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Like anything else, GP’s advice is context-sensitive. In this case, it scales with experience. If you just came out of a bootcamp and claim to know 3 backend l

Like anything else, GP’s advice is context-sensitive. In this case, it scales with experience. If you just came out of a bootcamp and claim to know 3 backend languages, or have less than 3 years experience and list more than a half dozen languages, I’ll assume you’ve worked with each of them so little that you don’t know any of them in a meaningful sense. If you have more than 10 years experience and know only 2 languages, your exposure is very limited, and I’ll wonder whether you’ve learned by rote rather than knowing how to learn concepts and reapply them elsewhere. For me as a hiring manager, it’s not about curiosity or passion so much as flexibility and ability to learn and grow in both depth and breadth.

duxup 8y ago
Thank you for the feedback! I've dabbled in a number of languages but I'm focused on just a few areas and I haven't listed my dabbling as ... well exactly what you said. As a noob listing half a dozen languages seems sort of absurd when in actuality I know just one (and still need to work on it).
- cimmanom 8y ago
  Yup, sounds like you’ve got the right mindset in that regard. Pick something to focus on and learn to be highly productive with it at a professional level. Once you have expertise in one thing, you’ll find it transfers well to other languages and to some degree to other domains. You can start picking up secondary languages, or choose one other language to deep-dive into. At the junior level, most employers are looking for moderate depth in at least one language and area, and an awareness of what the other technologies are that the developers around you will be integrating your work with. The degree of depth and the number of different technologies they’ll want you to know well will also scale with experience level. Too many new programmers undermine themselves by trying to learn every single technology they can get their hands on. I blame the bootcamps, which by nature have to expose you to at least a handful of different skills and don’t have time to teach any of them in meaningful depth. They send an incorrect message that a few hours with a new technology, tool, or framework is as much as is worth learning before moving on to the next shiny thing.
  - duxup 8y ago
    Sounds about right. Accordingly one of my feedbacks to the camp I attended was to drop like four things, add one (minor thing), and spend more time on the rest. Rather than sort of shotgun it.

duxup 8y ago

Thank you for the feedback! I've dabbled in a number of languages but I'm focused on just a few areas and I haven't listed my dabbling as ... well exactly what you said. As a noob listing half a dozen languages seems sort of absurd when in actuality I know just one (and still need to work on it).

cimmanom 8y ago
Yup, sounds like you’ve got the right mindset in that regard. Pick something to focus on and learn to be highly productive with it at a professional level. Once you have expertise in one thing, you’ll find it transfers well to other languages and to some degree to other domains. You can start picking up secondary languages, or choose one other language to deep-dive into. At the junior level, most employers are looking for moderate depth in at least one language and area, and an awareness of what the other technologies are that the developers around you will be integrating your work with. The degree of depth and the number of different technologies they’ll want you to know well will also scale with experience level. Too many new programmers undermine themselves by trying to learn every single technology they can get their hands on. I blame the bootcamps, which by nature have to expose you to at least a handful of different skills and don’t have time to teach any of them in meaningful depth. They send an incorrect message that a few hours with a new technology, tool, or framework is as much as is worth learning before moving on to the next shiny thing.
- duxup 8y ago
  Sounds about right. Accordingly one of my feedbacks to the camp I attended was to drop like four things, add one (minor thing), and spend more time on the rest. Rather than sort of shotgun it.