4 ms·

The author is 100% correct here, but it's not going to change anything, and I'll tell you why. Companies LOVE requiring all of these sexy over-engineered tools

by tharne 5y ago

The author is 100% correct here, but it's not going to change anything, and I'll tell you why. Companies LOVE requiring all of these sexy over-engineered tools in the requirements for the jobs they post. I've definitely used these overkill solutions in my own work, sometimes because they were the right tool for the job, but many times simply because I knew that one day in the future, I'd be applying for another job, and that job would likely require that I have experience in these technologies. It sucks, but it's the way the world works for now. This has a couple of downstream effects too. If I'm trying to hire, I need to include at least some of those sexy tech stacks in my posting if I want to get good applicants. Why? for the same reason I need to use those things myself even when they're not the best tool for the job. The folks applying to my role know that they're not going to work for me for the rest of their lives and want to been able to check the right boxes when it comes time apply for their next job. Then of course when they get hired in we have to use at least some of these technologies even when we don't totally need them, because after all, it said right on the job posting that we use those technologies. I saw the inverse of this too. There was a team managing a series of small-ish but incredibly important databases. They had these thing running on Microsoft sql server and were doing a beautiful job. There was exactly zero reason to migrate them to something else. But....when the folks in this department went to apply for other jobs inside the company or out, they were greeted with: "You're not using Snowflake??!!", "you're not doing Cloud?!!", "you don't even have an EMR cluster??!!". Not surprisingly, after a while this group had a hard time hiring because folks saw it as a career dead end. TL;DR people do what they're incentivized to do. Stop incentivizing dumb behaviors.

spaetzleesser 5y ago
“There was a team managing a series of small-ish but incredibly important databases. They had these thing running on Microsoft sql server and were doing a beautiful job. There was exactly zero reason to migrate them to something else. But....when the folks in this department went to apply for other jobs inside the company or out, they were greeted with: "You're not using Snowflake??!!", "you're not doing Cloud?!!", "you don't even have an EMR cluster??!!". Exactly. A lot of people who are doing a great job for years wouldn’t even get hired by their own company. A few years ago I realized this was true for myself. Since then I am making an effort to keep myself hireable even if new tech wouldn’t necessarily make sense for the company. But it makes sense for my own career survival.
weatherlite 5y ago
> If I'm trying to hire, I need to include at least some of those sexy tech stacks in my posting if I want to get good applicants. Idk , I think after 10-15 years in the business not all senior devs get so excited by buzzwords. Some do, sure, but others just want to work on a high quality code base with smart colleagues, interesting product and a good work life balance. I couldn't care less if you threw Kafka in there but hey that's just me. But sure, the younger you are the more inclined you'll be to prioritize shiny tech.
jenscow 5y ago
> If I'm trying to hire, I need to include at least some of those sexy tech stacks in my posting if I want to get good applicants I understand your reasoning, however it may put off some good hires because they don't meet one of your bogus requirements.
- tharne 5y ago
  > I understand your reasoning, however it may put off some good hires because they don't meet one of your bogus requirements. That's fair. I'll freely admit, this is not an issue I found a great solution for yet.
  - names_are_hard 5y ago
    The solution is to separate "we use" from "we're looking for". Eg, a job post can say: We use kafka, big-scale-databigness, BuzzwordDb, and CoolFramework. We're looking for smart engineers with an open mind and a commitment to building to high quality, robust systems. Minimum qualifications: * Several years developing user-facing web applications * Experience with OOP in a language like Java, C#, Smalltalk, or similar

by tharne 5y ago

spaetzleesser 5y ago

“There was a team managing a series of small-ish but incredibly important databases. They had these thing running on Microsoft sql server and were doing a beautiful job. There was exactly zero reason to migrate them to something else. But....when the folks in this department went to apply for other jobs inside the company or out, they were greeted with: "You're not using Snowflake??!!", "you're not doing Cloud?!!", "you don't even have an EMR cluster??!!". Exactly. A lot of people who are doing a great job for years wouldn’t even get hired by their own company. A few years ago I realized this was true for myself. Since then I am making an effort to keep myself hireable even if new tech wouldn’t necessarily make sense for the company. But it makes sense for my own career survival.

weatherlite 5y ago

> If I'm trying to hire, I need to include at least some of those sexy tech stacks in my posting if I want to get good applicants. Idk , I think after 10-15 years in the business not all senior devs get so excited by buzzwords. Some do, sure, but others just want to work on a high quality code base with smart colleagues, interesting product and a good work life balance. I couldn't care less if you threw Kafka in there but hey that's just me. But sure, the younger you are the more inclined you'll be to prioritize shiny tech.

jenscow 5y ago

> If I'm trying to hire, I need to include at least some of those sexy tech stacks in my posting if I want to get good applicants I understand your reasoning, however it may put off some good hires because they don't meet one of your bogus requirements.

tharne 5y ago
> I understand your reasoning, however it may put off some good hires because they don't meet one of your bogus requirements. That's fair. I'll freely admit, this is not an issue I found a great solution for yet.
- names_are_hard 5y ago
  The solution is to separate "we use" from "we're looking for". Eg, a job post can say: We use kafka, big-scale-databigness, BuzzwordDb, and CoolFramework. We're looking for smart engineers with an open mind and a commitment to building to high quality, robust systems. Minimum qualifications: * Several years developing user-facing web applications * Experience with OOP in a language like Java, C#, Smalltalk, or similar