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>almost impossible to find developer with Scala experience around here anyway) I feel you. I think there is no pool more shallow than the one of C programmers

>almost impossible to find developer with Scala experience around here anyway) I feel you. I think there is no pool more shallow than the one of C programmers that can work on embedded in my area. Regardless of what your background is, I’ve already had to commit to 6 months of training for anyone I hire.

cannonedhamster 7y ago
There's no such thing as someone you're not going to have to train. Every single company does something different. To suggest that you're not going to have months of train up isn't feasible. I wish this mindset would go away. Training is, and should be an integral part of any workplace. It's what makes your whole team better, it's what makes everyone have a similar style, and shows people the expectations. This goes for internal code process as well as external code and tools. Embedded especially is going to be hard because it's a specialized skill set that's far harder than people realize especially once you get into space constraints.
- nitrogen 7y ago
  I agree with this 100%, even as an experienced engineer I want to continue to give and receive ongoing training. Yet I've actually been told in some settings not to even mention the "T" word because it would be seen as offensive. Instead as an industry we have ridiculous expectations in hiring and an inefficient, informal training process in the form of production failures.
  - 0_gravitas 7y ago
    I bet the job post reads "Searching for self-starter that can hit the ground running!"
- princeb 7y ago
  my experience is that you have to babysit the senior hires a little bit more because they bring their own baggage and habits into the team even if it doesn't support the existing workflow or even goes against. they are also more resistant to change than a fresh hire, or may be a bit more convincing when they want things to move their way (to the team's detriment). if you want to incorporate new cultural elements into your team, especially if your team has already strong, well-developed culture, you have to be aware of what is good and what is bad within your existing team, what to keep and what to give up, and be quick to nip any unintended side effects of a cultural/workflow change in the bud.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  > There's no such thing as someone you're not going to have to train. Not for employees but for contractors or consultants they better be able to hit the ground running. That’s why they get paid 3x and up what employees get. If you need someone right now you can pay the premium for it and get it.
fragmede 7y ago
> commit to 6 months of training for anyone I hire. Google broadly believes it takes 6-12 months for a new hire to become completely productive, so I doubt that particular aspect of your experience is due to shallowness of the embedded (straight) C (not C++) talent pool in your area.
- erik_seaberg 7y ago
  Google did a lot of pioneering work and created a proprietary stack. This used to be a big competitive advantage, but the industry largely caught up and now the incompatibility is mostly just tech debt that everyone has to ramp up on.
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    A lot of what's required in onboarding is domain knowledge. Say a fintech engineer gets a job in industrial controls or vice versa; there will be considerable time spent learning about the industry itself, regulatory environment, etc.
  - lozenge 7y ago
    Are you speaking as a Googler/Xoogler? They come out with impressive projects like Kube and their build system, I would be surprised if their in house stack can really be described entirely as "tech debt".
    - erik_seaberg 7y ago
      Xoogler from a few years ago. I'm not saying they have nothing cutting edge, just that the rest of the industry eventually reached parity with a lot of their everyday platforms. If you come in knowing HDFS and Cassandra and Spark and k8s, moving to CFS and BigTable and Flume and Borg involves learning a whole lot of minor differences that don't make you much more capable but screw up code reuse. I was pleased to see Cloud Spanner hit the market, and trying to nudge the industry towards hermetic builds with Bazel.
      - 7y ago
nitrogen 7y ago
Out of curiosity, what's your area, and what channels do you use for hiring? Sounds like exactly the kind of work I might enjoy (and spent several years doing for my old startup) depending on industry, location, and compensation, but all I ever see are Java and web jobs.
ChuckNorris89 7y ago
> I think there is no pool more shallow than the one of C programmers that can work on embedded in my area. Maybe if Embedded gigs wouldn't be paid a fraction of what a web dev kiddie would make, the pool would be larger.

cannonedhamster 7y ago

There's no such thing as someone you're not going to have to train. Every single company does something different. To suggest that you're not going to have months of train up isn't feasible. I wish this mindset would go away. Training is, and should be an integral part of any workplace. It's what makes your whole team better, it's what makes everyone have a similar style, and shows people the expectations. This goes for internal code process as well as external code and tools. Embedded especially is going to be hard because it's a specialized skill set that's far harder than people realize especially once you get into space constraints.

nitrogen 7y ago
I agree with this 100%, even as an experienced engineer I want to continue to give and receive ongoing training. Yet I've actually been told in some settings not to even mention the "T" word because it would be seen as offensive. Instead as an industry we have ridiculous expectations in hiring and an inefficient, informal training process in the form of production failures.
- 0_gravitas 7y ago
  I bet the job post reads "Searching for self-starter that can hit the ground running!"
princeb 7y ago
my experience is that you have to babysit the senior hires a little bit more because they bring their own baggage and habits into the team even if it doesn't support the existing workflow or even goes against. they are also more resistant to change than a fresh hire, or may be a bit more convincing when they want things to move their way (to the team's detriment). if you want to incorporate new cultural elements into your team, especially if your team has already strong, well-developed culture, you have to be aware of what is good and what is bad within your existing team, what to keep and what to give up, and be quick to nip any unintended side effects of a cultural/workflow change in the bud.
barry-cotter 7y ago
> There's no such thing as someone you're not going to have to train. Not for employees but for contractors or consultants they better be able to hit the ground running. That’s why they get paid 3x and up what employees get. If you need someone right now you can pay the premium for it and get it.

fragmede 7y ago

> commit to 6 months of training for anyone I hire. Google broadly believes it takes 6-12 months for a new hire to become completely productive, so I doubt that particular aspect of your experience is due to shallowness of the embedded (straight) C (not C++) talent pool in your area.

erik_seaberg 7y ago
Google did a lot of pioneering work and created a proprietary stack. This used to be a big competitive advantage, but the industry largely caught up and now the incompatibility is mostly just tech debt that everyone has to ramp up on.
- nitrogen 7y ago
  A lot of what's required in onboarding is domain knowledge. Say a fintech engineer gets a job in industrial controls or vice versa; there will be considerable time spent learning about the industry itself, regulatory environment, etc.
- lozenge 7y ago
  Are you speaking as a Googler/Xoogler? They come out with impressive projects like Kube and their build system, I would be surprised if their in house stack can really be described entirely as "tech debt".
  - erik_seaberg 7y ago
    Xoogler from a few years ago. I'm not saying they have nothing cutting edge, just that the rest of the industry eventually reached parity with a lot of their everyday platforms. If you come in knowing HDFS and Cassandra and Spark and k8s, moving to CFS and BigTable and Flume and Borg involves learning a whole lot of minor differences that don't make you much more capable but screw up code reuse. I was pleased to see Cloud Spanner hit the market, and trying to nudge the industry towards hermetic builds with Bazel.
    - 7y ago

nitrogen 7y ago

Out of curiosity, what's your area, and what channels do you use for hiring? Sounds like exactly the kind of work I might enjoy (and spent several years doing for my old startup) depending on industry, location, and compensation, but all I ever see are Java and web jobs.

ChuckNorris89 7y ago

> I think there is no pool more shallow than the one of C programmers that can work on embedded in my area. Maybe if Embedded gigs wouldn't be paid a fraction of what a web dev kiddie would make, the pool would be larger.