JavaScript. So many bad developers, so few good ones. You get a lot of people coming to interview.
What do you look for specifically when hiring a good JS developer?
What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?
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Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?
#32Don't hire someone for their knowledge in a specific language! (Unless you're doing some very core work in that language) Hire someone who knows the concepts behind most languages, and can easily understand new ones.
I don't understand how people believe this is universally good advice. Perhaps if your company is large enough that you can reasonably pay new employees for weeks or months before they're actually productive, I can see this being feasible. But that's not most companies.
Keep in mind that this also likely impacts the productivity of at least one of your current employees, and if it doesn't, your newbie's language acquisition is not going to happen as fast, and their ramp-up time on your projects is going to be longer.
There's a big gray area between well-funded startup and well-established business where an entirely unproductive employee can have a non-trivial impact on your cash flow.
Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?
#33It's true that certain languages are particularly hot, and thus particularly in demand. The three that come to mind right away are Ruby, Python, and JavaScript, for which there seems to be unquenchable demand, even if the absolute number of such jobs is dwarfed by Java and C#. I'm sure that there is a shortage of good Erlang, Scala, and Clojure developers, as well.
But no matter what language you're looking to hire for, you're likely to come up short. That's because you don't just want someone who can write code in XYZ, but someone who can write amazing code, and interact well with the others in the company, and be sensitive to business needs, and communicate well. That combination is rare, no matter how popular and new (or unpopular and old) the language is.
Heck, everyone's favorite punching bag, Cobol, is still used in a huge number of businesses. I've seen in a number of places that if you want to make lots of money doing un-sexy work, you should become a Cobol specialist. Believe me, the businesses who need Cobol developers don't really care that Ruby is the new hotness; they've got billions of dollars invested in existing code that needs to be maintained and improved.
Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?
#34I'd like to come at it from the opposite direction, and help engineers build out profiles of what they are looking for. Not another resume site, but a forum for making anonymous declarations of what the the perfect job(s) would look like. And something similar for potential employers. I probably wouldn't even focus on making connections, but instead just provide scores and feedback on availability, trends, regional f…
Isn't this sort of what LinkedIn is for?
Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?
#35Speaking as someone who has done a little hiring (i.e. authorized to hire two more people for my team at BigCorp) the answer is "All of them". I'm not being facetious, I seriously mean that. The skilled people you want are a scarce resource in a world of high demand. The recruiters shotgun anyone whose resume buzzword-matches at least 25% of the job posting. It just sucks. Imho, your best bet is to develop relationsh…
I agree. I find community meet ups are a great way to find skilled people in specific areas. I've not done much hiring myself (finishing graduate school) but I've done this to find local skill in big data.
Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?
#36Speaking as someone who has done a little hiring (i.e. authorized to hire two more people for my team at BigCorp) the answer is "All of them". I'm not being facetious, I seriously mean that. The skilled people you want are a scarce resource in a world of high demand. The recruiters shotgun anyone whose resume buzzword-matches at least 25% of the job posting. It just sucks. Imho, your best bet is to develop relationsh…
We're currently trying to hire one or two people in Aalborg, Denmark. Getting anyone with skills beyond C# or Java for a smallish company is next to impossible. We're looking for Python and/or Javascript skills, preferably working knowledge of Unix. We've gotten may one real application, it's strikes me as a bit strange, I would have loved to have had open positions like ours when I graduated. An open position in boo…
Try offering the position to remote workers (within a reasonable distance... in your case, somewhere in Europe where there would be no more than +/- 2 hours of timezone difference).
Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?
#37We don't struggle to hire programmers for languages. The struggle is find programmers who understand the concepts we need them to understand. That, and Android developers.
Out of interest, what concepts are you talking about?
Different things depending on what we are hiring for. It also depends on how people present themselves. Algorithms, protocols, software design, data structures.
Hell, there are times I'd be happy if people just understood the difference between TCP and UDP, or knew how to make an HTTP request. I guess it would be a lot easier if we were just looking for code monkeys to follow orders.
Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?
#38For most programmers its not the new language, its the custom libraries, obscure frameworks, legacy code, or tooling that is going to be an issue for them.
Most of which can be summarized as "magic". The less "magic" you have, easier it is to fill new positions.
Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?
#39Or, to put it another way, why are you so averse to investing in people/your company that you're looking for the finished article on the job market, rather than finding good people and helping them learn the specific skills you need?
Because we need a solution now and can't take time to teach you anything. Can you start last week? /s
I've met managers who say that but then are surprised when developers in their team complain bitterly about working on anything other than the "hot" technologies.
Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?
#40Speaking as someone who has done a little hiring (i.e. authorized to hire two more people for my team at BigCorp) the answer is "All of them". I'm not being facetious, I seriously mean that. The skilled people you want are a scarce resource in a world of high demand. The recruiters shotgun anyone whose resume buzzword-matches at least 25% of the job posting. It just sucks. Imho, your best bet is to develop relationsh…
We're currently trying to hire one or two people in Aalborg, Denmark. Getting anyone with skills beyond C# or Java for a smallish company is next to impossible. We're looking for Python and/or Javascript skills, preferably working knowledge of Unix. We've gotten may one real application, it's strikes me as a bit strange, I would have loved to have had open positions like ours when I graduated. An open position in boo…
>> "Skilled software developer ( and yes you can be newly graduated ) will get us nothing"
Maybe that's the problem. I'm a freelancer but anytime I've thought about applying for a full-time software developer position I get put off by words like 'skilled', 'senior', and a list of technologies the person needs to know that no single developer in the world knows.
I've been coding for about 8 years, professionally for 5 and I consider myself a good programmer. But I don't know if I fit your definition of skilled or someone else's definition of senior as those are both too subjective. It puts me off applying mainly because I don't want to embarrass myself.
Edit: I think a good way to hire would be a short coding test a person can take online BEFORE applying. If they pass they know they are skilled enough to apply for the position, if not they don't get laughed out of the room.