5 ms·

Hiring manager here, and after many interviews with enterprise programmers, I do find myself putting more and more of them into the "no" pile right off the bat.

Hiring manager here, and after many interviews with enterprise programmers, I do find myself putting more and more of them into the "no" pile right off the bat. The problem is that those candidates, in my experience, tend to throw up way more red flags than others - their code is extremely verbose, they rattle off factory patterns like they're reading a textbook without any inkling what sort of problems they're actually solving, they parrot popular opinions without being able to articulate the reasoning behind them, they're not comfortable with developing a new feature without extensive documentation, and they miss the forest for the trees when it comes to things like testing and code organization. Enterprise programmers usually leave me with the impression that they're heavily indoctrinated into one specific mode of thought, and that they would struggle to break out of it.

throwaway456789 11y ago
It's funny you say that. I can't name one factory pattern off the top of my head... Never needed to learn one. I should clarify -- I'm in my late twenties, and I've spent my entire career (10 years) writing Java code. I don't understand how that negatively hiring managers against me.
- shimon 11y ago
  Have you worked at multiple jobs over those 10 years? As a hiring manager (working with only the limited data you've provided here) I'd be concerned that you value stability very highly, and you might be thrown by the rate of change (in requirements, tools used, business goals, desired feature set, etc) that is typical of a startup. Long tenure at a single job suggests you enjoy getting deeply specialized and developing mastery of a stable set of tools, which is needed at a certain stage of company but not at most early-stage startups. Is that true of you? I.e. would you be frustrated by 3-4x/year significant churn in your technological tooling and top-level business goals? Would you be excited to learn a few new toolsets? If so, why haven't you done that on your own?
  - jmagoon 11y ago
    Is this really true of the startup world? What possible business reason could there be for swapping your stack / tooling 3-4x per year? Do you mean learning something new 3-4 times per year that is unrelated to large architectural changes? In terms of 'on your own'--I don't know, maybe this person has a life outside of writing code?
  - arethuza 11y ago
    "Would you be excited to learn a few new toolsets?" I suspect by the 3rd or 4th time in the same year with people who haven't worked out what it is they are trying to achieve my level of excitement might be wearing a bit thin.
  - hox 11y ago
    Wow. Really? Why is stability a concern? Much of engineering is making solid decisions and fucking sticking with them rather than changing to the latest toolset because that's what hacker news says is the best today. Are you trying to build a product and company, or a blog post?
    - Snowdax 11y ago
      Stability is a concern because startups are not stable. In 6 months time Apple could open source something that makes your last 5 years of work irrelevant in a night. If you can't ship in 6 months you're company will probably have shut up shop in 12 because someone already ate your lunch. If it's a choice between stability (via proper testing, architecture, etc.) and staying operating, stability loses every time. No matter what happens the tech world is a different place in a year. You have to adapt regardless so properly thought out code will get thrown out just as easily as 4am hacks.
- tinco 11y ago
  Well sorry to be crude, but it just signals that you're all talk. You say you're a great programmer, and could learn to program in Ruby in a few days, yet in 10 years you've never done it, even though you are apparently applying for jobs that are interested in that skill. If you can't even bother with learning the language that's requested in the advert in a few days, why should a hiring manager be interested in you? I'm also in my late twenties, and have been programming for money for over 10 years and I also like to brag about how I'm a great programmer and am fluent in over a dozen programming languages, but you bet that if I'd go for a job that requests Node.JS experience (I wouldn't), I'd brush up on my Node.JS and make sure my resume lists it as a core competency. You can't just go around saying you're a great programmer and expect people to believe it from ten years of Java experience.
  - throwaway456789 11y ago
    Who ever said I was interviewing for a job? I was commenting on the state of the industry as a whole. Read some of the comments (and the article). The article mentioned that one person who multiple companies thought was the best they have ever seen got rejected from the first company he interviews with because he didn' write tests. Hiring is so subjective. This comment in particular really illustrates the sad state of our industry, and why I don't usually write comments on the Internet and why I wrote this under a throwaway account. Thanks for making my point: To repeat: "You're all talk." "If you can learn Ruby in a few days why haven't you done it yet over the last 10 years?" Here's why: I made well over 400K this year at my job. I am not jumping through hoops killing myself to learn new things I may not even need. My time away from work is too precious to me. By the way, I am paid 400K because I am a really good programmer and problem solver and can use whatever tools I need to to get the job done. It doesn't matter if I've never used the language before. I will figure it out. Plus: most places won't even talk to me because I make more than what they are willing to pay. Oh wait; I guess this is all talk too. PS: If patio11 is reading this comment, I will happily verify these facts with him via my real personal email. To prove that this comment isn't just "all talk". I really hate the Internet sometimes.
    - tinco 11y ago
- balls187 11y ago
  My opinion is learning design patterns are very important to being a really good programmer. Patterns (and Anti-patterns) are an extremely useful part of software development, specifically because they help engineers be more efficient at solving problems with code. Factory, funny enough, is the name of a design pattern. And for good measure, DRY Violation is a good anti-pattern to pick up (though I suspect you know that already even if you can't name it).
sbov 11y ago
Most of this is fixable by driving YAGNI into their heads. Beyond that, I would claim that most people startups look for (recent graduates) have no ability to understand the reason behind popular opinions. Because they don't have the experience to do so. They might be able to parrot it though. Interestingly, I'm used to working in a pretty fluid environment without a lot of specs. But we recently started developing something with very tight rules and an extremely picky end user. It's much less efficient without a set of specs, which the project managers didn't have the constitution to make since we aren't used to doing so. As a result I basically have to constantly go back to them on things, which isn't very productive.
hoorayimhelping 11y ago
>Enterprise programmers usually leave me with the impression that they're heavily indoctrinated into one specific mode of thought, and that they would struggle to break out of it. That's been my impression as well, both coming from the enterprise and interviewing people from that domain. The most deleterious thing I've noticed is a lot of them, like GP, are convinced they're really good programmers and the reason they can't break out of the Enterprise is because startups are biased against some arbitrary and unimportant part of their identity (like their age), not their actual abilities and attitude. I say this as a guy who's likely half a decade older than a guy in his late 20s who thinks he's too old to work at a startup.
Joof 11y ago
Valve calls this "beaten wife syndrome" and apparently it often goes away after a while (if not, they fire the new hire).

throwaway456789 11y ago

It's funny you say that. I can't name one factory pattern off the top of my head... Never needed to learn one. I should clarify -- I'm in my late twenties, and I've spent my entire career (10 years) writing Java code. I don't understand how that negatively hiring managers against me.

shimon 11y ago
Have you worked at multiple jobs over those 10 years? As a hiring manager (working with only the limited data you've provided here) I'd be concerned that you value stability very highly, and you might be thrown by the rate of change (in requirements, tools used, business goals, desired feature set, etc) that is typical of a startup. Long tenure at a single job suggests you enjoy getting deeply specialized and developing mastery of a stable set of tools, which is needed at a certain stage of company but not at most early-stage startups. Is that true of you? I.e. would you be frustrated by 3-4x/year significant churn in your technological tooling and top-level business goals? Would you be excited to learn a few new toolsets? If so, why haven't you done that on your own?
- jmagoon 11y ago
  Is this really true of the startup world? What possible business reason could there be for swapping your stack / tooling 3-4x per year? Do you mean learning something new 3-4 times per year that is unrelated to large architectural changes? In terms of 'on your own'--I don't know, maybe this person has a life outside of writing code?
- arethuza 11y ago
  "Would you be excited to learn a few new toolsets?" I suspect by the 3rd or 4th time in the same year with people who haven't worked out what it is they are trying to achieve my level of excitement might be wearing a bit thin.
- hox 11y ago
  Wow. Really? Why is stability a concern? Much of engineering is making solid decisions and fucking sticking with them rather than changing to the latest toolset because that's what hacker news says is the best today. Are you trying to build a product and company, or a blog post?
  - Snowdax 11y ago
    Stability is a concern because startups are not stable. In 6 months time Apple could open source something that makes your last 5 years of work irrelevant in a night. If you can't ship in 6 months you're company will probably have shut up shop in 12 because someone already ate your lunch. If it's a choice between stability (via proper testing, architecture, etc.) and staying operating, stability loses every time. No matter what happens the tech world is a different place in a year. You have to adapt regardless so properly thought out code will get thrown out just as easily as 4am hacks.
tinco 11y ago
Well sorry to be crude, but it just signals that you're all talk. You say you're a great programmer, and could learn to program in Ruby in a few days, yet in 10 years you've never done it, even though you are apparently applying for jobs that are interested in that skill. If you can't even bother with learning the language that's requested in the advert in a few days, why should a hiring manager be interested in you? I'm also in my late twenties, and have been programming for money for over 10 years and I also like to brag about how I'm a great programmer and am fluent in over a dozen programming languages, but you bet that if I'd go for a job that requests Node.JS experience (I wouldn't), I'd brush up on my Node.JS and make sure my resume lists it as a core competency. You can't just go around saying you're a great programmer and expect people to believe it from ten years of Java experience.
- throwaway456789 11y ago
  Who ever said I was interviewing for a job? I was commenting on the state of the industry as a whole. Read some of the comments (and the article). The article mentioned that one person who multiple companies thought was the best they have ever seen got rejected from the first company he interviews with because he didn' write tests. Hiring is so subjective. This comment in particular really illustrates the sad state of our industry, and why I don't usually write comments on the Internet and why I wrote this under a throwaway account. Thanks for making my point: To repeat: "You're all talk." "If you can learn Ruby in a few days why haven't you done it yet over the last 10 years?" Here's why: I made well over 400K this year at my job. I am not jumping through hoops killing myself to learn new things I may not even need. My time away from work is too precious to me. By the way, I am paid 400K because I am a really good programmer and problem solver and can use whatever tools I need to to get the job done. It doesn't matter if I've never used the language before. I will figure it out. Plus: most places won't even talk to me because I make more than what they are willing to pay. Oh wait; I guess this is all talk too. PS: If patio11 is reading this comment, I will happily verify these facts with him via my real personal email. To prove that this comment isn't just "all talk". I really hate the Internet sometimes.
  - tinco 11y ago
balls187 11y ago
My opinion is learning design patterns are very important to being a really good programmer. Patterns (and Anti-patterns) are an extremely useful part of software development, specifically because they help engineers be more efficient at solving problems with code. Factory, funny enough, is the name of a design pattern. And for good measure, DRY Violation is a good anti-pattern to pick up (though I suspect you know that already even if you can't name it).

sbov 11y ago

Most of this is fixable by driving YAGNI into their heads. Beyond that, I would claim that most people startups look for (recent graduates) have no ability to understand the reason behind popular opinions. Because they don't have the experience to do so. They might be able to parrot it though. Interestingly, I'm used to working in a pretty fluid environment without a lot of specs. But we recently started developing something with very tight rules and an extremely picky end user. It's much less efficient without a set of specs, which the project managers didn't have the constitution to make since we aren't used to doing so. As a result I basically have to constantly go back to them on things, which isn't very productive.

hoorayimhelping 11y ago

>Enterprise programmers usually leave me with the impression that they're heavily indoctrinated into one specific mode of thought, and that they would struggle to break out of it. That's been my impression as well, both coming from the enterprise and interviewing people from that domain. The most deleterious thing I've noticed is a lot of them, like GP, are convinced they're really good programmers and the reason they can't break out of the Enterprise is because startups are biased against some arbitrary and unimportant part of their identity (like their age), not their actual abilities and attitude. I say this as a guy who's likely half a decade older than a guy in his late 20s who thinks he's too old to work at a startup.

Joof 11y ago

Valve calls this "beaten wife syndrome" and apparently it often goes away after a while (if not, they fire the new hire).