5 ms·

I'll throw in my personal example from 2012 when I was laid off. Senior dev, about 30 years experience at the time. A friend knew of an opening somewhere but th

by ralphc 2y ago

I'll throw in my personal example from 2012 when I was laid off. Senior dev, about 30 years experience at the time. A friend knew of an opening somewhere but they wanted GWT experience, I didn't have it so they wouldn't talk to me. 6 weeks later they were still looking. Like I couldn't learn GWT in six weeks? If they hired any decent dev after a good general screening and gave him the docs they could self-learn GWT in less time than that.

shagie 2y ago
The risk is that they hire someone who doesn't know GWT and six weeks later (and six months later) they still don't know it. The ability to do self directed learning of a new skill / technology is something that is difficult to find (a lot of developers that I know don't know how to learn a new version of Java or framework and are still writing code exactly as they did when they graduated college... and they could put down "Java developer - 5 years experience" and apply for senior positions.) There are a lot of devs who appear decent with current tech, but lack the ability to learn new tech without someone hand holding them for several months.
- giantg2 2y ago
  The people I have meet who were slower to learn things generally had factors that could be overcome. Burnout is a huge one. If I'm being told to learn this new tech every 3-6 months and not given enough time to become an expert in the thing I previously learned, then why should I put in the effort? Its not a building block in my career. This is how it is for me (plus a disability). It never benefits me, so where's the incentive?
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    > Burnout is a huge one Of course, but companies have deadlines to hit and features to release. It absolutely sucks on the applicant's end, but we can't spend a year helping a new hire work through burnout when most companies are in a fairly competitive market with extremely demanding customers AND much more competitive vendors.
    - giantg2 2y ago
      "Of course, but companies have deadlines to hit and features to release." I mean, they're allowed to be shortsighted if they want. Burn through people and spend time and money hiring replacements.
      - alephnerd 2y ago
        This is about new hires. Not existing employers. The answer is simple - don't burn out your existing employees.
        giantg2 2y ago
        Yeah, but even as a new employee, my past experiences have conditioned me to expect that I will get screwed over the same way even at a new company.
        alephnerd 2y ago
        And this is why the job market sucks. Enough hiring managers and applicants have been screwed over by the other that it's become adversarial. It is what it is. ------- My two cents though to you giantg2, the mentality you have is not feasible in the private sector as neither employers nor employees have any loyalty anymore. Either switch to a government programming job (plenty of those now and they are increasingly remote first - especially Federal) or a new industry. Or start learning the game (how to market yourself, constantly upskilling with "hot" tech stacks, networking, etc).
        giantg2 2y ago
        Eh, I've been at this job for somethingblike 13 years. Might as well stick at it. There isn't anything feasible for me to switch to anyways. I've tried the marketing shit and it didn't work for me.
      - shagie 2y ago
        Companies are well aware of Brooks's law and will instead chose to not hire someone and work with existing known productivity levels (and look to see what can be done to improve that) than to hire a risky person that puts existing deadlines even more at risk. That companies aren't hiring people (and complaining that there's no one to hire) is what we're seeing rather than burning through people and dealing with Net Negative Producing Programmers ( https://web.archive.org/web/20030517045551/http://www.pyxisinc.com/NNPP_Article.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20030517045551/http://www.pyxisi... ). --- Because people are leaving for greener pa$ture$ at a faster rate, and the higher compensation demanded, companies are mitigating that risk by requiring a person to come in with the expected training rather than spending months training a person who may not be able to preform at expected levels. The other side of that is that there are a lot of places out there that are moving slow and not updating things quickly. I worked at a retail company a number of years ago where you could make $70k / year as a programmer and be able to work at a more leisurely pace. I currently work in the public sector and things are on much longer timescales. However, if you want to work in the fast paced and highly paid sector of Big Tech startups, you may need be able to meet the needs that they have. And there its less risky to have one of the existing employees take on another task than to hire someone (and burn runway faster) that might not be able to contribute until after the runway is gone.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > The risk is that they hire someone who doesn't know GWT and six weeks later (and six months later) they still don't know it. 100% THIS. If I wanted to fire someone I just hired, it ends up taking 2-3 quarters (1 Q realize they suck, 1-2 Qs managing them out/building a case) AND looks very bad on the hiring manager because you wasted $1.75*BASE_SALARY of company money and have nothing to show for it. I understand some candidates can learn quickly, but as a hiring manager you learn very quickly to plan and assume for the worst case, because sadly, most people do kinda suck.
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    Or you know, you can just hire them as contractors and fire them tomorrow if they don't perform. Every company I worked with in the last 8 years does just that.
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      With contractors you deal with overhead of managing contracts, and American employment law increasing views tech contractors as de facto being FT employees deserving of the same benefits packages as FT employees. At that point your best option is to open an office in India/Israel/Eastern Europe because at least people don't complain as much, you get similar productivity (depending on what you pay), and you don't need to deal with a lot of these headaches. The same thing happened to the CPA/Accounting industry in the 1990s.
      - pdimitar 2y ago
        Well, I'm from Eastern Europe and your observations match mine. There is still a huge amount of skilled devs here but USA companies skip them almost automatically.
        alephnerd 2y ago
        > There is still a huge amount of skilled devs here but USA companies skip them almost automatically. English fluency and/or Employment Laws are a big issue as well. Most companies have already had an Israeli or Indian subsidiary since the 1990s-2000s. Most didn't start entering Eastern Europe until the 2010s, and much of that was in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus thanks to EPAM and the massive Soviet Diaspora in the US. Poland, Czechia, and Romania are known quantities, but newish (late 2000s/early 2010s), and the larger ecosystem (not just engineers but lawyers, bureaucrats, accountants, etc that you need to run a subsidiary) don't have working English fluency and in some countries are Indian bureaucracy level headaches (looking at you Bulgaria) with the added lack of an English speaking ecosystem headaches. In all honesty, if the Russia-Ukraine War didn't start in 2014, much of the Eastern EU's tech scene would have been much weaker as it's largely powered by the UKR/RUS/BEL diaspora who emigrated the moment all 3 countries entered an economic and social tailspin. At a previous employer 5-7 years ago, we had an office in Czechia, but most of the Engineers were Russians or Ukrainians.
- pdimitar 2y ago
  You're basing your entire argument on an arbitrary deadline (six weeks). I am giggling as I am monitoring several job forums and seeing several companies pop up periodically (once a quarter I'd say) looking for the same positions... 2.5 years later. So let's change the example. Is it really worth it to be as picky for 2.5 years? I'd wager they lost money because of that. Any senior dev can learn GWT or anything similar in much less than 6 weeks even (though proficiency is another matter). And ability to self-learn can be somewhat gauged by a take-home assignment.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    > Is it really worth it to be as picky for 2.5 years Yes as an employer. > I'd wager they lost money because of that No. If a role isn't filled in a quarter, that money is in most cases reverted back into the compensation pool used to either help hire a high performer, or give bonuses to the existing team. 99% of a time, an IC Engineering role will NOT make or break a company's entire financial future. If this is one of those 1% roles, those are hired through internal networks because of how critical they are.
    - pdimitar 2y ago
      Hm, I think we're talking different scenarios. I was under the impression that the new person is sorely needed and not having them on board would lead to lost revenue.
  - ralphc 2y ago
    And let's say that they found their "dream" candidate that knew GWT. Technologies change and improve over time, can you imagine a place that is still using GWT, or jQuery, or backbone? Whoever they hire is going to have to learn new technologies while working there, otherwise they need to fire all their devs and go back out and hire React devs or whatever is the flavor of the day. Even something as stable as Java has changed dramatically as it has absorbed functional and parallel concepts from Scala and Kotlin. Any dev should be hired on their ability to learn, not, or not just, on what specific tech they know now.
- hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
  The fact that self-directed learning is so rare even among programmers will never cease to baffle me. I got into computers precisely because it was so perfectly suited to self study. It appealed perfectly to the autodidact-venerating Frank Zappa fan in me.

by ralphc 2y ago

shagie 2y ago

The risk is that they hire someone who doesn't know GWT and six weeks later (and six months later) they still don't know it. The ability to do self directed learning of a new skill / technology is something that is difficult to find (a lot of developers that I know don't know how to learn a new version of Java or framework and are still writing code exactly as they did when they graduated college... and they could put down "Java developer - 5 years experience" and apply for senior positions.) There are a lot of devs who appear decent with current tech, but lack the ability to learn new tech without someone hand holding them for several months.

giantg2 2y ago
The people I have meet who were slower to learn things generally had factors that could be overcome. Burnout is a huge one. If I'm being told to learn this new tech every 3-6 months and not given enough time to become an expert in the thing I previously learned, then why should I put in the effort? Its not a building block in my career. This is how it is for me (plus a disability). It never benefits me, so where's the incentive?
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > Burnout is a huge one Of course, but companies have deadlines to hit and features to release. It absolutely sucks on the applicant's end, but we can't spend a year helping a new hire work through burnout when most companies are in a fairly competitive market with extremely demanding customers AND much more competitive vendors.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    "Of course, but companies have deadlines to hit and features to release." I mean, they're allowed to be shortsighted if they want. Burn through people and spend time and money hiring replacements.
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      This is about new hires. Not existing employers. The answer is simple - don't burn out your existing employees.
      - giantg2 2y ago
        Yeah, but even as a new employee, my past experiences have conditioned me to expect that I will get screwed over the same way even at a new company.
        alephnerd 2y ago
        And this is why the job market sucks. Enough hiring managers and applicants have been screwed over by the other that it's become adversarial. It is what it is. ------- My two cents though to you giantg2, the mentality you have is not feasible in the private sector as neither employers nor employees have any loyalty anymore. Either switch to a government programming job (plenty of those now and they are increasingly remote first - especially Federal) or a new industry. Or start learning the game (how to market yourself, constantly upskilling with "hot" tech stacks, networking, etc).
        giantg2 2y ago
        Eh, I've been at this job for somethingblike 13 years. Might as well stick at it. There isn't anything feasible for me to switch to anyways. I've tried the marketing shit and it didn't work for me.
    - shagie 2y ago
      Companies are well aware of Brooks's law and will instead chose to not hire someone and work with existing known productivity levels (and look to see what can be done to improve that) than to hire a risky person that puts existing deadlines even more at risk. That companies aren't hiring people (and complaining that there's no one to hire) is what we're seeing rather than burning through people and dealing with Net Negative Producing Programmers ( https://web.archive.org/web/20030517045551/http://www.pyxisinc.com/NNPP_Article.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20030517045551/http://www.pyxisi... ). --- Because people are leaving for greener pa$ture$ at a faster rate, and the higher compensation demanded, companies are mitigating that risk by requiring a person to come in with the expected training rather than spending months training a person who may not be able to preform at expected levels. The other side of that is that there are a lot of places out there that are moving slow and not updating things quickly. I worked at a retail company a number of years ago where you could make $70k / year as a programmer and be able to work at a more leisurely pace. I currently work in the public sector and things are on much longer timescales. However, if you want to work in the fast paced and highly paid sector of Big Tech startups, you may need be able to meet the needs that they have. And there its less risky to have one of the existing employees take on another task than to hire someone (and burn runway faster) that might not be able to contribute until after the runway is gone.
alephnerd 2y ago
> The risk is that they hire someone who doesn't know GWT and six weeks later (and six months later) they still don't know it. 100% THIS. If I wanted to fire someone I just hired, it ends up taking 2-3 quarters (1 Q realize they suck, 1-2 Qs managing them out/building a case) AND looks very bad on the hiring manager because you wasted $1.75*BASE_SALARY of company money and have nothing to show for it. I understand some candidates can learn quickly, but as a hiring manager you learn very quickly to plan and assume for the worst case, because sadly, most people do kinda suck.
- pdimitar 2y ago
  Or you know, you can just hire them as contractors and fire them tomorrow if they don't perform. Every company I worked with in the last 8 years does just that.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    With contractors you deal with overhead of managing contracts, and American employment law increasing views tech contractors as de facto being FT employees deserving of the same benefits packages as FT employees. At that point your best option is to open an office in India/Israel/Eastern Europe because at least people don't complain as much, you get similar productivity (depending on what you pay), and you don't need to deal with a lot of these headaches. The same thing happened to the CPA/Accounting industry in the 1990s.
    - pdimitar 2y ago
      Well, I'm from Eastern Europe and your observations match mine. There is still a huge amount of skilled devs here but USA companies skip them almost automatically.
      - alephnerd 2y ago
        > There is still a huge amount of skilled devs here but USA companies skip them almost automatically. English fluency and/or Employment Laws are a big issue as well. Most companies have already had an Israeli or Indian subsidiary since the 1990s-2000s. Most didn't start entering Eastern Europe until the 2010s, and much of that was in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus thanks to EPAM and the massive Soviet Diaspora in the US. Poland, Czechia, and Romania are known quantities, but newish (late 2000s/early 2010s), and the larger ecosystem (not just engineers but lawyers, bureaucrats, accountants, etc that you need to run a subsidiary) don't have working English fluency and in some countries are Indian bureaucracy level headaches (looking at you Bulgaria) with the added lack of an English speaking ecosystem headaches. In all honesty, if the Russia-Ukraine War didn't start in 2014, much of the Eastern EU's tech scene would have been much weaker as it's largely powered by the UKR/RUS/BEL diaspora who emigrated the moment all 3 countries entered an economic and social tailspin. At a previous employer 5-7 years ago, we had an office in Czechia, but most of the Engineers were Russians or Ukrainians.
pdimitar 2y ago
You're basing your entire argument on an arbitrary deadline (six weeks). I am giggling as I am monitoring several job forums and seeing several companies pop up periodically (once a quarter I'd say) looking for the same positions... 2.5 years later. So let's change the example. Is it really worth it to be as picky for 2.5 years? I'd wager they lost money because of that. Any senior dev can learn GWT or anything similar in much less than 6 weeks even (though proficiency is another matter). And ability to self-learn can be somewhat gauged by a take-home assignment.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > Is it really worth it to be as picky for 2.5 years Yes as an employer. > I'd wager they lost money because of that No. If a role isn't filled in a quarter, that money is in most cases reverted back into the compensation pool used to either help hire a high performer, or give bonuses to the existing team. 99% of a time, an IC Engineering role will NOT make or break a company's entire financial future. If this is one of those 1% roles, those are hired through internal networks because of how critical they are.
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    Hm, I think we're talking different scenarios. I was under the impression that the new person is sorely needed and not having them on board would lead to lost revenue.
- ralphc 2y ago
  And let's say that they found their "dream" candidate that knew GWT. Technologies change and improve over time, can you imagine a place that is still using GWT, or jQuery, or backbone? Whoever they hire is going to have to learn new technologies while working there, otherwise they need to fire all their devs and go back out and hire React devs or whatever is the flavor of the day. Even something as stable as Java has changed dramatically as it has absorbed functional and parallel concepts from Scala and Kotlin. Any dev should be hired on their ability to learn, not, or not just, on what specific tech they know now.
hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
The fact that self-directed learning is so rare even among programmers will never cease to baffle me. I got into computers precisely because it was so perfectly suited to self study. It appealed perfectly to the autodidact-venerating Frank Zappa fan in me.