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We only hire the trendiest

danluu.com

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Re: We only hire the trendiest

#11

Post by dkopi »

I find that "how can he improve?" is probably a much better question than "Why don't you want him"? Ask the first - and you'll get real actionable items to improve on. Ask the second - and you'll get the recruiters equivalent of "you're cute, but I already have an imaginary boyfriend".

While a company might pride itself in hiring generalists and "we do a bit of everything", very often they're just looking for someone to fill a specific position for a very specific need. Those needs might change in 3 months, (and then they'll be glad you're a generalist), but they're hiring someone to fill the gap NOW. This is especially true for startups, who have limited funding, believe in "move fast" mantras, are afraid of hiring someone that might need to be fired, and are afraid to take time for ramp up.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#14

Post by dkopi »

pingec wrote: post #9

Is the anti windows/.NET bias really that common? I have been a .NET dev for 6 years because that was my job. But I don`t believe that makes me useless on any other stack. In fact lately I desire to work on something that feels exciting and fresh again but sometimes I feel like .NET devs are looked down upon and it`s not so easy to land a job or contract outside .Net land.

I wouldn't say it's an "Anti .NET" bias, as much as it's an "anti too many years in the same exact thing" bias.

1. Choose a different language for your next side project. 2. Step in the door with C#, try to help out on projects or change positions inside the company. 3. Attend hackathons, contribute to opensource projects.

A good programmer can quickly feel comfortable in any programming language. Recruiters feel more comfortable when you can actually show proof of that.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#15

Post by romanovcode »

pingec wrote: post #9

Is the anti windows/.NET bias really that common? I have been a .NET dev for 6 years because that was my job. But I don`t believe that makes me useless on any other stack. In fact lately I desire to work on something that feels exciting and fresh again but sometimes I feel like .NET devs are looked down upon and it`s not so easy to land a job or contract outside .Net land.

"fresh and exciting". Do you know about .NET core? It's pretty fresh, open-source and it runs on all platforms.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#16

Post by UK-AL »

dkopi wrote: post #14
pingec wrote: post #9

Is the anti windows/.NET bias really that common? I have been a .NET dev for 6 years because that was my job. But I don`t believe that makes me useless on any other stack. In fact lately I desire to work on something that feels exciting and fresh again but sometimes I feel like .NET devs are looked down upon and it`s not so easy to land a job or contract outside .Net land.

I wouldn't say it's an "Anti .NET" bias, as much as it's an "anti too many years in the same exact thing" bias. 1. Choose a different language for your next side project. 2. Step in the door with C#, try to help out on projects or change positions inside the company. 3. Attend hackathons, contribute to opensource projects. A good programmer can quickly feel comfortable in any programming language. Recruiters feel mor…

Changing stack usually involves a decrease in salary.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#17

Post by pingec »

romanovcode wrote: post #15
pingec wrote: post #9

Is the anti windows/.NET bias really that common? I have been a .NET dev for 6 years because that was my job. But I don`t believe that makes me useless on any other stack. In fact lately I desire to work on something that feels exciting and fresh again but sometimes I feel like .NET devs are looked down upon and it`s not so easy to land a job or contract outside .Net land.

"fresh and exciting". Do you know about .NET core? It's pretty fresh, open-source and it runs on all platforms.

I meant fresh and exciting as in content/product, not the tech.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#18

Post by dwb »

staticelf wrote: post #12

I couldn't stand the wall of text on such a wide screen that I have. But the TLDR seems to be not to hire based of trendy skills, which I agree with.

"Wall of text" is usually reserved for people who don't use paragraph breaks; such a complaint is unfair on a perfectly well-formatted page. If you want it narrower, maybe make your window smaller?

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#19

Post by staticelf »

pingec wrote: post #9

Is the anti windows/.NET bias really that common? I have been a .NET dev for 6 years because that was my job. But I don`t believe that makes me useless on any other stack. In fact lately I desire to work on something that feels exciting and fresh again but sometimes I feel like .NET devs are looked down upon and it`s not so easy to land a job or contract outside .Net land.

I think why .NET is looked down upon is because many have severe lack of experience with .NET. I too have made assumptions of .NET because of my experience was only webforms in a small course at my university.

Ironically, I have recently started using .NET MVC for my projects since I think it's really great. It beats many alternative MVC-frameworks in my opinion.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#20

Post by johnloeber »

bluetomcat wrote: post #7

The abundance and heterogeneity of various technology stacks, frameworks, methodologies and whatnot fuels this hiring mess. Twenty-five years ago, nearly everyone who called himself a programmer knew C and an interviewer could judge the relative strength of two candidates by really examining their programming skills and not some trendy keywords.

This sounds like a falsehood, brought about by the belief that the past was somehow simpler, because the relics from the past that survive into the modern day are few in number.

I doubt that everyone knew C. Lots of big firms extensively used COBOL. Fortran was important in science/numerical computing. Pascal was popular. The list goes on.

Need I mention that for decades, there were lots of competing assembly languages, and that only in recent years we've converged on three? That Harvard Architecture and Von Neumann Architecture competed into the late 70s? That compiling a program on a machine with particular hardware could be seriously difficult? The conflict between big-endian and little-endian systems? Computing has always been full of heterogenous, competing technology stacks, frameworks, methodologies, etc. Why? https://xkcd.com/927/

And in the 90s in particular: do you really think that designing software for this so-called "internet" and newfangled HTML and JavaScript was free of trendy keywords?

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