5 ms·

Oh hell, software dev is so, so very overloaded with underskilled programmers with fragile egos. They come out of college knowing a little python and javascript

Oh hell, software dev is so, so very overloaded with underskilled programmers with fragile egos. They come out of college knowing a little python and javascript and can't do jack shit for at least a year, and just come to a screeching halt with every tough issue they encounter. I'm a project manager box in an org-chart to help un-flatten the management hierarchy (I manage 20+), I am constantly having to re-assign tickets because they linger too long due to inexperience. Our review system is a joke and i have zero authority to fire, I'm supposed to "onramp" them, especially kids who just will never understand how to do this job (I give classes one week a month and they blow them off). I'm not in charge of hiring, if I was, half these kids (and I say "kids" because the 20 somethings are really immature compared to the mid-30 devs, but the latter ain't much more actualized) would have NEVER made it past the phone screen. TL; DR - New college CS grads are mostly children who know very little and expect huge paychecks immediately because they watched Mr. Robot and maybe opened a browser on an RPi. Once.

xamuel 8y ago
Unless your shop literally hires every warm body that walks in the door, you're still seeing things through survivor bias lenses. Even those inept kids are better than what you'd get if you opened the floodgates.
- shados 8y ago
  A lot of companies in tech hotbeds have a hire rate of 25 to 50% of the people who make it in person. It's not "hiring every warm body", but it's pretty damn close in my book, if you consider that resume screening and phone screens might as well be random considering how poorly it's done in the industry. Yeah, the person who barely has the skill to pump gas probably won't make it (they probably have some bigger problems, too), but... Compared to the post dotcom crash (where it was a buyer's market) where you could pick the best and brightest and make super teams, there's a stark contrast in 2018, and it shows in the quality of the products.
- iheartpotatoes 8y ago
  My god I hope you're correct. The problem is I'm not given a "new employee time buffer": the SLA is king, and even though I get budget to train (free lunches!!!) it isn't fully internalized that increasing customers at a rate faster than growing / training tech support is untenable. I've been here 4 years, and some of the new-hires that came on my first year are now able to support mutliple projects and getting their sea-legs, but the burden on the senior programmers is still heavy, and I'm doing my best to retain those saints! Perhaps there will be an inflection point that doesn't involve customers and managers freaking out. Or, heh, perhaps I'M the weak link.
- xanipher 8y ago
  But since not everyone that would be or could become a good software developer takes that path there are also a lot of people out there better than the CS grads described here.
sizzle 8y ago
If this a symptom of bad hiring practices in your organization of representative across the tech industry? How do you know your org isn't to blame?
- shados 8y ago
  Can't talk for the person you're replying to, but in my case at least I worked for a LOT of companies (did consulting for a while, and switched jobs probably more than I should have had), AND so did my SO, so while it's anecdotal, it's a LOT of orgs, including some of the big names everyone have heard of, as well as some smaller ones, and my friends have the same experiences. It might just be insanely bad luck since that's not a significant sample, but it makes us think.
- iheartpotatoes 8y ago
  That's entirely possible. The founders are promising customizations as a way of getting new sales, and I think that is the main problem here: trying to grow business faster than support. I kinda see their dilemma: they don't want to grow the # of employees TOO fast, but right now we're not growing fast enough, and the complexity of customizations is non-trivial. This might be early growing pains in an immature business. But I was bitching about the self-starter trends among new hires.

xamuel 8y ago

Unless your shop literally hires every warm body that walks in the door, you're still seeing things through survivor bias lenses. Even those inept kids are better than what you'd get if you opened the floodgates.

shados 8y ago
A lot of companies in tech hotbeds have a hire rate of 25 to 50% of the people who make it in person. It's not "hiring every warm body", but it's pretty damn close in my book, if you consider that resume screening and phone screens might as well be random considering how poorly it's done in the industry. Yeah, the person who barely has the skill to pump gas probably won't make it (they probably have some bigger problems, too), but... Compared to the post dotcom crash (where it was a buyer's market) where you could pick the best and brightest and make super teams, there's a stark contrast in 2018, and it shows in the quality of the products.
iheartpotatoes 8y ago
My god I hope you're correct. The problem is I'm not given a "new employee time buffer": the SLA is king, and even though I get budget to train (free lunches!!!) it isn't fully internalized that increasing customers at a rate faster than growing / training tech support is untenable. I've been here 4 years, and some of the new-hires that came on my first year are now able to support mutliple projects and getting their sea-legs, but the burden on the senior programmers is still heavy, and I'm doing my best to retain those saints! Perhaps there will be an inflection point that doesn't involve customers and managers freaking out. Or, heh, perhaps I'M the weak link.
xanipher 8y ago
But since not everyone that would be or could become a good software developer takes that path there are also a lot of people out there better than the CS grads described here.

sizzle 8y ago

If this a symptom of bad hiring practices in your organization of representative across the tech industry? How do you know your org isn't to blame?

shados 8y ago
Can't talk for the person you're replying to, but in my case at least I worked for a LOT of companies (did consulting for a while, and switched jobs probably more than I should have had), AND so did my SO, so while it's anecdotal, it's a LOT of orgs, including some of the big names everyone have heard of, as well as some smaller ones, and my friends have the same experiences. It might just be insanely bad luck since that's not a significant sample, but it makes us think.
iheartpotatoes 8y ago
That's entirely possible. The founders are promising customizations as a way of getting new sales, and I think that is the main problem here: trying to grow business faster than support. I kinda see their dilemma: they don't want to grow the # of employees TOO fast, but right now we're not growing fast enough, and the complexity of customizations is non-trivial. This might be early growing pains in an immature business. But I was bitching about the self-starter trends among new hires.