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The thing about all of those skills is they are all soft skills, that can be taught quickly on the job to the right candidates. Whereas a deep ability to solve

The thing about all of those skills is they are all soft skills, that can be taught quickly on the job to the right candidates. Whereas a deep ability to solve a technical problem cannot be taught in a reasonable amount of time to most people. Asking someone to find the matching subtrees in a binary tree might not be the best interview question, and to some extent it is kind of trivia for "did you grok your CS education well" - but the point of algorithms questions overall is to see if the candidate, when confronted with a tricky problem, will solve it. And no, these tricky problems don't come up all that often, and you're often just doing basic coding plumbing work. But the candidates who can solve these problems can do all the plumbing work too, and when confronted with a tricky problem, they can get past it. And they also may innovate in an algorithmic way where a less deeply technical developer will either get blocked or come up with a worse solution.

kasey_junk 7y ago
“The thing about all of those skills is they are all soft skills, that can be taught quickly on the job to the right candidates” Citation very much needed. If anything my experience suggests I can teach people with “soft skills” how to do algorithms and data structure tricks much easier than the opposite.
matwood 7y ago
> The thing about all of those skills is they are all soft skills, that can be taught quickly on the job to the right candidates. Whereas a deep ability to solve a technical problem cannot be taught in a reasonable amount of time to most people. This is the exact opposite I have seen in 20 some odd years of working. Maybe if you mean deep technical skills as an expert in cutting edge ML? Thing is, most companies do not need that that depth of expertise. They need someone who can get build standard web/mobile apps, and not be an asshole (and even a bigger plus if they know anything about business/finance/project management). How many assholes have you ever turned into not assholes vs. how many people have you been able to teach something technical? Soft skills are hard for many people. EDIT Wanted to add that a pretty standard soft skill of being able to check their ego often allows people to learn more easily than those who can't put their ego aside.
mike00632 7y ago
There is the old adage, "you can teach technical skills but you can't teach personality."
- kthejoker2 7y ago
  I can handle most personalities within 2 sigma, coach where I need, what is very hard to change is mindset. People who won't try new things, because they'll suck at it. People who don't Google (they know how, they just don't) because they think all answers all received wisdom, not something between a SWAG, an opinion, and a mental model. People who don't read things outside their domain because that's someone else's job. People who confuse having 1 experience for 7 years with 7 years experience. People who think you have to be an expert scientist, engineer, architect, philosopher, and mechanic to change a light bulb, so they never even tried. People so worried about imposter syndrome they'll never deliberately exert any curiosity for fear it will be seen as ignorance.

kasey_junk 7y ago

“The thing about all of those skills is they are all soft skills, that can be taught quickly on the job to the right candidates” Citation very much needed. If anything my experience suggests I can teach people with “soft skills” how to do algorithms and data structure tricks much easier than the opposite.

matwood 7y ago

> The thing about all of those skills is they are all soft skills, that can be taught quickly on the job to the right candidates. Whereas a deep ability to solve a technical problem cannot be taught in a reasonable amount of time to most people. This is the exact opposite I have seen in 20 some odd years of working. Maybe if you mean deep technical skills as an expert in cutting edge ML? Thing is, most companies do not need that that depth of expertise. They need someone who can get build standard web/mobile apps, and not be an asshole (and even a bigger plus if they know anything about business/finance/project management). How many assholes have you ever turned into not assholes vs. how many people have you been able to teach something technical? Soft skills are hard for many people. EDIT Wanted to add that a pretty standard soft skill of being able to check their ego often allows people to learn more easily than those who can't put their ego aside.

mike00632 7y ago

There is the old adage, "you can teach technical skills but you can't teach personality."

kthejoker2 7y ago
I can handle most personalities within 2 sigma, coach where I need, what is very hard to change is mindset. People who won't try new things, because they'll suck at it. People who don't Google (they know how, they just don't) because they think all answers all received wisdom, not something between a SWAG, an opinion, and a mental model. People who don't read things outside their domain because that's someone else's job. People who confuse having 1 experience for 7 years with 7 years experience. People who think you have to be an expert scientist, engineer, architect, philosopher, and mechanic to change a light bulb, so they never even tried. People so worried about imposter syndrome they'll never deliberately exert any curiosity for fear it will be seen as ignorance.