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Hire talent, not five years with Java

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Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#101

Post by doktrin »

ciupicri wrote: post #48
doktrin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hugely over-architected solution? Eliminated. I once made the mistake of over-engineering a coding test by , among other things, writing and invoking C code from a Java web application. While I thought it would communicate enthusiasm by going above and beyond, it in fact horrified them and I never even heard back. Lesson learned.

Out of curiosity, why did you invoke C code from Java? Was it for speed or something else?

Well, honestly it was curiosity. At the time I was teaching myself both C and Java, and I thought the coding test a good chance to apply both languages in a new context.

However, yes, the C code was more performant than its ruby counterpart - though within the context of the coding challenge it was fairly negligible.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#102

Post by InclinedPlane »

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…

Death march is often the norm, and when more effort is needed the only option is a super death march or just giving up.

And yes, it's not a good way to work. Nor is it even a fast way to work. It's a an equilibrium point that is reached when certain initial conditions in regard to the value that is placed on the appearance of work and dedication are higher than craftsmanship et al is valued.

For people who are immersed in that world view it seems perfectly logical that adding more hours worked will make everything better. But the paradox is that it doesn't, it often makes things worse, for a whole laundry list of reasons. People become physically and emotionally exhausted by the pace, there's no room for higher level improvements which are often the only way to achieve orders of magnitude gains in efficiency, productivity, and quality.

There are a handful of companies that do things right and at those companies employees tend to stick around for not just a few years but decades and the products they make tend to have an outsized impact on the industry (valve, blizzard, 37signals, pixar, etc.) But it's still so hard to fight against the conventional wisdom.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#103

Post by russell »

blaabjerg wrote: post #46
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…

I'm not sure this is exclusive to the software/engineering industries. My impression in general is that people "back in the day" were much more content to stay with a single employer for their whole life–or at least long periods of time–than they are today. If that's the case, training new employees from the ground up made much more sense a few decades ago from an ROI standpoint. I haven't got any statistics to back…

I was there "back in the day". There were lots of people who stayed with a company for decades as well as lots who jumped ship after a couple of years when their employers couldnt keep up with the salary escalation. One or the big differences was that there were many more layers of management. Engineers were reasonably well paid, but the salary range was fairly compressed. In general the highest paid engineer could not make more than his manager. When a man got a family and needed more money, he was promoted to a manager. There was the HP Way where nobody was fired and engineers were taken care of.

While there were startups, there was not the froth of new ventures that there is today. Finding a job was very much word of mouth, newspaper classifieds, and head hunters, not the easy searching of Craigslist of today.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#104

Post by pjungwir »

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…

From what I've read, IBM was hiring crossword players, chess players, anything that seemed to indicate intelligence.

I agree it's better to hire for talent (or aptitude or intelligence) over experience, but sadly in the United States these days that is pretty much illegal. So how much of "hiring for experience" is HR departments not knowing any better, and how much is it their better knowledge of employment law and not wanting to be sued?

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#105

Post by [deleted] »

hga wrote: post #83
wfunction wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#106

Post by vamega »

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…

Would you discount someone who didn't write tests, but wrote the solution in a language that had a strong, static type system (like Haskell, OCaml, etc)?

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#107

Post by superuser2 »

vamega wrote: post #106
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…

Would you discount someone who didn't write tests, but wrote the solution in a language that had a strong, static type system (like Haskell, OCaml, etc)?

Because all software bugs are a result of dynamic typing? What?

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#108

Post by alberich »

caw wrote: post #89
alberich wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems this sum is all they get, as they said most mechanics prefer to work on their own (informally) as they get more money. Besides, comissions don't contribute for their final retirement salary and stuff like that.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#109

Post by russell »

hfsktr wrote: post #35

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'…

You have my sympathies. One thing that might help it to pay attention to your attitude and demeanor. One problem is thinking that you are humbly begging for a job and that they are in control of the process. A bit more of a chip on your shoulder may help. Sure some my be put off by an "attitude", but if you arent having any success, why not? It may make you look like a can-do person.

Re: Hire talent, not five years with Java

#110

Post by jeremysmyth »

michaelochurch wrote: post #52
trhtrsh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the days of guilded craftsmen, apprentices weren't allowed marry.
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