5 ms·

A single exception doesn't mean your right. You might not require a CS degree (I see a lot of shops starting to give up on that, but its still common), and hop

by KevinMS 15y ago

A single exception doesn't mean your right. You might not require a CS degree (I see a lot of shops starting to give up on that, but its still common), and hopefully you don't discriminate (3 guys, all about the same young age right?), but I'm convinced there's a lot of development talent out there not being utilized because employers have an exact image of what a developer looks like and is only trying to find that, which would explain why there is both a "hot jobs market" and lots of unemployment at the same time.

gaius 15y ago
I don't know why you were downvoted. If some 55-year-old geezer, 30 years experience in COBOL on a mainframe, rocks up to a shop like that, would they give him a fair shake or laugh at him for not knowing Ruby?
- msbarnett 15y ago
  I can't say I've ever encountered, or even heard of anyone encountering, such a candidate. The parent post claims that there's some vast, undocumented sea of talented unemployed developers, but I am aware of no statistical documentation of such, and no anecdotes resembling your hypothetical situation. That the parent has a large chip on his shoulder about his age is obvious from his posting history, but in my experience if a dev of any age is having trouble finding work the reason is always that they're not nearly as talented as they think they are. 90% of the people in this industry are just plain bad at what they do. But let's say it happened: would we give this hypothetical person a fair shake? I'd like to think so. His age is irrelevant. His experience is valuable. But why is COBOL his only listed skill? If that was the only tool at his mainframe job, that's all well and good, but the #1 thing I want to see out of candidates is a lot of evidence that they are keeping up with the industry and keeping their tool chest well stocked with cutting edge tools they're picking up on their own time. I want the people I work with to be autodidacts who can quickly and smoothly move from ruby to clojure to objective-c as a project evolves. 30 years at one tool doesn't scream self-motivated learner to me. But maybe he could talk me around at the interview.
  - gaius 15y ago
    the #1 thing I want to see out of candidates is a lot of evidence that they are keeping up with the industry I've met plenty of very capable people who only programmed 40 hours a week at their jobs. Our hypothetical 55-year-old maybe has a family, outside interests, and so on. This is something that is unique to the IT industry, expecting people to work in the field out of hours. I can't think of any other industry that does this. In the case of our COBOL guy, he's probably been refining his domain knowledge, and has probably learnt a lot about solving business problems with code which is what we all actually do.
    - msbarnett 15y ago
      I'm married, I have diverse non-software interests and outside hobbies. I still manage to pick up an awful lot of knowledge outside of my day job, and it's that knowledge that has tended to pay off in terms opportunities down the road. If you want to be paid a lot of money to put in 40 hours and go home and never even think about a computer or feel compelled to pick up a new skill on your down time, hey man, I don't blame you. That sounds like nice work if you can find it. But I don't think you're going to find much of it in a knowledge economy. So if our hypothetical COBOL programmer had that job and is looking for something like that again, I wish him the best of luck, but I've got nothing for him. We aren't experiencing a shortage in domain knowledge.
      - gaius 15y ago
        Sounds like you're proving my point for me. If this guy started working 30 years ago doing COBOL at IBM, he's smart enough, but this is just all he knows, this is how his colleagues and peers were, they worked and went home. That's the culture he was steeped in. Internet kids forget that there is a huge world of computing outside of websites. All this guy needs is to be shown that there's another way. But as far as he knows, he's doing everything right, and can't understand why he can't get a job, while everyone's complaining they can't hire. You think a H1B will be any better than him?
        15y ago

by KevinMS 15y ago

gaius 15y ago

I don't know why you were downvoted. If some 55-year-old geezer, 30 years experience in COBOL on a mainframe, rocks up to a shop like that, would they give him a fair shake or laugh at him for not knowing Ruby?

msbarnett 15y ago
I can't say I've ever encountered, or even heard of anyone encountering, such a candidate. The parent post claims that there's some vast, undocumented sea of talented unemployed developers, but I am aware of no statistical documentation of such, and no anecdotes resembling your hypothetical situation. That the parent has a large chip on his shoulder about his age is obvious from his posting history, but in my experience if a dev of any age is having trouble finding work the reason is always that they're not nearly as talented as they think they are. 90% of the people in this industry are just plain bad at what they do. But let's say it happened: would we give this hypothetical person a fair shake? I'd like to think so. His age is irrelevant. His experience is valuable. But why is COBOL his only listed skill? If that was the only tool at his mainframe job, that's all well and good, but the #1 thing I want to see out of candidates is a lot of evidence that they are keeping up with the industry and keeping their tool chest well stocked with cutting edge tools they're picking up on their own time. I want the people I work with to be autodidacts who can quickly and smoothly move from ruby to clojure to objective-c as a project evolves. 30 years at one tool doesn't scream self-motivated learner to me. But maybe he could talk me around at the interview.
- gaius 15y ago
  the #1 thing I want to see out of candidates is a lot of evidence that they are keeping up with the industry I've met plenty of very capable people who only programmed 40 hours a week at their jobs. Our hypothetical 55-year-old maybe has a family, outside interests, and so on. This is something that is unique to the IT industry, expecting people to work in the field out of hours. I can't think of any other industry that does this. In the case of our COBOL guy, he's probably been refining his domain knowledge, and has probably learnt a lot about solving business problems with code which is what we all actually do.
  - msbarnett 15y ago
    I'm married, I have diverse non-software interests and outside hobbies. I still manage to pick up an awful lot of knowledge outside of my day job, and it's that knowledge that has tended to pay off in terms opportunities down the road. If you want to be paid a lot of money to put in 40 hours and go home and never even think about a computer or feel compelled to pick up a new skill on your down time, hey man, I don't blame you. That sounds like nice work if you can find it. But I don't think you're going to find much of it in a knowledge economy. So if our hypothetical COBOL programmer had that job and is looking for something like that again, I wish him the best of luck, but I've got nothing for him. We aren't experiencing a shortage in domain knowledge.
    - gaius 15y ago
      Sounds like you're proving my point for me. If this guy started working 30 years ago doing COBOL at IBM, he's smart enough, but this is just all he knows, this is how his colleagues and peers were, they worked and went home. That's the culture he was steeped in. Internet kids forget that there is a huge world of computing outside of websites. All this guy needs is to be shown that there's another way. But as far as he knows, he's doing everything right, and can't understand why he can't get a job, while everyone's complaining they can't hire. You think a H1B will be any better than him?
      - 15y ago