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Phone post, so may be a little disjointed... Until very recently I was frontend lead for a fairly large UK site, and one of the best hires I ever made was a 32

by ry_ry 9y ago

Phone post, so may be a little disjointed... Until very recently I was frontend lead for a fairly large UK site, and one of the best hires I ever made was a 32 year old former-recruiter with no commercial programming experience, and no CS background. However it was far from plain sailing. We had mutual friends and whilst chatting in a pub, and they won me over with their passion and enthusiasm for what I discovered was their dream job. I brought them on as a jr, into a small talented team with measures in place to ensure there was the opportunity to learn on the job and appropriate tasks to work on, but it quickly became apparent they were out of their depth. I worked on mentoring in work and and pointed them in the direction of stuff they might look at outside of work to dodge the bullet. My work started to suffer because I was spending so much time mentoring, fixing code that had become irrevocably tangled and trying to manage a very stressed & frustrated jr dev. Eventually I had no choice but to move them into a different team where the work was less technically demanding and more html/css focused, with a small salary cut. Everybody was disappointed with the situation but the alternative was letting them go. Three years later, that dev rejoined the core engineering team a more experienced developer, passion intact, and having learned their trade in a lower pressure environment, comfortable they could handle the role. I'm incredibly proud of them for the way they handled the situation and am absolutely confident this time will be a success. That said, it'll probably be the last time I hire a dev with zero development experience. As an investment in an individual it's incredibly worthwhile, but despite the happy ending, the whole experience was fairly disastrous.

samayylmao 9y ago
To me, this is very different than someone who has graduated with a CS degree or self-taught with a portfolio of open source contributions/personal projects. An understanding of basic concepts obtained in the ways described above is very different from 0 experience. And on paper to a recruiter, what I've listed above counts as 0 real-world business experience. edit: it is nice to hear this situation worked out for you though!
justherefortart 9y ago
There's a huge difference in no work experience and no experience at all. Hiring college grads without a lot of real world experience gives you the opportunity to mentor and train in good methodologies that I find older developers will refuse to implement without incessant fighting. It is more work initially but the long run payoff has been fantastic in my experience. When you manage based on yearly expectations that are attainable life is so much more enjoyable. The biggest key is management and upper management buy-in. Sadly that's exponentially more difficult to get when most places see IT as a sunk-cost instead of an opportunity to deliver more efficient workflows internally and externally. I'm on the fence about working with developers that don't have college degrees. The gaps in their skill-set frequently causes issues no matter how much experience they've had.
- protonimitate 9y ago
  I'm curious to hear what kinds of skill gaps you see and the severity of issues they bring, and if there are common knowledge gaps or it's more random.
  - Brockenstein 9y ago
    I would have to assume, coming from that sort of background. College makes you take classes and learn skills that "you" don't care about or don't see immediate value to, but you have to do it anyway. Maybe not all of them are CS classes either. It's possible for a self-taught to developer to learn a lot but stay in their safe bubbles of expertise, work or school can push you out of your comfort zones quite frequently and force you to expand your horizons. In a way that you might not do for yourself, at least not all the time. Individual experiences may vary. I'm not saying there aren't some amazing talented self-taught programmers just you have to be very careful in assuming that they all are.
    - misterhtmlcss 9y ago
      As an evolving self-taught I think it's too early for me to speak confidently on this topic, however I will add my two sense for what it's worth. Additional background; I'm the local Admin for a Free Code Camp (FCC) group so I meet lots of aspiring self-taughts btw. 1. Many many self-taughts (ST?) aren't joining coding for passion, they are joining because they want to change careers and think coding is easy. They think this (IMO) because it's famous for hiring non-graduates. 2. They then proceed to join groups like FCC in massive surges that closely correlates what's happening in the job market; which doesn't fuel me with confidence in their conviction to become a ST dev. It's kind of like joining the gym Jan 1; if you wanted to be healthy why wait until your NYE resolution. So like a gym 90% of those that join then go silent in our group nearly immediately. 3. I'd say about 1-4% of those who join even complete FCC and of those I genuinely believe they've all found success. Ironically FCC draws in a ton of weak links because it's free, but also because it's free very very few of us ever finish and get a certificate. If I had a chance to hire an ST that was junior I'd definitely be curious about their story. Their story will tell you so much about the 'man' they are: - Did they go balls deep and pay $15k+ and give up sleep and life for 3+ months? What did they do afterwards? What did they do before? - Did they chip away at FCC for 1-2 years building out a portfolio, FINISHING at least the FE certificate? You see where I'm going here? In my life I've never met someone who did truly well without an internal desire to get it done and that can't be taught. The real advantage of an ST can be their resilience and determination to do what is needed to succeed and if you ignore that amazing skill/asset just because he's without a paper then it's definitely a mistake. So while I'm not advocating for STs over Grads, I am saying they can be very special and valuable assets that are worth taking a long look at when you get their resume. You'll see more of me soon; I'm quiting my job May 1 to focus on finishing my skills to a commercial standard, which I've waited two years to do; I'm finally near the finish line and I can't be more excited to be going full time on my passion. This was written on my phone; so apologies if I'm vague, impolite or grammatically a fail. It's hard when you're trying to work and quickly add two cents of value on a topic you love.

by ry_ry 9y ago

samayylmao 9y ago

To me, this is very different than someone who has graduated with a CS degree or self-taught with a portfolio of open source contributions/personal projects. An understanding of basic concepts obtained in the ways described above is very different from 0 experience. And on paper to a recruiter, what I've listed above counts as 0 real-world business experience. edit: it is nice to hear this situation worked out for you though!

justherefortart 9y ago

There's a huge difference in no work experience and no experience at all. Hiring college grads without a lot of real world experience gives you the opportunity to mentor and train in good methodologies that I find older developers will refuse to implement without incessant fighting. It is more work initially but the long run payoff has been fantastic in my experience. When you manage based on yearly expectations that are attainable life is so much more enjoyable. The biggest key is management and upper management buy-in. Sadly that's exponentially more difficult to get when most places see IT as a sunk-cost instead of an opportunity to deliver more efficient workflows internally and externally. I'm on the fence about working with developers that don't have college degrees. The gaps in their skill-set frequently causes issues no matter how much experience they've had.

protonimitate 9y ago
I'm curious to hear what kinds of skill gaps you see and the severity of issues they bring, and if there are common knowledge gaps or it's more random.
- Brockenstein 9y ago
  I would have to assume, coming from that sort of background. College makes you take classes and learn skills that "you" don't care about or don't see immediate value to, but you have to do it anyway. Maybe not all of them are CS classes either. It's possible for a self-taught to developer to learn a lot but stay in their safe bubbles of expertise, work or school can push you out of your comfort zones quite frequently and force you to expand your horizons. In a way that you might not do for yourself, at least not all the time. Individual experiences may vary. I'm not saying there aren't some amazing talented self-taught programmers just you have to be very careful in assuming that they all are.
  - misterhtmlcss 9y ago
    As an evolving self-taught I think it's too early for me to speak confidently on this topic, however I will add my two sense for what it's worth. Additional background; I'm the local Admin for a Free Code Camp (FCC) group so I meet lots of aspiring self-taughts btw. 1. Many many self-taughts (ST?) aren't joining coding for passion, they are joining because they want to change careers and think coding is easy. They think this (IMO) because it's famous for hiring non-graduates. 2. They then proceed to join groups like FCC in massive surges that closely correlates what's happening in the job market; which doesn't fuel me with confidence in their conviction to become a ST dev. It's kind of like joining the gym Jan 1; if you wanted to be healthy why wait until your NYE resolution. So like a gym 90% of those that join then go silent in our group nearly immediately. 3. I'd say about 1-4% of those who join even complete FCC and of those I genuinely believe they've all found success. Ironically FCC draws in a ton of weak links because it's free, but also because it's free very very few of us ever finish and get a certificate. If I had a chance to hire an ST that was junior I'd definitely be curious about their story. Their story will tell you so much about the 'man' they are: - Did they go balls deep and pay $15k+ and give up sleep and life for 3+ months? What did they do afterwards? What did they do before? - Did they chip away at FCC for 1-2 years building out a portfolio, FINISHING at least the FE certificate? You see where I'm going here? In my life I've never met someone who did truly well without an internal desire to get it done and that can't be taught. The real advantage of an ST can be their resilience and determination to do what is needed to succeed and if you ignore that amazing skill/asset just because he's without a paper then it's definitely a mistake. So while I'm not advocating for STs over Grads, I am saying they can be very special and valuable assets that are worth taking a long look at when you get their resume. You'll see more of me soon; I'm quiting my job May 1 to focus on finishing my skills to a commercial standard, which I've waited two years to do; I'm finally near the finish line and I can't be more excited to be going full time on my passion. This was written on my phone; so apologies if I'm vague, impolite or grammatically a fail. It's hard when you're trying to work and quickly add two cents of value on a topic you love.