3 ms·

I think this is spot on. When I started in the 90s hiring was more like “you are smart so you will be able to learn”. Now it seems you really have to chase the

I think this is spot on. When I started in the 90s hiring was more like “you are smart so you will be able to learn”. Now it seems you really have to chase the latest cool stuff all the time or you quickly are marked as outdated. What they don’t seem to understand is that if you are the cool hotshot that’s working on an important project for a while you are almost by definition outdated after a while because you will not work on the latest hot tech. Realistically the best way to deal with is to do resume driven development and have constant churn by replacing frameworks and databases constantly just for the heck of it. Even better is to either have a degree from a fancy school or having the name of a currently cool company on your resume but be aware that the currently cool company may fall out of favor any time.

jamil7 7y ago
A lot of this is pretty specific to web development, I know it exists elsewhere too but I think it's most pronounced on the web and in the javascript community. To the point where javascript has inserted itself into more or less every domain and people look at you confused, asking why you'd bother writing your software in anything else.
mattrp 7y ago
The problem is the recruiters - how much justice would it be for someone to start a recruiting agency and say to applicants, 'oh you have recruiting experience? yeah...well, we're looking people with a different skillset.'
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  I think part of it is also the interviewing process. In general I like the idea of being interviewed by future colleagues but I have been in interviews where the interviewer had a really narrow perspective and there was only one right answer and only one valid approach to problem solving. I think interviewing should be taken seriously as a skill and interviewers should be trained more.
  - mattrp 7y ago
    I'm sorry I just thought it would be a nice ironic twist -- recruiters hiring other recruiters has to be like a matter meeting anti-matter. In all seriousness, it all comes back to the client. Having been a hiring manager, one of the things that frustrates me is that HR departments have so little bandwidth to do the one thing that's truly important (hiring) that they have no choice but to treat it like a retail shopping experience: hiring 3-5 recruiters, post it to the job boards and hope a qualified candidate shows up. And then by contrast you see the companies that work at it - they host meetups, they sponsor conferences and they go out of their way to create conversations between hiring managers and people who aren't even looking.

jamil7 7y ago

A lot of this is pretty specific to web development, I know it exists elsewhere too but I think it's most pronounced on the web and in the javascript community. To the point where javascript has inserted itself into more or less every domain and people look at you confused, asking why you'd bother writing your software in anything else.

mattrp 7y ago

The problem is the recruiters - how much justice would it be for someone to start a recruiting agency and say to applicants, 'oh you have recruiting experience? yeah...well, we're looking people with a different skillset.'

Ididntdothis 7y ago
I think part of it is also the interviewing process. In general I like the idea of being interviewed by future colleagues but I have been in interviews where the interviewer had a really narrow perspective and there was only one right answer and only one valid approach to problem solving. I think interviewing should be taken seriously as a skill and interviewers should be trained more.
- mattrp 7y ago
  I'm sorry I just thought it would be a nice ironic twist -- recruiters hiring other recruiters has to be like a matter meeting anti-matter. In all seriousness, it all comes back to the client. Having been a hiring manager, one of the things that frustrates me is that HR departments have so little bandwidth to do the one thing that's truly important (hiring) that they have no choice but to treat it like a retail shopping experience: hiring 3-5 recruiters, post it to the job boards and hope a qualified candidate shows up. And then by contrast you see the companies that work at it - they host meetups, they sponsor conferences and they go out of their way to create conversations between hiring managers and people who aren't even looking.