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Hire talent, not five years with Java

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Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#51

Post by Ovid »

mailshanx wrote: post #49
Ovid wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'm a computer programmer, but I also do recruiting for a company in Amsterdam and their approach is most definitely "talent". A typical question is "given two arrays, find all the elements in one array that are also in t…

Just saw the blog you write, and i must say: it is incredibly awesome indeed! I believe that travel expands one's mind greatly, and it would be a shame to not travel while you can. I'm wrapping up my thesis here in Singapore now, and i'll buzz you when i'm done: it would be an awesome experience to interview with shops that emphasize on core CS concepts rather than some arbitrary piece of tech:)

Glad you like it! I've lived in five countries so far and were it not for a two-year-old daughter, I'd keep country-hopping (though my wife and I have considered moving to Malta).

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#52

Post by michaelochurch »

trhtrsh wrote: post #21
yuhong wrote: post #4

I think "years of experience" dates back to the era of widget factories where it actually made sense.

Why did it make sense then?

Why did it make sense then?

Age and maturity. Most people didn't even finish high school and started work at about 15. "5 years of experience" meant you were getting a 20-year-old-- likely, for a working-class male before 1960, to have settled down and gotten married, and to either have a child or be planning to have one.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#53

Post by flyinRyan »

jowiar wrote: post #22

Once upon a time (1969-ish), my father was hired as a programmer. He was an electrical engineer by training, but had zero programming experience at the time. Given a shortage of programmers, IBM placed an ad in the newspaper, hired smart people, and taught them how to program. Assembly. On mainframes. 40+ years later, companies are in a similar situation, but instead, given a shortage of engineers, they are simply wh…

>but instead, given a shortage of engineers, they are simply whining about it.

I don't like this phrase "shortage of engineers". What there is a shortage of is engineers who will work for the shit salaries these companies want to pay. Labor is a market like anything else. If there is more demand than supply....

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#54

Post by fecak »

The key issue is probably time investment for companies. Using years of experience is the easiest way to judge 'ability', and it can be judged by someone non-technical that can ask simple questions about experience - so every applicant is not wasting the time of a tech team member. Pay a fresh grad 30K to review resumes and waste their time instead of your 120K tech lead.

A trend these days is using interests as a predictor of talent. Most of my clients (recruiter of engineers) could see two identical levels of professional experience, but if one of those candidates is writing Haskell at night that is the one getting the interview. The intellectual curiosity and interest in complex subjects seems to be an indicator of ability and/or talent. This could be something easy to teach HR and recruiters, and I always ask candidates about tech hobbies or "What do you run at home?" to get some insight.

Most below average engineers are probably not assumed to be researching complex concepts in their spare time.

To think that companies or individuals will not continue to use experience numbers in evaluating talent is overly-optimistic, but I think judging based on interests is becoming a useful means.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#55

Post by readme »

b0rsuk wrote: post #13
readme wrote: post #10

Talent is a function of experience. It's not that you shouldn't hire for experience - you should. The problem is that the model most people have for quantifying experience is flawed. As it says in the article, 5 years of experience for one person might be the same as 1 year for another. To solve the problem, we need to borrow an idea from RPGs: experience points.

Funny, I think it's the other way around. Experience is a function of talent. Talented people gain xp points faster and therefore level up faster. Or rather, they have lower xp requirements for new levels.

It could be that way... I doubt it though. I don't believe anyone is that innately talented. Try picking up a few musical instruments that you don't know how to play. Genius is learned, not inborn. You need to be lucky enough to win a certain IQ and have all your fingers and toes, but after that it's perspiration.

Find me a child prodigy genius who didn't come from a well to-do family who paid for tons of tutoring. Find me one from a slum. (hint: you probably won't find one)

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#56

Post by nawitus »

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…

>"Why do you want to work here?"

The problem with this question is that many people won't answer it honestly. A lot people just want to get, say, a better salary, but instead will answer stuff like "I want to solve difficult problems" etc.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#57

Post by ses »

This resonates a lot with some experiences I have had, and the reluctance to take a very small risk on whether someone with talent will be able to pick up a new technology is something I do feel a lot of companies are losing out from as a result. However at the same time I'm quite sure recruiting is a very hard thing to do, as there does seem to be a big shortage of both skills and talent in our industry. I suppose you have to always consider the context of what you are recruiting for. But personally if I was given the choice I would go for someone that clearly has talent and ability to learn, as long as there is some evidence available to show for it.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#58

Post by michaelochurch »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #41
jowiar wrote: post #22

Once upon a time (1969-ish), my father was hired as a programmer. He was an electrical engineer by training, but had zero programming experience at the time. Given a shortage of programmers, IBM placed an ad in the newspaper, hired smart people, and taught them how to program. Assembly. On mainframes. 40+ years later, companies are in a similar situation, but instead, given a shortage of engineers, they are simply wh…

Part of it is the difference in programming culture. With startup culture, which has many good aspects, also came the idea that the death march should be the norm. Meaning, 20-somethings should be working 80 hour weeks on a regular basis and projects should be shipped at the soonest possible moment it's even remotely feasible to do so. This sort of working environment has no slack, no capability to operate effectivel…

Yes, this. In the analysis that I'm building up (start here: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/gervais-princ...) it's the tough culture. It gets people to work hard but not smart. Long-term strategic considerations are ignored, it's all about now, now, now. That mentality can be good for short bursts of superhuman productivity, but after a few months, it taps out.

The apprenticeship makes sense in the lawful-good guild culture; tough culture is chaotic evil. (Typical corporate rank cultures, where subordination is key but you can get away with pretty much anything-- even doing nothing for years-- so long as your boss likes you, are lawful evil; Valve's bossless, self-executive mode is chaotic good.) So the tough culture of startups is the exact opposite of the progressive (but usually incapable of immediate scaling) guild culture.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#59

Post by randomdata »

yuhong wrote: post #4

I think "years of experience" dates back to the era of widget factories where it actually made sense.

Perhaps even going back to agriculture. You typically only get one growing season per year, which means it takes many years to see different variables you may encounter play out.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#60

Post by namenotrequired »

GoranM wrote: post #9

Here's a relatively novel idea (I guess): Outline exactly what you need the developer to do, and have them send in proof that they can actually do it. Previous projects, personal github experiments ... Most capable programmers will have something interesting to show. Right?

Good idea but I think part of the point of the article is that the job will change. So to "Outline exactly what you need the developer to do, and have them send in proof that they can actually do it" is, again, to attract people with 'experience' that happens to fit that particular job description, rather than talent.
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