Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hire talent, not five years with Java

gillesleblanc.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 121 posts

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#81

Post by s_baby »

Jare wrote: post #32
s_baby wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

What is over-engineering for a toy example is good coding for some problems.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#82

Post by 127001brewer »

nollidge wrote: post #78
127001brewer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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.

I totally forgot what we're talking about anyway.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#83

Post by hga »

wfunction wrote: post #24
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…

The cool thing with EE is, in a lot of cases, the older you get, the more in demand you become (or at least, not any less wanted), since experience is so crucial in EE. With CS, it seems like every company's looking for young, energetic undergrads fresh out of college who know the latest technologies, in many cases to replace the older people. It's always seemed a little too short-sighted to me... not sure how my gen…

"not sure how my generation of CS majors is going to do in the long term"

The way to bet is "very badly", and if you're a conventional salaried employee have your exit strategy well in place by the time you hit 35. Expect to be conventionally unemployable at 40, unless you can hide your age.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#84

Post by noarchy »

nawitus wrote: post #56
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.

It is nice to have interesting problems to solve, and I wouldn't discount that as I motivator. But while I might code in my spare time for free, I sure as heck don't want to trudge into an office and deal with a company for free. It is indeed too bad that people aren't upfront about how money motivates them, or if they feel that they can't do it, as if it is a taboo.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#85

Post by hga »

facorreia wrote: post #71
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.

Indeed. Some of my portfolio is from dead companies where I got permission from the rights holder, some is where I got permission to use a few foundational files that showed e.g. how I do things to improve error reporting and debugging but none of the company's secret sauce. But neither would have been possible without my having been in the field for a long time.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#86

Post by hga »

tomjen3 wrote: post #67
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…

The problem with that kind of requirements is that a lot of non-agressive people take it as a "meet this minimum requirement or the CV goes in the bin". I did this initially but then wen't fuck that and applied no matter what, as long as I thought I might be able to do the job.

Bingo. I myself would put them into a separate bin, and more thoroughly investigate the company to see if I wanted to work there, if I could perhaps weasel around the official requirements in my cover letter, etc. If you're more aggressive, bypass HR and find the hiring manager.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#87

Post by winestock »

mapt wrote: post #47
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…

If there's no slack for training time, there's no slack for an empty position, which is what we have now.

Very succinct. If a company can afford to let a position go empty for six months because they "need someone who can hit the ground running," then they don't really need someone who can hit the ground running.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#88

Post by hga »

drewcoo wrote: post #36
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.…

That's interesting, and I suppose my resume shows that, although there are ups and downs, i.e. a very demanding job followed by one not so demanding.

What I do is to express a narrative in each job, showing how I did stuff that made a difference. I'm most proud of this ending to a sentence in my resume: "[my work] provided half of company revenues and enabled another quarter (out of $5 million for FY92)" (it did go along with some demanding work, technically, and human factor for GUI/workflow).

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#89

Post by caw »

alberich wrote: post #70
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…

Funny that I see companies complaining about the lack of skilled workers here in Brazil, but they are not startups... they just don't want to pay the price. They want engineers, programers, etc. with huge experience and paying a little. Just yesterday I saw a news article talking about the lack of car mechanics... and they say (like it is a great thing) that salaries go high as $450 bucks a month (40h per week)... th…

Total compensation or salary? I'm pretty sure mechanics are paid a base + commission of the sale. The less time they spend fixing the car the more commission they can make (as they move on to the next car). It's an incentive to work. If the labor takes more than the estimate, then the shop and the employee are losing money.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#90

Post by bearmf »

nollidge wrote: post #79
bearmf wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Testing does not mean "writing tests". It means ensuring that the program performs its intended function correctly.
Post reply on HN