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I cannot answer either the more broad or more specific questions in these threads. But my 2 cents as to: "Why do we hire reactjs programmers with e-commerce ex

I cannot answer either the more broad or more specific questions in these threads. But my 2 cents as to: "Why do we hire reactjs programmers with e-commerce experience instead of react programmers, e-commerce programmers, or programmers?" In my neck of the woods, we generally hire specifically PeopleSoft Programmers, ideally with Payroll experience. Here's why: 1. First and foremost, developers need to do more than spit out code. They need to thoroughly understand business problems, work with business analysts and product owners to hash out requirements, be able to meaningfully discuss these requirements, create design that they can independently sanity-check meets these requirements, and then work on translating it into code. 2. They need PeopleSoft experience and knowledge - it's a specific ecosystem and language with specific requirements and constraints and capabilities. Programmer needs to fully understand these early on when they discuss requirements and solution with business. 3. Payroll experience helps, again for them to be able to discuss things meaningfully with the business. I know that this ("Dev needs to be able to gather requirements") is self-evidently true across development world, but I want to underline that our developers can meaningfully discuss intricacies of Canadian and Provincial tax code, payroll processes and regulations, time and labour, benefits, pension, and other adjustments with their functional counterparts; while also having meaningful discussions with our DBA & Infra teams on indexes, stats, etc. All in the specific world of PeopleSoft where code resides in database, with specific component processor which offers about 30 different ways to trigger code on a page, while ensuring data integrity etc. With that in mind, historically, it's just as easy and perhaps easier/faster/cheaper, to train a new grad (and we do, a lot!), rather than get somebody experienced in a completely different ecosystem and try to retrain them. Now, PeopleSoft is a very specific (quirky, legacy, idiosyncratic, crazy, etc) ecosystem, but I think using it as an extreme example may show some of the core reasons why even in less extreme environments, requirements are fairly specific. Yes, a good programmer with wide experience has a lot of skills. But by numbers, I think most devs work in business areas with specific set of common industry/sector problems and solutions, which reward specialization.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
>In my neck of the woods, we generally hire specifically PeopleSoft Programmers, ideally with Payroll experience. I can see why that works for the employer but as an employee I would be terrified of that becoming a career dead end.
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  I can understand that perspective. There's always a personal and professional decision and tradeoff, ideally done in a conscious and informed manner, of specialization vs generalization. My world is drastically different than the mean HN poster I think; but I'm fairly convinced that by number of people it employs, it may be the more common one. There's just a lot of boring but eternal business applications out there. FWIW, I've been a "PeopleSoft person" for 25 years now. So from that perspective I'm specialized, but I would not call it a dead end. In that time I've also worked with Windows Linux AIX HP-UP; with DB2 on mainframe and unix, Oracle on Unix and Windows, even MS-SQL once. On premise, hosted, and now even cloudy. Done development, database administration, system administration, upgrades, performance testing and tuning, data disaster recovery, infrastructure architecture, etc. So I've led a wonderfully diverse, interesting, challenging and satisfying career - inside a very specific niche ecosystem :) . Around me are respected professionals with DEEP and profound understanding of that ecosystem, who do their job exceptionally well, consistently deliver client value, and most of us find our own kind of variety. None of us feel "exploited by the employer", for what it's worth (I have fair control of my career and direction), and are generally satisfied with our chosen lot in life.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

>In my neck of the woods, we generally hire specifically PeopleSoft Programmers, ideally with Payroll experience. I can see why that works for the employer but as an employee I would be terrified of that becoming a career dead end.

NikolaNovak 5y ago
I can understand that perspective. There's always a personal and professional decision and tradeoff, ideally done in a conscious and informed manner, of specialization vs generalization. My world is drastically different than the mean HN poster I think; but I'm fairly convinced that by number of people it employs, it may be the more common one. There's just a lot of boring but eternal business applications out there. FWIW, I've been a "PeopleSoft person" for 25 years now. So from that perspective I'm specialized, but I would not call it a dead end. In that time I've also worked with Windows Linux AIX HP-UP; with DB2 on mainframe and unix, Oracle on Unix and Windows, even MS-SQL once. On premise, hosted, and now even cloudy. Done development, database administration, system administration, upgrades, performance testing and tuning, data disaster recovery, infrastructure architecture, etc. So I've led a wonderfully diverse, interesting, challenging and satisfying career - inside a very specific niche ecosystem :) . Around me are respected professionals with DEEP and profound understanding of that ecosystem, who do their job exceptionally well, consistently deliver client value, and most of us find our own kind of variety. None of us feel "exploited by the employer", for what it's worth (I have fair control of my career and direction), and are generally satisfied with our chosen lot in life.