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One of the problems with popularity is you will get a lot of mediocre developers who don't know what they are doing. You know, the people who pick up tools only
by abvdasker 12y ago
One of the problems with popularity is you will get a lot of mediocre developers who don't know what they are doing. You know, the people who pick up tools only because they think it will land them a job more easily. The same people who picked up VB.
I understand that you're saying it's a bad practice to adopt a tool for reasons other than its utility in addressing a specific problem.
But is it really so terrible for a developer to want to learn a new tool so he can broaden his skillset and make himself a more attractive candidate to potential employers (so long as the tool is the right one for the task at hand)?
- JustSomeNobody 12y agoYes. However, software companies that hire for a specific popular tool/framework need to be punished with mediocrity.
- kelseydh 12y agoWhy? If I'm running a business and I intersect closely between the business side and software side of the company, but need help on the side. I'm hiring for the stack that I use and already understand. It's not mediocrity, it's called playing to your advantages.
- JustSomeNobody 12y agoWhy not hire smart people who can learn your stack?
- emodendroket 12y agoA bright person can pick up a new language or framework in a few days or less, but it will take some time working in that ecosystem before they're really writing natural and idiomatic code. All other things being equal, I would prefer to hire someone who has experience in the same stack.
- JustSomeNobody 12y agoSo, when it's time to move to a different stack, do you train your old team or can them? Or worse, relegate them to only maintaining the old stuff until the new stuff is in production? If you don't move to a new stack, how's your retention?
- oldmanjay 12y agohow many smart people are there compared to the current appetite for software?
- marcosdumay 12y agoYour problem is, you are hiring for a "stack", not for competence. For the developers that go out of their way to learn a tool only because people like you will hire him, their problem is that they'll be hired by people that hire by a "stack", and not by competence. Jobs that select this way normaly place a negative value on competence, and the developer will face the choice of adapting and become mediocre, or going away and losing some short term benefit.
- hasenj 12y agoWhat I'm actually saying is a bit more subtle. There are types of developers who are very limited in what they can do. They learn some basic "tricks" in the form of "If write this magic spell, I get this magic result". These are the mediocre developers. They tend to pick some popular tool and try to market themselves as "an X developer" where X is something that's popular right now. Then there are developers who can create magic. They can build something almost from scratch without having to have a library that already does it for them. These developers can pick up X or Y or Z in a week or two and then they will become 20x more productive with it than the mediocre developers are. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to pick up a tool to market yourself as an "X developer". I'm just saying there's a lot more mediocre people in the pool of "X developer", and if that's what you go looking for, you'll get mostly mediocre people.
- Terr_ 12y ago"Watch out for script-kiddies."
- taurath 12y agoAt the same time, theres a very high amount of managers and HR who want someone who has worked in those libraries, period. They want people that will tell them "I'm an X developer".
- hasenj 12y agoI think that companies managed by these types are being naturally-selected out of the software products market.