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We will never have enough software developers (2020)

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Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#361

Post by alexalx666 »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #353
itsmemattchung wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The best just get bored and move on. Or a reorg happens and you land a shitty manager. To be fair, almost all my managers were amazing, people who truly cared about their staff: at professional level as well as a personal level. I've only had one absolute psychopath as a manager ... but I should thank him because he was the last straw and gave me enough courage (and anger) to leave AWS and start my journey as a sol…

Oddly enough I joined AWS not too long ago and while the job itself sucks, my manager is exceptionally awesome. In fact I only interviewed with AWS as kind of a half-joke, but he was so likeable that it convinced me to take it seriously. He has a healthy "fuck em" attitude when it comes to pressure from outside the team, so he's constantly protecting us in a multitude of ways (e.g. during on-call rotations or deadlin…

We need more stories like that :D

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#362

Post by bryanrasmussen »

whimsicalism wrote: post #343
csomar wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what exactly your company is doing? Why do you care if an applicant understand how a hash map works; and what's particular about a hash map? I'd care more about an applicant understanding the concept of a hash; or hashing in general. If an applicant shows that he understands that a hash is a magical and fascinating mathematical concept; and it can have uses in Information/Computers, that would be more inte…

To me, "what a hashmap is" is just an extremely basic engineering concept. Your reference to "memorizing" (to refer to the topic you don't like) vs. "understanding" (to refer to the topic you do like) is value-laden and also suggests to me that you think a hashmap is more complicated than it actually is - it is truly just one step from understanding what a hash is.

well I mean there is quite a lot of differences between what the answer to 'what is a hashmap?' can be - is it acceptable to say a hashmap is a bunch of key value pairs where the key is an identifier by which you can look up the value you want - or should it be more in depth - akin to the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_table describing not just what it is but also its place in CS and how it is implemented? If the second it's probable the memorized description would be accurate.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#363

Post by mrtksn »

qgin wrote: post #189
mathverse wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adjusted for costs of living or TCO? IT pays peanuts in Europe.

It doesn’t make sense to me why pay is so low in Europe. Is there actually that much less demand relative to supply?

It's not taxes, the taxes are high but the gross salaries in EU and even in the UK are very low, compared to the USA. You don't have stuff like developer making 200K a year but taking home 50K a year, it's more like making 60K a year and taking home 40K.

IMHO it's the culture and the VC environment. There's simply not that much money around to throw at moonshot projects, therefore you don't have many unicorns that lose a few billion euros a year paying extravagant salaries for talent. Obviously EU is a very rich place but people with money invest their money in stuff that are profitable right away, likely to be profitable in short term because a giant company is behind it or invest in the US companies if they are more adventurous.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#364

Post by whimsicalism »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #362
whimsicalism wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, "what a hashmap is" is just an extremely basic engineering concept. Your reference to "memorizing" (to refer to the topic you don't like) vs. "understanding" (to refer to the topic you do like) is value-laden and also suggests to me that you think a hashmap is more complicated than it actually is - it is truly just one step from understanding what a hash is.

well I mean there is quite a lot of differences between what the answer to 'what is a hashmap?' can be - is it acceptable to say a hashmap is a bunch of key value pairs where the key is an identifier by which you can look up the value you want - or should it be more in depth - akin to the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_table describing not just what it is but also its place in CS and how it is i…

I would expect the basic notion of hashing to decide where to place an element as well as a strategy for dealing with collisions (the basic approach being hashing to a linked list). This didn't require any "memorization" on my part.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#365

Post by rootusrootus »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #301
rootusrootus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely think "we do not do leetcode interviews" and maybe "we only have three interviews total" would be selling points on a job posting. People who are experienced in the field don't want to go through the same hoops that newbies do just to prove they know how to write basic algorithms.

You wrote: > I am constantly interviewing candidates for roles at my company. It seems like CVs are a complete gamble. Either some are lies, or wildy understated, and everything in between -- at all levels of experience! "[J]ust to prove..." and yet so many can not do the 2022 version of FizzBuzz. I am stunned how many senior (well, so they say!) hands-on technical applicants cannot do basic things like write a very…

I concede it may just be that I've been lucky, but when interviewing experienced candidates I've never really had any problem judging their competency just from discussing their past work. A little bit of back-and-forth deep dive into the technology has always exposed people who are shallower than their CV would have you believe.

What has burned me, however, cannot be tested adequately in an interview. Bad attitude and laziness. Anyone can behave well in interviews, so we've hired a few people who turned out to have a passive aggressive streak or condescending attitude that interferes with the rest of the team. We've also hired people who are really great developers ... when they work. But they're really lazy and getting them interested enough to do the work is the hard part.

Hiring is hard. I doubt I need to tell you that. There is a reason we gravitate towards hiring people we've worked with in the past, or come recommended by someone we trust.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#366

Post by wayeq »

rolisz wrote: post #320
popotamonga wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my old place they just overestimated my tasks complexity by 200-300%. I wasnt going to be the one saying no... So i had plenty of time to fix whatever.

In my old workplace, I overestimated my tasks by 2x. Who was to question me? The PM who hadn't coded in 10 years? My manager who had never used Python before?

Lucky you.. in my experience the answer to your 2 questions is: yes. Having no or outdated experience doesn't stop them from questioning even accurate estimates and attempting to filibuster their way into us lowing them.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#367

Post by bryanrasmussen »

whimsicalism wrote: post #364
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well I mean there is quite a lot of differences between what the answer to 'what is a hashmap?' can be - is it acceptable to say a hashmap is a bunch of key value pairs where the key is an identifier by which you can look up the value you want - or should it be more in depth - akin to the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_table describing not just what it is but also its place in CS and how it is i…

I would expect the basic notion of hashing to decide where to place an element as well as a strategy for dealing with collisions (the basic approach being hashing to a linked list). This didn't require any "memorization" on my part.

Ok fine, so not an in-depth definition, but someone might think you mean an in-depth definition if you don't specify the level you expect is being used (perhaps because they have encountered that situation). I mean if you ask me define a hashmap and how it works for example I might think: "aw damn, this guy wants the low level details, I bet this place sucks to work at!"

Although I would probably ask them to specify the level of detail they want before trying to comply, and then not get the job because I ask a lot of unnecessary questions or something.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#369

Post by eropple »

xwolfi wrote: post #338
eropple wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really important. At my first job, in 2010 or so, we were using Servlets. Not just Servlets, but Servlets with some home-rolled shims to make it act like Servlets 1.0 in a distinctly post-1.0 world. Doing pretty much anything in there was slow, and I realized it at the time. So during a hack week I built an MVC layer on top, with routing that didn't involve XML files and just--made it generally better . Or so…

That s the problen with juniors yes, you have to drive them towards productivity while not killing their enthusiasm.

Yeah, totally. And in my experience (on both sides of things), a good junior developer is going to probably realize what sucks well before having a strong understanding of how to make it not suck. The first attempts are probably not going to be perfect (maybe not even good) - but that's the sort of thing folks don't really learn by being told. You have to walk into that screen door a couple times. Which is why hiring junior folks is such an investment.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#370

Post by rafaelero »

goldenshale wrote: post #240

I think this article hits on some truths and gets a handful of things wrong. First, they are correct that we are in a dynamic profession that requires constant learning and expanding. No doubt the people who choose to stay in software are likely to be people who are curious, life-long learners where this is a benefit of the profession rather than a drawback. That said, one thing I noticed from teaching computer scien…

Well, that's not what the data is showing. Why are you trying to create a narrative that is not trying to explain what we observe? Smarter people leave the field earlier and the author offers a compelling explanation why.
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