3 ms·

This isn't my experience at all, but that may be due to different companies. I'd expect that in large corporations with very structured recruitment processes, c

This isn't my experience at all, but that may be due to different companies. I'd expect that in large corporations with very structured recruitment processes, cozy jobs and high pay. They don't want deviation from the norm, so any red flags are "thanks, but no thanks". For smaller companies (< 50 people) and agencies though? Not my experience at all. They don't pay as well and they aren't as organized, you might not get sponsored trips to conferences, hackathons or you decide how much vacation days you want, but certification and resume gaps aren't that much of an issue in IT for them, because it's very much a sellers' market at the moment (that is: has been in the past decade, but I'll wager that it's going to be the same in the next 5 to 10 years). Homelessness is another beast, as might mental health issues be, but degrees don't matter nearly as much in the real world as they do in the corporate world.

clarry 7y ago
I suspect the differences in our experiences are more regional. I imagine that Germany, having 15x the population and significantly more capital than Finland, would have a much more vibrant tech scene. Being closer to other EU countries probably helps a lot too. The demand for developers is fierce here, for sure, so it is very much a seller's market. But like I said, medium-large companies are siphoning off all the fresh blood (and no, you don't need a degree, but being a student in a relevant discipline makes all the difference!). Small companies with productive experts don't want to waste time & money on training juniors and taking chances with them. The rest of the small companies are pretty much on shoestring budget (most of them serving local niches in our small market, or playing startup with government funds which are comparable to unemployment benefits, barely enough to cover rent and food) and a bad hire could genuinely topple many of them. Sure, that does leave a handful of small companies that will take chances out of desperation, but I think they're a dying breed -- think the kind of shops that maintain some legacy doodles written in php and visual basic. Their services are slowly getting subsumed by the larger companies. The meme on local boards is that yeah, there's a huge demand for seniors with 5+ years of experience, at junior salaries. :-) I'm pretty much seeing the same thing in my network; plenty of people are working at small-medium companies that could use more bodies, but at the same time everyone's saying they wouldn't hire juniors (sometimes phrased as "we would hire juniors with relevant experience"). Similar story at my (very small) company..

clarry 7y ago

I suspect the differences in our experiences are more regional. I imagine that Germany, having 15x the population and significantly more capital than Finland, would have a much more vibrant tech scene. Being closer to other EU countries probably helps a lot too. The demand for developers is fierce here, for sure, so it is very much a seller's market. But like I said, medium-large companies are siphoning off all the fresh blood (and no, you don't need a degree, but being a student in a relevant discipline makes all the difference!). Small companies with productive experts don't want to waste time & money on training juniors and taking chances with them. The rest of the small companies are pretty much on shoestring budget (most of them serving local niches in our small market, or playing startup with government funds which are comparable to unemployment benefits, barely enough to cover rent and food) and a bad hire could genuinely topple many of them. Sure, that does leave a handful of small companies that will take chances out of desperation, but I think they're a dying breed -- think the kind of shops that maintain some legacy doodles written in php and visual basic. Their services are slowly getting subsumed by the larger companies. The meme on local boards is that yeah, there's a huge demand for seniors with 5+ years of experience, at junior salaries. :-) I'm pretty much seeing the same thing in my network; plenty of people are working at small-medium companies that could use more bodies, but at the same time everyone's saying they wouldn't hire juniors (sometimes phrased as "we would hire juniors with relevant experience"). Similar story at my (very small) company..