3 ms·

Why does tech talent have to be young?

by willismichael 10y ago

ng12 10y ago
Because we've been in a talent shortage for 10 years. By the numbers the available applicant pool is young.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  There is no shortage, it is just that every company wants to hire all the same rock stars and nobody wants to train anymore.
  - laughfactory 10y ago
    I've definitely observed this here in SD. When I used to go to meetups as an aspiring developer we'd get lots of recruiters looking for "rockstars" or senior developers, and none (?) just looking for talent they could cultivate. I understand this is a by product of people staying at jobs for 1-3 years these days, but come on, where are future rockstars and senior devs going to come from if someone doesn't give them a shot?
    - ng12 10y ago
      Can you blame them for not wanting to take the gamble? I was once given a new hire who had a degree in a different field and later went to one of those hacker schools. He was smart, friendly, and a good worker -- but just not cut out for a job writing software. Not only was he unproductive, but he dragged down the rest of the team who had to fix his code and spend extra time going over his code reviews.
      - stuxnet79 10y ago
        Can you go into more detail regarding why he wasn't cut out? Did he just not have enough experience at the time to work on software? It's always interesting to me what makes a 'bad' hire, a 'bad' hire because I'm starting to realize it is very subjective. My motivation level and productivity varies significantly depending on work conditions, and how well I am getting along with colleagues.
        ng12 10y ago
        He could write code just fine (he passed the interview) but he couldn't seem to grasp engineering. He couldn't look at a mock or a system diagram and figure out how to translate that into code. Given multiple approaches a problem, he wasn't ever able to formulate the advantages and disadvantages to each (and would inevitably pick some crazy, obfuscated approach). Maybe it was just lack of experience, and he'll eventually come into his own -- but he definitely wasted an unacceptable amount of resources for a small company.
- FilterSweep 10y ago
  By "we" do you mean San Diego specifically, or by "we" do you mean the entire industry as a whole being frustrated in a lack of applicants for their CRUD application that can't have applicants that can traverse a BST on a whiteboard or pseudocode malloc/free?

Why does tech talent have to be young?

ng12 10y ago

Because we've been in a talent shortage for 10 years. By the numbers the available applicant pool is young.

AstralStorm 10y ago
There is no shortage, it is just that every company wants to hire all the same rock stars and nobody wants to train anymore.
- laughfactory 10y ago
  I've definitely observed this here in SD. When I used to go to meetups as an aspiring developer we'd get lots of recruiters looking for "rockstars" or senior developers, and none (?) just looking for talent they could cultivate. I understand this is a by product of people staying at jobs for 1-3 years these days, but come on, where are future rockstars and senior devs going to come from if someone doesn't give them a shot?
  - ng12 10y ago
    Can you blame them for not wanting to take the gamble? I was once given a new hire who had a degree in a different field and later went to one of those hacker schools. He was smart, friendly, and a good worker -- but just not cut out for a job writing software. Not only was he unproductive, but he dragged down the rest of the team who had to fix his code and spend extra time going over his code reviews.
    - stuxnet79 10y ago
      Can you go into more detail regarding why he wasn't cut out? Did he just not have enough experience at the time to work on software? It's always interesting to me what makes a 'bad' hire, a 'bad' hire because I'm starting to realize it is very subjective. My motivation level and productivity varies significantly depending on work conditions, and how well I am getting along with colleagues.
      - ng12 10y ago
        He could write code just fine (he passed the interview) but he couldn't seem to grasp engineering. He couldn't look at a mock or a system diagram and figure out how to translate that into code. Given multiple approaches a problem, he wasn't ever able to formulate the advantages and disadvantages to each (and would inevitably pick some crazy, obfuscated approach). Maybe it was just lack of experience, and he'll eventually come into his own -- but he definitely wasted an unacceptable amount of resources for a small company.
FilterSweep 10y ago
By "we" do you mean San Diego specifically, or by "we" do you mean the entire industry as a whole being frustrated in a lack of applicants for their CRUD application that can't have applicants that can traverse a BST on a whiteboard or pseudocode malloc/free?