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What Programming Languages Do You Struggle To Hire For?

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

#61

Post by JoeAltmaier »

nbouscal wrote: post #53
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Custom libraries are magic in the sense the OP used that term. So I agree there is no point in calling it all magic; its got to be there, so deal with it.

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

#62

Post by logfromblammo »

inglor wrote: post #21

JavaScript. So many bad developers, so few good ones. You get a lot of people coming to interview.

I just had an interview where the company passed because they wanted someone with specific Javascript experience, and I had only useless unrelated experience with Lisp, C++, Java, and C#. None of those could possibly help a new hire be successful, when what they really need to know is the syntax of a specific scripting language.

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

#63

Post by humanrebar »

lectrick wrote: post #59
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…

For the most part that's true, but (for example) unit testing isn't as important in Haskell as it is in Ruby (due to stricter typing rules). Even something simple like mocking an interface requires a lot of boilerplate in C.

That being said, there are probably some things that can be pivoted. The value is in having attempted them in pilot projects so that you already know what works.

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

#64

Post by bliti »

A lot of times it is the company's hiring process that is broken. I recently did a phone interview for a company and it was an absolute disaster right from the start. The interviewer started asking questions about specific Python functions/methods without even asking me about previous work experience. He was so adamant in trying to understand if I could program that he simply forgot to ask about me. This turned me off instantly and I did not answer any questions. I kept the interview short and politely declined through email for any sub-sequent interviews.

Their product is APIs for the financial sector. I write APIs for a living, and have done so for a while. Including APIs for the financial sector. I understood their challenges, and the technology. But rather than try and get to know about my experience a little bit first, he decided to test me on my knowledge of some obscure explanation in the Python documentation.

In contrast, my current employer did the opposite. They got to know me a little bit first and then asked me questions about programming. They brought me in as a contractor for a short period of time and observed me work. Then they did three more interviews including a technical one. Which was really interesting to do because it revolved around the decisions made in the short project I was given. The process was very smooth, and I have already shipped a project for the company, and am in the process of shipping the second one. No silly questions about coin flipping, no fizz buzz on a whiteboard. Just real questions about my skills, and an opportunity to show them off on their own environment. I wish more companies hired this way.

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

#65

Post by humanrebar »

eik3_de wrote: post #20

> What Programming Skills Are Needed For UK Businesses To Grow? [x] Being able to put up a survey and allow a visitor to receive notification when results are available without faking input and pretending they're a company

Yeah, I'm interested in the results, but not interested in junking up their data in order to see them.

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

#67

Post by rickr »

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…

I had this problem when I started looking for jobs. For things like 'senior' and 'skilled' your best bet is to ignore those, just apply away. If you're resume is interesting you'll get a call. As long as you don't outright lie in the resume you shouldn't be embarrassed.

One thing that I learned later on in life was to not treat interviews as a one sided process. I'm there to make sure the company isn't awful, as much as you're there to make sure I'm not awful. If you go in with a mindset of evaluating the company to see if it's a fit with you I'm sure your fear of getting laughed out of the room will go away. Would you want to work with people like that anyway?

Of course this only applies to people who don't NEED a job.

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

#68

Post by humanrebar »

bliti wrote: post #64

A lot of times it is the company's hiring process that is broken. I recently did a phone interview for a company and it was an absolute disaster right from the start. The interviewer started asking questions about specific Python functions/methods without even asking me about previous work experience. He was so adamant in trying to understand if I could program that he simply forgot to ask about me. This turned me of…

> They brought me in as a contractor for a short period of time and observed me work.

I'm glad that worked out for you, but for the time being, contract work is much more complicated than it should be in the U.S. Expecting all future employees to work through a contracting period while paying double payroll taxes and sticker-prices for health insurance probably isn't reasonable.

But as an option for potential employees, that sounds great.

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

#69

Post by logfromblammo »

mavdi wrote: post #22
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…

This. We find it hard to find skilled developers across all the languages we need. The good ones are all hired and highly paid.

It sounds to me as though they are not actually hard to find. You're just looking in the wrong place and not allocating enough funds for salary.

If you can't compete on money, you can probably compensate with time instead. A 30 hour work week with liberal personnel policies would be very attractive to someone who likely already earns more than "enough", and probably spends a lot of time padding out hours by just looking busy anyway.

There are a lot of people out there who are working a job they dislike because the job search routine is even worse. Find the company no one likes to work for and actively recruit their dissatisfied employees.

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

#70

Post by rch »

humanrebar wrote: post #34
rch wrote: post #19

I'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?

I find linkedin to be relatively useless in this context. I need to be able to supply scores and weights to the various things I'm looking for, and to submitted job descriptions. I'd like to get at what candidates are looking for, not just what they have done.

It makes sense to list Java and C# in a profile, but I'd give a bump to Python and Haskell opportunities, personally (others might do the opposite).

Actual hiring is driven more by accomplishments anyway.

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