5 ms·

Um... I disagree. I worked for a large company that does just that: hire liberal arts majors with high gpas and teach them to program. It works, well, horribl

by earl 16y ago

Um... I disagree. I worked for a large company that does just that: hire liberal arts majors with high gpas and teach them to program. It works, well, horribly. Ask any former employee about the code quality at epic systems.

jrockway 16y ago
I work for a large company that hires programmers with many years of experience at prestigious firms and it works, well, horribly. It turns out that not very many people are cut out for programming. So honestly, I don't think your approach is too bad.
- gcheong 16y ago
  "So honestly, I don't think your approach is too bad." You mean in the sense that both approaches work horribly?
  - jrockway 16y ago
    Yes. There is no "approach" that works, which means the problem is with expectations.
    - diogenes_ 16y ago
      I have found an honest man!
    - icefox 16y ago
      The corp participates in some open source program (that they don't own). Then hire the best people that contribute to the project. I have seen this work several times over and it has always resulted in high quality developers.
      - jrockway 16y ago
        Yes. My employer employs something like 70,000 programmers. Your way gets you 10 programmers that do a really good job. Now find the other 69,990 programmers. (I like to think I get a lot of work done, but I can't get 7,000 people's work done.) (If it was my company, would I have a bunch of unrelated development departments with no common standards on 5 continents? No. But it's not my company, so I don't get to decide, I can only observe.)
        mikeklaas 16y ago
        I've yet to be convinced any company can productively employ 10,000 programmers let alone 70k. Do you have counterexamples?
        icefox 16y ago
        If you want to hire 70,000 below average developers in no time flat you can. Realistically you are not hiring that many at once but over a long period of growth. All I am saying is that using open source as a way to find talented individuals who love what they do and are really good is one solid way I have found to find new talent. If that can only get me X number of devs a year than that is X number I don't have to hunt through resumes for.
peregrine 16y ago
Epic Systems eh? I heard they were a great place to work?
- earl 16y ago
  No. You can start here: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=223259&start=160 http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=223259... or glassdoor or virtually any former dev there
  - sudont 16y ago
    Generally anyone who likes working there is fairly senior management. As in, they’re in the middle two tiers between CEO and grunt. With all the OSS projects going on, I can’t believe anyone serious about development wouldn’t just use that for experience.
  - peregrine 16y ago
    Where else in wisconsin would you suggest to be a good place to work? Or is that just a pipe dream of mine?
meterplech 16y ago
From what I can see Epic has a landfill of problems that probably aren't related to just hiring liberal arts majors. Moving from that particular example, I think that most startups are not willing to take the risk of hiring someone right of of college who doesn't have an incredible personal portfolio showcased on their amazing website, with years of internships/personal startups. I agree with the blogpost that colleges aren't doing a good job of transitioning students to the challenges of startup/modern tech workforce. But, it seems to me that the solution would be a number of big employers like Google and others who are more able to take the risks should hire up the most qualified and teach them those skills. Simply, if the undergraduate education isn't good enough, someone's gotta teach em.
- untamedmedley 16y ago
  Sounds nice at first but if Google can afford to hire the most experienced, why would they do something that goes against their bottom line? From what I've seen, you've got a lot of developers commanding 60-80k salaries. From a startup perspective, I don't really understand why this is the only acceptable path. It just seems smarter to locate near some technical colleges in cities that have a lower cost of living, and pay entry level developers a salary between 35-45k to start. As they improve their skills, you up their salary... assuming that improvement comes with an increase in revenues/profits.
  - kujhytrtyu 16y ago
    So your choice is pay 80-90k salary to somebody who will contribute $M to your bottom line (Google earnings/employee are incredible) or pay $35-45K for sombody who will just tie up your other programmers fixing their bugs
  - nostrademons 16y ago
    Google actually hires a large number of junior-to-midrange engineers and trains them up. Average age at Google is something like 28; a large number of Google engineers have never worked anywhere but Google. At that level, they hire for aptitude, not experience. The $60-80K that Google pays for beginning hires is on the anticipation that after training, they'll be worth at least that much, and Google can retain them long enough for them to make it back. It's fairly common knowledge that a new Google engineer won't be productive for 6-8 months at least. The risk that a startup runs by paying $35-45K is that they'll get people with lower aptitude who'll never turn into experienced engineers. That's a pretty big financial risk to take, particularly for a startup with much less runway than Google.
27182818284 16y ago
It depends on the measure doesn't it? Does it work "horribly" if the company grew from one person to having $600 million in revenue in 2008? I mean it isn't like Facebook success, but it doesn't seem horrible (at least if measured that way.)

by earl 16y ago

jrockway 16y ago

I work for a large company that hires programmers with many years of experience at prestigious firms and it works, well, horribly. It turns out that not very many people are cut out for programming. So honestly, I don't think your approach is too bad.

gcheong 16y ago
"So honestly, I don't think your approach is too bad." You mean in the sense that both approaches work horribly?
- jrockway 16y ago
  Yes. There is no "approach" that works, which means the problem is with expectations.
  - diogenes_ 16y ago
    I have found an honest man!
  - icefox 16y ago
    The corp participates in some open source program (that they don't own). Then hire the best people that contribute to the project. I have seen this work several times over and it has always resulted in high quality developers.
    - jrockway 16y ago
      Yes. My employer employs something like 70,000 programmers. Your way gets you 10 programmers that do a really good job. Now find the other 69,990 programmers. (I like to think I get a lot of work done, but I can't get 7,000 people's work done.) (If it was my company, would I have a bunch of unrelated development departments with no common standards on 5 continents? No. But it's not my company, so I don't get to decide, I can only observe.)
      - mikeklaas 16y ago
        I've yet to be convinced any company can productively employ 10,000 programmers let alone 70k. Do you have counterexamples?
      - icefox 16y ago
        If you want to hire 70,000 below average developers in no time flat you can. Realistically you are not hiring that many at once but over a long period of growth. All I am saying is that using open source as a way to find talented individuals who love what they do and are really good is one solid way I have found to find new talent. If that can only get me X number of devs a year than that is X number I don't have to hunt through resumes for.

peregrine 16y ago

Epic Systems eh? I heard they were a great place to work?

earl 16y ago
No. You can start here: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=223259&start=160 http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=223259... or glassdoor or virtually any former dev there
- sudont 16y ago
  Generally anyone who likes working there is fairly senior management. As in, they’re in the middle two tiers between CEO and grunt. With all the OSS projects going on, I can’t believe anyone serious about development wouldn’t just use that for experience.
- peregrine 16y ago
  Where else in wisconsin would you suggest to be a good place to work? Or is that just a pipe dream of mine?

meterplech 16y ago

From what I can see Epic has a landfill of problems that probably aren't related to just hiring liberal arts majors. Moving from that particular example, I think that most startups are not willing to take the risk of hiring someone right of of college who doesn't have an incredible personal portfolio showcased on their amazing website, with years of internships/personal startups. I agree with the blogpost that colleges aren't doing a good job of transitioning students to the challenges of startup/modern tech workforce. But, it seems to me that the solution would be a number of big employers like Google and others who are more able to take the risks should hire up the most qualified and teach them those skills. Simply, if the undergraduate education isn't good enough, someone's gotta teach em.

untamedmedley 16y ago
Sounds nice at first but if Google can afford to hire the most experienced, why would they do something that goes against their bottom line? From what I've seen, you've got a lot of developers commanding 60-80k salaries. From a startup perspective, I don't really understand why this is the only acceptable path. It just seems smarter to locate near some technical colleges in cities that have a lower cost of living, and pay entry level developers a salary between 35-45k to start. As they improve their skills, you up their salary... assuming that improvement comes with an increase in revenues/profits.
- kujhytrtyu 16y ago
  So your choice is pay 80-90k salary to somebody who will contribute $M to your bottom line (Google earnings/employee are incredible) or pay $35-45K for sombody who will just tie up your other programmers fixing their bugs
- nostrademons 16y ago
  Google actually hires a large number of junior-to-midrange engineers and trains them up. Average age at Google is something like 28; a large number of Google engineers have never worked anywhere but Google. At that level, they hire for aptitude, not experience. The $60-80K that Google pays for beginning hires is on the anticipation that after training, they'll be worth at least that much, and Google can retain them long enough for them to make it back. It's fairly common knowledge that a new Google engineer won't be productive for 6-8 months at least. The risk that a startup runs by paying $35-45K is that they'll get people with lower aptitude who'll never turn into experienced engineers. That's a pretty big financial risk to take, particularly for a startup with much less runway than Google.

27182818284 16y ago

It depends on the measure doesn't it? Does it work "horribly" if the company grew from one person to having $600 million in revenue in 2008? I mean it isn't like Facebook success, but it doesn't seem horrible (at least if measured that way.)