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Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

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101–110 of 242 posts

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#101

I work at SoundHound as a Senior Software Engineer, and take part in interviewing/hiring. Full-stack JavaScript engineers are still in very short supply. Lots of people claim to know JavaScript but many fall short when working across the stack. When I say full-stack, I mean being responsible for building and managing everything the front-end webserver (NodeJS), Database (Postgres/MySQL), and front-end (usually ReactJ…

That's because someone who can build you a server from barebones hardware to a running system in the cloud, waiting to accept and serve data won't pick a framework to write the application; they are unlikely to even use JavaScript for the backend part, because they learned their lessons. What you have are conflicting requirements. You have to work on those first, or hire someone with 20-30 years of experience, pay them appropriately and trust them.

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#102
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you put in your job ads? Usually all I see is a list of tech that I haven't had the inclination to learn as it seems like a step backwards for the majority of use cases- e.g. MongoDB in place of relational databases.

I guess most companies need to pretend that they are a cool tech company with a "challenging line of work". The sheer shortage of programmers manifests a developer-centric market where using the cutting-edge technology matters, even if the business considerations make less of a sense. Take for example, Walmart Labs move to Node.JS + React [1]. The rationale is quite obvious here. It's a step to distance from the corp…

Maybe because developers were sick of being forced to use "corporate technologies" sold at golf courses (like crap from IBM or Oracle)

So when I see a job posting advertising those I know the people in charge have no clue in what they're doing and treat developers as janitors.

Or as pg said: "The more of an IT flavor the job descriptions had, the less dangerous the company was. The safest kind were the ones that wanted Oracle experience. You never had to worry about those."

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#103
post #86
post #67

Intelligence. Tenacity. Ambition. Judgement. Bonus points for recognizing the bullshit parade that is the current startup world. e.g.: NodeJS has value, but it's mostly the same wheel we've had for 20+ years. Or that MongoDB's changelog has consisted of standard SQL features for the past five years and that pgsql would have been just fine (had people read some boyce-codd anyhow).

What's so special about NodeJS: * It has a revolutionary module system (Common JS) witch allows less coupling, more code reuse and better abstractions.

There's nothing "revolutionary" about CommonJS. It's a packaging system that offers simple encapsulation (but so does Java/Kotlin/Scala or C#). There's something different about it, in that it allows concurrent use of different versions--but, frankly, to me that's a demerit, not a positive, 'cause I'd rather keep my dependencies squared away.

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#104
post #86
post #67

Intelligence. Tenacity. Ambition. Judgement. Bonus points for recognizing the bullshit parade that is the current startup world. e.g.: NodeJS has value, but it's mostly the same wheel we've had for 20+ years. Or that MongoDB's changelog has consisted of standard SQL features for the past five years and that pgsql would have been just fine (had people read some boyce-codd anyhow).

What's so special about NodeJS: * It has a revolutionary module system (Common JS) witch allows less coupling, more code reuse and better abstractions.

I'm honestly not sure if this is sarcastic or not. CommonJS is just one approach to solve missing native modularization in JS, but not really revolutionary. Other languages usually have built-in features with a similar purpose, like "import" in Java or Python.

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#105
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are also hurting for front-end javascript engineers and have found the exact same thing. People put javascript on their resume because they recognize the loops and other syntax from their cs classes but in reality know almost nothing about it.

In your opinion what does it mean to know JavaScript?

Personally. I'd mean someone who knows and understands how to structure JavaScript apps in a way that makes it easy to maintain, extent and deploy. Someone who understands the tooling and ecosystem that's been built up around JavaScript when it comes to things like modules and packaging, and know when to use what (and more importantly when not to use what).

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#106
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

here, i'll paraphrase for you, since i'm a "real world" hiring manager as well, with a business that i keep anonymous/secretive on hn. "a reliable person who can actually, really, like, totally for real drive a problem to resolution and then go spend time with family. if there's an emergency, they pick up their phone and try to help." this is a small percentage of the population, but big enough. it's why we (based in…

That pitch is great, if rarely seen. My job entails emergencies from time to time, and it's rewarding to solve an issue at the customer, before it gets out of hand, while still solving problem on the long-term roadmap during the day. What I do regret is the complete lack of remote, meaning I will pretty much leave this job soon, as my fiancée is currently living on the other side of the planet. It's great to see comp…

> Are you still looking for applicants?

i don't recruit on hn. i will say this though: most people like you, if given the opportunity to work for a smaller, unknown firm for less money remotely, and a larger well known 'famous' firm for more money on-site, they will usually choose the latter even if they really want to work remotely.

in other words, "i want to work remotely" usually really means, "i wish i had all the upsides of BigCo with none of the downsides."

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#107
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not op, but: IMO somewhat uninformed opinion (longtime dev on two of the biggest platforms, played a bit with node etc a few times) the Javascript ecosystem has seems to have numerous issues. Here is my impression: - being equally bad or worse than php in a number of ways (I used to write php, the right way ; ) -to: having bad dependency management -to: the complete ecosystem being in a churn, always. Like if php con…

Sorry, that's just how I talk. If we had a past interaction, good to see you again. "Sounds cool so I will avoid it for now, I'll use the old way, get it done and then have fun with it after we solve the problem" I actually feel that there's some great advice here. I mean, great "fucking" advice. People in my community tend to jump into things that are new and shiny, and it makes me feel that I'm missing out sometime…

> Sorry, that's just how I talk.

That's under your control, right?

> I'd rather call people "old and cynical" and give them a chance to show me why I'm wrong.

If you address people respectfully, you will get more fruitful responses.

An insult is rarely the best way to start a conversation.

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#108
post #50

I manage the Google Container Engine and Kubernetes team in Seattle (we have other sites in Mountain View and Warsaw). Aside from the obvious interest in building container orchestration systems, I look for a passion to solve real user problems, not only building a piece of tech. Bonus points for knowing about Docker or containers or clouds or Golang or security. More points for meeting users where they are. And the…

Wow, working with Google would be a dream come true for me. However, most of my experience is with Amazon ECS and Docker, tried a bit of Mesos.

Definitely apply - that's useful experience to have at Google. After all, what's the worst that can happen? :)

Bear in mind that our hiring process is SLOW, so be prepared for it to take a lot of time. Best of luck!

Re: Ask HN: Hiring managers, what tech skills will you be hiring for in 2017?

#110
I work for a small company in the Netherlands.

We are looking for c# devs with some front-end experience and ops people (linux / Windows / networking). Azure / AWS experience is you have it. You can do SQL and have a nice grasp of distributed architectures. Experience with CI is appreciated.

Most of all though, you need to have a passion for the job. Really like what you are doing and be proud of the stuff you create with the team.

As a company we value your efforts and actively encourage you to have a normal family life but we also expect you to handle a shitstorm (with your team) if need be.

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