4 ms·

There are enough young enthusiasts who will rewrite something to weird tech without asking, even if they were tasked just to add a simple feature. It's a real

There are enough young enthusiasts who will rewrite something to weird tech without asking, even if they were tasked just to add a simple feature. It's a real problem. So after few bad encounters businesses might prefer to hire boring people.

raverbashing 3y ago
Yes, boring business (or undermanaged ones) prefer to hire boring people
Barrin92 3y ago
It's a pretty big leap though to take someone's academic interests as an indicator about their ability to do work. If that guy sees that I took two semesters of medieval history, is he going to be afraid that I'll turn the workplace into a Renaissance fair? Having to hide your interests to look more bland might be the saddest thing I read today. I Just imagine that those recruiters have some sort of list of subversive activities. 1. Was an active member of the Red Army Faction OR 2. Read a book about Erlang or Lisp, is now too dangerous to be reintroduced into the general developer population
- londons_explore 3y ago
  CV's are just a bad way to judge developers. A link to a github account is far more valuable IMO. If you have nothing on github (or another code sharing service), then you probably don't have a passion for software.
hoten 3y ago
Oh I definitely understand the aversion, just not why it was directed towards me!
imiric 3y ago
> There are enough young enthusiasts who will rewrite something to weird tech without asking This is a communication problem, and not something you can infer from a CV. I can't see why having experience with any particular language would be a bad thing—quite the contrary. There are concepts to learn from each language, and the more languages under an engineer's belt (particularly "weird" languages), the more open they are to novel solutions. The tool analogy works well: you would want someone who's familiar with an axe and a chisel, and not only a hammer. Someone thinking this is a bad thing shouldn't be making hiring decisions. It speaks more of the company, so OP probably dodged a bullet.
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
The software industry is for sure not the only industry where people confuse the quality of their tools for the quality of the job, and go looking for nails that match their preferred hammer instead of focusing on doing a good job of the task at hand. However it might be one of the only professions where this tool-obsession is so valorized and where there's a whole subculture of it, and where it proliferates at such a high rate. There are people who've made half their career out of chasing the technology of the month or advising that a rewrite in language/framework/technique will solve all problems. It's of course natural because we talk about the tech industry, and so people become focused on the technology rather than its application to human problems, or see all problems as a technology choice issue rather than a issue of implementing business logic with technology choices... So it depends on the discipline of the engineer how deep down that rabbit hole people go, and the quality of management about how well they can keep their staff focused on the problem domain first, and tools second. All this to say: I've been that engineer, I've also suffered from those engineers, and because of that I'm now careful. I think Erlang is great. And my career now is Rust. But I hope I'm wise enough to recognize that how harmful rewrite in X and if only this was built in X can be to customers' projects and budgets. Not to say the original-comment was that person, or that the person sneering about the Erlang was right, but I do understand where the wariness comes from. All that said, I have more fear of the proliferation of novel JS frameworks than I do of stuff like Erlang or Lisp. And Java is another place where esp in the early days the proliferation of frameworks-as-solutions was a real problem.

raverbashing 3y ago

Yes, boring business (or undermanaged ones) prefer to hire boring people

Barrin92 3y ago

It's a pretty big leap though to take someone's academic interests as an indicator about their ability to do work. If that guy sees that I took two semesters of medieval history, is he going to be afraid that I'll turn the workplace into a Renaissance fair? Having to hide your interests to look more bland might be the saddest thing I read today. I Just imagine that those recruiters have some sort of list of subversive activities. 1. Was an active member of the Red Army Faction OR 2. Read a book about Erlang or Lisp, is now too dangerous to be reintroduced into the general developer population

londons_explore 3y ago
CV's are just a bad way to judge developers. A link to a github account is far more valuable IMO. If you have nothing on github (or another code sharing service), then you probably don't have a passion for software.

hoten 3y ago

Oh I definitely understand the aversion, just not why it was directed towards me!

imiric 3y ago

> There are enough young enthusiasts who will rewrite something to weird tech without asking This is a communication problem, and not something you can infer from a CV. I can't see why having experience with any particular language would be a bad thing—quite the contrary. There are concepts to learn from each language, and the more languages under an engineer's belt (particularly "weird" languages), the more open they are to novel solutions. The tool analogy works well: you would want someone who's familiar with an axe and a chisel, and not only a hammer. Someone thinking this is a bad thing shouldn't be making hiring decisions. It speaks more of the company, so OP probably dodged a bullet.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

The software industry is for sure not the only industry where people confuse the quality of their tools for the quality of the job, and go looking for nails that match their preferred hammer instead of focusing on doing a good job of the task at hand. However it might be one of the only professions where this tool-obsession is so valorized and where there's a whole subculture of it, and where it proliferates at such a high rate. There are people who've made half their career out of chasing the technology of the month or advising that a rewrite in language/framework/technique will solve all problems. It's of course natural because we talk about the tech industry, and so people become focused on the technology rather than its application to human problems, or see all problems as a technology choice issue rather than a issue of implementing business logic with technology choices... So it depends on the discipline of the engineer how deep down that rabbit hole people go, and the quality of management about how well they can keep their staff focused on the problem domain first, and tools second. All this to say: I've been that engineer, I've also suffered from those engineers, and because of that I'm now careful. I think Erlang is great. And my career now is Rust. But I hope I'm wise enough to recognize that how harmful rewrite in X and if only this was built in X can be to customers' projects and budgets. Not to say the original-comment was that person, or that the person sneering about the Erlang was right, but I do understand where the wariness comes from. All that said, I have more fear of the proliferation of novel JS frameworks than I do of stuff like Erlang or Lisp. And Java is another place where esp in the early days the proliferation of frameworks-as-solutions was a real problem.