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The real value of an engineer is 10 or 20 percent in what frameworks they know, but 80 or 90 percent in what they can learn. That's especially true in today's

The real value of an engineer is 10 or 20 percent in what frameworks they know, but 80 or 90 percent in what they can learn. That's especially true in today's embarrassment of riches world in which no one could possibly learn everything. It's really a great time to be in software, despite the problems. The world runs on software and this will only be more true in the future. You don't have to hit one of the pitfalls in the story. After all, printf himself ended up as a happy programmer with a human face. If you love programming and you can stay focused on doing what you love, then no matter what else happens, you win. And if you don't enjoy what you're doing, then you lose, no matter what kind of paycheck you take home.

MichaelGG 11y ago
Exactly. Some of the best folks I've hired or worked with had no experience with the framework/language we ended up using. Knowing fundamentals is far more important. This is also why managers that pick languages based on "hireability" are wrong for the most part. In any non trivial system, learning the domain and existing codebase will dominate the time to learn a new language. It's a nice bonus to have experience with a certain piece of tech, and for baby apps that might be the most important thing. But not for real systems.
- wwweston 11y ago
  > Some of the best folks I've hired or worked with had no experience with the framework/language we ended up using. Knowing fundamentals is far more important. This is what we want to be true. It's not how 90+% of job listings are written, and I'm not sure it's how we hire. Even if we addressed that problem, it'd still only be true at a close approximation: once a framework/lib/language becomes leaky enough, or has enough of a mismatch between its natural invocation and the problem domain, or carries enough of a culture of The Right Way To Do It™, then it's true that experience with the tool matters... as long as the org is more invested in the tool than a solution that doesn't have those problems, knowing the tool's foibles and practices remains important.
  - nostrademons 11y ago
    Companies have a wide variety of hiring practices. By making yourself bad at one hiring procedure but good at another, you'll select for the companies that are selecting for developers like you. Getting a job is not a numbers game unless you just want any old job and really hate jobsearching. I've found that making myself unappealing to the organizations that I wouldn't actually want to work for has paid off significantly in both financial and job satisfaction terms.
- deciplex 11y ago
  > This is also why managers that pick languages based on "hireability" are wrong for the most part. This is 80% of what's out there though, FWIW.

MichaelGG 11y ago

Exactly. Some of the best folks I've hired or worked with had no experience with the framework/language we ended up using. Knowing fundamentals is far more important. This is also why managers that pick languages based on "hireability" are wrong for the most part. In any non trivial system, learning the domain and existing codebase will dominate the time to learn a new language. It's a nice bonus to have experience with a certain piece of tech, and for baby apps that might be the most important thing. But not for real systems.

wwweston 11y ago
> Some of the best folks I've hired or worked with had no experience with the framework/language we ended up using. Knowing fundamentals is far more important. This is what we want to be true. It's not how 90+% of job listings are written, and I'm not sure it's how we hire. Even if we addressed that problem, it'd still only be true at a close approximation: once a framework/lib/language becomes leaky enough, or has enough of a mismatch between its natural invocation and the problem domain, or carries enough of a culture of The Right Way To Do It™, then it's true that experience with the tool matters... as long as the org is more invested in the tool than a solution that doesn't have those problems, knowing the tool's foibles and practices remains important.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  Companies have a wide variety of hiring practices. By making yourself bad at one hiring procedure but good at another, you'll select for the companies that are selecting for developers like you. Getting a job is not a numbers game unless you just want any old job and really hate jobsearching. I've found that making myself unappealing to the organizations that I wouldn't actually want to work for has paid off significantly in both financial and job satisfaction terms.
deciplex 11y ago
> This is also why managers that pick languages based on "hireability" are wrong for the most part. This is 80% of what's out there though, FWIW.