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You can't git clone a team

virtualize.sh

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Re: You can't git clone a team

#71

Post by valenterry »

fragmede wrote: post #61
thenewwazoo wrote: post #19

As an aside, TFA says: We’re talking about skills that span kernel-level programming, hardware quirks, low-level debugging, distributed systems, security, orchestration logic, even the capability to work with the UI/UX team... and the ability to explain all that without scaring interns. You can’t just hire for that. You have to grow it. Nurture it. Beg for it. Or in some cases, resurrect it. If you are that person, w…

On the right team at a FAANG to a large SaaS, because the places that need all of that kind of work are few and far between. Eg somewhere among the teams that make the Oculus firmware would be close enough to the hardware to need all that sort of work in order to ship to the tight latency specs they're looking for. Or early employee at a startup making a product that's going to need those sort of problems solved on a…

What you say makes sense, but I guess finding the right team is extremely hard. I would guess that 95% of FAANG is actually kinda bad and only lives from the reputation of the 5% (or less). So how do you specifically interview for the 5% without a prior connection / network?

Re: You can't git clone a team

#72

Post by ygouzerh »

Great idea to go to Grenoble (France). There is there a nice ecosystem of companies + grad schools + researchers, one of the birth place of IT in France.

If you are looking for the place to hire new engineers, or researchers to work on an advanced project, I would recommend it too.

Re: You can't git clone a team

#73

Post by theamk »

thenewwazoo wrote: post #19

As an aside, TFA says: We’re talking about skills that span kernel-level programming, hardware quirks, low-level debugging, distributed systems, security, orchestration logic, even the capability to work with the UI/UX team... and the ability to explain all that without scaring interns. You can’t just hire for that. You have to grow it. Nurture it. Beg for it. Or in some cases, resurrect it. If you are that person, w…

Go for robotics or specific robotics subtype (UAV, ROV, vehicles, etc..). If there is a "platform team", that would be your best fit, but some companies don't have separate platform team, or they don't advertise team name in the job postings.

People like that are in demand. Our company just filled few position like this, and hiring was hard. Some people were rejected because of not enough low-level knowledge, some people were rejected for not having enough high-level knowledge.

Agree with the TFA's author though, people with all the skills are super rare.. We were lucky to end up with few hires like that, but most of the people don't have all skills at once, and they have to learn on the job.

Re: You can't git clone a team

#74

Post by corliss_island »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #63
thenewwazoo wrote: post #19

As an aside, TFA says: We’re talking about skills that span kernel-level programming, hardware quirks, low-level debugging, distributed systems, security, orchestration logic, even the capability to work with the UI/UX team... and the ability to explain all that without scaring interns. You can’t just hire for that. You have to grow it. Nurture it. Beg for it. Or in some cases, resurrect it. If you are that person, w…

I think there's a bit of an "eternal September" where people are promoted to management, asked to hire a bunch of people for some niche role, and blog about their inability to hire good people. Hate to break it to the author, but there are plenty of people who can write a driver, bootloader, distributed systems, PAXOS, etc. but there's NO JOBS DOING THAT so they all work for making . The author mentions their grand s…

This!

My first job out of university was working on an embedded Java runtime, with a group of peers from said university. Which sounds similar to what Virtualise.sh is doing.

Now, 20 years later? Tech lead on a Typescript/Flutter/AWS internal system.

In some ways I'd be excited to write container orchestration logic, or hack on a hypervisor. There's precious little of that work available, especially so in a small country like mine (NZ). My CV is crazy enough: being burnt isn't the issue, just finding the work is.

The cynical part of me wonders if the other reason to hire people straight out of university is that they're cheap...

(throwaway account, my CV is bad enough already)

Re: You can't git clone a team

#75

Post by fragmede »

valenterry wrote: post #71
fragmede wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the right team at a FAANG to a large SaaS, because the places that need all of that kind of work are few and far between. Eg somewhere among the teams that make the Oculus firmware would be close enough to the hardware to need all that sort of work in order to ship to the tight latency specs they're looking for. Or early employee at a startup making a product that's going to need those sort of problems solved on a…

What you say makes sense, but I guess finding the right team is extremely hard. I would guess that 95% of FAANG is actually kinda bad and only lives from the reputation of the 5% (or less). So how do you specifically interview for the 5% without a prior connection / network?

You're entitled to your own belifo about FAANG, but that particular one might make it harder to find any team you like. Definitely would make it nigh impossible to find the right one.

Re: You can't git clone a team

#76

Post by doix »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #63
thenewwazoo wrote: post #19

As an aside, TFA says: We’re talking about skills that span kernel-level programming, hardware quirks, low-level debugging, distributed systems, security, orchestration logic, even the capability to work with the UI/UX team... and the ability to explain all that without scaring interns. You can’t just hire for that. You have to grow it. Nurture it. Beg for it. Or in some cases, resurrect it. If you are that person, w…

I think there's a bit of an "eternal September" where people are promoted to management, asked to hire a bunch of people for some niche role, and blog about their inability to hire good people. Hate to break it to the author, but there are plenty of people who can write a driver, bootloader, distributed systems, PAXOS, etc. but there's NO JOBS DOING THAT so they all work for making . The author mentions their grand s…

Pretty much matches my experience. I'm an EE, I started out writing an LLVM backend for a custom DSP. Pretty good understanding of hardware, compilers and general low level things.

Now I have a generic web dev job working on a generic nodejs app. There are many more jobs available and in general it's much easier to have a remote web dev job.

Re: You can't git clone a team

#77

Post by IshKebab »

manquer wrote: post #65
IshKebab wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No he's saying if you are a generalist you shouldn't try to market yourself as that. Usually employers are looking for specialists that are perfectly moulded to the one exact task they need at that very moment. It's misguided of course, but that's what they think they want and if you say "I've done all sorts of things and I'm good at all of them" they'll hear "I don't have much experience with anything" and discount…

On the flip side few reasons why I don’t favor generalist profiles (while being one myself). - resumes which claim generalist tend to be SEO’ed than real, or AI generated and they will say experience dozens of technologies most of which would be untrue, throw everything and see what sticks . In most cases it just tells me what they have heard of rather than what they know especially if they are not very senior . - It…

> Being a generalist with depth of understanding means you are the type of person who needs to understand things properly before doing them . .You are lot of time learning things which are not required for get the task completed.

Ha, I feel seen. Though also I wouldn't frame this quite so negatively. I've seen a lot of tasks "completed" by people who just got the job done without fully understanding it and they frequently get it done badly.

Re: You can't git clone a team

#78

Post by pjmlp »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #63
thenewwazoo wrote: post #19

As an aside, TFA says: We’re talking about skills that span kernel-level programming, hardware quirks, low-level debugging, distributed systems, security, orchestration logic, even the capability to work with the UI/UX team... and the ability to explain all that without scaring interns. You can’t just hire for that. You have to grow it. Nurture it. Beg for it. Or in some cases, resurrect it. If you are that person, w…

I think there's a bit of an "eternal September" where people are promoted to management, asked to hire a bunch of people for some niche role, and blog about their inability to hire good people. Hate to break it to the author, but there are plenty of people who can write a driver, bootloader, distributed systems, PAXOS, etc. but there's NO JOBS DOING THAT so they all work for making . The author mentions their grand s…

Also the usual botched hiring process, where even if one has the knwoledge, just because it wasn't what one was doing the last five years, it doesn't count, even if one has portfolio from side projects to show.

Or the dumb leetcode stuff because "we are going to be cool like Google over here".

So many gravitate to companies with more sensible hiring practices, and that is how a company loses candidates, if it is one of those unicorns that the whole planet wants to work on.

Re: You can't git clone a team

#79

Post by pjmlp »

manquer wrote: post #65
IshKebab wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No he's saying if you are a generalist you shouldn't try to market yourself as that. Usually employers are looking for specialists that are perfectly moulded to the one exact task they need at that very moment. It's misguided of course, but that's what they think they want and if you say "I've done all sorts of things and I'm good at all of them" they'll hear "I don't have much experience with anything" and discount…

On the flip side few reasons why I don’t favor generalist profiles (while being one myself). - resumes which claim generalist tend to be SEO’ed than real, or AI generated and they will say experience dozens of technologies most of which would be untrue, throw everything and see what sticks . In most cases it just tells me what they have heard of rather than what they know especially if they are not very senior . - It…

Generalist over here as well, that is kind of what pushed me to boring fields, UNIX, Windows, Java, .NET, C++, vanilajs,...

Changes also happen, but they are kind of glacial with areas where we are hunting the new shinny every here.

Usually I tend to be a laggard on the adoption graph, the large majority of stuff hardly makes the curve, and I have better things to do with my time.

Plus that vintage stuff that isnt' cool to write blog posts about, usually pays good enough.

Stuff like Android or iDevices suffer from yearly fashion, platform owners feel compeled to reboot the development experience every year, forcing app developers to keep up, and also as means to sell new devices.

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