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I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

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Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#251

Post by sanderjd »

listenallyall wrote: post #91
sanderjd wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, yeah, I would have no trouble hiring you for any of those things, based on your experiences. I wouldn't have expectations that you'd be the most productive member of those teams "in a few days", but a few months, sure. And I would expect your wisdom from working on a bunch of different things to be a lot more impactful than whatever fine grained details you don't yet know of the exact technology we're usi…

You're saying that in isolation. If you have 50 other resumes on your desk for a React job, there's no way you're going to choose the guy who hasn't touched front-end since 2012.

Sure I would. My company builds stuff with React, but that isn't what's important to what we do. It's just an implementation detail.

I mean obviously it depends on a bunch of other stuff in the resumes and during the interview process. But no, it's not a huge advantage to know React or have done front end development recently, just because we do some front end development in React. It's like the tenth most important consideration for whether someone would be a valuable contributor.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#252

Post by janstice »

sirsinsalot wrote: post #201
scarface_74 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about your tech leads who are looking for top of market salary? By top of market, I mean within your hiring pool not senior staff principal engineer level at a hedge fund

What about them? I'm looking for someone who has lead a team, solved that level of problems, has good soft skills and leadership. The language or stack is irrelevant. A good lead knows the right questions to ask, understands they don't have all the answers and plays to their own and the teams strength. Honestly the last thing I care about, especially here, is if they know the stack.

I agree with all of this - and the skill that leaders need isn’t demonstrating (intermediates can do this), but coaching - this will help develop the team to be able to solve the issues themselves.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#253

Post by sanderjd »

scarface_74 wrote: post #109
listenallyall wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying that in isolation. If you have 50 other resumes on your desk for a React job, there's no way you're going to choose the guy who hasn't touched front-end since 2012.

I agree completely. Even if I did learn React. I still wouldn’t know the tricks to make a modern, usable, website. I would be no good as lead responsible for giving input on best practices and strategy.

Sure you would. It's all the same thing, just different details. You'd do the same thing you do with whatever stack you're currently using: you'd read a lot, do a lot of proofs of concept and prototypes, make a bunch of mistakes, but figure it out and do just fine.

Sure, you wouldn't be as fast as someone who has worked with these tools a million times, and sure, that would matter if you're being hired on a three-month contract to build something and part ways. But if you're being hired to be a valuable contributor and leader at a company, this learning period is going to come out in the wash.

Let me give you an example: At my current company, by my estimation our MVP employee on the engineering side spent most of his career making video games, largely within the Microsoft stack. We do python, go, and React. If we hadn't hired this person because he had never used any of those technologies, that would have been, by a very long shot, the stupidest decision we ever made. This stuff just. doesn't. matter.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#254

Post by sanderjd »

jgoodhcg wrote: post #116
lampshades wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've interviewed a lot of candidates over my years and technology specific information isn't something I ever look for, unless money is tight.

> unless money is tight The software dev job market is cooling down. Making good choices on what to build experience in is more important than it has been in recent years. I think many companies, including mine, are thinking they have only a few spots to fill and a lot of candidates to consider. I know we consistently say things like “who will be productive quickly?”

I honestly think that if you have a short enough runway that "who will be productive quickly" is a prime concern, it may be time to consider hiring nobody and figuring out other ways to save money and extend runway. And if you aren't that desperate, then you should stop asking this question and instead ask "who will be a good investment longer term?".

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#255

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG »

janstice wrote: post #252
sirsinsalot wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about them? I'm looking for someone who has lead a team, solved that level of problems, has good soft skills and leadership. The language or stack is irrelevant. A good lead knows the right questions to ask, understands they don't have all the answers and plays to their own and the teams strength. Honestly the last thing I care about, especially here, is if they know the stack.

I agree with all of this - and the skill that leaders need isn’t demonstrating (intermediates can do this), but coaching - this will help develop the team to be able to solve the issues themselves.

You can’t coach what you don’t know. And the reality of leading an engineering team is that when your team members actually seek your opinion on a problem, you have to know the specific solution to specific details, not general patterns.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#256

Post by cellis »

sanderjd wrote: post #254
jgoodhcg wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unless money is tight The software dev job market is cooling down. Making good choices on what to build experience in is more important than it has been in recent years. I think many companies, including mine, are thinking they have only a few spots to fill and a lot of candidates to consider. I know we consistently say things like “who will be productive quickly?”

I honestly think that if you have a short enough runway that "who will be productive quickly" is a prime concern, it may be time to consider hiring nobody and figuring out other ways to save money and extend runway. And if you aren't that desperate, then you should stop asking this question and instead ask "who will be a good investment longer term?".

Alas, that's not how the market works, unless you can pay top of market. So for FAANG, that works, but for startup #293928293 that won't work. They need to ship more features asap (an orthogonal discussion about building the right features is a different matter), and for that they don't have time to bring someone up to speed, only for them to jump to a better paying role once they've upskilled.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#257

Post by nologic01 »

somsak2 wrote: post #206
nologic01 wrote: post #165

Developers have a finite useful lifespan and they need to pick their portfolio of techologies wisely if their journey is not going to be an anxious random walk chasing the latest fad. You cant only pick "winners" but you almost need to develop a sixth sense for what will be a valuable and long term addition to your finite toolbox. Looking at tech attributes is just the start. business and community context, complemen…

I don't think it's subtle at all. Pick existing popular technologies / frameworks. If you like to gamble a bit, pick those that you see growing quickly. Invest time in learning new stuff (ideally, on an employer's dime) throughout your career. If you don't care about being on the 'bleeding edge', you really don't have to think about it too hard and you'll have plenty of job opportunities.

Hmm, lets put that approach to the test? Is flutter 'popular'? There are other popular alternatives for mobile apps. Is one or two years being "the most loved" on surveys sufficient to decide its "growing quickly"?

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#258

Post by sanderjd »

cellis wrote: post #256
sanderjd wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly think that if you have a short enough runway that "who will be productive quickly" is a prime concern, it may be time to consider hiring nobody and figuring out other ways to save money and extend runway. And if you aren't that desperate, then you should stop asking this question and instead ask "who will be a good investment longer term?".

Alas, that's not how the market works, unless you can pay top of market. So for FAANG, that works, but for startup #293928293 that won't work. They need to ship more features asap (an orthogonal discussion about building the right features is a different matter), and for that they don't have time to bring someone up to speed, only for them to jump to a better paying role once they've upskilled.

I've worked at all different kinds of companies, and I don't think this is the way it works at well managed startups.

The model I've seen at startups is an approximately two-year cycle of 1. raise money against a couple year plan of milestones, 2. hire quickly on the back of that raise, 3. use that personnel growth to hit those milestones, 4. go back to 1.

Importantly, the large bulk of the hiring happens around those post-raise points, when there is a couple years of runway. And the idea of startups is to be ambitious and forward-looking, not myopically churning on short term features.

I would submit that it's even more important for startups to be focused on investing in the right team during those scale-up periods, because many of those people are going to be the leaders during the next round. You want people who are going to be strong stewards of your business as it grows, not just people who see themselves as "react devs" or whatever.

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#259

Post by scarface_74 »

sanderjd wrote: post #253
scarface_74 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely. Even if I did learn React. I still wouldn’t know the tricks to make a modern, usable, website. I would be no good as lead responsible for giving input on best practices and strategy.

Sure you would. It's all the same thing, just different details. You'd do the same thing you do with whatever stack you're currently using: you'd read a lot, do a lot of proofs of concept and prototypes, make a bunch of mistakes, but figure it out and do just fine. Sure, you wouldn't be as fast as someone who has worked with these tools a million times, and sure, that would matter if you're being hired on a three-mon…

And why would you waste money on waiting for me to come up to speed when there are literally thousands of people who know react and can hit the ground running?

And at this point in my career I’m looking for lead positions. Would you hire me to lead your front end efforts?

(my area of expertise is enterprise app architecture/dev + AWS. As a developer I spent most of the modern era of my career working with Node, C# and Python).

Re: I feel like I made a mistake investing professionally into Flutter

#260

Post by notbeuller »

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #255
janstice wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with all of this - and the skill that leaders need isn’t demonstrating (intermediates can do this), but coaching - this will help develop the team to be able to solve the issues themselves.

You can’t coach what you don’t know. And the reality of leading an engineering team is that when your team members actually seek your opinion on a problem, you have to know the specific solution to specific details, not general patterns.

But as a leader, if you don't know - then it's an opportunity for you and the team members to learn it together, the real point of which is teaching the team members how to adapt. Half the crap people ask me, I don't know, but I'm happy to find out with them. And maybe next time they'll be able to figure it out on their own.
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