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Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

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Re: Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

#51

Post by VLM »

mooreds wrote: post #43
lastofus wrote: post #6

> I think if I applied for a job I'd get rejected as there is no track record of being able to work with that tech. This is a big assumption, that is simply not true for a lot of opportunities out there. If you are able to show proficiency in what they are looking for, many companies will take you seriously as a candidate, even without 5+ years on the resume in said technology. Worst thing you can do for yourself is…

If this is the case, why do people put tech under the 'requirements' section, rather than the 'desired'? Hiring managers, you are going to get what you ask for.

At least some of those are H1B posts to prove there's no one in the locality with seven years experience with Windows10. Some are also pencil whipping a HR checklist before hiring the bosses kid or the hand picked internal candidate. You want a CCIE and are offering $50K? No one applying is not necessarily seen as a bug.

At megacorps the relationship between the people writing reqs and the actual job are often rather strained.

I could never qualify for my own job req, and I work there. I got in via networking and portfolio. Seriously, HR lists specific versions of AS/400 software and the department doesn't even work that closely with the AS/400 group, ya know. In fact I think my AS/400 password expired, aged out so I need to regain access, although I really don't need it. People in my department "need" windows 8 experience but our desktops are win7? A+ certification preferred because everyone in my great-grand department requires it on paper? You listed the exact model number and firmware version of a specific spectrum analyzer from a company that is no longer in business under that name? Seriously?

Re: Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

#52

Post by darklajid »

GrinningFool wrote: post #35
darklajid wrote: post #9

Thanks a lot for asking this - I'm in a similar boat¹ and will follow this thread with interest. Good luck from another 30-something. ① For me 'niche tech' is one thing, and 'investing a lot of time in the bowels of the corporate product over 10 years' the other one - the latter just WILL go away if I switch and is absolutely not useful elsewhere

Don't underestimate the value of the lessons you've learned in the bowels of that corporate product. Consider: 1) You have experience in a corporate environment. You know the kinds of things that terrify them, and you know the kind of experience they expect from the companies they interact with. This knowledge and perspective is incredibly valuable to any startup in the b2b space. 2) The problems you solved - while m…

Thanks for the words of encouragement.

I'm not totally pessimistic, I was really referring to the knowledge that doesn't translate to a new job. After 10 years and working deeply with a lot of stuff I am among the 'Do you know..?' types for questions about the inner workings of the product. That is really just baggage.

Processes, experiences probably can be reapplied elsewhere. But having read some C files from 1996 (I .. didn't work at that company at that time), reciting the product's API every evening after dinner and being intimately familiar with the current .Net code base is time invested in this job and this job only.

Re: Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

#53

Post by vonmoltke »

VLM wrote: post #51
mooreds wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is the case, why do people put tech under the 'requirements' section, rather than the 'desired'? Hiring managers, you are going to get what you ask for.

At least some of those are H1B posts to prove there's no one in the locality with seven years experience with Windows10. Some are also pencil whipping a HR checklist before hiring the bosses kid or the hand picked internal candidate. You want a CCIE and are offering $50K? No one applying is not necessarily seen as a bug. At megacorps the relationship between the people writing reqs and the actual job are often rather…

See, this is a major dysfunction when combined with the unwillingness to give rejection reasons. How is one supposed to know when they get a form letter rejection if it was because this particular company is actually serious about their asinine "requirements"?

Re: Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

#54

Post by VLM »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #20
nasalgoat wrote: post #17

When I interview people, I am less interested in their specific experience than I am in their ability to think and troubleshoot problems. Google solves the knowledge problem but doesn't solve the problem of intelligently using that info. I imagine other employers are similar, and given the high demand for tech workers, you might be surprised at the reactions.

I do the same, but from reading a lot of comments in similar threads here, it seems that we're a minority. Many (most?) employers want to hire people with only the exact skills & technologies they're currently using. I was hired into my original position here knowing absolutely nothing about the language or the technology. Like you, my manager just wanted raw talent that could be retrained and it worked out for him.…

"but an awful lot of people don't want to take that kind of a risk"

I would agree with and extend your remarks in that its a window into how the company handles risk. There have been companies that have blamestorming meetings to punish the people who selected employees that didn't work out. I had an experience with that leveraging an inside contact for info, and I was pretty pissed off at that time, but now that I'm older and wiser I am so unimaginably happy I didn't get a job at a company mismanaged like that.

Re: Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

#55

Post by vonmoltke »

nilkn wrote: post #26
ExpiredLink wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do companies really try to pigeonhole developers into "tech stacks" so much that you'll be forced to revert to junior status to change? Yes, they do. Moreover, you don't even get a junior position because you don't have adequate education and/or experience.

Well, my company doesn't, nor have other companies I've interviewed with and received offers from. I'd be very hesitant to join such a company. I've interviewed with "top" companies like Google as well and they've never seemed to care about this stuff. This sounds more like a way to hire a contractor, not an engineer you will invest in who will be a full member of the team for potentially a very long time.

> Well, my company doesn't, nor have other companies I've interviewed with and received offers from. I'd be very hesitant to join such a company. I've interviewed with "top" companies like Google as well and they've never seemed to care about this stuff.

My experience has been that the vast majority of non-software tech companies care quite a bit about these specifics. They are also much more likely to pigeonhole you.

Re: Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

#56

Post by vonmoltke »

barrkel wrote: post #39
nilkn wrote: post #21

Do companies really try to pigeonhole developers into "tech stacks" so much that you'll be forced to revert to junior status to change? Unless we're talking about COBOL -> Haskell here, I think any decent company would be wary of overvaluing skills with a particular language or framework and undervaluing fundamentals.

It depends. It's more about developers pigeonholing themselves. Some CVs come along and are e.g. all Java, EJB, Spring, Hibernate etc. - they present themselves as completely unidimensional and more or less rule themselves out of something broader. There are different things you learn when you've coded in a mix of C/C++, Java/C#, Ruby/Python, and perhaps something functional. But having all your experience in one of…

What are they supposed to do when the people employing them demand they get ever deeper into a specific stack in order to advance?

Re: Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

#57

Post by BadassFractal »

hkarthik wrote: post #13

I did this back in 2009. Here's how to do it. Pick a technology stack that you want to get a job in and build a side project in your spare time. Attend meetups with experts in your local community and learn how to make it awesome. Build relationships with them along the way. Use those relationships to get some part-time contract work in said technology stack with someone local. Document this experience and build up a…

This! I've had the opportunity to hire for our company for the past year or so. We use a somewhat uncommon paradigm in our tech stack that is very attractive to a lot of developers. Many of our applicants have exactly what you said: plenty of side projects in that paradigm / stack and participation to meetups / communities etc.

Occasionally however I run into people who have absolutely no side projects and have been doing the same stuff for 10+ years. I'm a Java expert (or .NET or C etc.), they claim. When I ask them if they've tried anything else besides that one thing they've been doing over and over for a decade, perhaps a side project, a toy product, some contribution to OSS in the new paradigm they apparently really want to work in, I get responses along the lines of "I'd never work on something I'm not being paid for, I'm a serious professional that's irresponsible".

Er.. ok. So I'm supposed to hire you, take a huge risk not knowing if you can pull this off or not, train you for a year to do something you have 0 familiarity with, and then you might peace out right about the time when I'm starting to recoup the onboarding costs? I'll pass. Candidates who already demonstrate a lot of interest, side projects, and desire to learn outside of their 9-5 will win any day of the week with me.

Re: Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

#58

Post by newobj »

I've worked for 20 years and never targeted myself towards a tech stack. In fact, I think spreading yourself over lots of different tech is a better bet for longevity, even if not optimal in some short-term capacity. Being able to adapt quickly to new paradigms is the quality necessary for long-run viability. And when you have a track record of successfully doing that, no one will question your ability to do it in a new setting.

Re: Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

#59

Post by brianfryer »

pcsanwald wrote: post #24

As someone who does a lot of hiring for a startup, I will say I'm agnostic with regards to languages and frameworks. We've hired folks with all sorts of disparate backgrounds including embedded C (we mostly use Java and JavaScript). I think you should sell yourself as an experienced technologist who's looking to learn. You should also demonstrate a willingness and ability to learn new things; maybe by making somethin…

This is an excellent point. We hired an engineer at the startup I work at who had a lot of Java experience but very little Ruby experience—our stack's primary language.

He was a fast learner and had no issues getting up to speed in a reasonable amount of time.

Re: Ask HN: How to reskill without losing income?

#60

Post by rdudek »

hkarthik wrote: post #13

I did this back in 2009. Here's how to do it. Pick a technology stack that you want to get a job in and build a side project in your spare time. Attend meetups with experts in your local community and learn how to make it awesome. Build relationships with them along the way. Use those relationships to get some part-time contract work in said technology stack with someone local. Document this experience and build up a…

I can't upvote this post enough! I would also like to add a point to pick a new tech stack and stick to it. Don't fall into the trap like I did some years ago where I kept jumping ship every few months which was causing me to not get anywhere. You'll see people posting to do this and that, all it did for me was just create noise and prevented me from learning new things.
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