "required" section of the job posting.

Luckily, the developers in charge of interviewing and hiring people seemed to understand that hiring someone smart was better than hiring someone with "experience" in random technologies.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#32

Post by Jare »

s_baby wrote: post #23
prophetjohn wrote: post #8

Here's the strategy we feel is working pretty well for us. First of all, our tech stack looks like this: Java/Spring(MVC)/MyBatis/Hibernate/etc Ruby/Sinatra/ActiveRecord/etc JavaScript/Angular/etc A bit of SQL (MS) We look for candidates of all skill levels who have experience with any "systems" programming language (Java/C/C++/C#) and any scripting language (Ruby/Python/JS). Once we've found a candidate that has any…

>Hugely over-architected solution? Eliminated For a code interview I can see myself over-engineering a solution even though my day-to-day coding style is all about flexibility and readability. In my mind being able to over-engineer shows an ability to code.

> In my mind being able to over-engineer shows an ability to code

Huh, very mixed feelings here. My gut reaction is to reply that "it also shows poor judgement", but there is some truth to what you are saying. The middle ground would be where you can actually explain what you are trying to achieve with the over-engineered bits.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#34

Post by jasey »

This 100%.

I have 6+ years experience now and am going for senior dev roles.

4 of those years are PHP and I feel company's and recruiters pidgin hole me as a "senior php dev".

I feel like I have to continue down the php stack + web dev path or take a pay cut even though I have non professional experience in mobile for example.

I understand where they are coming from but a little less narrow mindedness would be nice.

-gets ready for the 'no one other than a php shop wants to hire a dev with most their experience in php' jokes-

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#35

Post by hfsktr »

Sadly I think it only just occurred to me that I might be one of those 1 yr / 5 times people. Only because my job was mainly CRUD work. I did get to do some other stuff but it was not often. That place closed down and I've been looking for work since. Feeling like I must not have learned enough (or the right stuff) since I have had many interviews and not gotten any offers.

How much of an average developers time isn't CRUD? How do you get the experience to do other things[1] unless you needed them for that one off project?

1. Unless you are talking along the lines of specializing in something idk what these things might be.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#36

Post by drewcoo »

happywolf wrote: post #29

I would agree with OP, until when I has become a hiring manager myself. I do understand years of experience may not equal to competency in certain skill sets. But if you are going to run a hiring post, what kind of metrics could you use, on top of years of experience? Putting something too generic (e.g. intermediate programmer, mid-level, etc.), you tend to attract a lot of non-relevant, hello-world sort of people. P…

When I read resumes, and I don't mind personally sifting through hundreds a week, I look for a narrative. If there's a cover letter, that helps create the narrative. I want to see personal, professional growth on a resume. I wonder about time gaps and seeming to do the same job repeatedly but they're not deal-killers at the resume screen stage. I look for increased depth of knowledge and increased scope of influence. Both of those things make someone more senior, rather than having just repeated the same year x-many times.

If someone can sell me his/her story in the cover letter and resume, I follow up on that in a phone screen. I'm still looking for more proof of someone being "passionate" (overused term but often part of HR doctrine) and showing that they grow and grow and grow.

This has never made any sense to any recruiters I've worked with and has sometimes been a hard sell to others when I wasn't the hiring manager but I honestly don't know how else to screen for "has a lot of potential but maybe doesn't know our stack yet".

I'd love to hear how other people do this. I'd especially like to hear from someone who doesn't focus solely on what's in someone's Github repos.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#37

Post by bobwaycott »

pekk wrote: post #27
bobwaycott wrote: post #25

Perhaps the better approach to solving this problem is to stop repeating it on tech blogs, and start moving to publishing and discussing it in HR blogs and similarly appropriate, targeted mediums. As stated elsewhere[1], this is undoubtedly the existing mentality of the audience to whom this article is written. Those who actually need this advice are the existing and future HR managers and departments who are in char…

If this were true, then you would never see a problem with startups too small to have HR departments. But you do. It might differ subtly from the big companies, but it's absolutely there. Everyone doing hiring thinks they are the smart exception and everyone else is stupid.

> Everyone doing hiring thinks they are the smart exception and everyone else is stupid.

I apologize if I came off sounding like this. It certainly wasn't my intention. I just wanted to suggest partnering with and moving these types of discussion into the forums where they'd be helpful--those sources used by persons involved in and responsible for hiring decisions.

I didn't mean to imply this was HR-dept-specific, or that small startups did not have the problem. I was just using that as shorthand for 'professionals who are responsible for hiring'. Maybe there are enough of them reading HN, but I'd also bet they rely on mgmt/hiring advice from other channels, as well.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#38

Post by planetjones »

Some of the best developers I have worked with weren't Computer Science or Software Engineering graduates, but had Engineering or Electronics degrees. However, some companies wouldn't hire them because their degrees didn't fit their definition of correct.

All the points made about years of service not equaling ability are absolutely proven, yet ignored by many - I'd rather work with someone who can break problems down, ask the right questions and think logically - as opposed to someone who can force a program to work because they know the syntax. Some of this is how candidates are interviewed too - technical screenings alone rarely find someone who is good at software development.

Writing a syntactically correct program quickly, is the not the same as writing a good piece of software.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#39

Post by bobwaycott »

ritchiea wrote: post #30
bobwaycott wrote: post #25

Perhaps the better approach to solving this problem is to stop repeating it on tech blogs, and start moving to publishing and discussing it in HR blogs and similarly appropriate, targeted mediums. As stated elsewhere[1], this is undoubtedly the existing mentality of the audience to whom this article is written. Those who actually need this advice are the existing and future HR managers and departments who are in char…

I don't think you're wrong. But could you define talent? That's something that bugs me endlessly. Talent gets thrown around recklessly everywhere. Is talent smart and gets stuff done? Is it more than that? I feel pretty confident I can identify "talent" but the blog post you are responding to isn't written for me or you, it's written for people who are already doing things the wrong way and content with it. We say hi…

> We say hire for talent as though talent is self explanatory. I don't think it is.

Absolutely true. A sibling comment[1] mentions an approach that is a bit closer to what I'm getting at. I personally hate trivia-ish questions when I've been interviewed and have attempted to eschew them when I've interviewed/hired. I try to focus more on questions that give me an insight into how a person thinks. So, I tend to refrain from asking definitional questions, and instead, opt for questions that can't be answered with a parroted statement of "X is like Y for Z."

> But could you define talent?

Heh. That's so subjective, isn't it?

I try to gauge talent in programmers by listening to how people reason through problems. Generally speaking, I look for the ability to confidently walk through how they'd approach identifying and resolving a bug in a software package they know nothing about (say, because they've just been brought into a product team with a 2-yr-old codebase), or how they'd tackle architecting a complicated data-heavy backend, or what kind of pitfalls they'd be mindful of in defining UI/X for a mobile application, etc.

I am wary of developers who start talking about programming languages and frameworks as solutions to higher-level, abstract concerns. That is, given the problem of integrating systems X and Y, hearing Ruby, Python, Django, or Lift as part of the solution before it's appropriate to discuss a stack. I'm also very circumspect when new developers join a team and advocate for technology/language/framework X to solve problem Y, when X is the thing they used for n years before joining the team.

I also try to tease out a person's decision-making abilities. This has been a much more difficult talent to assess. I've seen a lot of inability to assess a problem and summarily decide how to appropriately move forward--that is, the kind of person who gets too bogged down in talking through a problem, and is unable to make a decision on how to actually get started solving it. I've found a team is highly unproductive when there isn't at least one person who is able to codify the team's thoughts on a problem into a pragmatic approach to get work done--especially when they lack management figures who know enough to help make informed decisions.

> If you are the kind of person who hires for X years of experience you probably aren't the kind of person who feels confident identifying talent outside of a solid definition.

Certainly. Which is why I suggested a better approach is to focus efforts on those who are in hiring positions (be they HR professionals or otherwise) who could use the help and input of someone who is able to confidently identify talent.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5441632

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#40

Post by eru »

b0rsuk wrote: post #16

In general, this article belongs among the best articles nobody will read. It looks like I might finally get a job as a Django/Python developer after 3 years of unemployment. Encouraged by my local course for unemployed, I visited the company personally and handed them a dead tree CV and cover letter. I was mildly amused to find they seem to be just 3 guys in small dusty room. I ended up on a job interview of sorts I…

Where do you live and where did you look for jobs?
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