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We only hire the trendiest

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Re: We only hire the trendiest

#71

Post by cubano »

mbrock wrote: post #39

I sometimes think there's a built in pomposity in the whole attitude of hiring, looking for someone "good enough to qualify." Instead, I like to think of it as, we are looking for someone to help us , someone who has different experience and knowledge, someone who could tell us how we can improve. Then instead of this adversarial situation of selecting a new ingroup member, it's a solicitation for assistance with a b…

> I sometimes think there's a built in pomposity in the whole attitude of hiring...

Of course there is. At a basic level, that's what hiring is.

With this now-popular attitude that "1 bad hire is worse then 100 good ones" or something like that, how could it be anything else?

Imagine the pressure that puts on the hiring teams.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#72

Post by organsnyder »

s_kilk wrote: post #44
mrweasel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that depends on where you live really. In the area I'm in being a .NET developer is clearly an advantage. One reason I, and others like me have looked down on .NET developers, is that a large number of them aren't any good. I've meet brilliant .NET developer, some of the most talented developers I know are .NET developers, but the crappiest developers I know are .NET developers as well. Some developers are co…

> These are developers that can make code work, but take Visual Studio away from them and they cease to be developers. Ha, during my brief stint at a windows-shop after graduating, I did meet a few who couldn't get their heads around the concept of having a build happen without someone clicking a green triangle button in VS.

Those sorts of developers exist on every platform. The trendy platforms are simply too new for non-adaptable developers to have yet made themselves visible.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#73

Post by ta0967 »

mikro2nd wrote: post #30
LAMike wrote: post #6

What does a "trendy" resume look like in 2016?

If you have a resume you're not "trendy". You're "trendy" if you have a github account full of projects in Go and Node-y stuff, a twitter-stream with a few thousand followers, some medium rants and (maybe) a linked-in profile. eta: ... and 10k+ karma on HN and SO ;)

my impression has been that node.js reached the top of its hip curve a few years ago, same with golang. not that they're disused, they're just not obsessive-compulsive topics. this is mostly based on what i (don't) see and hear at work and here.

again, based on what i see on hn, github is actually falling out of favor (we'll see if they can reverse the trend [sic] with the newly released features; the search removal inspires little confidence).

twitter has been around for too long to be trending upwards, it's like facebook. the populace split into users and abstinents has ossified. it's even more pronounced with linkedin which has been around much longer.

i have no idea what's supposed to be trending in programming instead though. recently it's felt to me like a plateau of sorts.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#74

Post by s_kilk »

UK-AL wrote: post #60
s_kilk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These are developers that can make code work, but take Visual Studio away from them and they cease to be developers. Ha, during my brief stint at a windows-shop after graduating, I did meet a few who couldn't get their heads around the concept of having a build happen without someone clicking a green triangle button in VS.

Considering the .NET stack has a heavy bias towards CI, that's hard to believe.

It probably varies by geography, but the .Net scene I was in really didn't have a bias toward CI at all (or testing, or almost any decent development practices).

I wont argue about it, our experiences differ, and that's cool :)

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#75

Post by bitwize »

dkopi wrote: post #14
pingec wrote: post #9

Is the anti windows/.NET bias really that common? I have been a .NET dev for 6 years because that was my job. But I don`t believe that makes me useless on any other stack. In fact lately I desire to work on something that feels exciting and fresh again but sometimes I feel like .NET devs are looked down upon and it`s not so easy to land a job or contract outside .Net land.

I wouldn't say it's an "Anti .NET" bias, as much as it's an "anti too many years in the same exact thing" bias. 1. Choose a different language for your next side project. 2. Step in the door with C#, try to help out on projects or change positions inside the company. 3. Attend hackathons, contribute to opensource projects. A good programmer can quickly feel comfortable in any programming language. Recruiters feel mor…

If you don't have 3-5 years experience in language/framework X, no jobs in language/framework X will be forthcoming. People hire based on what you know, not your ability to learn. A new hire who can "hit the ground running" is an asset; one who can't is a liability.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#76

Post by bluetomcat »

johnloeber wrote: post #20
bluetomcat wrote: post #7

The abundance and heterogeneity of various technology stacks, frameworks, methodologies and whatnot fuels this hiring mess. Twenty-five years ago, nearly everyone who called himself a programmer knew C and an interviewer could judge the relative strength of two candidates by really examining their programming skills and not some trendy keywords.

This sounds like a falsehood, brought about by the belief that the past was somehow simpler, because the relics from the past that survive into the modern day are few in number. I doubt that everyone knew C. Lots of big firms extensively used COBOL. Fortran was important in science/numerical computing. Pascal was popular. The list goes on. Need I mention that for decades, there were lots of competing assembly languag…

Indeed there were lots of competing standards and technologies, but C was still the kind of "lingua franca" among most (professional?) programmers. Many people used to write really intricate programs in it without relying on anything but standard library functions. It was about raw talent and people used to take pride in the way a program was written and not just what its effect is.

And yes, it all started to change in the mid 90's with the advent of Windows and the web.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#77

Post by marcus_holmes »

UK-AL wrote: post #68
marcus_holmes wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to DLL Hell ;) The thing I didn't get (and still don't fully appreciate) is the power of bash - you can write almost-serious code in this! And some of the standard CLI utilities (stand up awk) are like pocket universes of depth and complexity. Windows probably has a lot of the same stuff, I hear good things about PowerScript, but it's not so standard to use it as a code monkey. I miss Visual Studio sometimes.…

Powershell, not powerscript.

I stand corrected. Thanks :)

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#78

Post by dunkelheit »

I see wonderful symmetry here. There are TrendyCos (hot startup unicorns), BigCos (established companies like google or amazon or microsoft) and UnknownCos (not in the limelight so there is not much information about them). Likewise there are TrendyDevs (hotshots who produce one heavily github-starred framework after another), BigCoDevs (multiple years of experience at one of the BigCos, probably were responsible for some important part of one of their numerous services) and UnknownDevs (been there done that, hard to say).

And here is the rub. There are certainly many undervalued gems among UnknownCos and UnknownDevs but also many abysmally bad workplaces and programmers. So you either have some inside knowledge about them (a referral, an acquaintance working at UnknownCo), have some magic method for separating the gems (like tptacek claims to possess) or it is just too risky to consider them.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#79

Post by libria »

pingec wrote: post #9

Is the anti windows/.NET bias really that common? I have been a .NET dev for 6 years because that was my job. But I don`t believe that makes me useless on any other stack. In fact lately I desire to work on something that feels exciting and fresh again but sometimes I feel like .NET devs are looked down upon and it`s not so easy to land a job or contract outside .Net land.

The old perception of .NET devs is that they're provincial in their approach to tech outside of Microsoft. Stacks are always top to bottom straight from MSDN or P&P: jQuery, razor, ASP.NET MVC, WCF, EF, MSSQL, TFS. Part of this is MS fault: the silver/gold partner licenses provide financial incentive for businesses to stay in the fold by being MS stack proficient. I've seen Biztalk shoe-horned into a product mostly because it was included in the quarterly MSDN mailout CD package and hey, it's free!

To some degree, it's true. Many of my colleagues never touched node.js til Microsoft started using it. Or Linux til Azure supported it. Or functional programming til F#, or git etc.

Java developers seem more comfortable searching online and piecing together a solution from oracle, apache common, other 3rd parties. It feels like they're better at critically inspecting packages for performance, applicability, adoption since they don't have a mother corp creating or blessing every product. nuget has helped a lot of .NET devs come out of their cave and explore the great unknown that is open source.

Hopefully Microsoft's recent reinvention of itself changes both this perception of .NET devs and whatever reality is behind it.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#80

Post by bitwize »

vetinari wrote: post #37
UK-AL wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simple ignorance. People think .NET = old, not innovative, corporate In reality its a fast moving stack, that's constantly innovating.

It's not a simple ignorance. The wast majority of people, who claim .NET experience can launch Visual Studio, then some wizards to generate skeleton of the app and then fill something to have a CRUD "solution". They spoil it for the folks, who are truly experienced. The claims in the CVs are so maximized (Dunning-Kruger at the extreme), that it's simpler to just ignore .NET experience.

How many Ruby on Rails Rockstars and Node.js Ninjas really, truly know computer science? My guess is "way fewer than is touted".
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