4 ms·

Language is a primary differentiator in hire-ability. In case you don't remember, we had a discussion about the job market last year: https://news.ycombinator

by xiaoma 13y ago

Language is a primary differentiator in hire-ability. In case you don't remember, we had a discussion about the job market last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4214543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4214543 You were claiming the hiring market was on fire and that being fizzbuzz capable was about enough to get meetings with hiring directors and that your clients were begging you to find them an engineer. During that time I was spending a great deal of time applying to jobs, going to tech meetups and interviewing and had very little success despite a track record of successfully taking on challenges in the business world and demonstrable junior-level programming skills. I asked you to your back up your claims and put me in touch with any of these clients dying for an engineer, as you might remember. Now—about a year later—I've achieved the goals I had at that time. I'm working in a purely technical role building a large site that many, many people use. My compensation is at least in the top decile of both programmers in the US and residents of the city where I live. And one thing that was key to me getting a flood of offers from both large companies and start-ups a few months ago was developing domain-expertise in JavaScript and becoming proficient in several frameworks. Putting up projects on github and contributing to others played a role, too. There is a high rate of unemployment in the US right now. As a result, many, many people are trying to break into the software world. For new graduates, there's a bit of an open door via internships but it's not at all easy in the general case. I've seen many talented people struggle for months to break in and then suddenly get a flood of offers. There's clearly a good degree of herd behavior involved. Without the specific framework skills that I had, companies would have had a very long list of applicants to consider before getting to me. And both understanding the frameworks and doing well in the technical interviews required some fairly deep understanding of the language. Yes, the company you work for and the team you're working on have a great deal to do with your compensation. But both of those things are heavily influenced by how skilled you are in what technologies, especially for typical engineering roles. Knowing the right stack can open doors for networking around the front-door, too! >They're getting compensated for non-Ruby things which happen to be expressed in Ruby programs." I call that winning rather than cheating but to each their own. I wouldn't call that cheating but I would call it a poor anecdote to generalize from. Some people with a legal background translate contracts and earn a great deal of money for it, but that fact doesn't speak much to the market for translators as a whole or show there's no appreciable difference in career trajectories for translators of various languages.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago
I am very very impressed by your posts over a year ago, and by your recent achievements - as someone who hustled his way from redundant to twice my original salary in a similar time I sympathise with the effort. I would say that perhaps both of you are missing one important component - specialisation. giving off the right signals for a particular niche enables you to credibly sell yourself in that niche (be it email-life cycle products or Angularjs coding) I read your post from a year ago - you mentioned three interviews, Ruby, ObjC and JS. I would guess that today you would not dream of going to the first two - simply because your strengths lie in JS. You have specialised - and as such become more valuable. But you could have specialised in many things other than language and still gotten good jobs. A specialist commands more money, due to scarcity and percieved increase in the probability of success. However I still think patio11 is also right - of two equally qualified specialists, one that is better at marketing and promotion and negotiation is going to do drastically better. But no matter how good Ramit Sethi is on negotiation, if he goes for a C++ job he is not going to beat out a specialist even if the specialist just says yes to the first offer. (Little assumption there about Ramit's C++ skillz)
alinajaf 13y ago
If your argument here is that knowing Javascript earns you more money than knowing no programming language in depth at all, I don't think anyone disagrees with you. You could however have picked Ruby, PHP, Python, Haskell, Java, C(++), Objective-C (holy crap, Objective-C), Scala, Clojure etc to deep-dive on and would have been just as employable. To convince me otherwise, you'd have to make the case that all of my professional connections are conspiring to deceive me or that I'm experiencing hallucinations on a near-daily basis and need professional help.
- xiaoma 13y ago
  Yes and no. The particular job offers I got all relied on JavaScript, but of course there are a lot of great positions that require other languages. I do think that JavaScript was the optimal choice. There is such a small number of people who have experience with the MEAN stack compared to LAMP / Java / RoR that it makes it a quite a bit easier for an outsider to break in through unconventional means. Objective C would have been very strong as well. Many companies of all sizes, including my current one use it. It would probably have taken a successful app on the app store or a stronger resume in order to get the kind of interest I did from top tier companies. Ruby would have lead to openings, but probably wouldn't have done much for me my interviews with Google. Java is used all over the place but from what I've seen, few junior devs without a degree break into the better work. Haskell would have been absolutely horrible--I'd have been competing with freakishly smart people for a small number of low-paying jobs! The beauty of JavaScript is: 1) It's in the front end of every web stack, so nearly everyone needs it. 2) The MEAN stack (which includes Node and Angular) is a fast rising platform with few people competent in it. Even knowing "old" frameworks like Backbone can lead to a lot of opportunities. 3) In general, there is a bit less conservative of a culture among JavaScript programmers. Java/C/Python shops are more likely to care about pedigree and formal credentials.

by xiaoma 13y ago

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

I am very very impressed by your posts over a year ago, and by your recent achievements - as someone who hustled his way from redundant to twice my original salary in a similar time I sympathise with the effort. I would say that perhaps both of you are missing one important component - specialisation. giving off the right signals for a particular niche enables you to credibly sell yourself in that niche (be it email-life cycle products or Angularjs coding) I read your post from a year ago - you mentioned three interviews, Ruby, ObjC and JS. I would guess that today you would not dream of going to the first two - simply because your strengths lie in JS. You have specialised - and as such become more valuable. But you could have specialised in many things other than language and still gotten good jobs. A specialist commands more money, due to scarcity and percieved increase in the probability of success. However I still think patio11 is also right - of two equally qualified specialists, one that is better at marketing and promotion and negotiation is going to do drastically better. But no matter how good Ramit Sethi is on negotiation, if he goes for a C++ job he is not going to beat out a specialist even if the specialist just says yes to the first offer. (Little assumption there about Ramit's C++ skillz)

alinajaf 13y ago

If your argument here is that knowing Javascript earns you more money than knowing no programming language in depth at all, I don't think anyone disagrees with you. You could however have picked Ruby, PHP, Python, Haskell, Java, C(++), Objective-C (holy crap, Objective-C), Scala, Clojure etc to deep-dive on and would have been just as employable. To convince me otherwise, you'd have to make the case that all of my professional connections are conspiring to deceive me or that I'm experiencing hallucinations on a near-daily basis and need professional help.

xiaoma 13y ago
Yes and no. The particular job offers I got all relied on JavaScript, but of course there are a lot of great positions that require other languages. I do think that JavaScript was the optimal choice. There is such a small number of people who have experience with the MEAN stack compared to LAMP / Java / RoR that it makes it a quite a bit easier for an outsider to break in through unconventional means. Objective C would have been very strong as well. Many companies of all sizes, including my current one use it. It would probably have taken a successful app on the app store or a stronger resume in order to get the kind of interest I did from top tier companies. Ruby would have lead to openings, but probably wouldn't have done much for me my interviews with Google. Java is used all over the place but from what I've seen, few junior devs without a degree break into the better work. Haskell would have been absolutely horrible--I'd have been competing with freakishly smart people for a small number of low-paying jobs! The beauty of JavaScript is: 1) It's in the front end of every web stack, so nearly everyone needs it. 2) The MEAN stack (which includes Node and Angular) is a fast rising platform with few people competent in it. Even knowing "old" frameworks like Backbone can lead to a lot of opportunities. 3) In general, there is a bit less conservative of a culture among JavaScript programmers. Java/C/Python shops are more likely to care about pedigree and formal credentials.