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Hire talent, not five years with Java

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Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#71

Post by facorreia »

mortdeus wrote: post #62

If you are not hiring developers based solely on their portfolio of previous projects they authored. You are doing it wrong. Every prerequisite requirement for developers is inherently flawed. 1. A degree. While degrees are nice and prove somebody is considerably "intelligent" and not a "complete waste of time", many talented programmers, especially the ones you want to hire; are fully capable of teaching themselves…

Often the majority of a programmer's portfolio is code that is intellectual property of former employers and they can't show it around. In fact, most times they're not supposed to have that code in their personal laptops.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#72

Post by tokenadult »

Here is another active discussion of company hiring procedures here on HN. Most of us have been hired for at least one job in our lives, and all of us who have built up an organization have had occasion to hire someone else before, so we all think about this. I searched the comment thread to see if anyone has linked to the Hacker News FAQ on this subject. The last full posting of that FAQ was a while ago,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227923

and the tl;dr of the FAQ is "If you are hiring for any kind of job in the United States, prefer a work-sample test as your hiring procedure. If you are hiring in most other parts of the world, use a work-sample test in combination with a general mental ability test."

"Reasons for being selective when choosing personnel selection procedures" (2010) by Cornelius J. König, Ute-Christine Klehe, Matthias Berchtold, and Martin Kleinmann backs up this advice:

"Choosing personnel selection procedures could be so simple: Grab your copy of Schmidt and Hunter (1998) and read their Table 1 (again). This should remind you to use a general mental ability (GMA) test in combination with an integrity test, a structured interview, a work sample test, and/or a conscientiousness measure."

http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/prepri...

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#73

Post by 127001brewer »

michaelochurch wrote: post #58
InclinedPlane wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

...it's all about now, now, now.

I think this mentality affects all aspects of our lives and society. How do you disrupt this shortsightedness?

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#74

Post by Retric »

dexen wrote: post #44
InclinedPlane wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While I agree with your overall message, 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. has got me puzzled: in my (limited) experience and from what I've read, a death march is exactly the opposite of shipping early. The usual story goes: a deadline…

All it takes is unrealistic deadlines and you end up with a death march. Unfortunately, some people game the system and assume burning people out is worth it.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#75

Post by AUmrysh »

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…

They can also just hire H1B workers who have the exact skills they're looking for while paying them level one wages. Obviously this only applies to America considering H1B, but other countries have similar programs.

I don't blame the foreign workers, I blame the employers who undermine the value of our engineers to benefit their own bottom line.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#76

Post by lccarrasco »

readme wrote: post #55
b0rsuk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. F…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan

> Without a degree, he left college and continued to pursue independent research in mathematics. At this point in his life, he lived in extreme poverty and was often on the brink of starvation.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#77

Post by bearmf »

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…

> People who write no tests are immediately eliminated.

Why would you need dedicated test code for a project that can be completed in an hour? This is definitely TDD-specific and most programmers would not do it.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#78

Post by nollidge »

127001brewer wrote: post #73
michaelochurch wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

...it's all about now, now, now. I think this mentality affects all aspects of our lives and society. How do you disrupt this shortsightedness?

Eh, let's figure it out later.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#79

Post by nollidge »

bearmf wrote: post #77
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…

> People who write no tests are immediately eliminated. Why would you need dedicated test code for a project that can be completed in an hour? This is definitely TDD-specific and most programmers would not do it.

> We tell the candidates to solve the problem in any programming language and that the goal is to show off problem solving, testing and design skills.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#80

Post by nollidge »

jasey wrote: post #34

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.…

Yes. I increasingly get the feeling that I'm stuck in .NET-land because that's the only thing that recruiters feeding off of LinkedIn seem to care about when they "network" at me.
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