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I've been doing a lot of tech blogging lately, playing around with various F# tools and toy projects, seeing what resonates with the community. There was a pro

I've been doing a lot of tech blogging lately, playing around with various F# tools and toy projects, seeing what resonates with the community. There was a progressive complexity that happened back in the late 70s and early 80s such that people alive today who still code and learned back then have taken the ride from machine language to multi-gigabyte stacks. We just kept adding stuff and having to make sure we could be functional in all of it. Not an expert, but functional. It was standard practice on my commercial programming teams to decide what everybody wanted to learn on a new project before starting. (And these were high-paying projects. We always left with happy customers). People were jack-of-all-trades. Most everybody was. You had to be. What am I seeing resonate, at least as far as I can tell? The inability to understand what the hell is going on and work with it. You get a C++ compiler compiling a hellacious codebase working in DOS, a rails configuration ain't nothing. I see what are supposedly senior programmers walk a bit off the happy path on a framework and they're lost. Not only are they lost, they are insecure, afraid, embarrassed. There's nothing wrong with these people. There's something wrong with the way we're training and staffing them. Fifteen years ago I was still coding commercially, having a blast. Talking to a recruiter one day about various projects, she said "You know, you're one of the last true general consultants" There may be ten thousand of us. Beats me. But her general appraisal was correct. There is a drastic and complete change between the way coders used to relate to technology and the way they do today. It's not tech. It's mindset.

52-6F-62 8y ago
Just to your point about the recruiter’s assessment— I’ve never met a modern tech recruiter who can make that kind of remark. They largely focus on buzzwords and where you went to school. Seems like they even often fail the companies they work for by designing poor matches and wouldn’t recognize experience like you’ve noted as being worth anything. Then again, maybe I’m just in a weird bubble here. And I’m just generalizing—they’re not all the way I’ve described, but many (possibly most) are.
- 0x445442 8y ago
  "Just to your point about the recruiter’s assessment— I’ve never met a modern tech recruiter who can make that kind of remark." How many years experience of "the XML" do you have?
  - 52-6F-62 8y ago
    Oh at least twice the lifetime of the technology. I'm a veritable expert.
  - JDWolf 8y ago
    "What versions of .Net were you using at each of these jobs?" "What percentage of time were you using SQL databases?" "On a scale of 1-10, how well do you know Java?" and my personal favorite...."Are you willing to do a contract role for less than your salary? We have many candidates go long term."
- autokad 8y ago
  as a data scientist, I would struggle to answer 'what % of your work involves programming in python?' I'm like well uh that depends. 95% if you include #import sklearn and basic numpy and pandas operations. 01% if you consider 'real programming'. 'so what %?' ... That aside, there is a real problem in the tech industry when it comes to developing talent. Universities teach mostly theory and rely on the industry to teach us best practice, 'production level coding'. but then once they get to the industry, they get no mentorship. companies don't want to spend time training someone who will leave in 2 years. however, if everyone did solid mentorship programs, the entire industry would benefit.
- RichardCA 8y ago
  There are good and bad recruiters in every age. Back in the day they would ask you if you knew MVS or OS/390, and if you said no to that, they'd proceed to ask if you knew TSO.

52-6F-62 8y ago

Just to your point about the recruiter’s assessment— I’ve never met a modern tech recruiter who can make that kind of remark. They largely focus on buzzwords and where you went to school. Seems like they even often fail the companies they work for by designing poor matches and wouldn’t recognize experience like you’ve noted as being worth anything. Then again, maybe I’m just in a weird bubble here. And I’m just generalizing—they’re not all the way I’ve described, but many (possibly most) are.

0x445442 8y ago
"Just to your point about the recruiter’s assessment— I’ve never met a modern tech recruiter who can make that kind of remark." How many years experience of "the XML" do you have?
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  Oh at least twice the lifetime of the technology. I'm a veritable expert.
- JDWolf 8y ago
  "What versions of .Net were you using at each of these jobs?" "What percentage of time were you using SQL databases?" "On a scale of 1-10, how well do you know Java?" and my personal favorite...."Are you willing to do a contract role for less than your salary? We have many candidates go long term."
autokad 8y ago
as a data scientist, I would struggle to answer 'what % of your work involves programming in python?' I'm like well uh that depends. 95% if you include #import sklearn and basic numpy and pandas operations. 01% if you consider 'real programming'. 'so what %?' ... That aside, there is a real problem in the tech industry when it comes to developing talent. Universities teach mostly theory and rely on the industry to teach us best practice, 'production level coding'. but then once they get to the industry, they get no mentorship. companies don't want to spend time training someone who will leave in 2 years. however, if everyone did solid mentorship programs, the entire industry would benefit.
RichardCA 8y ago
There are good and bad recruiters in every age. Back in the day they would ask you if you knew MVS or OS/390, and if you said no to that, they'd proceed to ask if you knew TSO.