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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

#41

Post by [deleted] »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #12
madrox wrote: post #4

As a hiring manager, I've found entry level roles to be the hardest to fill well. No metric is a guarantee of a quality candidate. I loathe whiteboard programming, but for entry level jobs it's at least a signal that they're putting in the work to figure out how to be successful within a structure. Beyond that, I want a narrative for the candidate's career...both where they've been and where they want to go. It helps…

> "I work for the highest bidder" Uhm, I find people like these are actually the easiest to keep. They know their price and define it. You know what to expect.

[deleted]

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

#42

Post by shalmanese »

ceras wrote: post #28
r3012 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How should they know where they want to go if they're entry-level? I think it’s totally reasonable to expect people to have a plan. It’s also totally reasonable, and expected really, for that plan to change over time. But working without a plan, which implies working without goals, is rarely a recipe for success.

This doesn't really match my experience for my own career or as a manager. Plenty of great engineers don't have a plan beyond "learn and get better," including those that have traditionally-successful careers (e.g. director+ at top tech company). I'd expect that to matter more if you're, say, trying to be a founder - I can see that benefitting from intentional planning. But for careers at big companies, "learn and ge…

There’s also a difference between not having a plan and not being able to articulate your plan. Articulation is a skill that needs training and people who rarely need it are rarely good at it. I can take people who have strong plans and train them to articulate it in a few weekend sessions but someone who doesn’t have a plan requires multiple years of work to develop a plan.

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

#43

Post by wizofaus »

shmde wrote: post #8

I can tell you this is 110% true in my case. I graduated and landed a very shitty testing job at a big consulting firm. I worked hard like a mule( more like a donkey ) for 11 months. Then one day I woke up in the middle of the night and screamed into the pillow that I rather kill myself then do my job. I resigned the next month. Fucked around for a few months, got interested in making backend apps and started applyin…

I've been involved in screening candidates where we basically did just put aside applications from people whose commercial experience was not exactly what the JD was asking for, and indeed some were those with a background in testing/QA when we specifically needed a developer. But that's because we had a ton of resumes sent through by recruiters where it seemed like they'd done very little to ensure they were sending us relevant candidates. To be fair we would have put your resume aside if you'd removed your QA experience too if you didn't also have significant commercial experience as a developer.

But in general if I was responsible for the final call on a junior hire I'd definitely prefer someone with industry experience even in a different role over someone with none at all.

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

#44

Post by ChrisPebble »

nnoitra wrote: post #37

Yes, it's called ageism. Young and fresh is perceived as better than experienced because some bozo will make the argument that they've been doing software engineering "wrong".

This is definitely true sometimes, but the “wrong” kind of experience can definitely hamper people.

I have a highly skilled senior developer with a desktop app development background who joined our web team, he’s excellent at many tasks but keeps getting tripped up when dealing with state. He logically knows how it works, but his muscle memory when programming is so used to being able to rely on state that it’s hard for him stop letting those concepts leak in and trip him up.

He’s still an amazing asset to the team, but in this case he does have some experience that’s hampering him in a new role.

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

#45

Post by honkdaddy »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

I generally enjoy Dan Luu’s advice, but IMO it’s best approached with the understanding that his professional and social network is somewhat of a bubble that doesn’t reflect the average person. Specifically, he cites a statistic that 50% of the people with “no experience” he knows are getting ML and other such jobs at Big Tech companies. In this case, I think he’s likely pre-filtering his sample set to people with si…

Well said as usual, PragP.

My experience working in big tech is that the bar for actually getting an interview for the junior positions is actually relatively low, and your standardized interview performance matters 10x more than the content of your resume. Some people apply for L3 out of college, some people after many years of experience. I’ve never seen someone turned down for “too much of the wrong experience”, what more often happens is that the ruts they got into from their previous job start to show and it affects their interview performance.

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

#46

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

avgDev wrote: post #29

I work for a non-tech company as a solo full stack dev. I have been able to interview with fortune 500 companies and get offers. I have been getting contacted by recruiters from hot startups, Microsoft, Google, AWS, Amazon and Meta. I am not sure if I'm stupid but I really don't know how "no experience" can be better than wrong experience. There is always things you learn, better negotiation tactics, your value to a…

Just a side note: FAANG recruiters/startups spam pretty much any developer with buzzwords on their socials (LinkedIn/GH/etc). That’s not necessarily a signal you’re hirable at those companies.

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

#47

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

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…

> 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.

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

#48

Post by avgDev »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #46
avgDev wrote: post #29

I work for a non-tech company as a solo full stack dev. I have been able to interview with fortune 500 companies and get offers. I have been getting contacted by recruiters from hot startups, Microsoft, Google, AWS, Amazon and Meta. I am not sure if I'm stupid but I really don't know how "no experience" can be better than wrong experience. There is always things you learn, better negotiation tactics, your value to a…

Just a side note: FAANG recruiters/startups spam pretty much any developer with buzzwords on their socials (LinkedIn/GH/etc). That’s not necessarily a signal you’re hirable at those companies.

It is a signal you can get an interview.

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

#49

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

avgDev wrote: post #48
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a side note: FAANG recruiters/startups spam pretty much any developer with buzzwords on their socials (LinkedIn/GH/etc). That’s not necessarily a signal you’re hirable at those companies.

It is a signal you can get an interview.

You can get a phone screen and potentially a take home/first round, sure.

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

#50

Post by moeris »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

I generally enjoy Dan Luu’s advice, but IMO it’s best approached with the understanding that his professional and social network is somewhat of a bubble that doesn’t reflect the average person. Specifically, he cites a statistic that 50% of the people with “no experience” he knows are getting ML and other such jobs at Big Tech companies. In this case, I think he’s likely pre-filtering his sample set to people with si…

> he cites a statistic that 50%...

Not a statistic so much as an anecdote. He makes it pretty explicit, I thought.

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