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Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

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Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#201

Post by decafninja »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #25

I'm experiencing this now and it's taking some energy to not become disillusioned with the industry. Generalists, or people with a "wide T", are also a lot less valuable than specialists. For any given technology or stack right now, some company out there is doing something cool with it, and they only want to hire people who are already familiar with their particular configuration. The couple of tech interviews I've…

My experience has been that it's the big crufty old school enterprise companies that insist on specialists. They obsess over your resume having certain keywords or "N years of X". The Silicon Valley tech companies mostly don't seem to care about this.

Actually, the SV tech companies do want a particular kind of specialist - Leetcode Masters.

As long as you can regurgitate algorithms while putting on a show as if you discovered the solution serendipitously at the whiteboard, you're golden regardless of whether you have 20 years of experience in Rust or whether your previous job was serving tables as a waiter.

In fact, going along with the theme of this original article, some tech companies have a pipeline for "nontraditional applicants", so I feel in some sense, it can actually be advantageous to be a former waiter whose spent time mastering leetcode vs. an industry veteran with many years of experience at the "wrong companies".

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#202

Post by Hermitian909 »

kristopolous wrote: post #175
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generalists, or people with a "wide T", are also a lot less valuable than specialists I actually disagree with this. Speaking anecdotally but also someone who works at a FAANG-esque co, full stack or “wide stack” (front, back, infra, sre) are the most desirable due to their versatility and knowledge of the interworkings of various parts of the stack.

Someone needs to tell HR then. That is in no way what they are looking for.

I work at a big tech co. IMO the market has been somewhat poisoned by the disconnect is that in big tech usually has a higher than usual bar to be senior in a specialized role (e.g. frontend) and hiring managers wants full stack engineers to be senior in all of those roles. I've had a lot of conversations with managers from these companies that they'd love a full stack dev but every time they hire one they find the developer can only really cut it in 1 layer.

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#203

Post by kristopolous »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #202
kristopolous wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone needs to tell HR then. That is in no way what they are looking for.

I work at a big tech co. IMO the market has been somewhat poisoned by the disconnect is that in big tech usually has a higher than usual bar to be senior in a specialized role (e.g. frontend) and hiring managers wants full stack engineers to be senior in all of those roles. I've had a lot of conversations with managers from these companies that they'd love a full stack dev but every time they hire one they find the d…

I'm pretty sure that current valley hiring practices filter out the mischiefs needed to take things from sustaining to innovative. It's why tech is coasting and deteriorating.

I look for passionate adults who respectfully disagree with me. Most firms apparently want eager children who aim to please.

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#204

Post by mathgladiator »

ransom1538 wrote: post #192
mathgladiator wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FANGS hire plenty of senior talent especially on the infrastructure side, but there is a core challenge of what ever senior means. I've seen many senior people get managed out due to performance as the game is much harder. Perhaps, it is needlessly hard. However Price's Law applies and is soul crushing.

"FANGS hire plenty of senior talent" Following this logic the median/mean age would not be 29. But we know it is - since that number is from lawsuits which did their due diligence with court ordered discovery. The other way to follow this logic is that age and experience is not correlated. EG. A 23 year old developer could be senior. Maybe this is the case?

No, median/mean are bad metrics due to Price's Law.

For reference, look at https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Facebook,Amazon&track=Softwa... for leveling reference.

There's a fat pipe of people in the E3-E5 range, but it starts to drop at E6 and even more so at E7, and E8/E9 are unicorns. The median is going to be in the E3-E4 range as there is a tremendous amount of churn there for performance reasons.

This is why the question of "what is a senior engineer?" is so important. FANGs are thirsty for E6+ and they hire plenty of them, but there are not enough of them in the world as it's hard to become one without credentials from another FANG.

Part of the reason for this is that there are not many big tech companies that marshal similar forces. For instance, a E6 may be responsible for designing a $50,000,000 system which is definitely a rare skill.

Unfortunately, the senior title is basically useless across the industry. Does it mean time spent doing stuff? Well, time spent doing what? With what kind of budget? What kind of responsibility? What kind of operational burden?

The cruelty of reality is Price's Law comes in for a double whammy. First, for humanity, there are only so many big tech endeavors that investors/customers support so the scope is limited in the number of companies that have big challenges. Second, within a company, there are only so many big-tech problems.

The hardest part of my job was creating scope that was relevant for the business, and I left as an E8 where my great pride was helping two people achieve E7 and a swath of people achieve E6. I was not creative enough to create the scope for another E8.

I tried, failed, and bounced to create room for someone else.

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#205

Post by bena »

kingrazor wrote: post #55
bena wrote: post #23

I think I've felt this a little bit. As a non-degreed individual, I didn't hear anything from places I would apply. Eventually, I applied for a non-development job at a company that also claimed it developed software. With the hopes I'd be able to kind of prove my chops while in the other role to get moved over. Luckily, the company I applied for had no fucking clue what they were doing and hired me for a software de…

I also had no degree and wound up working for a small software company as an IT "intern" which quickly lead to being their sole IT person. That company was also a complete shit-show, but had I not worked there I wouldn't have gained the skills that lead to my current role, which is the best job I've had yet.

Sadly, I can't even really credit that first job with any skills.

Maybe familiarity with SQL Server Management Studio.

The only thing it allowed me to do was to shift so I would develop projects on the company dime rather than at home. If I wanted to learn python, I'd write some web services in python for my job rather than for some bullshit at home.

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#206

Post by eslaught »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #151
anonymoushn wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colleges are less impactful for trendy tech companies than they are for finance or whatever. I went to a no-name state school and could get into these things. If you really did an internship programming at Walgreens, it's easy enough to omit it from your resume.

Is the "state degree" vs. "Ivy League degree" thing that common in US society? I ask because I've just joined an American company, and a person mentioned that they'd been hired and given a chance to excel "despite only having a state degree, much to my Mom's disgust", which surprised me. In my country, there's not much difference between the respective universities in terms of 'prestige'.

I went to UCSD (a public university) for undergrad and then Stanford for grad school (PhD). Both programs were CS.

In my opinion, the average CS undergrad at UCSD is honestly not that different from Stanford. At Stanford, there are a few truly, truly brilliant undergrad students; and possibly more than a school like UCSD. But you'll still find more than zero of those at UCSD, and it's not as if you're swimming in them at Stanford.

Having said that, there is definitely a difference in perception. People (especially people who haven't actually gone to Stanford) seem to expect everyone to be extraordinary at Stanford, even if most of the students are "just" modestly smart.

At Stanford, I had a startup founder walk into my office and just start pitching. I'm not sure what they expected to accomplish, but I thanked them and sent them on their way.

I've also met starry-eyed VCs who seemed to be of the impression that everyone in CS is starting a startup, and that I would (as a CS grad student) just be connected to all these people.

Anyway, overall my impression is that the difference in skill isn't that dramatic, but perception doesn't always match reality.

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#207

Post by plonk »

eslaught wrote: post #206
EdwardDiego wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the "state degree" vs. "Ivy League degree" thing that common in US society? I ask because I've just joined an American company, and a person mentioned that they'd been hired and given a chance to excel "despite only having a state degree, much to my Mom's disgust", which surprised me. In my country, there's not much difference between the respective universities in terms of 'prestige'.

I went to UCSD (a public university) for undergrad and then Stanford for grad school (PhD). Both programs were CS. In my opinion, the average CS undergrad at UCSD is honestly not that different from Stanford. At Stanford, there are a few truly, truly brilliant undergrad students; and possibly more than a school like UCSD. But you'll still find more than zero of those at UCSD, and it's not as if you're swimming in the…

From what I've read the UCs are above-average state schools though. Doesn't UCSD rank just below UCLA and Berkeley?

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#208

Post by plonk »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #156
EdwardDiego wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the "state degree" vs. "Ivy League degree" thing that common in US society? I ask because I've just joined an American company, and a person mentioned that they'd been hired and given a chance to excel "despite only having a state degree, much to my Mom's disgust", which surprised me. In my country, there's not much difference between the respective universities in terms of 'prestige'.

To most people, there really isn't much of a distinction - what you accomplish is far more important than where you went to school. To others, it is everything . I know someone whose mother constantly tells her that she is a dumb failure because she didn't go to Harvard (she went to Stanford).

> I know someone whose mother constantly tells her that she is a dumb failure because she didn't go to Harvard (she went to Stanford).

Sounds like the parent has some self-esteem issues she needs to offload.

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#209

Post by tessierashpool »

plonk wrote: post #207
eslaught wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to UCSD (a public university) for undergrad and then Stanford for grad school (PhD). Both programs were CS. In my opinion, the average CS undergrad at UCSD is honestly not that different from Stanford. At Stanford, there are a few truly, truly brilliant undergrad students; and possibly more than a school like UCSD. But you'll still find more than zero of those at UCSD, and it's not as if you're swimming in the…

From what I've read the UCs are above-average state schools though. Doesn't UCSD rank just below UCLA and Berkeley?

that's absolutely correct. the UC system is not what people are talking about when they say "a state school." it's almost even a change of topic.

Re: Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience

#210

Post by EdwardDiego »

wiseowise wrote: post #165
EdwardDiego wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Wrong kind of experience is worse than no experience" is an interesting concept. It implies that the people thinking like this think that people aren't mutable. With no experience, you're a tabula rasa, but once you've been carved, that's it, fixed in stone. Which may be true for some people, but I'm fairly certain that humans are known for their adaptability, their willingness to learn. At least that's why they get…

Real life is not D&D.

No, you're kidding?! Thanks for clarifying that, that explains why when I was rolling my D20 for persuasion checks in stores, they kept asking me to leave.

That said, I'm glad there's no owlbears.

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