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Great list. Regarding points 4 & 5, I think it really depends on what stage of company you are, and what kind of work you're doing. When you're making your 4th

Great list. Regarding points 4 & 5, I think it really depends on what stage of company you are, and what kind of work you're doing. When you're making your 4th, 5th, 6th hires into an engineering team, you normally want a pretty diverse range of skills. We've had front-end guys work on SQL code and contribute significantly to our devops tools. People who are interested enough in programming to be constantly pushing themselves to learn new technologies are extremely valuable.

bane 13y ago
You're correct of course, but I think that "wide range of skills" can be hiring criteria as well. But even Amazon and Google, pretty large and mature companies, will bring a candidate in for position X, and ask them thing about position Y, delta, neon-blue and Z.
- eshvk 13y ago
  That is because Amazon and Google are looking for replaceable parts. So my experience has been in data science, suppose I apply to Google, get an interview (extremely likely to be with one of the data teams), I can in theory after the interview move to a front-end team or a team that works on Go. This is not a bad thing. This is not a good thing. It is however why large companies work the way they do. The thing to realize is that this is not a process that a small company needs to roll by. (Of course, there are silly things that Google does like ask potential Product Managers algorithm questions; I am not clear how that helps.)
potatolicious 13y ago
The "everything person" is a valid position - though your likelihood of landing this sort of unicorn might be questionable. I think GP is arguing against the extremely open ended sort of hiring - the "wow you're crazy good, but we don't have a real need for your niche right now so we'll bounce you around until you get frustrated and leave". At some larger companies also, interviews tend to be "holistic" even when the roles are not. You might be hiring a frontend person but the interview panel will be consisted mostly of backend people. I've unfortunately been through interview cycles (from the employer-side) where this was the case. Worse perhaps are when recruiters deliberately mislead the candidate into coming in. I've seen in the past situations where frontend or backend-centric people come in to interview for the exact opposite position, and are pissed off (rightly so) because they've made their specialization clear to their recruiter contact but was told the position was still relevant to them.
- bane 13y ago
  You pretty much got most of what I was thrusting at. I'd only differ with you on larger companies wanting more holistic folks. In my anecdotal experience, large companies are usually hiring to fit somebody into a particular business process block and want ultra-specialized people for that block. In my area it's not even uncommon to see job reqs for experienced people using very specific development tools as well. It can get weird when that role is a new industry one, like less than 5 years, and they want a senior person for that role with 5-10 years of experience in it...which is clearly impossible.

bane 13y ago

You're correct of course, but I think that "wide range of skills" can be hiring criteria as well. But even Amazon and Google, pretty large and mature companies, will bring a candidate in for position X, and ask them thing about position Y, delta, neon-blue and Z.

eshvk 13y ago
That is because Amazon and Google are looking for replaceable parts. So my experience has been in data science, suppose I apply to Google, get an interview (extremely likely to be with one of the data teams), I can in theory after the interview move to a front-end team or a team that works on Go. This is not a bad thing. This is not a good thing. It is however why large companies work the way they do. The thing to realize is that this is not a process that a small company needs to roll by. (Of course, there are silly things that Google does like ask potential Product Managers algorithm questions; I am not clear how that helps.)

potatolicious 13y ago

The "everything person" is a valid position - though your likelihood of landing this sort of unicorn might be questionable. I think GP is arguing against the extremely open ended sort of hiring - the "wow you're crazy good, but we don't have a real need for your niche right now so we'll bounce you around until you get frustrated and leave". At some larger companies also, interviews tend to be "holistic" even when the roles are not. You might be hiring a frontend person but the interview panel will be consisted mostly of backend people. I've unfortunately been through interview cycles (from the employer-side) where this was the case. Worse perhaps are when recruiters deliberately mislead the candidate into coming in. I've seen in the past situations where frontend or backend-centric people come in to interview for the exact opposite position, and are pissed off (rightly so) because they've made their specialization clear to their recruiter contact but was told the position was still relevant to them.

bane 13y ago
You pretty much got most of what I was thrusting at. I'd only differ with you on larger companies wanting more holistic folks. In my anecdotal experience, large companies are usually hiring to fit somebody into a particular business process block and want ultra-specialized people for that block. In my area it's not even uncommon to see job reqs for experienced people using very specific development tools as well. It can get weird when that role is a new industry one, like less than 5 years, and they want a senior person for that role with 5-10 years of experience in it...which is clearly impossible.