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I have become less and less convinced on this. Most recently I had choices for what would ostensibly be a Go-centric job between generalists who had a little Go

I have become less and less convinced on this. Most recently I had choices for what would ostensibly be a Go-centric job between generalists who had a little Go experience, and people really good at Go, but not as much at the rest of our stack. We went with the generalist under the theory you’re advocating and it was a disaster. The people we hired learned Go, but it takes a while to grok the paradigms and really develop a mental model for what’s going on under the hood. Those hiring choices cost us a lot of grief and probably several months of development time as they made choices that were ostensibly reasonable in other languages/frameworks, but didn’t necessarily hold in Golang. In the future if I require someone for something specific, say k8s, I’m hiring someone with direct lengthy experience in k8s and not a devops expert who has some experience with k8s.

dreen 6y ago
Well there is no silver bullet right, and there are many factors in a situation like yours. Lets say you're hiring for a Java position to make web apps. Is a better candidate someone with lots of desktop Java experience, or someone with lots of Django experience? The answer is of course, it depends. On the person, the job etc. I'd interview both and it's probable the second person has more relevant skills. The problem with putting emphasis on years of experience is that the second person might not get through the HR filter.
TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
Is it normal for one experience to guide all future hiring decisions?
rightbyte 6y ago
Obviously it is better if the candidate has experience in the specific work, but you didn't chose between two generally good candidates but with and without that experience did you?
cameronh90 6y ago
The optimal strategy depends on the timeframe in which you're looking for the employee to provide a net contribution and how long you expect them to stay, among other particulars. If you're scaling up quickly or employing a bunch of people to immediately work on a new project, and expect them to stay an average of 2 years, you need preexisting experience. If you're in a company where people stay on average 4-5 years and, and there's already a well established team with a good set of conventions and technical leadership, a generalist is probably a better call.

dreen 6y ago

Well there is no silver bullet right, and there are many factors in a situation like yours. Lets say you're hiring for a Java position to make web apps. Is a better candidate someone with lots of desktop Java experience, or someone with lots of Django experience? The answer is of course, it depends. On the person, the job etc. I'd interview both and it's probable the second person has more relevant skills. The problem with putting emphasis on years of experience is that the second person might not get through the HR filter.

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago

Is it normal for one experience to guide all future hiring decisions?

rightbyte 6y ago

Obviously it is better if the candidate has experience in the specific work, but you didn't chose between two generally good candidates but with and without that experience did you?

cameronh90 6y ago

The optimal strategy depends on the timeframe in which you're looking for the employee to provide a net contribution and how long you expect them to stay, among other particulars. If you're scaling up quickly or employing a bunch of people to immediately work on a new project, and expect them to stay an average of 2 years, you need preexisting experience. If you're in a company where people stay on average 4-5 years and, and there's already a well established team with a good set of conventions and technical leadership, a generalist is probably a better call.