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They do qualify. Boot camps generate a lot of noise but there is no doubt that out of that noise there are a lot of good candidates that significantly increase

They do qualify. Boot camps generate a lot of noise but there is no doubt that out of that noise there are a lot of good candidates that significantly increase supply by a non trivial margin. Not seeing this is denying reality. People who can actually engineer in python is becoming more and more common place.

omginternets 4y ago
>there are a lot of good candidates that significantly increase supply by a non trivial margin There's still a deficit of talent, even in Python. I don't see anyone denying this reality. But to your point, there is a flood of bad candidates.
- HervalFreire 4y ago
  >But to your point, there is a flood of bad candidates. How would you know did you hire these candidates to find out? Or did you dismiss them as bad because they didn't pass some brain teaser algorithm interview? Those candidates go on to get hired at companies with a lower bar for lower salaries and those lower salaries do influence the market.
  - omginternets 4y ago
    >How would you know did you hire these candidates to find out? Yes. We'll still interview them, but they're usually pretty bad. I'm struggling to remember one who wasn't. The one's we've hired have been disasters.
    - HervalFreire 4y ago
      Hold on. Of course you want to avoid terrible candidates. But brain teaser questions and asking gotcha questions about obscure python syntax or something like that isn't a good correlative indicator. You get a bunch of false negatives this way... people who are good but not good at interviews. You have to give them some take home exercise. That's the best way to determine if they're not a false negative. Unfortunately many good devs just don't have the time to do a takehome. Did you hire a candidate who say... didn't know what MRO was, but created a stellar result for a take home project? What I'm saying is that the market is flooded with these false negatives.
      - omginternets 4y ago
        >But brain teaser questions and asking gotcha questions about obscure python syntax or something like that isn't a good correlative indicator. Agreed, but that's not how we interview. >Did you hire a candidate who say... didn't know what MRO was, but created a stellar result for a take home project? Do you have me confused with the other guy? >What I'm saying is that the market is flooded with these false negatives. Understood. The market is also flooded with incompetent devs, capable of talking at length about Python syntax (and sometimes even the computational model, e.g. MRO, etc.), but who aren't actually able to put that knowledge to use in engineering systems. These are systematically catastrophic hires, by which I mean, the engineering team is significantly better off hiring no-one, than hiring them. May I ask, why does this seem to matter so much to you? If you are a bootcamp graduate yourself, that doesn't preclude you from being a good engineer. I am more than happy to believe you are the one-in-a-thousand counter-example.
        HervalFreire 4y ago
        >May I ask, why does this seem to matter so much to you? If you are a bootcamp graduate yourself, that doesn't preclude you from being a good engineer. I am more than happy to believe you are the one-in-a-thousand counter-example. I'm not a bootcamp graduate engineer. I'm actually quite good at what I do, interviewing (from both sides) and engineering. This topic matters to me because I like to argue online and I have strong opinions. It's common for people to manipulate their perception of reality to justify their own situation, I assure you I am not doing that here, however I think you are doing this. >>What I'm saying is that the market is flooded with these false negatives. >Understood. A false negative is someone who is GOOD, but appears bad. He is a negative but that assignment is false. I am saying the market is flooded with capable engineers that are good but appear bad due to interview processes and biases. Hence the term false negative. >Do you have me confused with the other guy? Nope you guys touched on similar points. You never mentioned syntax, but you're likely testing on algorithms so it's the same result. You get a ton of false negatives. You pay a premium for the guy who does better at the interview when you can get someone who's just as capable at a much lower cost. The point is someone will hire those false negatives at a cheaper price and that effects the whole market. Companies hire the best they can get. >Agreed, but that's not how we interview. That's why a certain segment of the market looks like there's a dearth of people. It's because the interview clouds your perception. You interview the wrong way, you agree. The contradiction here is that although most people like you agree, you still reject people based off the SAME results as the WRONG interview AND you think the rejection is accurate. That's how the psychology works. Everyone I talk to agrees interviewing is wrong overall but when they use it to judge on individual candidates they think it's accurate. The contradiction exists even in your own reply. You agree the interview process you use is screwed yet you're really confident about your judgement of the market even though your measurement methodology is SELF admitted to be wrong. It renders your entire argument into question.
sirsinsalot 4y ago
I hire 10+ Python developers per year. You're wrong. If you yourself are a bad engineer or terrible at hiring, you might mistake the chaff for the wheat, but then you're doomed anyway. I think you're not talking from experience. The same thing happened with JS when that was peaky, and it'll happen in other languages too. What is old is new again.
- HervalFreire 4y ago
  > I hire 10+ Python developers per year. You're wrong. I've been hiring roughly the same amount for 10 years. I'm actually really extremely good at modern python. My skills with python syntax are so good that I can do in 1 line exclusively with generators what a junior programmer probably needs 10 lines and twice as much mutating state to pull off. My code is also likely more modular and neater then a junior but you have to realize none of this matters that much. My skill level with python is beyond the curve of what is necessary and so is any other developer that goes beyond 2 years with python. In the end every programmer I ever hired exclusively for python will hit this tier within 1 or 2 years, very few exceptions. Roughly half of the junior programmers I hire are actually already within this tier upon getting hired. Literally before hitting there first job. After two years the only thing left to pick up are some more unique patterns and tricks but that's it. I am 100% talking from experience.
  - sirsinsalot 4y ago
    Yes but the same timeline can be done for C, C#, Java or anything else. It isn't unique to Python. "Of what is necessary" is subjective. Regardless of the language or framework I'm hiring within they must have the same level of engineering skill. I've hired people for Python projects who were outstanding Go or Java programmers who never touched Python commercially. My point is the language isn't relevant to your arguments. That's why you're wrong. There's also plenty of Python developers two years in (that I've interviewed and rejected) who couldn't write me a decorator or explain MRO. There's plenty of 2-year Go programmers who can't deal with goroutines well.
    - 4y ago

omginternets 4y ago

>there are a lot of good candidates that significantly increase supply by a non trivial margin There's still a deficit of talent, even in Python. I don't see anyone denying this reality. But to your point, there is a flood of bad candidates.

HervalFreire 4y ago
>But to your point, there is a flood of bad candidates. How would you know did you hire these candidates to find out? Or did you dismiss them as bad because they didn't pass some brain teaser algorithm interview? Those candidates go on to get hired at companies with a lower bar for lower salaries and those lower salaries do influence the market.
- omginternets 4y ago
  >How would you know did you hire these candidates to find out? Yes. We'll still interview them, but they're usually pretty bad. I'm struggling to remember one who wasn't. The one's we've hired have been disasters.
  - HervalFreire 4y ago
    Hold on. Of course you want to avoid terrible candidates. But brain teaser questions and asking gotcha questions about obscure python syntax or something like that isn't a good correlative indicator. You get a bunch of false negatives this way... people who are good but not good at interviews. You have to give them some take home exercise. That's the best way to determine if they're not a false negative. Unfortunately many good devs just don't have the time to do a takehome. Did you hire a candidate who say... didn't know what MRO was, but created a stellar result for a take home project? What I'm saying is that the market is flooded with these false negatives.
    - omginternets 4y ago
      >But brain teaser questions and asking gotcha questions about obscure python syntax or something like that isn't a good correlative indicator. Agreed, but that's not how we interview. >Did you hire a candidate who say... didn't know what MRO was, but created a stellar result for a take home project? Do you have me confused with the other guy? >What I'm saying is that the market is flooded with these false negatives. Understood. The market is also flooded with incompetent devs, capable of talking at length about Python syntax (and sometimes even the computational model, e.g. MRO, etc.), but who aren't actually able to put that knowledge to use in engineering systems. These are systematically catastrophic hires, by which I mean, the engineering team is significantly better off hiring no-one, than hiring them. May I ask, why does this seem to matter so much to you? If you are a bootcamp graduate yourself, that doesn't preclude you from being a good engineer. I am more than happy to believe you are the one-in-a-thousand counter-example.
      - HervalFreire 4y ago
        >May I ask, why does this seem to matter so much to you? If you are a bootcamp graduate yourself, that doesn't preclude you from being a good engineer. I am more than happy to believe you are the one-in-a-thousand counter-example. I'm not a bootcamp graduate engineer. I'm actually quite good at what I do, interviewing (from both sides) and engineering. This topic matters to me because I like to argue online and I have strong opinions. It's common for people to manipulate their perception of reality to justify their own situation, I assure you I am not doing that here, however I think you are doing this. >>What I'm saying is that the market is flooded with these false negatives. >Understood. A false negative is someone who is GOOD, but appears bad. He is a negative but that assignment is false. I am saying the market is flooded with capable engineers that are good but appear bad due to interview processes and biases. Hence the term false negative. >Do you have me confused with the other guy? Nope you guys touched on similar points. You never mentioned syntax, but you're likely testing on algorithms so it's the same result. You get a ton of false negatives. You pay a premium for the guy who does better at the interview when you can get someone who's just as capable at a much lower cost. The point is someone will hire those false negatives at a cheaper price and that effects the whole market. Companies hire the best they can get. >Agreed, but that's not how we interview. That's why a certain segment of the market looks like there's a dearth of people. It's because the interview clouds your perception. You interview the wrong way, you agree. The contradiction here is that although most people like you agree, you still reject people based off the SAME results as the WRONG interview AND you think the rejection is accurate. That's how the psychology works. Everyone I talk to agrees interviewing is wrong overall but when they use it to judge on individual candidates they think it's accurate. The contradiction exists even in your own reply. You agree the interview process you use is screwed yet you're really confident about your judgement of the market even though your measurement methodology is SELF admitted to be wrong. It renders your entire argument into question.

sirsinsalot 4y ago

I hire 10+ Python developers per year. You're wrong. If you yourself are a bad engineer or terrible at hiring, you might mistake the chaff for the wheat, but then you're doomed anyway. I think you're not talking from experience. The same thing happened with JS when that was peaky, and it'll happen in other languages too. What is old is new again.

HervalFreire 4y ago
> I hire 10+ Python developers per year. You're wrong. I've been hiring roughly the same amount for 10 years. I'm actually really extremely good at modern python. My skills with python syntax are so good that I can do in 1 line exclusively with generators what a junior programmer probably needs 10 lines and twice as much mutating state to pull off. My code is also likely more modular and neater then a junior but you have to realize none of this matters that much. My skill level with python is beyond the curve of what is necessary and so is any other developer that goes beyond 2 years with python. In the end every programmer I ever hired exclusively for python will hit this tier within 1 or 2 years, very few exceptions. Roughly half of the junior programmers I hire are actually already within this tier upon getting hired. Literally before hitting there first job. After two years the only thing left to pick up are some more unique patterns and tricks but that's it. I am 100% talking from experience.
- sirsinsalot 4y ago
  Yes but the same timeline can be done for C, C#, Java or anything else. It isn't unique to Python. "Of what is necessary" is subjective. Regardless of the language or framework I'm hiring within they must have the same level of engineering skill. I've hired people for Python projects who were outstanding Go or Java programmers who never touched Python commercially. My point is the language isn't relevant to your arguments. That's why you're wrong. There's also plenty of Python developers two years in (that I've interviewed and rejected) who couldn't write me a decorator or explain MRO. There's plenty of 2-year Go programmers who can't deal with goroutines well.
  - 4y ago