51–60 of 153 posts
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This doesn't sound like the Asia that I live in.
> This doesn't sound like the Asia that I live in. Well I have seen it in ; Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia. (note: when I refer to Asia, it is the SEA section)
I'm afraid there's a shortage of good programmers, with proper education in computer science, understanding of how the OS and programs interact, knowing how to use at least one programming language proficiently, fluent in algorithms and data structures - i mean people who know their tools and know what they're doing. Instead we've got lots of excited, half-educated but enthusiastic ctrl-c/ctrl-v specialists, doing wh…
>I'm afraid there's a shortage of good programmers, with proper education in computer science, understanding of how the OS and programs interact, knowing how to use at least one programming language proficiently, fluent in algorithms and data structures Well, I never geeked out about algorithms and data structures irrespective of application domain, but hey, what are you looking for?
I'm afraid there's a shortage of good programmers, with proper education in computer science, understanding of how the OS and programs interact, knowing how to use at least one programming language proficiently, fluent in algorithms and data structures - i mean people who know their tools and know what they're doing. Instead we've got lots of excited, half-educated but enthusiastic ctrl-c/ctrl-v specialists, doing wh…
There's a wide spectrum between copy+paste no-hopers and people with a PhD from MIT who know Knuth and SICP backwards. I would rather employ a self-taught developer with some experience and pragmatism born out of real-world experience than I would someone with impeccable academic credentials. Forgive me if I sound touchy but I'm self-taught, my knowledge of algorithms is extremely patchy - but I think I'm a competent…
One (very recent) example of what i'm talking about: There was a system that crashed once or twice a day, running on EC2 instance. I discovered that the program crashes because it runs out of memory, and also that the system runs without a swap file. Then a guy responsible for that setup explained to me that it's a bad sign when a program uses a swap, therefore they disabled it altogether. Curiously, aftere enabling the swap the problem disappeared.
>>> when a new technology is introduced, one is _immediately_ required to know about it before getting a job where that technology will be used. Well Said. I too am in a similar position you have explained. I have a Computer Science college degree (graduated in November) and I have been applying to junior/graduate level jobs that have inflated expectations of what a regular graduate should know (especially technologi…
Try looking at it from an employer perspective. The fact that you have a CS degree tells me absolutely nothing about your engineering talent. So hiring you on that basis alone would be gamble, and the odds for that gamble are hysterically bad . They have better odds taking a year's junior developer salary straight to the casino. The number of people claiming to be able to do the job is a multitude of those actually a…
Thanks for the advice. I am currently working on that.
"I know lots of engineers who are unable to find work." I don't. Probably your definition of "engineer" is different from mine. "Another problem is that us engineers are expected to have real-world, paid experience in whatever technology the hiring company uses" Generalization and obviously not true. I have a company, I don't care about paid experience, in fact we hired lots of people from open source projects, or di…
"I don't care about paid experience ... we hired lots of people from open source projects". "The better demonstration of grasping computing technology is actually having done something with a computer". So you do care about experience.
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H1Bs are used not only to pay lower wages, but to enable employers to treat their employees poorly without fear that they will leave. As a US Citizen, not only can I work for any US employer, I can reside here as well, even if I don't have a job. If I work for someone who treats me poorly, or who I regard as unethical, I will resign. One time I just walked right off the job - I left on a Friday, then never returned,…
A possible solution here is for countries to treat labor the way they have started to treat capital and goods and services. Start signing reciprocal free-labor agreements. If country Y is willing to allow anyone who can legally live and work in country X to legally live and work in country Y, then country X will do the same for people who can legally live and work in country Y. In my mind, if companies were serious a…
Free movement of labor also requires a correspondence in the national health care and retirement programs, so for example totalization agreements to eliminate dual Social Security coverage. The US has such agreements with only a score or so countries (see http://www.ssa.gov/international/agreements_overview.html ). It gives an example of a 66% tax rate when such an agreement does not exist.
As it stands now, there is no such agreement between the US and, say, New Zealand. A NZ citizen working in the US for 8 years before returning to NZ would pay US Social Security taxes for those 8 years, but receive no benefits.
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Relatively moderate nit: Using the WhatsApp founders is a very poor example. If you look at their resumes (VP of Eng at Yahoo for Brian, presumably a very senior/architect-level engineering role for Jan), I have no doubt they were interviewing at Facebook for architect/engineering director-level roles. Whether or not you get hired at that level obviously depends on much more than baseline coding competency.
I'll pick some at that nit. In the link, the author contrasts it to the quote from Zuckerberg: "Our policy is literally to hire as many talented engineers as we can find. The whole limit in the system is just that there aren’t enough people who are trained and have these skills today." The example is to point out how this quote is not true, as two such engineers were not hired by Facebook. You point out that it depen…
Fully agree. Recently discussing this issue among friends, not one of them could get hired for specific positions, even though they knew the required technologies. All got the same excuse, the said technologies were being used in side projects, not on their main job.
I find what you are saying very hard to believe as my own experience has been the complete opposite. When I was interviewing I got asked about my side projects more than everything else combined.
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The only concrete things that you've suggested you would do is call colleges and previous employers' HR departments. That's both pretty trivial, and there are lots of companies that already provide that service. They're usually marketed as background checks to do just before the offer, as you say, but I'm sure they could also do it up front as you're proposing.
HR departments normally have legal advice to say as little as possible. It would be hard to get a tech opinion out of them.
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I live in Vancouver, Washington (the "Original Vancouver", not Vancouver, British Columbia), but am looking for work in Portland, Oregon. However I have also lived in Vancouver BC, Truro, Nova Scotia, St. John's, Newfoundland, Santa Cruz, California and Silicon Valley. The claim that there was a tech worker shortage started to appear during the dot-com boom, but never really went away, even when the economy contracte…
Seriously, you claim it only cost the company a book and a week to get you up to speed in a new languages, but you can't be arsed to make that small investment in yourself before applying for a new job? That inertia and lack of motivation is the reason I wouldn't hire you. Because besides languages, your job as an engineer entails constantly learning and trying new things in order to find the best solution for any gi…
"But you can't be arsed to make that small investment in yourself before applying for a new job?"
Bills don't pay themselves. Why can't you, the employer, be arsed to make that small investment in your new employee? You're the one with the capital.
"Your job as an engineer entails constantly learning and trying new things in order to find the best solution"
Exactly, job. As in getting paid for it. Not sure why you think it's a duty. A sacrifice that employees must make for you.
"I might as well give the work to a much cheaper coder in an off shore sweatshop."
Enjoy the results. :)