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[Hope this doesn't sound too harsh.] I few months back, we were hiring and Put up an ad on Monster. One of my reject criteria was "having more than 3 unconnect

by shabda 17y ago

[Hope this doesn't sound too harsh.] I few months back, we were hiring and Put up an ad on Monster. One of my reject criteria was "having more than 3 unconnected technologies". Even with >10 yrs exp, listing all the technologies you might be connected with doesnt look nice at all. Also no matter how desparate I am I would never, "I am willing to work for free on interesting projects", as that just leads to wrong people and wrong expectations, who dont value your work or time. Also if you want this ad to be effective, a newly created account with no credentials like a Github account, a blog or your site doesnt help.

shabda 17y ago
If you are looking to work full time at a startup a number of Indian startup blogs have job sections pluggd.in venturewoods.org You might meet some interesting people at Bangalore's Barcamp and Startup Saturday. Proto.in has a forum which has frequent job postings. The web links for these are googlable, but I am too lazy to do this right now.
Confusion 17y ago
having more than 3 unconnected technologies What do you consider 'unconnected'? that just leads to wrong people and wrong expectations, who dont value your work or time. QFT
- shabda 17y ago
  C#, Java, Rail -> Why all three, eaither is a substitute of other. MS-SQL, Oracle, Mysql -> Ditto above. My point being that if you list all of them you probaly do not know any of these at the level I want/require.
  - cousin_it 17y ago
    What if they used C# for a desktop app, Java for a mobile app and Rails for a webapp? In my own case, I guess having experience with PHP, Perl, Python and Ruby is the ultimate fail, because they all solve the same problems and are very similar to boot. Interesting way to look at it! What percentage of HN's audience did you just fail?
    - davidw 17y ago
      Those that have been around for a while? I got started doing web stuff in 1997, with Perl. We then switched to the up and coming PHP. Later I branched out and did some Tcl and Python and have since pretty much converted to Rails for web stuff. I also know C, Java at least in the context of Java ME for mobile stuff, and a bit of this, that, and the other thing (Erlang, Emacs lisp). It all depends on what you want, of course, as I'm more of a jack of all trades, master of none kind of guy. Of course, what the OP probably means is that these sort of random strings of technologies look, at times, a bit dubious.
      - shabda 17y ago
        > Of course, what the OP probably means is that these sort of random strings of technologies look, at times, a bit dubious. Yes. If you were looking for a webdev position, you probably will not list your Perl and Rails experience with same prominance as your Tcl and C experience.
        davidw 17y ago
        Err... actually I would:-) http://tcl.apache.org/rivet/ http://tcl.apache.org/rivet/ Point taken though.
    - shabda 17y ago
      I know Java, Python, Javascript, Sql, PL/Sql quite well, and have played with a number of others including C#, and other functional language. I have used MySQL, POstgresSQl and Oracle. However, if I were looking for a JOb I will probably only list Python, Django, Mysql and company prominently and list others with a disclaimer: "Lst used 3 years ago". Listing all of them together without further info doesnot give a good impression (to me at least). This is persional experience, so YMVV of course.
      - viraptor 17y ago
        Well... what I do to not sound like I'm just listing every technology there is, is to split them into `expert`, `good`, `ok` levels of experience. So that even if I list 10+ languages I can comfortably use, it still seems fairly obvious which are the important ones (2 on expert, 2-3 on good, rest on ok).
plinkplonk 17y ago
" One of my reject criteria was "having more than 3 unconnected technologies". Even with >10 yrs exp, listing all the technologies you might be connected with doesnt look nice at all." WHile it is your privilege to use whatever criteria to reject people, this is complete nonsense. I know many excellent developers from my days at ThoughtWorks who are experts in and move seamlessly between the java/j2ee, dotNet and RoR stacks. If you understand the fundamentals behind one web stack you can shift trivially into another. Many have contributed code to both j2ee and RoR (say). If you really understand http (and associated bits like sessions, caching etc), sql (and associated bits like database scaling/sharding etc) , an ORM, Javscript (maybe a framework like JQuery) and have worked on some large web apps for a few years, switching to "unconnected" stacks is the least of your worries. Web dev doesn't change all that much over the years. The only significant change I see is the rise of NoSQL/"BigData" and really how much time does it take for a talented developer to come up to speed on these things especially if he is working with people experienced on the "new stuff" (for whatever values of "new stuff")? Web Dev is hardly rocket science stuff taking decades ot master. The rest of your post though , this bit ""I am willing to work for free on interesting projects", as that just leads to wrong people and wrong expectations, who dont value your work or time. Also if you want this ad to be effective, a newly created account with no credentials like a Github account, a blog or your site doesnt help." is very much on the dot. Let me add to the chorus of voices here advising you to actually build something/write some open source sw so people can judge how good you are. "Free" is hardly the criterion one use when bringing on a new dev onto a critical project (All startup projects are critical projects)
- mapleoin 17y ago
  Well those three technology that you mentioned are actually connected, and you mentioned a very strong link between them: they're all web stacks. You actually cited that part of the original post: "...having more than 3 unconnected technologies..."

by shabda 17y ago

shabda 17y ago

If you are looking to work full time at a startup a number of Indian startup blogs have job sections pluggd.in venturewoods.org You might meet some interesting people at Bangalore's Barcamp and Startup Saturday. Proto.in has a forum which has frequent job postings. The web links for these are googlable, but I am too lazy to do this right now.

Confusion 17y ago

having more than 3 unconnected technologies What do you consider 'unconnected'? that just leads to wrong people and wrong expectations, who dont value your work or time. QFT

shabda 17y ago
C#, Java, Rail -> Why all three, eaither is a substitute of other. MS-SQL, Oracle, Mysql -> Ditto above. My point being that if you list all of them you probaly do not know any of these at the level I want/require.
- cousin_it 17y ago
  What if they used C# for a desktop app, Java for a mobile app and Rails for a webapp? In my own case, I guess having experience with PHP, Perl, Python and Ruby is the ultimate fail, because they all solve the same problems and are very similar to boot. Interesting way to look at it! What percentage of HN's audience did you just fail?
  - davidw 17y ago
    Those that have been around for a while? I got started doing web stuff in 1997, with Perl. We then switched to the up and coming PHP. Later I branched out and did some Tcl and Python and have since pretty much converted to Rails for web stuff. I also know C, Java at least in the context of Java ME for mobile stuff, and a bit of this, that, and the other thing (Erlang, Emacs lisp). It all depends on what you want, of course, as I'm more of a jack of all trades, master of none kind of guy. Of course, what the OP probably means is that these sort of random strings of technologies look, at times, a bit dubious.
    - shabda 17y ago
      > Of course, what the OP probably means is that these sort of random strings of technologies look, at times, a bit dubious. Yes. If you were looking for a webdev position, you probably will not list your Perl and Rails experience with same prominance as your Tcl and C experience.
      - davidw 17y ago
        Err... actually I would:-) http://tcl.apache.org/rivet/ http://tcl.apache.org/rivet/ Point taken though.
  - shabda 17y ago
    I know Java, Python, Javascript, Sql, PL/Sql quite well, and have played with a number of others including C#, and other functional language. I have used MySQL, POstgresSQl and Oracle. However, if I were looking for a JOb I will probably only list Python, Django, Mysql and company prominently and list others with a disclaimer: "Lst used 3 years ago". Listing all of them together without further info doesnot give a good impression (to me at least). This is persional experience, so YMVV of course.
    - viraptor 17y ago
      Well... what I do to not sound like I'm just listing every technology there is, is to split them into `expert`, `good`, `ok` levels of experience. So that even if I list 10+ languages I can comfortably use, it still seems fairly obvious which are the important ones (2 on expert, 2-3 on good, rest on ok).

plinkplonk 17y ago

" One of my reject criteria was "having more than 3 unconnected technologies". Even with >10 yrs exp, listing all the technologies you might be connected with doesnt look nice at all." WHile it is your privilege to use whatever criteria to reject people, this is complete nonsense. I know many excellent developers from my days at ThoughtWorks who are experts in and move seamlessly between the java/j2ee, dotNet and RoR stacks. If you understand the fundamentals behind one web stack you can shift trivially into another. Many have contributed code to both j2ee and RoR (say). If you really understand http (and associated bits like sessions, caching etc), sql (and associated bits like database scaling/sharding etc) , an ORM, Javscript (maybe a framework like JQuery) and have worked on some large web apps for a few years, switching to "unconnected" stacks is the least of your worries. Web dev doesn't change all that much over the years. The only significant change I see is the rise of NoSQL/"BigData" and really how much time does it take for a talented developer to come up to speed on these things especially if he is working with people experienced on the "new stuff" (for whatever values of "new stuff")? Web Dev is hardly rocket science stuff taking decades ot master. The rest of your post though , this bit ""I am willing to work for free on interesting projects", as that just leads to wrong people and wrong expectations, who dont value your work or time. Also if you want this ad to be effective, a newly created account with no credentials like a Github account, a blog or your site doesnt help." is very much on the dot. Let me add to the chorus of voices here advising you to actually build something/write some open source sw so people can judge how good you are. "Free" is hardly the criterion one use when bringing on a new dev onto a critical project (All startup projects are critical projects)

mapleoin 17y ago
Well those three technology that you mentioned are actually connected, and you mentioned a very strong link between them: they're all web stacks. You actually cited that part of the original post: "...having more than 3 unconnected technologies..."