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This article makes me feel so seen. I started out a self-trained junior developer and now I'm hiring selectively for that same basic capability. I thought it wa
by spacemanmatt 4y ago
This article makes me feel so seen. I started out a self-trained junior developer and now I'm hiring selectively for that same basic capability. I thought it was just required for the career, but now I'm surprised at how hard it is to find.
- pyb 4y agoWhat do you mean? Can you no longer find candidates who learned to code by building things at home?
- spacemanmatt 4y agoWell, I'm sure they're out there, but many have optimized for salary and I'm not hiring into a VC/startup type environment. They're harder for me to find, given that constraint.
- onion2k 4y agoI started out a self-trained junior developer and now I'm hiring selectively for that same basic capability. Hiring people using the criteria of 'people who are like me' leads to immensely myopic teams who fail to implement even basic and obvious features in my experience. Recognizing that there are many routes to becoming a great dev is very useful because it creates a team with a breadth of knowledge and experience that you just don't get if you're laser-focused on specific criteria.
- tomp 4y agoIt’s not “hiring people like me”, it’s just a way to separate the wheat (people who are intrinsically interested in programming) from the chaff (people who picked programming instead of law/finance/medicine because it pays better right now) Literally all other personality features are irrelevant, hence definitely not “people like me”.
- onion2k 4y agoSome people who studied compsci at university chose that because they'd been coding since they were 6 years old and they absolutely love it and want to master it. They're not all there because they decided it pays better than law.
- brabel 4y agoAmazing what someone wanting to see "something" will see "something"... if anything , going through the pain of a CompSci degree and not giving up (more than half my class gave up in the first 2 years) is about the best proof you can get the person is interested in programming. Self-taught people may also be truly talented and interested, but it may just well be that they studied for a few months and now claim to "know programming" exactly because they noticed the profession pays very well (I know someone exactly in that situation right now, and she's already looking for some other path after just 2 years in it as clearly she has zero aptitude).
- ghaff 4y agoCS overlaps with but != programming. Students will often gravitate to majors that have some overlap between "This is pretty interesting" and "I can probably make a reasonable living doing this." Outside of the arts, programming is rather unusual in that some have an expectation that this is something that you've loved since you were 6. (And, again, CS only overlaps to some degree anyway.)
- lapcat 4y ago> it’s just a way to separate the wheat (people who are intrinsically interested in programming) from the chaff (people who picked programming instead of law/finance/medicine because it pays better right now) Why would you assume that self-trained developers are intrinsically interested in programming?
- c16 4y agoIn my experience, background doesn't tell you if someone's passionate. Spending a few minutes talking about their (as well as your own) side projects and what they've been spending their evenings working on / reading about and seeing them light up is a big indicator for me. Not everyone will do side projects - and that's fine - but passionate engineers will have something to get excited about without needing to think about it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- spacemanmatt 4y agoIs that a bit reductionist? I'm not hiring because they're like me. I'm hiring for /just one/ of my foundational attributes due to cost constraints.