I think the guy is great.
As an accountant trying to turn programmer lots of nuggets there.
How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans
31–40 of 49 posts
Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans
#32"anytime they’re looking at job ads, serious developer positions, not front end developers... " Ouch. I guess I never should have dropped PHP for client side MVC apps.
The full quote is "The second thing, if I see Photoshop on a developer ad, that’s a red flag immediately. What it tells me is you don’t understand what you want, so you’re just throwing everything out there. I advise developers, anytime they’re looking at job ads, serious developer positions, not front end developers, but mid range and back end developers, if they see Photoshop on it, walk away." He's not saying "fro…
Yeah, I bristled at his phrasing, until I read the rest of the sentence--then I was in full agreement. As a front end developer, I'm tired of seeing kitchen sink job postings "requiring" Sass, AngularJS, and...Hibernate. Or WebSphere.
Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Personally, I would want my employees to give me 100% of their effort on coding. If they are going home and coding, how much effort are they actually putting in at work? If you owned a restaurant, would you object to your cooks going home and making themselves a nice meal? Note: This is more of an idle curiosity thing that popped into my head reading your comment. This is not a "Boom, roasted!" type of comment.
That's fair. I guess it is more of a management issue then. I wouldn't want my chef cutting corners and rushing his/her work in order to prepare a 5 course dinner at home, but maybe I would want them to try out new recipes at home and bring them to the restaurant. Something to think about.
That's close to, but not quite the point. Let's say you're happy with your chef's output at work. The chef is making good dishes, and suggests changes and new items. Great.
You ask, when the chef comes in for the day, what he or she did over the weekend. "Well", comes the response. "My in-laws were visiting, so I made them a proper Italian supper, with fresh pasta and homemade meatballs."
Your restaurant isn't Italian. Are you annoyed? The point is that it's wrong to control people when they're not at work. If you're happy with a programmer's output at work, it's ridiculous to tell them that they shouldn't program when they go home. If you're unhappy with their work, then the point is not "you're doing too much at home", but "you're not doing enough at work. Do what you need to do to produce as we agreed your job requires."
Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans
#34Depends - are we hiring brogrammers or precious snowflake developers who must be feted and every desire fulfilled to keep them happy - and let them keep producing the crap bogging down the web as we know it?
I agree. Evolution is overrated, let's go back to BBS.
Don't underrate bbsing... the best BBS interfaces were clean, artistic and didn't have a sense of information overload. The same holds true today, especially with mobile.
Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans
#35The fact that he touts Dave Ramsey's 6 month hiring process as some sort of positive is misleading.
Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans
#36I have so many comments on this article but this stood out: > I do not negotiate salaries. > I ask the person what do you need. That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. Did you honestly tell your employer "oh I only needed $X to pay my bills and eat ramen"? > I’ve got a junior developer saying I need $100,000, that’s not reasonable Actually according to glassdoor[1] - salaries for a "junior developer" range f…
That link seems to be geolocation-specific. For me it returns salaries from 23 to 31k [1] [1] https://imgur.com/cCq85nI
Which I think does add to my point - especially if you are a remote worker. The cost of living in a small suburbia town will be different than living in Silicon Valley.
I don't think he has to deal with remote workers - but automatically disqualifying someone based on how much they ask just rubs me the wrong way.
Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's fair. I guess it is more of a management issue then. I wouldn't want my chef cutting corners and rushing his/her work in order to prepare a 5 course dinner at home, but maybe I would want them to try out new recipes at home and bring them to the restaurant. Something to think about.
That's close to, but not quite the point. Let's say you're happy with your chef's output at work. The chef is making good dishes, and suggests changes and new items. Great. You ask, when the chef comes in for the day, what he or she did over the weekend. "Well", comes the response. "My in-laws were visiting, so I made them a proper Italian supper, with fresh pasta and homemade meatballs." Your restaurant isn't Italia…
I feel like I'm being a bit misunderstood. I wasn't trying to talk about current employees, but lets work with this analogy.
I take issue with the author trying to judge this chef based on the meal he made for his in-laws. That seems to be the same as judging a candidate's merit based upon their side projects.
My example and question might have been a bit off, but I still think it is a bit flawed to make this judgement when trying to hire someone.
Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. Evolution is overrated, let's go back to BBS.
Don't underrate bbsing... the best BBS interfaces were clean, artistic and didn't have a sense of information overload. The same holds true today, especially with mobile.
Some days I think I would gladly go back to BBSes. The medium was so raw and exciting back then, in a way the modern web has never recreated with all its bells and whistles.
Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I totally agree with your first point. He seems to be saying that you are no good to him if you have not worked on side projects or open source. He seems blinded by his 35 years in the industry, and seems to not understand two things: 1) That there are a ton of companies that give 0 time for open source 2) That some people just write code as a job, not as a hobby. Personally, I would want my employees to give me 100%…
>Personally, I would want my employees to give me 100% of their effort on coding. If they are going home and coding, how much effort are they actually putting in at work? If you owned a restaurant, would you object to your cooks going home and making themselves a nice meal? Note: This is more of an idle curiosity thing that popped into my head reading your comment. This is not a "Boom, roasted!" type of comment.
Cooking is different as it's something you do in order to eat--a basic necessity of life. So a cook would likely go home to cook a meal for his family but might not be happy about it.
Software development is not a basic necessity of life.
Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans
#40Thank you everyone for the comments. Whether you agreed with em or not, I do appreciate the feedback. :)