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I've always viewed staying up with the latest tools, technologies, and practices as part of my job. I've also found that the people who tend to not do this or d

I've always viewed staying up with the latest tools, technologies, and practices as part of my job. I've also found that the people who tend to not do this or display a similar sentiment you touched on with your comment, it's because you have carved out a large enough amount of success or niche with what you are working with. Am I reading into this too far?

nitrogen 6y ago
The breadth of the industry makes it completely impossible to keep up with everything. I started typing out a list, but the list would be impossibly long.
- dimitrios1 6y ago
  I agree that it is impossible to keep up with everything. I am more viewing it from a prospective employability position and safeguarding my future interests. I may do very well writing apps in containers with traditional load balancers, but I very well better learn some Serverless and JAMStack type patterns as well, as a completely random example. It's part of the filtering process to determine what subset you want to target, but learn something new as often as you can. The bonus I've learned over time is the more paradigms, tools, and technologies I learn and practice configuring and launching sample apps or solving simple challenges with, the more they all start to look and feel the same.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  Also once you've done it for about 10 years you realize there's not a lot that's really new.
tharkun__ 6y ago
Like nitrogen explains as well, it's just too much, even if you concentrate on what you are actually usually working on/in, depending on what your field is. I.e. if you are working on anything that is currently a 'web app' of some sort, then depending on what company you were at, you would either be using one framework or another. So you might write in the "I know technology X" column things like "jQuery, React", because your last job used JQuery, then they grew up and switched to React. In the "I don't know technology Y" column, you write things like "BackboneJS, AngularJS" etc. (the actual lists would be much longer, this is just to take an example). You're still current if you use either Angular or React it just happens that you (or someone at your company) didn't choose one but the other. And then there's the myriad of other frameworks that come and go or that a particular niche of companies might prefer. If you're a web app FE or full stack guy you can still pick any of these up easily enough, so it makes sense to list them for the "pattern matching HR drones" (or computers :)) to get the interview.
35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
As someone who gets to participate in the hiring process more than I'd like to, I look for balance on resumes. If you bring nothing but J2EE 1.4 experience I'm going to assume you've carved out a focused niche. I'll steer the interview towards broad, modern practices and technologies. If your resume talks about nothing but modern technologies, I'll try to dive deep to be sure you aren't a dilettante with surface knowledge in a ton of things but no deep capabilities where it matters to $company. In general the best resumes show a balance of deep expertise in foundational tech and exposure to new technologies. A dev might have done Python for a decade but has started poking at Elixir, an ops person knows Linux like the back of their hand before they start talking about Kube, etc.
- Frazmatazz 6y ago
  Do you have hard data demonstrating that your method actually has greater predictive power for job performance than other methods?
  - 35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
    Absolutely not. It's one more approach riddled with bias, human foibles and questionable correlation to results - just like all hiring. All I can say: in my experience, the engineers I've hired with deep (but potentially old) experience and with balanced resumes have been better performers and more likely to stick around than those who bounce around tech to tech.
    - Frazmatazz 6y ago
      I mean, I'm in the same boat as you. I just hate that I have to rely on this type of information, subject to all the flaws and biases of relying on personal experience. In my experience, it's useful to have a couple 'jack-of-all-trades' types on the team, but you wouldn't want all your engineers to be broad but shallow. I did a stint in the military to pay for college, and something we'd point out was that it was better to have something 'good enough' right now than something perfect a thousand miles away. Breadth of experience is also handy when trying to innovate a novel solution. But I don't have any better evidence than you. I've never worked anywhere large enough to have that sort of data where we could demonstrate quantitatively that one method works better than another, and of course the metrics are all fairly arbitrary themselves.
flukus 6y ago
If it's part of your job then you spend time in your regular 9-5 day keeping up with technologies correct? Otherwise it's not part of your job, it's part of your personal time. Employers tend to want people with the right skills but they seldom allow time to develop those skills.

nitrogen 6y ago

The breadth of the industry makes it completely impossible to keep up with everything. I started typing out a list, but the list would be impossibly long.

dimitrios1 6y ago
I agree that it is impossible to keep up with everything. I am more viewing it from a prospective employability position and safeguarding my future interests. I may do very well writing apps in containers with traditional load balancers, but I very well better learn some Serverless and JAMStack type patterns as well, as a completely random example. It's part of the filtering process to determine what subset you want to target, but learn something new as often as you can. The bonus I've learned over time is the more paradigms, tools, and technologies I learn and practice configuring and launching sample apps or solving simple challenges with, the more they all start to look and feel the same.
throwawayboise 6y ago
Also once you've done it for about 10 years you realize there's not a lot that's really new.

tharkun__ 6y ago

Like nitrogen explains as well, it's just too much, even if you concentrate on what you are actually usually working on/in, depending on what your field is. I.e. if you are working on anything that is currently a 'web app' of some sort, then depending on what company you were at, you would either be using one framework or another. So you might write in the "I know technology X" column things like "jQuery, React", because your last job used JQuery, then they grew up and switched to React. In the "I don't know technology Y" column, you write things like "BackboneJS, AngularJS" etc. (the actual lists would be much longer, this is just to take an example). You're still current if you use either Angular or React it just happens that you (or someone at your company) didn't choose one but the other. And then there's the myriad of other frameworks that come and go or that a particular niche of companies might prefer. If you're a web app FE or full stack guy you can still pick any of these up easily enough, so it makes sense to list them for the "pattern matching HR drones" (or computers :)) to get the interview.

35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago

As someone who gets to participate in the hiring process more than I'd like to, I look for balance on resumes. If you bring nothing but J2EE 1.4 experience I'm going to assume you've carved out a focused niche. I'll steer the interview towards broad, modern practices and technologies. If your resume talks about nothing but modern technologies, I'll try to dive deep to be sure you aren't a dilettante with surface knowledge in a ton of things but no deep capabilities where it matters to $company. In general the best resumes show a balance of deep expertise in foundational tech and exposure to new technologies. A dev might have done Python for a decade but has started poking at Elixir, an ops person knows Linux like the back of their hand before they start talking about Kube, etc.

Frazmatazz 6y ago
Do you have hard data demonstrating that your method actually has greater predictive power for job performance than other methods?
- 35fbe7d3d5b9 6y ago
  Absolutely not. It's one more approach riddled with bias, human foibles and questionable correlation to results - just like all hiring. All I can say: in my experience, the engineers I've hired with deep (but potentially old) experience and with balanced resumes have been better performers and more likely to stick around than those who bounce around tech to tech.
  - Frazmatazz 6y ago
    I mean, I'm in the same boat as you. I just hate that I have to rely on this type of information, subject to all the flaws and biases of relying on personal experience. In my experience, it's useful to have a couple 'jack-of-all-trades' types on the team, but you wouldn't want all your engineers to be broad but shallow. I did a stint in the military to pay for college, and something we'd point out was that it was better to have something 'good enough' right now than something perfect a thousand miles away. Breadth of experience is also handy when trying to innovate a novel solution. But I don't have any better evidence than you. I've never worked anywhere large enough to have that sort of data where we could demonstrate quantitatively that one method works better than another, and of course the metrics are all fairly arbitrary themselves.

flukus 6y ago

If it's part of your job then you spend time in your regular 9-5 day keeping up with technologies correct? Otherwise it's not part of your job, it's part of your personal time. Employers tend to want people with the right skills but they seldom allow time to develop those skills.