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This is true for all hiring of experienced people. If a company is after an experienced person then they want someone who can come up to speed with their codeb

This is true for all hiring of experienced people. If a company is after an experienced person then they want someone who can come up to speed with their codebase quickly. This means they do not want to spend time training someone in the languages and preferably the frameworks used. Yes for a permanent position they will also try to get people who can do other things and in a year or two's time the person will probably not be doing the same job. For a contractor you mist know the languages immediately, they need the person to cover a gap in their knowledge or resourses immediately. You won't be expected to know their codebase but would be expected to answer a question on the language or common library in the first few days to help a coworker debug an issue. In many cases you will not be there long enough to learn their codebase. If you are a contractor then you learn on your own time - the company will not pay you to learn new things, well at least until you have shown you are above average in doing things then they might allow this as they know they will get a payback. Basically you can't tell during a hiring process how good someone is (you can find out if they are bad) and so the company will look at how well you have done after some time and make a view as to wether it is worth spending resources to get you to do something different. Unfortunately many companies have this attitude to permeant employees and don't give enough time for training etc.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago
One thing that is not generally considered is that while it's quick to switch language, it's not true for ecosystems. Yes, you can be productive in python syntax quickly, but I've seen enought people failing at building a sane python project I know that other things take more time: libs, tooling, workflow, typical error, debugging, deployment strats, etc. So you do want at least one specialist in the team to drive the generalists.
- pasc1878 3y ago
  That explains my view that it takes months to learn a language whilst others say it takes days. You can't be proficient in a language until you can write programs in to and that includes being able to build and use common libraries, debug in it and use common tools well.
  - materielle 3y ago
    I get what you’re saying. But, it depends. Someone who has been learning for 20 or 30 years probably can pick up a new ecosystem easier. “I can learn it in a day because I’ve been learning for 30 years”, etc.
    - pasc1878 3y ago
      But it is still not a day. I have done this for 30-40 years. Yes I can guess better than a junior but still takes time.
dilyevsky 3y ago
> If a company is after an experienced person then they want someone who can come up to speed with their codebase quickly. This means they do not want to spend time training someone in the languages and preferably the frameworks used. I think there's more to it than this - companies want new hires to approximately align on culture things. If I'm a Go shop I don't want someone to endlessly whine about how Rust or Elixir or whatever is better and vice versa

BiteCode_dev 3y ago

One thing that is not generally considered is that while it's quick to switch language, it's not true for ecosystems. Yes, you can be productive in python syntax quickly, but I've seen enought people failing at building a sane python project I know that other things take more time: libs, tooling, workflow, typical error, debugging, deployment strats, etc. So you do want at least one specialist in the team to drive the generalists.

pasc1878 3y ago
That explains my view that it takes months to learn a language whilst others say it takes days. You can't be proficient in a language until you can write programs in to and that includes being able to build and use common libraries, debug in it and use common tools well.
- materielle 3y ago
  I get what you’re saying. But, it depends. Someone who has been learning for 20 or 30 years probably can pick up a new ecosystem easier. “I can learn it in a day because I’ve been learning for 30 years”, etc.
  - pasc1878 3y ago
    But it is still not a day. I have done this for 30-40 years. Yes I can guess better than a junior but still takes time.

dilyevsky 3y ago

> If a company is after an experienced person then they want someone who can come up to speed with their codebase quickly. This means they do not want to spend time training someone in the languages and preferably the frameworks used. I think there's more to it than this - companies want new hires to approximately align on culture things. If I'm a Go shop I don't want someone to endlessly whine about how Rust or Elixir or whatever is better and vice versa