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> the new generation doesn't know them or have much of a desire to learn them On one hand, I'd say that this is true. But on the other, I'm not so sure. 15 y

by OldHand2018 6y ago

> the new generation doesn't know them or have much of a desire to learn them On one hand, I'd say that this is true. But on the other, I'm not so sure. 15 years ago, I interviewed for a job that turned out to be for building software on OpenVMS running on Alpha. I had honestly never heard of either thing. The interviewer, who would be my manager, said that isn't a problem, it's just a computer that works a little different than others. Do you want to learn it? I said ok. Over the years, the hiring process changed, and there is no way that someone like me would even be sitting at that interview where they could ask if I wanted to learn. So companies can go ahead and spend all that money on legacy consultants and all that money on migrating their systems.

bluGill 6y ago
Companies that want to hire new people haven't change. If you want a standard web app you can demand someone with experience in the framework of your choice and get it. If you want someone to write in your custom language - you know they have to learn it so you hire people who can learn.
- monocasa 6y ago
  And not even a super custom language. Get out of the bay area and you'll see tons of job postings that ideally want Go or Scala experience, but will gladly teach you if you have the right fundamentals. That's the only way to get their hiring top of funnel large enough to fill seats. I really think big iron's customer's problems are that they don't want to pay for quality engineers, but for some reason will pay those higher rates or more for some overpriced consultants. Literally just accepting that the outsourcing dream of 2000 was not a great move and using that money on internal engineering would go soooo far. You see even .gov getting the hint with 18F and the US Digital Service building and supporting non contractor government engineers.

bluGill 6y ago

Companies that want to hire new people haven't change. If you want a standard web app you can demand someone with experience in the framework of your choice and get it. If you want someone to write in your custom language - you know they have to learn it so you hire people who can learn.

monocasa 6y ago
And not even a super custom language. Get out of the bay area and you'll see tons of job postings that ideally want Go or Scala experience, but will gladly teach you if you have the right fundamentals. That's the only way to get their hiring top of funnel large enough to fill seats. I really think big iron's customer's problems are that they don't want to pay for quality engineers, but for some reason will pay those higher rates or more for some overpriced consultants. Literally just accepting that the outsourcing dream of 2000 was not a great move and using that money on internal engineering would go soooo far. You see even .gov getting the hint with 18F and the US Digital Service building and supporting non contractor government engineers.