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What are the boundary conditions here? I'm a young developer (23) who's made over half a million USD$ from web apps while in school - would many companies be i

by brockf 14y ago

What are the boundary conditions here? I'm a young developer (23) who's made over half a million USD$ from web apps while in school - would many companies be interested in hiring even with programming languages I have little to no experience with?

mquander 14y ago
The startup I work for would! Assuming, at least, that you have experience in a couple moderately dissimilar languages (e.g. not only Java) it's really not a big deal. It's important to have someone who is a real expert on a language you're using, but most people can just be good at it, and you can get good at most languages quickly with sustained effort. What is a big deal is being smart and motivated and knowing a lot about at least something useful. Everything else is gravy.
gcp 14y ago
I'd expect the boundary condition to be whether those web apps were all exactly the same technology, or if there's evidence you're quick to learn and pick up new stuff. If you're like "I did this first thing in PHP but for the second, bigger project I moved to Python/Django with some client-side JS", your odds should be great. Hiring highly skilled programmers that know exactly the technologies they need is what many companies aim for when hiring, and never accomplish. They're wrong. Even Google has problems finding (and hiring) those. That's why I said it was a mistake. So, I would expect that you can find these jobs. And the companies that are willing to hire you might also be the ones you want to work at. But some HR departments will turn you down, and some people (like the original poster) may turn you down because it's a risk. (I can't blame them - hiring the wrong person is a bad mistake, too - but they shouldn't complain it's hard to find good people.)
kylemaxwell 14y ago
The better question is, in your situation, why would you consider looking for a generic opening? If you can build that sort of business, then you probably don't need a "job".

by brockf 14y ago

mquander 14y ago

The startup I work for would! Assuming, at least, that you have experience in a couple moderately dissimilar languages (e.g. not only Java) it's really not a big deal. It's important to have someone who is a real expert on a language you're using, but most people can just be good at it, and you can get good at most languages quickly with sustained effort. What is a big deal is being smart and motivated and knowing a lot about at least something useful. Everything else is gravy.

gcp 14y ago

I'd expect the boundary condition to be whether those web apps were all exactly the same technology, or if there's evidence you're quick to learn and pick up new stuff. If you're like "I did this first thing in PHP but for the second, bigger project I moved to Python/Django with some client-side JS", your odds should be great. Hiring highly skilled programmers that know exactly the technologies they need is what many companies aim for when hiring, and never accomplish. They're wrong. Even Google has problems finding (and hiring) those. That's why I said it was a mistake. So, I would expect that you can find these jobs. And the companies that are willing to hire you might also be the ones you want to work at. But some HR departments will turn you down, and some people (like the original poster) may turn you down because it's a risk. (I can't blame them - hiring the wrong person is a bad mistake, too - but they shouldn't complain it's hard to find good people.)

kylemaxwell 14y ago

The better question is, in your situation, why would you consider looking for a generic opening? If you can build that sort of business, then you probably don't need a "job".