16 ms·

The Problem with Job Titles

208 points by carsie 12y ago

dkyc 12y ago
I think the results have to do with your questioning. For example, I don't want to spend my time testing, but I have to do it if I want to write high quality software. So some people give testing a 0, because it's not something you actively want to do. And others give testing a 5, because they know that whatever job they'll take, they probably have to test their code. I don't really see much difference to the classic self-made bullet-point-list of skills.
- warcode 12y ago
  The "What would I like to do" vs "What would be agreeable to do in a job" scenario would probably explain the specialists vs generalists. Unless everybody is forced to answer the same question the shapes are useless.
- dagw 12y ago
  I would interpret a testing of 0 as willing to write the minimal number of tests needed to get their code working and 5 as willing to spend all their time developing the company wide testing framework and testing policy and making sure it's continually updated and being followed, as well as being the last person in the chain to sign off on the fact that any software leaving the shop as passed all the tests. Basically being a 5 means you want to own that aspect, if necessary at the exclusion of everything else.
  - dkyc 12y ago
    Your interpretation seems like a reasonable scale - however, it is a very vague definition of "0". I'm sure some people want a 0 to mean an actual 0, like a blind developer asked to do UI development.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Yeah, sounds like a joke. But I worked at a company where the tech writer was legally blind, the marketing guy was shy and the spokesperson (CEO) stuttered. Weird place.
    - jeffbr13 12y ago
      Interfaces aren't only visual - blind users still have to interact with something.
    - dagw 12y ago
      OK, let's take 0 to mean does not write tests on principle and 1 to mean writes minimal tests grudgingly if required by policy.
- onion2k 12y ago
  For example, I don't want to spend my time testing, but I have to do it if I want to write high quality software. Why? Someone has to do the testing, obviously, but why does it have to be you just because you want to write good quality software? Why can't you work with a brilliant QA[1] team who can generate an awesome set of processes and tests based on your specifications? You don't have to do the bit you find boring if there's someone else around who loves doing it and will do a better job of it because they don't find it boring. Giving up parts of the development process is part of being in a team. A very important part. Using the idea in the article along with good knowledge of what's needed in the particular problem domain, it should be possible to use 'workshapes' to put together a very suitable team of people for a project. [1] Important note for the unfamiliar: Most QA teams are actually QC teams. QA (quality assurance) has to happen from the very first stages of a project, putting in processes that assure the right level of quality will be met. QC (quality checking) happens at the end where someone goes through a project and makes sure it's been done well. If your "QA" only happens at the end then it's QC, and it's probably not helping you build the best product you're capable of building.
  - GordyMD 12y ago
    Like that you have picked on the team aspect. We have a very exciting new feature in the works which focuses on presenting the team that you would be joining and how you will compliment each other in terms of how you collectively want to spend time.
  - JustSomeNobody 12y ago
    Before the code even gets to QA it needs to be functional and as bug free as possible. As a developer, I _hate_ it when my fellow developers send crap to QA because they could not be bothered to make it not crap. It is unprofessional. The goal should be to produce SW that does not get rejected at QA.
    - gambiting 12y ago
      Yeah, I agree on principle. But sometimes you look bad in front of QA because you ask them to do their job. To give you an example - I was implementing an achievement for a console game. The achievement took roughly 3-4 hours to test fully. I was specifically told by my manager to do my best to make sure that it works,but not to spend time testing it myself,because it would be a waste of my time - it's QAs job to test things like this. So obviously, when the achievement didn't trigger after 4 hours of testing, I looked like a dick to QA,who just spent 4 hours testing this thing. Unfortunately some people take this approach for everything and never test their code - that's bad.
solve 12y ago
So, let's plug these shapes into a regressor / ranker / classifier, along with some possible target variables (career path, survival rates, yearly office peer ratings, salary after 5 years,) for as many balanced samples as possible, and see what predictive power these might have! Or, I guess the graph itself could also be considered a resume differentiator / sales technique. Edit: Oh, I see. They're heavy on the highly personalized matching angle.
- qooleot 12y ago
  Yes, that would be interesting data. Most companies would output reports from their HRIS systems in wildly different formats, and you'd have to adjust for industry, geo/currency, year, gender/ethnicity/language, and all sorts of things. But just getting that data and the sensitivity that goes with it would be near-impossible unless you were a salary survey company. And then, they get job-level data and not per employee. They charge serious money for the services of analyzing this data and do not make their data available.
Ronsenshi 12y ago
Fascinating approach to the matching. "No CVs" sounds awesome, but I think companies would ask applicants for their CVs in the end anyway. Love d3 animations on the landing page.
- hunglee2 12y ago
  We think so too, and that's ok. Workshape.io is an attempt to bring the 'sentiment match' to the beginning of the hiring process. We think if both parties know that there's compatibility in terms of interest, then they should be good to go further conversation. Its a de-risking tool, I think [Source: I'm Hung Lee, founder]
- Lispsilp 12y ago
  True that, but it wouldn't be part of the sourcing process, at least. The problem is CVs just became too fundamental in the selection process, and they're only looked at for something like 5 seconds...
sparaker 12y ago
A pretty good way to find people that you want to hire. Perhaps if we can add some experience graphs along with these, we can get a good platform up that actually makes head hunting really easy for small companies who do not have the time or the money to do this properly.
- hunglee2 12y ago
  thanks sparaker - its Hung, CEO of Workshape - thanks for your comment. Time / money is what we want companies to save, not only at point-of-hire but also in terms of hiring the right person for the opportunity. Its a blind match on both sides, so we think both parties are able to trust the match more than they would in traditional job discovery platforms. As for experience / bio - we're probably pull in social data via an aggregator at some point.
  - sparaker 12y ago
    I am surely looking forward to this.
lordbusiness 12y ago
Interesting and thought provoking article. I wonder if this could take off as a concept and change the way we define ourselves? I like the concept. One thing that is lacking however is perhaps an understanding of what job titles are today. I haven't formally been handed a job title in many years, so long in fact that I honestly can't recall which previous employer was the last to grant me a specific pigeon hole at the personnel level. (Yes, I deliberately use the antiquated term for HR to illustrate how long ago this may have been). In this day and age job titles for me and my peers appear to be ultra concise summaries of what capacity people are most recently working in, as opposed to formally designated titles. Perhaps we're stretching the word title. Regardless, the fact that these charts better represent the fluid nature of how interests and activities change, this would be a nicer solution. Two thumbs up. P.S. I say this with no snarkiness, I wish people would proof read articles they publish.
- lordbusiness 12y ago
  P.P.S. I'd love to see the ability to add myself as a remote worker. I had to choose my closest major city, which doesn't accurately reflect how I work.
  - GordyMD 12y ago
    We're in the process of considering a number of new input fields for both organisations and users. This is one that we intend to add in the next few days.
orenbarzilai 12y ago
I would love to see potential candidates add this work shape for their CVs
k__ 12y ago
I like their ideas, but the only thing that changed for me with the shapes is, that I have a profile that doesn't match any job offering. So no win for me, lol
- hunglee2 12y ago
  Hey k_3, its Hung, CEO of Workshape.io here. Thanks for signing up and for your comment. We know that the 'no match' screen feels like failure, even when its anything but! Its simply a case that no employer has seen the wisdom of designing a job opportunity that meets your interest! And its highly likely to be a question of scale i.e not enough companies on the platform. In any case, we need to get better at that screen and are aiming to produce analytics to describe job distribution (geography, tech stack etc) so that users who see it will come away with better value. Ping me if you have any more input!
  - k__ 12y ago
    Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't take this personally. I just wanted to say that this is a bigger problem than you think. The companies have some skills in mind when they want to hire and packing them into a job title with description or a radar chart doesn't change anything. I think everyone is fully aware that these titles doesn't mean much. I have read so much different descriptions of one title, that I don't read the titles anymore.
    - GordyMD 12y ago
      We aren't completely transfixed by job titles, this was just the blog post headline and one component of current recruitment practices we dislike. Unfortunately recruiters may not be so aware of job titles not meaning much - it is still common practice to perform key word search on other platforms to identify candidates. This is a behaviour we are looking to disrupt.
Coogle 12y ago
Seems like some pretty cool concept. Love the visualisation - quite a different way to think about job descriptions.
- hunglee2 12y ago
  thanks Coogle! Our entire thing is that job descriptions actually don't do a great job of the describing. Text is not the best way to describe human work - its too ambiguous, too hard to make / read and entirely reliant on subtext / context. We think the radar plot is a better way. Glad you like the product - stay with us, a lot more to come from us
VLM 12y ago
1) Are people good at evaluating what they want? Its a liberal arts truism that they aren't. Enormous piles of literature about non-technical topics "love" "lifestyle" etc. I'd be shocked if humans are truly excellent at self evaluation uniquely for technical topics. 2) (Only kinda kidding) Where's emergency fire fighting? Escalated customer support?
mnsc 12y ago
It sucks that we are so three-dimensional in our thinking. This "Workshape" is really a 10-dimensional world where we "wander" in our careers by spending time/energy along some axis. Sometimes we actively pursue a direction, "developing my back-end-skills/archictecture" and sometimes we are more/less forced in a direction "this needs testing/documentation". The result is a traveled path which is "my experience", and a direction which is my "desired trajectory forward". Matching would then be a spatial questions: Have you been [here]? Where are you heading? Stupid physical world.
bencollier49 12y ago
This immediately identified a very good match for me. It's brilliantly built, I'm very impressed. They could do with a little bit of narrative to explain that you're now free to converse with the potential employer, at the point where the conversation thread opens up. 5 thumbs up.
- GordyMD 12y ago
  Thanks - really glad it found a match for you. I'll note down your comment - we do need to improve the UX in this area.
janee 12y ago
I actually need to update my CV, glad I came across this. Think I'll add one for work experience and another for current perception of 'How do you want to spend your time'.
arno_v 12y ago
So instead of the ambiguous text 'Software Engineer' we now have 10 ambiguous texts ranging from 'Analysis' to 'Data Science'. I don't really see how that solves a problem, since these underlying concepts are also quite hard to define consistently.
- GordyMD 12y ago
  Thanks for your comments. Whilst we cannot remove ambiguity completely from our solution - we can minimise it. The ambiguity of text really comes into play in CVs and job descriptions. We attempt to minimise the ambiguity by asking software engineers/anyone involved in software development to describe their work in a uniform way and not relying up the traditional artefacts. So whilst the terms have ambiguity to them, companies and people are answering the same question and we are using those answers to match people so that they can begin a conversation.
  - arno_v 12y ago
    Ok, if you are indeed asking the same questions that helps. I would add some information per item with some explanation or definition, so it is as clear as possible what is meant by the different terms.
    - GordyMD 12y ago
      It is available right now if you hover over the labels on the chart. It is definitely not immediately obvious though so we shall have to work on that - thanks!
  - scrapcode 12y ago
    I've got a problem. I've been coding for 12 years, yet have zero professional experience. How does your service rank me?
    - GordyMD 12y ago
      We don't do any ranking per se we just present how you want to spend your time. So it does not factor it in. It is up to you to decide what level of seniority the type of position you would consider going for. It might be a bit misleading that we use Github for sign up right now, this is mainly just to ensure only developers are signing up - as the service only exists for them currently. We do not use Github for any number crunching.
Peroni 12y ago
It really was only a matter of time before Hung Lee created something like this. He's one of a very small group of people that truly 'gets' hiring in todays environment and I'm really not surprised to see workshape gaining traction. We're still relatively new users but we have already arranged a handful of interviews via the platform.
- hunglee2 12y ago
  Thanks Peroni - appreciate your comment. We don't forget your early and continuous support was critical to Workshape.io. Love to see how we can help further - time for us to meet up?
jqueryin 12y ago
I'm not a fan of the WorkShape matching algorithm. The form isn't in regards to proficiencies but rather what your ideal job function would be spanning all proficiencies. Realistically, one's experience isn't likely to match up with their ideal working environment. Trying to pair an employer's requirements to an applicants ideal job would require an order of magnitude more users on both sides before you see realistic matches.
jamesdelaneyie 12y ago
Oh now this is cool. I tried to do something similar for designers a while back[0] but this is a much nicer system! Would love if you added a designer version! [0] http://codepen.io/jamesdelaneyie/pen/uIdie http://codepen.io/jamesdelaneyie/pen/uIdie
- GordyMD 12y ago
  Like it! We are definitely looking to roll the service out to other verticals. Designers will most likely be next considering the complimentary nature of what you guys do! Thanks for the feedback.
  - jamesdelaneyie 12y ago
    Glad to hear it! Best of luck lads :)
ukigumo 12y ago
So, first things first: Love the software and the concept of visualizing your activity spread in a radar plot. Well done! Now for the rant: I am an IT architect. There are many architects working in IT but few of them do anything that is related to what I do. I see job postings for Enterprise Sharepoint Architect and I cry a little, others for CTO/Architect/senior developer and I question if they are maybe hiring for 3 positions and are just really bad at writing jobspecs. I often have VPs working under my direction and govern the work of Project Managers and yet people contact me and ask if I'm interested in a devops role. Recruitment is broken and I hope companies like workshape.io are here to fix it.
- hunglee2 12y ago
  ukigumo, your experience is the reason why Gordon and I started Workshape.io - all the information out there is historical - what you have done in the past - and nothing at all on what you want to do in the immediate future. Glad you like the service - keep an eye on us, there's a lot more to come
  - ukigumo 12y ago
    Good to hear you guys have a vision. May I offer some advice though? Big corp also needs help finding talent (maybe more so than startups) so you may want to _also_ target that market segment going forward. Good luck!
    - hunglee2 12y ago
      Yeah we definitely want to provide the service to any organisation that is struggling with hiring / workforce issues. Our focus is startup for now - its the market we know - but we'll get to enterprise and beyond, sooner rather than later.
- namdnay 12y ago
  If you think "architect" is too vague, think of the poor "vice-president" :) As you say yourself, "I often have VPs working under my direction"
mordae 12y ago
Sigh; the categories make no sense. Seriously, someone is looking for RabbitMQ-something? I mean, do they really look for someone who deeply understands RabbitMQ or do they look for someone who can administer it or do they look for someone who can use it's language bindings correctly after skimming through docs?
andrey-g 12y ago
That's why we call ourselves back-end/front-end/ui/embedded (software) engineers.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- jghn 12y ago
  One problem I have w/ the back-end/front-end distinction is that at least to me that implies one is working on a web or mobile application. For instance, the product I work on daily has no UI (ok, it has a 2 page UI used by an ops group) - is that "back end" when there's no "front end"?
  - ulisesrmzroche 12y ago
    Your front-end is your 2 page report. It's not about size but separation of concerns, nothing to do specifically with web apps.
    - jghn 12y ago
      Right, although to me "back end" implies "feeding the front end" which isn't the case here, rather that 2 page report is more of a side channel and the consumer is another data processing engine. And apologies - this is a bit OT here and I'm not trying to be difficult nor argumentative, I've just often wondered if the majority of people view backend/frontend as specialized terms like I do or if it's really just a generic term for "works on visualization/UI" and "works on the other stuff"
    - sklogic 12y ago
      And what is the front-end of a microcontroller? GPIO pins?
Max_Horstmann 12y ago
Finally, a Rorschach test for developers!
mdc2161 12y ago
Great underlying data, but sad to see it visualized as radar charts. - Each category majorly affects the reading of the category next to it, which isn't helpful in non-sequential categorizations - The difference between two adjacent categories creates a unique angle and shape that is purely extraneous information - The relative sizes are hard to read as the underlying quantities aren't proportional to the displayed areas Although not the prettiest possibility, a grouped column chart (maybe groups for front-end, back-end, maintenance, culture, etc.) is a simple example that avoids many of these issues and has very good readability at a glance.
- exelius 12y ago
  Agreed; spider graphs really aren't helpful past about 5 variables.
- bendyBus 12y ago
  Good point, but I could imagine certain shapes becoming very recognisable after a while. Ensuring the ordering is such that a 5-1-5-1-5...pattern is unlikely, since these spiky shapes will all look the same. And yes the angles don't carry any extra information, but they are a helpful guide to the eye. I can see where you're coming from, but thinking about these plots a bit more carefully I think you are too dismissive.
- GordyMD 12y ago
  This is a fair point and something we are actively pursuing. Right now the radar plot represents a trade off between an effective interactive form of visual input that is also compelling and provides an easy mechanism for visual comparison (with the shapes overlapped). Appreciate the feedback.
  - d23 12y ago
    Yeah, if you can come up with a way to give the viewer a "sense" of the person at a glance it would go a long way. Maybe add colors? Or maybe consider that some metrics are pretty related and could be represented separately. Frontend / backend could be represented as a continuum by itself. UI/UX are sort of tied with front-end, so coming up with a way to link those together might be nice. Perhaps you could use the data you have to see what tends to be linked together and come up with 2-3 representations that communicate what you're going for quickly.
suttree 12y ago
Yes, job titles an CVs/resumes are out of date. People talk about the future of work but for a lot of us it's already here. This is great, although I have a different approach, namely https://www.somewhere.com https://www.somewhere.com and specifically https://www.somewhere.com/what-is-somewhere https://www.somewhere.com/what-is-somewhere
- _s 12y ago
  Just checked them out - but on a first glance I have trouble getting any meaningful data from the first few user profiles I clicked. Generally what I look for on a CV or whatever a potential applicant sends over: - Where have they worked? For how long? And what did they do? - What did they study? That's it - I have about 5-15 seconds to find and read that information. If there's something there that I like, then I dive into the rest of what they've written. Am I still interested? Now I'll start digging through their portfolio, web presence etc. What I am not interested in (until much later in the hiring process) is the random blurbs / thoughts that make them who they are which I think somewhere.com puts on the forefront. It is something I'd glance at to get a feel for who they are as a person, but it really doesn't solve the "CV" delima (if there is one).
  - suttree 12y ago
    Yes, absolutely. Somewhere has a lot more of the between-the-lines information, and we're getting into some of the more linear data now (see https://www.somewhere.com/visualcv https://www.somewhere.com/visualcv). So that in that, finding people who fit your work style over matching specific skills and experiences. However, you're spot on as both approaches need to pass the glanceability test.
bwzhou 12y ago
All eye candies, no insight. It is a good idea to have more accurate match between positions and people, but only if both sides are honest.
sklogic 12y ago
And yet, all the variety within the given categories will only cover a bunch of web developers. I cannot relate to any of the categories in the article, but yet I think I'm a software engineer.
ommunist 12y ago
Very good idea, and nice front end implementation. However, for the masses to chew it, it has to be properly advertised. Otherwise you shall have to physically wait until all 30-somethings HR managers and recruiting agents will die and take their prejudice to their graves. (This is how process of dissemination of new views on old things usually take place in science).
MadManE 12y ago
An interesting discussion on /r/AskEngineers: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/2w4q6j/worried_about_job_title/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/2w4q6j/worried... This seems to echo what's been said here, for the most part, but the concern of getting through HR is very real.

208 points by carsie 12y ago

dkyc 12y ago

I think the results have to do with your questioning. For example, I don't want to spend my time testing, but I have to do it if I want to write high quality software. So some people give testing a 0, because it's not something you actively want to do. And others give testing a 5, because they know that whatever job they'll take, they probably have to test their code. I don't really see much difference to the classic self-made bullet-point-list of skills.

warcode 12y ago
The "What would I like to do" vs "What would be agreeable to do in a job" scenario would probably explain the specialists vs generalists. Unless everybody is forced to answer the same question the shapes are useless.
dagw 12y ago
I would interpret a testing of 0 as willing to write the minimal number of tests needed to get their code working and 5 as willing to spend all their time developing the company wide testing framework and testing policy and making sure it's continually updated and being followed, as well as being the last person in the chain to sign off on the fact that any software leaving the shop as passed all the tests. Basically being a 5 means you want to own that aspect, if necessary at the exclusion of everything else.
- dkyc 12y ago
  Your interpretation seems like a reasonable scale - however, it is a very vague definition of "0". I'm sure some people want a 0 to mean an actual 0, like a blind developer asked to do UI development.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Yeah, sounds like a joke. But I worked at a company where the tech writer was legally blind, the marketing guy was shy and the spokesperson (CEO) stuttered. Weird place.
  - jeffbr13 12y ago
    Interfaces aren't only visual - blind users still have to interact with something.
  - dagw 12y ago
    OK, let's take 0 to mean does not write tests on principle and 1 to mean writes minimal tests grudgingly if required by policy.
onion2k 12y ago
For example, I don't want to spend my time testing, but I have to do it if I want to write high quality software. Why? Someone has to do the testing, obviously, but why does it have to be you just because you want to write good quality software? Why can't you work with a brilliant QA[1] team who can generate an awesome set of processes and tests based on your specifications? You don't have to do the bit you find boring if there's someone else around who loves doing it and will do a better job of it because they don't find it boring. Giving up parts of the development process is part of being in a team. A very important part. Using the idea in the article along with good knowledge of what's needed in the particular problem domain, it should be possible to use 'workshapes' to put together a very suitable team of people for a project. [1] Important note for the unfamiliar: Most QA teams are actually QC teams. QA (quality assurance) has to happen from the very first stages of a project, putting in processes that assure the right level of quality will be met. QC (quality checking) happens at the end where someone goes through a project and makes sure it's been done well. If your "QA" only happens at the end then it's QC, and it's probably not helping you build the best product you're capable of building.
- GordyMD 12y ago
  Like that you have picked on the team aspect. We have a very exciting new feature in the works which focuses on presenting the team that you would be joining and how you will compliment each other in terms of how you collectively want to spend time.
- JustSomeNobody 12y ago
  Before the code even gets to QA it needs to be functional and as bug free as possible. As a developer, I _hate_ it when my fellow developers send crap to QA because they could not be bothered to make it not crap. It is unprofessional. The goal should be to produce SW that does not get rejected at QA.
  - gambiting 12y ago
    Yeah, I agree on principle. But sometimes you look bad in front of QA because you ask them to do their job. To give you an example - I was implementing an achievement for a console game. The achievement took roughly 3-4 hours to test fully. I was specifically told by my manager to do my best to make sure that it works,but not to spend time testing it myself,because it would be a waste of my time - it's QAs job to test things like this. So obviously, when the achievement didn't trigger after 4 hours of testing, I looked like a dick to QA,who just spent 4 hours testing this thing. Unfortunately some people take this approach for everything and never test their code - that's bad.

solve 12y ago

So, let's plug these shapes into a regressor / ranker / classifier, along with some possible target variables (career path, survival rates, yearly office peer ratings, salary after 5 years,) for as many balanced samples as possible, and see what predictive power these might have! Or, I guess the graph itself could also be considered a resume differentiator / sales technique. Edit: Oh, I see. They're heavy on the highly personalized matching angle.

qooleot 12y ago
Yes, that would be interesting data. Most companies would output reports from their HRIS systems in wildly different formats, and you'd have to adjust for industry, geo/currency, year, gender/ethnicity/language, and all sorts of things. But just getting that data and the sensitivity that goes with it would be near-impossible unless you were a salary survey company. And then, they get job-level data and not per employee. They charge serious money for the services of analyzing this data and do not make their data available.

Ronsenshi 12y ago

Fascinating approach to the matching. "No CVs" sounds awesome, but I think companies would ask applicants for their CVs in the end anyway. Love d3 animations on the landing page.

hunglee2 12y ago
We think so too, and that's ok. Workshape.io is an attempt to bring the 'sentiment match' to the beginning of the hiring process. We think if both parties know that there's compatibility in terms of interest, then they should be good to go further conversation. Its a de-risking tool, I think [Source: I'm Hung Lee, founder]
Lispsilp 12y ago
True that, but it wouldn't be part of the sourcing process, at least. The problem is CVs just became too fundamental in the selection process, and they're only looked at for something like 5 seconds...

sparaker 12y ago

A pretty good way to find people that you want to hire. Perhaps if we can add some experience graphs along with these, we can get a good platform up that actually makes head hunting really easy for small companies who do not have the time or the money to do this properly.

hunglee2 12y ago
thanks sparaker - its Hung, CEO of Workshape - thanks for your comment. Time / money is what we want companies to save, not only at point-of-hire but also in terms of hiring the right person for the opportunity. Its a blind match on both sides, so we think both parties are able to trust the match more than they would in traditional job discovery platforms. As for experience / bio - we're probably pull in social data via an aggregator at some point.
- sparaker 12y ago
  I am surely looking forward to this.

lordbusiness 12y ago

Interesting and thought provoking article. I wonder if this could take off as a concept and change the way we define ourselves? I like the concept. One thing that is lacking however is perhaps an understanding of what job titles are today. I haven't formally been handed a job title in many years, so long in fact that I honestly can't recall which previous employer was the last to grant me a specific pigeon hole at the personnel level. (Yes, I deliberately use the antiquated term for HR to illustrate how long ago this may have been). In this day and age job titles for me and my peers appear to be ultra concise summaries of what capacity people are most recently working in, as opposed to formally designated titles. Perhaps we're stretching the word title. Regardless, the fact that these charts better represent the fluid nature of how interests and activities change, this would be a nicer solution. Two thumbs up. P.S. I say this with no snarkiness, I wish people would proof read articles they publish.

lordbusiness 12y ago
P.P.S. I'd love to see the ability to add myself as a remote worker. I had to choose my closest major city, which doesn't accurately reflect how I work.
- GordyMD 12y ago
  We're in the process of considering a number of new input fields for both organisations and users. This is one that we intend to add in the next few days.

orenbarzilai 12y ago

I would love to see potential candidates add this work shape for their CVs

k__ 12y ago

I like their ideas, but the only thing that changed for me with the shapes is, that I have a profile that doesn't match any job offering. So no win for me, lol

hunglee2 12y ago
Hey k_3, its Hung, CEO of Workshape.io here. Thanks for signing up and for your comment. We know that the 'no match' screen feels like failure, even when its anything but! Its simply a case that no employer has seen the wisdom of designing a job opportunity that meets your interest! And its highly likely to be a question of scale i.e not enough companies on the platform. In any case, we need to get better at that screen and are aiming to produce analytics to describe job distribution (geography, tech stack etc) so that users who see it will come away with better value. Ping me if you have any more input!
- k__ 12y ago
  Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't take this personally. I just wanted to say that this is a bigger problem than you think. The companies have some skills in mind when they want to hire and packing them into a job title with description or a radar chart doesn't change anything. I think everyone is fully aware that these titles doesn't mean much. I have read so much different descriptions of one title, that I don't read the titles anymore.
  - GordyMD 12y ago
    We aren't completely transfixed by job titles, this was just the blog post headline and one component of current recruitment practices we dislike. Unfortunately recruiters may not be so aware of job titles not meaning much - it is still common practice to perform key word search on other platforms to identify candidates. This is a behaviour we are looking to disrupt.

Coogle 12y ago

Seems like some pretty cool concept. Love the visualisation - quite a different way to think about job descriptions.

hunglee2 12y ago
thanks Coogle! Our entire thing is that job descriptions actually don't do a great job of the describing. Text is not the best way to describe human work - its too ambiguous, too hard to make / read and entirely reliant on subtext / context. We think the radar plot is a better way. Glad you like the product - stay with us, a lot more to come from us

VLM 12y ago

1) Are people good at evaluating what they want? Its a liberal arts truism that they aren't. Enormous piles of literature about non-technical topics "love" "lifestyle" etc. I'd be shocked if humans are truly excellent at self evaluation uniquely for technical topics. 2) (Only kinda kidding) Where's emergency fire fighting? Escalated customer support?

mnsc 12y ago

It sucks that we are so three-dimensional in our thinking. This "Workshape" is really a 10-dimensional world where we "wander" in our careers by spending time/energy along some axis. Sometimes we actively pursue a direction, "developing my back-end-skills/archictecture" and sometimes we are more/less forced in a direction "this needs testing/documentation". The result is a traveled path which is "my experience", and a direction which is my "desired trajectory forward". Matching would then be a spatial questions: Have you been [here]? Where are you heading? Stupid physical world.

bencollier49 12y ago

This immediately identified a very good match for me. It's brilliantly built, I'm very impressed. They could do with a little bit of narrative to explain that you're now free to converse with the potential employer, at the point where the conversation thread opens up. 5 thumbs up.

GordyMD 12y ago
Thanks - really glad it found a match for you. I'll note down your comment - we do need to improve the UX in this area.

janee 12y ago

I actually need to update my CV, glad I came across this. Think I'll add one for work experience and another for current perception of 'How do you want to spend your time'.

arno_v 12y ago

So instead of the ambiguous text 'Software Engineer' we now have 10 ambiguous texts ranging from 'Analysis' to 'Data Science'. I don't really see how that solves a problem, since these underlying concepts are also quite hard to define consistently.

GordyMD 12y ago
Thanks for your comments. Whilst we cannot remove ambiguity completely from our solution - we can minimise it. The ambiguity of text really comes into play in CVs and job descriptions. We attempt to minimise the ambiguity by asking software engineers/anyone involved in software development to describe their work in a uniform way and not relying up the traditional artefacts. So whilst the terms have ambiguity to them, companies and people are answering the same question and we are using those answers to match people so that they can begin a conversation.
- arno_v 12y ago
  Ok, if you are indeed asking the same questions that helps. I would add some information per item with some explanation or definition, so it is as clear as possible what is meant by the different terms.
  - GordyMD 12y ago
    It is available right now if you hover over the labels on the chart. It is definitely not immediately obvious though so we shall have to work on that - thanks!
- scrapcode 12y ago
  I've got a problem. I've been coding for 12 years, yet have zero professional experience. How does your service rank me?
  - GordyMD 12y ago
    We don't do any ranking per se we just present how you want to spend your time. So it does not factor it in. It is up to you to decide what level of seniority the type of position you would consider going for. It might be a bit misleading that we use Github for sign up right now, this is mainly just to ensure only developers are signing up - as the service only exists for them currently. We do not use Github for any number crunching.

Peroni 12y ago

It really was only a matter of time before Hung Lee created something like this. He's one of a very small group of people that truly 'gets' hiring in todays environment and I'm really not surprised to see workshape gaining traction. We're still relatively new users but we have already arranged a handful of interviews via the platform.

hunglee2 12y ago
Thanks Peroni - appreciate your comment. We don't forget your early and continuous support was critical to Workshape.io. Love to see how we can help further - time for us to meet up?

jqueryin 12y ago

I'm not a fan of the WorkShape matching algorithm. The form isn't in regards to proficiencies but rather what your ideal job function would be spanning all proficiencies. Realistically, one's experience isn't likely to match up with their ideal working environment. Trying to pair an employer's requirements to an applicants ideal job would require an order of magnitude more users on both sides before you see realistic matches.

jamesdelaneyie 12y ago

Oh now this is cool. I tried to do something similar for designers a while back[0] but this is a much nicer system! Would love if you added a designer version! [0] http://codepen.io/jamesdelaneyie/pen/uIdie http://codepen.io/jamesdelaneyie/pen/uIdie

GordyMD 12y ago
Like it! We are definitely looking to roll the service out to other verticals. Designers will most likely be next considering the complimentary nature of what you guys do! Thanks for the feedback.
- jamesdelaneyie 12y ago
  Glad to hear it! Best of luck lads :)

ukigumo 12y ago

So, first things first: Love the software and the concept of visualizing your activity spread in a radar plot. Well done! Now for the rant: I am an IT architect. There are many architects working in IT but few of them do anything that is related to what I do. I see job postings for Enterprise Sharepoint Architect and I cry a little, others for CTO/Architect/senior developer and I question if they are maybe hiring for 3 positions and are just really bad at writing jobspecs. I often have VPs working under my direction and govern the work of Project Managers and yet people contact me and ask if I'm interested in a devops role. Recruitment is broken and I hope companies like workshape.io are here to fix it.

hunglee2 12y ago
ukigumo, your experience is the reason why Gordon and I started Workshape.io - all the information out there is historical - what you have done in the past - and nothing at all on what you want to do in the immediate future. Glad you like the service - keep an eye on us, there's a lot more to come
- ukigumo 12y ago
  Good to hear you guys have a vision. May I offer some advice though? Big corp also needs help finding talent (maybe more so than startups) so you may want to _also_ target that market segment going forward. Good luck!
  - hunglee2 12y ago
    Yeah we definitely want to provide the service to any organisation that is struggling with hiring / workforce issues. Our focus is startup for now - its the market we know - but we'll get to enterprise and beyond, sooner rather than later.
namdnay 12y ago
If you think "architect" is too vague, think of the poor "vice-president" :) As you say yourself, "I often have VPs working under my direction"

mordae 12y ago

Sigh; the categories make no sense. Seriously, someone is looking for RabbitMQ-something? I mean, do they really look for someone who deeply understands RabbitMQ or do they look for someone who can administer it or do they look for someone who can use it's language bindings correctly after skimming through docs?

andrey-g 12y ago

That's why we call ourselves back-end/front-end/ui/embedded (software) engineers.

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jghn 12y ago
One problem I have w/ the back-end/front-end distinction is that at least to me that implies one is working on a web or mobile application. For instance, the product I work on daily has no UI (ok, it has a 2 page UI used by an ops group) - is that "back end" when there's no "front end"?
- ulisesrmzroche 12y ago
  Your front-end is your 2 page report. It's not about size but separation of concerns, nothing to do specifically with web apps.
  - jghn 12y ago
    Right, although to me "back end" implies "feeding the front end" which isn't the case here, rather that 2 page report is more of a side channel and the consumer is another data processing engine. And apologies - this is a bit OT here and I'm not trying to be difficult nor argumentative, I've just often wondered if the majority of people view backend/frontend as specialized terms like I do or if it's really just a generic term for "works on visualization/UI" and "works on the other stuff"
  - sklogic 12y ago
    And what is the front-end of a microcontroller? GPIO pins?

Max_Horstmann 12y ago

Finally, a Rorschach test for developers!

mdc2161 12y ago

Great underlying data, but sad to see it visualized as radar charts. - Each category majorly affects the reading of the category next to it, which isn't helpful in non-sequential categorizations - The difference between two adjacent categories creates a unique angle and shape that is purely extraneous information - The relative sizes are hard to read as the underlying quantities aren't proportional to the displayed areas Although not the prettiest possibility, a grouped column chart (maybe groups for front-end, back-end, maintenance, culture, etc.) is a simple example that avoids many of these issues and has very good readability at a glance.

exelius 12y ago
Agreed; spider graphs really aren't helpful past about 5 variables.
bendyBus 12y ago
Good point, but I could imagine certain shapes becoming very recognisable after a while. Ensuring the ordering is such that a 5-1-5-1-5...pattern is unlikely, since these spiky shapes will all look the same. And yes the angles don't carry any extra information, but they are a helpful guide to the eye. I can see where you're coming from, but thinking about these plots a bit more carefully I think you are too dismissive.
GordyMD 12y ago
This is a fair point and something we are actively pursuing. Right now the radar plot represents a trade off between an effective interactive form of visual input that is also compelling and provides an easy mechanism for visual comparison (with the shapes overlapped). Appreciate the feedback.
- d23 12y ago
  Yeah, if you can come up with a way to give the viewer a "sense" of the person at a glance it would go a long way. Maybe add colors? Or maybe consider that some metrics are pretty related and could be represented separately. Frontend / backend could be represented as a continuum by itself. UI/UX are sort of tied with front-end, so coming up with a way to link those together might be nice. Perhaps you could use the data you have to see what tends to be linked together and come up with 2-3 representations that communicate what you're going for quickly.

suttree 12y ago

Yes, job titles an CVs/resumes are out of date. People talk about the future of work but for a lot of us it's already here. This is great, although I have a different approach, namely https://www.somewhere.com https://www.somewhere.com and specifically https://www.somewhere.com/what-is-somewhere https://www.somewhere.com/what-is-somewhere

_s 12y ago
Just checked them out - but on a first glance I have trouble getting any meaningful data from the first few user profiles I clicked. Generally what I look for on a CV or whatever a potential applicant sends over: - Where have they worked? For how long? And what did they do? - What did they study? That's it - I have about 5-15 seconds to find and read that information. If there's something there that I like, then I dive into the rest of what they've written. Am I still interested? Now I'll start digging through their portfolio, web presence etc. What I am not interested in (until much later in the hiring process) is the random blurbs / thoughts that make them who they are which I think somewhere.com puts on the forefront. It is something I'd glance at to get a feel for who they are as a person, but it really doesn't solve the "CV" delima (if there is one).
- suttree 12y ago
  Yes, absolutely. Somewhere has a lot more of the between-the-lines information, and we're getting into some of the more linear data now (see https://www.somewhere.com/visualcv https://www.somewhere.com/visualcv). So that in that, finding people who fit your work style over matching specific skills and experiences. However, you're spot on as both approaches need to pass the glanceability test.

bwzhou 12y ago

All eye candies, no insight. It is a good idea to have more accurate match between positions and people, but only if both sides are honest.

sklogic 12y ago

And yet, all the variety within the given categories will only cover a bunch of web developers. I cannot relate to any of the categories in the article, but yet I think I'm a software engineer.

ommunist 12y ago

Very good idea, and nice front end implementation. However, for the masses to chew it, it has to be properly advertised. Otherwise you shall have to physically wait until all 30-somethings HR managers and recruiting agents will die and take their prejudice to their graves. (This is how process of dissemination of new views on old things usually take place in science).

MadManE 12y ago

An interesting discussion on /r/AskEngineers: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/2w4q6j/worried_about_job_title/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/2w4q6j/worried... This seems to echo what's been said here, for the most part, but the concern of getting through HR is very real.