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Do companies really try to pigeonhole developers into "tech stacks" so much that you'll be forced to revert to junior status to change? Unless we're talking ab

by nilkn 11y ago

Do companies really try to pigeonhole developers into "tech stacks" so much that you'll be forced to revert to junior status to change? Unless we're talking about COBOL -> Haskell here, I think any decent company would be wary of overvaluing skills with a particular language or framework and undervaluing fundamentals.

ExpiredLink 11y ago
> Do companies really try to pigeonhole developers into "tech stacks" so much that you'll be forced to revert to junior status to change? Yes, they do. Moreover, you don't even get a junior position because you don't have adequate education and/or experience.
- nilkn 11y ago
  Well, my company doesn't, nor have other companies I've interviewed with and received offers from. I'd be very hesitant to join such a company. I've interviewed with "top" companies like Google as well and they've never seemed to care about this stuff. This sounds more like a way to hire a contractor, not an engineer you will invest in who will be a full member of the team for potentially a very long time.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    > Well, my company doesn't, nor have other companies I've interviewed with and received offers from. I'd be very hesitant to join such a company. I've interviewed with "top" companies like Google as well and they've never seemed to care about this stuff. My experience has been that the vast majority of non-software tech companies care quite a bit about these specifics. They are also much more likely to pigeonhole you.
    - nilkn 11y ago
      Maybe I haven't witnessed this so much because I've always made it a point to only consider companies where software is the core product and profit center and developers are the main employees.
barrkel 11y ago
It depends. It's more about developers pigeonholing themselves. Some CVs come along and are e.g. all Java, EJB, Spring, Hibernate etc. - they present themselves as completely unidimensional and more or less rule themselves out of something broader. There are different things you learn when you've coded in a mix of C/C++, Java/C#, Ruby/Python, and perhaps something functional. But having all your experience in one of these buckets is more a sign of a junior developer, or the old "one year's experience ten times".
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  What are they supposed to do when the people employing them demand they get ever deeper into a specific stack in order to advance?
bbcbasic 11y ago
They want you to be productive immediately, so they can assess you in the probation period, and get more bang for the buck from the outset. For example. If you are a C# programmer who has never done Java programming. It takes you 6-12 months to get reasonably up to speed with the JVM, standard libraries and idiomatic coding. Let alone any dependency injection, web framework etc. libraries. Why would the Java shop pay you the same as a developer who has spent the last 5 years doing Java full time who can be productive in Java right away? That said, I think reverting someone to junior status is too extreme. A slightly lower salary or requiring an 'ace up your sleeve' to compensate is probably fair.
- nilkn 11y ago
  > Why would the Java shop pay you the same as a developer who has spent the last 5 years doing Java full time who can be productive in Java right away? Because you bring a lot of other experience to the table, and in just six months you will be completely up to speed? In any software company of real complexity it's going to take six months or so to really hit your stride anyway, regardless of whether you've used their stack before, because you'll still have to learn their codebase, standards, processes, etc. If they underpay you, guess what any self-respecting and talented developer will do? Leave. They'll be gone the second they're up to speed with the new stack because they found someone else willing to pay the full rate.

by nilkn 11y ago

ExpiredLink 11y ago

> Do companies really try to pigeonhole developers into "tech stacks" so much that you'll be forced to revert to junior status to change? Yes, they do. Moreover, you don't even get a junior position because you don't have adequate education and/or experience.

nilkn 11y ago
Well, my company doesn't, nor have other companies I've interviewed with and received offers from. I'd be very hesitant to join such a company. I've interviewed with "top" companies like Google as well and they've never seemed to care about this stuff. This sounds more like a way to hire a contractor, not an engineer you will invest in who will be a full member of the team for potentially a very long time.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  > Well, my company doesn't, nor have other companies I've interviewed with and received offers from. I'd be very hesitant to join such a company. I've interviewed with "top" companies like Google as well and they've never seemed to care about this stuff. My experience has been that the vast majority of non-software tech companies care quite a bit about these specifics. They are also much more likely to pigeonhole you.
  - nilkn 11y ago
    Maybe I haven't witnessed this so much because I've always made it a point to only consider companies where software is the core product and profit center and developers are the main employees.

barrkel 11y ago

It depends. It's more about developers pigeonholing themselves. Some CVs come along and are e.g. all Java, EJB, Spring, Hibernate etc. - they present themselves as completely unidimensional and more or less rule themselves out of something broader. There are different things you learn when you've coded in a mix of C/C++, Java/C#, Ruby/Python, and perhaps something functional. But having all your experience in one of these buckets is more a sign of a junior developer, or the old "one year's experience ten times".

vonmoltke 11y ago
What are they supposed to do when the people employing them demand they get ever deeper into a specific stack in order to advance?

bbcbasic 11y ago

They want you to be productive immediately, so they can assess you in the probation period, and get more bang for the buck from the outset. For example. If you are a C# programmer who has never done Java programming. It takes you 6-12 months to get reasonably up to speed with the JVM, standard libraries and idiomatic coding. Let alone any dependency injection, web framework etc. libraries. Why would the Java shop pay you the same as a developer who has spent the last 5 years doing Java full time who can be productive in Java right away? That said, I think reverting someone to junior status is too extreme. A slightly lower salary or requiring an 'ace up your sleeve' to compensate is probably fair.

nilkn 11y ago
> Why would the Java shop pay you the same as a developer who has spent the last 5 years doing Java full time who can be productive in Java right away? Because you bring a lot of other experience to the table, and in just six months you will be completely up to speed? In any software company of real complexity it's going to take six months or so to really hit your stride anyway, regardless of whether you've used their stack before, because you'll still have to learn their codebase, standards, processes, etc. If they underpay you, guess what any self-respecting and talented developer will do? Leave. They'll be gone the second they're up to speed with the new stack because they found someone else willing to pay the full rate.