What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For? • Hacker News Board

Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?

#51

Post by humanrebar » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 3:58 PM UTC

reuven wrote: post #33

It'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 f…

> 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.

This is really an issue of price points. If companies went around offering contracts for double-current-salary, full benefits, and guaranteed employment for 5 years, positions would be filled fairly quickly.

If the required price point is higher than a company can afford, maybe key goals, plans, and roles need to be reevaluated. As I say to my coworkers all the time, software project estimates are not very accurate, so if business will die without 10% returns on their software development investments (or being within 10% of schedule estimates), everyone's already in trouble.

> The three that come to mind right away are Ruby, Python, and JavaScript

That's highly dependent on the problem domain. Again, perhaps those are in demand because companies' expectations aren't keeping up with market prices.

Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?

#52

Post by pessimizer » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 3:58 PM UTC

mildtrepidation wrote: post #32

nevir wrote: post #9

Don'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 acqu…

If a company doesn't have enough runway to have a new hire be unproductive for a few weeks, I'm not sure if that company can afford to have employees yet.

Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?

#53

Post by nbouscal » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 3:59 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #47

egeozcan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of which can be summarized as "magic". The less "magic" you have, easier it is to fill new positions.

You have some IP; that's your magic. Its always there. The less IP, the easier to compete with you. Catch-22.

IP doesn't have to be magical, not in the sense the parent was referring to. Well-documented modular libraries that perform a specific task well are thoroughly un-magical, and also incredibly valuable IP.

Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?

#54

Post by luckydude » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 3:59 PM UTC

nevir wrote: post #9

Don'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 agree that any decent programmer can pick up a new language pretty quickly.

However, I think that it's not really about the language, it's more about the libraries. Knowing all the utility functions that exist and how to use them is based on experience, you don't pick that up overnight.

tl;dr: bright inexperienced people pick up the language quickly and then rewrite library functions that already exist.

Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?

#55

Post by logfromblammo » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 4:00 PM UTC

The answer to the question is "all of them," because it is the wrong question to ask.

When you hire for experience instead of aptitude, it's like trying to photograph Sasquatch with a macro lens.

I see company after company leaving postings open for months instead of just hiring someone and giving him some books to read for two weeks. I thought that was the point of brainteaser interviews--to find out how smart the interviewee is, aside from specific experience.

It is very clear to me that the system for hiring skilled labor in software is flawed at its foundations. There is plenty of supply out there. If you cannot fill your demand, it is for one of two reasons: your requirements are too narrow, or your offered amount is too low.

Is hiring someone fresh out of the diploma stamper and investing in a tiny bit of training really that horrible from a management perpective?

Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?

#56

Post by ryderm » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 4:01 PM UTC

mildtrepidation wrote: post #32

nevir wrote: post #9

Don'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 acqu…

I can learn a new language well enough to be productive faster than I can become comfortable with a new codebase or with all the tooling built around it. I think this is true of many developers.

Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?

#57

Post by lportion » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 4:03 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #16

Sukotto wrote: post #5

Speaking 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…

That is interesting. What would you think if someone applied who had several years C# experience, but had only used python in their spare time on one or two small projects? Assume they have solid understanding of general software development, but they'd need to get used to writing python in your work environment?

Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?

#58

Post by logfromblammo » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 4:04 PM UTC

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #18

robotic wrote: post #6

For 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.

I never really got the glib claim you can just hire people and get them up to speed in a month. In my experience it takes almost a year to get truly familiar with how everything is done in a platform. It's not that one can't be productive quickly, it's that one will do many stupid and time consuming things.

It doesn't seem quite so ridiculous when you realize that the endemic attitude is that the company should be able to hire someone that can "hit the ground running" and be productive from the hire date.

From that perspective, allowing for a whole month of training seems almost extravagant. That is why people say it. It is to counteract the sheer idiocy of expecting instant productivity.

Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?

#59

Post by lectrick » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 4:05 PM UTC

reuven wrote: post #33

It'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 f…

There's also lots of money to be made in pivoting/combining your career learned lessons to date and applying them to a different area.

For example, you could take all that great knowledge about unit testing you learned in the Ruby space, and jump into Cobol and in all likelihood you will not only be able to share a new thing or two to some Cobol folks, you might contribute to far better maintained Cobol code.

The new ideas tend to congregate to the language-du-jour.

Of course, most of the "new ideas" were done on Smalltalk and Lisp years ago, but I digress.

Re: What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?

#60

Post by humanrebar » Wed, Jan 29, 2014, 4:09 PM UTC

k-mcgrady wrote: post #40

mrweasel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For good companies, laundry lists of skills are more like wish lists than requirements, especially with niche technologies. Use the job description to figure out what general kind of developer they're looking for (low level? database? UI? enterprise? team lead?) and apply if you're interested.

Regarding the idea in your edit, huge companies like Facebook and Google do have coding puzzles and competitions. People who excel in those surely gain confidence to apply to all sorts of job openings.