The article basically says, as I'm reading it, that it's good to use the perfect technical solution to a problem. However that is a very short sighted and narrow look at software engineering. Software engineering is a team effort, a business effort and filled with unknown unknowns.
If you've written everything in X then ensuring that your next project is also in X (even if X isn't perfect for it) has many advantages. Your bus factor is high since your whole team is familiar with the technology. There are fewer unknown issues that you'd hit versus a new approach. You'll be able to re-use already written code so getting things running will be faster. There'll be fewer drawn out arguments and discussions on technology choice at every juncture. There will be more eyes able to properly review the code and choices made.
Hiring and overarching technological decisions are as much about business as technology. I've seen many engineers hired who want to rewrite everything in Y because they're not familiar with X. The business gain of it is negative but they still push for it.
I'm not saying that hiring only X is the best choice all the time but rather that a middle ground based on the specifics of the business is necessary. A flat out decision to never hire explicitly for X is as blind as one to without thought always hire for X.
the article isnt suggesting you should hire people who only know a different framework from the one you are using, but that you should hire people who are capable of being productive in all sorts of frameworks.
Even working on the core team at some of the world's most prestigious software companies, most of the work I've seen has been completely doable by any competent programmers who can communicate with their teams and organize their own time. I've only run across maybe a single bug per 3-4 years that actually required a superb coding prodigy to fix.
Interview coding tests select for gladiators when these companies actually need legionnaires
I'm going to borrow your gladiators vs. legionnaire analogy. Legionnaires need leaders and leaders need followers. There's something in those thoughts. Thanks.
Yep, I think this is either ignoring the main problems or mistaking a symptom for the disease. Certainly, people try to hire for "Ember gurus" or "10 years experience in Swift" or whatever else, and that goes poorly. But it's one of a dozen serious problems with tech hiring, and not near the top.
If anything, I think people end up hiring for framework experience because tech hiring is hard and broken. If you're relying on outside recruiters who can't read a resume, much less evaluate somebody's past projects, then hunting specific framework keywords at least gets you relevant candidates. If your interview sensitivity is terrible, then you can't accurately gauge whether someone will pick up your language/framework quickly, so it makes sense to only hire people who've already proven they understand it. And if your onboarding and codebase are a mess, you'll want people who know the language well enough to e.g. troubleshoot a broken build on their own.
Hiring people who already know everything isn't the problem with tech hiring, it's a weak effort to paper over the more fundamental problems.
Last time I did 'HR' training. They told us all about how to judge people.
You can't hire someone who doesn't have a firm handshake.
You can't hire someone with typos on their resume.
You must have that university degree right.
You can't hire someone who is a convict.
You can't hire old people.
So after HR has already eliminated all these people. They are left with the bottom of the barrel people who are apparently superman with no character flaws.
This is good advice. However, unless it can be rewritten to appeal to a CFO, the important guidance will never reach the people who define the positions and filter candidates.
Executive management needs to understand WHY fundamental/generalist skills are more valuable than specialized skills (or at least are of comparable value except in rare cases). And the "why" that most executives understand is "because it results in more profit long term".
Few executives or hiring managers are technically experienced enough to really know what skills are required to do a certain job. Since they know they don't know, they make effort to be very specific and target the technologies (and frameworks) that the person they are replacing was known to be using. If it's a new position, they have selected a popular stack based on what other people in their industry are using. In the mind of the manager, it makes practical sense to aim for exactly what they believe they need.
Successfully delivering this message to the right audience would require a great and charismatic communicator. Unless this leader is already famous, I don't see the advice having a lasting impact. Heck, even if... I still don't expect lasting impact. Companies have been getting by ok (measured by executive compensation and shareholder value) so far, so putting in the extra effort and risk for possibly a better long term result isn't likely to happen.
There is a bright side to this situation: some very talented people who don't fit the current hiring process may go off and do something on their own (or with others like them), resulting in great new things. In fact, that's usually how innovation happens.
> Hire people with fundamental skills, not framework or technology skills
I think this is the most important advice for employers. Companies often hire people that have experience in as many tools in their current stack as possible. Few of them realize that in 5 years their stack can be entirely different, and that more important than knowing current tools is the ability to learn the new ones.
The problem is that this is less and less feasible. More and more I see candidates that come just from "Angular Bootcamps" and similar who do not know fundamentals. Even people with a degree struggle with them.
Following Sijin´s competency matrix, most of the people I interview fall in the first level, not really knowing much about stuff.
This article is basically a complaint masquerading as advice.
> There once was a company with 34 employees and 34 different titles
Don’t be coy with us ;) We know who you’re talking about.
Presuming that all tech hiring is broken, and that your article is for people who think tech hiring is fine, without any data to support your claim is going to get your advice ignored.
He seems to miss a point about the "meta" of hiring when avoiding framework experience vs design.
Namely that how canidates advertise and actual talent and abilities may not align fully. It doesn't make sense to emphasize their bests if nobody is interested or it is taken for granted. Besides they have to try to play to more than you and filtering on arbitraries is how you miss talent, boost expenses and increase delay.
It is easier to train the technology than the business. Understanding the business and it's needs is usually more valuable than a tech stack. I do not see that being mentioned at all.
Long ago, I designed and developed a medical computer for a well-known manufacturer. If you walked into any eye doctor or surgeon today and mentioned its name, they would know what it is.
I started my own company but over the past five years, I would consistently see three former co-workers from that same company. I told them I was thinking of selling out and--jokingly--said I would re-apply for my old job. The response was always positive. "You should!", they'd say, "Put me down as a reference!".
Last October, I sold out. Last January, I ran into one of those co-workers. He's now a project manager. The other two co-workers were actually my bosses, one of whom is now a "Fellow". "There's an opening," he said, "Come apply at put me down as a reference."
So I did. Never heard anything back. I called my friend who talked to the "Fellow". That guy gave me the email of the headhunter who was now in charge of all hiring and told me to mention all three of their names. The headhunter replied and told me the job was, essentially, working on the same product I designed and would I be interested in working on a new version of that.
So I sent my resume which shows that I've been working on almost the exact same thing and that I had worked for that company for seven years on that exact same product and have three high level managers and former bosses who all encouraged me to apply for that job.
Never heard from him.
My former boss, who was the Director of Engineering and is now a "Fellow" is actually now retired and only works there part-time. He said he has no say into how they do things now and all hiring is done through the headhunter. The project manager is in a different department now so they don't care what he thinks. The other engineering manager also retired and, apparently, no one cares about his thoughts either.
I think, based on similar experiences, this happens when the organization is either not actually hiring for the position or is dealing with severe internal political conflicts.
[+] [-] marcinzm|6 years ago|reply
If you've written everything in X then ensuring that your next project is also in X (even if X isn't perfect for it) has many advantages. Your bus factor is high since your whole team is familiar with the technology. There are fewer unknown issues that you'd hit versus a new approach. You'll be able to re-use already written code so getting things running will be faster. There'll be fewer drawn out arguments and discussions on technology choice at every juncture. There will be more eyes able to properly review the code and choices made.
Hiring and overarching technological decisions are as much about business as technology. I've seen many engineers hired who want to rewrite everything in Y because they're not familiar with X. The business gain of it is negative but they still push for it.
I'm not saying that hiring only X is the best choice all the time but rather that a middle ground based on the specifics of the business is necessary. A flat out decision to never hire explicitly for X is as blind as one to without thought always hire for X.
[+] [-] convolvatron|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wikibob|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VRay|6 years ago|reply
https://daedtech.com/programmer-skill-fetish-contextualized/
Even working on the core team at some of the world's most prestigious software companies, most of the work I've seen has been completely doable by any competent programmers who can communicate with their teams and organize their own time. I've only run across maybe a single bug per 3-4 years that actually required a superb coding prodigy to fix.
Interview coding tests select for gladiators when these companies actually need legionnaires
[+] [-] dano|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dasil003|6 years ago|reply
I don't think this even scratches the surface of what's hard about tech hiring and where the flaws are in practice.
[+] [-] Bartweiss|6 years ago|reply
If anything, I think people end up hiring for framework experience because tech hiring is hard and broken. If you're relying on outside recruiters who can't read a resume, much less evaluate somebody's past projects, then hunting specific framework keywords at least gets you relevant candidates. If your interview sensitivity is terrible, then you can't accurately gauge whether someone will pick up your language/framework quickly, so it makes sense to only hire people who've already proven they understand it. And if your onboarding and codebase are a mess, you'll want people who know the language well enough to e.g. troubleshoot a broken build on their own.
Hiring people who already know everything isn't the problem with tech hiring, it's a weak effort to paper over the more fundamental problems.
[+] [-] Frost1x|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sleepysysadmin|6 years ago|reply
You can't hire someone who doesn't have a firm handshake.
You can't hire someone with typos on their resume.
You must have that university degree right.
You can't hire someone who is a convict.
You can't hire old people.
So after HR has already eliminated all these people. They are left with the bottom of the barrel people who are apparently superman with no character flaws.
Then we wonder why we can't seem to hire anyone.
[+] [-] benbristow|6 years ago|reply
This one I can kind of agree with. Should really double check before you send something like that around. Spell checkers exist.
[+] [-] bogle|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sethammons|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blunte|6 years ago|reply
Executive management needs to understand WHY fundamental/generalist skills are more valuable than specialized skills (or at least are of comparable value except in rare cases). And the "why" that most executives understand is "because it results in more profit long term".
Few executives or hiring managers are technically experienced enough to really know what skills are required to do a certain job. Since they know they don't know, they make effort to be very specific and target the technologies (and frameworks) that the person they are replacing was known to be using. If it's a new position, they have selected a popular stack based on what other people in their industry are using. In the mind of the manager, it makes practical sense to aim for exactly what they believe they need.
Successfully delivering this message to the right audience would require a great and charismatic communicator. Unless this leader is already famous, I don't see the advice having a lasting impact. Heck, even if... I still don't expect lasting impact. Companies have been getting by ok (measured by executive compensation and shareholder value) so far, so putting in the extra effort and risk for possibly a better long term result isn't likely to happen.
There is a bright side to this situation: some very talented people who don't fit the current hiring process may go off and do something on their own (or with others like them), resulting in great new things. In fact, that's usually how innovation happens.
[+] [-] arnvald|6 years ago|reply
I think this is the most important advice for employers. Companies often hire people that have experience in as many tools in their current stack as possible. Few of them realize that in 5 years their stack can be entirely different, and that more important than knowing current tools is the ability to learn the new ones.
[+] [-] xtracto|6 years ago|reply
Following Sijin´s competency matrix, most of the people I interview fall in the first level, not really knowing much about stuff.
[+] [-] hacknat|6 years ago|reply
> There once was a company with 34 employees and 34 different titles
Don’t be coy with us ;) We know who you’re talking about.
Presuming that all tech hiring is broken, and that your article is for people who think tech hiring is fine, without any data to support your claim is going to get your advice ignored.
[+] [-] granshaw|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nasrudith|6 years ago|reply
Namely that how canidates advertise and actual talent and abilities may not align fully. It doesn't make sense to emphasize their bests if nobody is interested or it is taken for granted. Besides they have to try to play to more than you and filtering on arbitraries is how you miss talent, boost expenses and increase delay.
[+] [-] raxxorrax|6 years ago|reply
I get it that you don't expect me to be honest and I can use words entrenched in so much honey that even your mother will get diabetes.
[+] [-] cat199|6 years ago|reply
but also: 'API Influencer' as job title? wow.
[+] [-] oaiey|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sureaboutthis|6 years ago|reply
Long ago, I designed and developed a medical computer for a well-known manufacturer. If you walked into any eye doctor or surgeon today and mentioned its name, they would know what it is.
I started my own company but over the past five years, I would consistently see three former co-workers from that same company. I told them I was thinking of selling out and--jokingly--said I would re-apply for my old job. The response was always positive. "You should!", they'd say, "Put me down as a reference!".
Last October, I sold out. Last January, I ran into one of those co-workers. He's now a project manager. The other two co-workers were actually my bosses, one of whom is now a "Fellow". "There's an opening," he said, "Come apply at put me down as a reference."
So I did. Never heard anything back. I called my friend who talked to the "Fellow". That guy gave me the email of the headhunter who was now in charge of all hiring and told me to mention all three of their names. The headhunter replied and told me the job was, essentially, working on the same product I designed and would I be interested in working on a new version of that.
So I sent my resume which shows that I've been working on almost the exact same thing and that I had worked for that company for seven years on that exact same product and have three high level managers and former bosses who all encouraged me to apply for that job.
Never heard from him.
My former boss, who was the Director of Engineering and is now a "Fellow" is actually now retired and only works there part-time. He said he has no say into how they do things now and all hiring is done through the headhunter. The project manager is in a different department now so they don't care what he thinks. The other engineering manager also retired and, apparently, no one cares about his thoughts either.
[+] [-] nobodyandproud|6 years ago|reply
Good luck proving it, though.
[+] [-] itronitron|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spoovy|6 years ago|reply
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