5 ms·

People 1-2 years out of college - with a CS major- should be in a junior position, and they had 4 solid years plus internships... Even if their title is not "j

People 1-2 years out of college - with a CS major- should be in a junior position, and they had 4 solid years plus internships... Even if their title is not "junior", that's just to compensate for bad salary with ego inflation. In a corporate environment, I have never met someone with <3 years exp whom I would not consider junior.

FLUX-YOU 13y ago
Well, everyone seems to have their own idea of what constitutes a competent developer, and also how long it takes to acquire that competence for the average tech-literate person (as I assume the OP is since he's here). I wrote off the people doing it in 6 months, but a year or two seemed much more reasonable. Previously I've read that a year or two is doable, but now I have to write those people off. So now 3 years is the minimum for any sort of job? What if I run into someone who says 5 years is the minimum for a position?
- waps 13y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7578365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7578365 talks about this. Keep in mind that because of the constant job-hopping society seems to be forcing on most developers (either stand still in your career, or job-hop), you should treat this as a single isolated game of prisoner's dilemma with participants that will never play again. In other words, there's only one winning strategy : always betray the company. In this case that would mean say whatever needs to be said to get you hired/an offer. Also this works reasonably well in normal situations as well, if you're negotiating about anything, make it clear that your default first play in the prisoner's dilemma is to betray, but it's up for negotiation. If you don't do this, any sales/management drone worth his salt will immediately exploit this. If you don't know yourself, and have attempted and failed to look this up, why do you assume the other person knows, really ? Either the other person is competent or not (ask a really difficult but slightly wrong question to find out, in a roundabout way, like "I can't get my head wrapped around how 'static' affects global versus local variables. It makes global variables no longer stack allocated, but what does it do to local variables ?". It's a nice obvious error that shouldn't make a capable person think worse of you, because it gives the perfect explanation, just assigns it to the opposite concept it should be assigned to). If they don't catch the error, assume they don't know anything, because they're a manager or HR drone checking boxes. The only thing to do is get past them. For the love of God, don't tell them they missed the error. Frankly, you'll be doing both yourself and your future team a favor by inaccurately checking their boxes. Also, getting past them is a good exercise in corporate skills, if you get hired, it won't be the last time you need to get past them. If you feel like honesty is a value, I would advise you to save your perfect honesty for obviously technical people, not for management. Don't outright lie, but absolutely try to avoid saying "no" because of technicalities. "Do you have experience with windows vista ?" -> "I have experience with windows". Keep in mind that the interviewer may be trying to do the same, stating an obviously wrong fact and asking you to check that box. "Do you know java 9 ?" is way too obvious, but something along the lines might be asked. Best answer to this is to inquire, not directly state it doesn't exist. E.g. "I'm following the java 8 updates, and there are some proposals that have been decided to be beyond java 8, but to my knowledge there is no java 9 software existing outside of Oracle. Can you clarify ?"

FLUX-YOU 13y ago

Well, everyone seems to have their own idea of what constitutes a competent developer, and also how long it takes to acquire that competence for the average tech-literate person (as I assume the OP is since he's here). I wrote off the people doing it in 6 months, but a year or two seemed much more reasonable. Previously I've read that a year or two is doable, but now I have to write those people off. So now 3 years is the minimum for any sort of job? What if I run into someone who says 5 years is the minimum for a position?

waps 13y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7578365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7578365 talks about this. Keep in mind that because of the constant job-hopping society seems to be forcing on most developers (either stand still in your career, or job-hop), you should treat this as a single isolated game of prisoner's dilemma with participants that will never play again. In other words, there's only one winning strategy : always betray the company. In this case that would mean say whatever needs to be said to get you hired/an offer. Also this works reasonably well in normal situations as well, if you're negotiating about anything, make it clear that your default first play in the prisoner's dilemma is to betray, but it's up for negotiation. If you don't do this, any sales/management drone worth his salt will immediately exploit this. If you don't know yourself, and have attempted and failed to look this up, why do you assume the other person knows, really ? Either the other person is competent or not (ask a really difficult but slightly wrong question to find out, in a roundabout way, like "I can't get my head wrapped around how 'static' affects global versus local variables. It makes global variables no longer stack allocated, but what does it do to local variables ?". It's a nice obvious error that shouldn't make a capable person think worse of you, because it gives the perfect explanation, just assigns it to the opposite concept it should be assigned to). If they don't catch the error, assume they don't know anything, because they're a manager or HR drone checking boxes. The only thing to do is get past them. For the love of God, don't tell them they missed the error. Frankly, you'll be doing both yourself and your future team a favor by inaccurately checking their boxes. Also, getting past them is a good exercise in corporate skills, if you get hired, it won't be the last time you need to get past them. If you feel like honesty is a value, I would advise you to save your perfect honesty for obviously technical people, not for management. Don't outright lie, but absolutely try to avoid saying "no" because of technicalities. "Do you have experience with windows vista ?" -> "I have experience with windows". Keep in mind that the interviewer may be trying to do the same, stating an obviously wrong fact and asking you to check that box. "Do you know java 9 ?" is way too obvious, but something along the lines might be asked. Best answer to this is to inquire, not directly state it doesn't exist. E.g. "I'm following the java 8 updates, and there are some proposals that have been decided to be beyond java 8, but to my knowledge there is no java 9 software existing outside of Oracle. Can you clarify ?"