Comments on: On the Skillfulness of Developers (part 1/2)

By: gglplx_str_thnkr

gglplx_str_thnkr — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:45:32 +0000

preach on, brother!

By: Xet9669roV @ Reddit

Xet9669roV @ Reddit — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:31:06 +0000

” …how are resumes analyzed ..”.
I did not expect ever to read an essay making the points nobody seems to be aware of now. If the other contents at your site compare to this, I have made my day.

1 – “I’ve looked at a lot of resumes recently.”
From the analysis that follows your statement I doubt you read them in or for a HR department. Otherwise, you are the first (or only) intelligent HR “recruiter” I have seen in 40 years. [ Checked your site:about and I doubt you function in a HR department ].
In IT (that is my field of experiences ) , when a job application is not handled DIRECTLY by the IT requester / client and it has to go through any flavor of HR process , the resulting hire is flawed or totally botched.
Grasping the concept of “versatility” is above the head of anyone who decides or ends up “making a career in ‘Personnel’ “. If you factor in the extra layers of ignorance implemented the last few years by the plethora of recruiting agencies, the picture is calamitous.

2 -” .. three big problems with valuing expertise highly ..”.
Your solutions are obvious to you – ever tried conveying this intelligence to “human resourcers”.

3 – Louis says — “That’s a different beast, altogether.”
I do NOT agree with Louis on that one.
Having been employee and self-employed or free-lance, my view is that you just need to employ an excellent free-lance resource to tackle that beast and to accurately handle the needs for “short-term employment like contracting and free- lancing”.—-
I will examplify with two of my experiences : –
3.1- The worst : CTG USA 1987-8 and CTG Belgium 1991 : permanent staff in HR or Sales to “recruit” outsourced consultants : a disaster. —-
3.2 The best : Legent €urope 1994-5 : a free-lancer to recruit outsourced consultant for projects. He knew the sphere : he lived in it.

By: louis

louis — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:37:06 +0000

I would agree that my thought process above falls apart for short-term employment like contracting and free-lancing. That’s a different beast, altogether.

By: Lokesh Kumar

Lokesh Kumar — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:33:50 +0000

While I agree with the idea of hiring programmers with no experience in the programming language of a given project, but the other environment also plays part in terms of coming up to speed. For example, a pure core Java programmer is of no value these days, simply because projects are not done that way. What you have is – Java EE, Spring, EJB, JBoss …. I suppose you get the picture.
I surely like developers that have programmed in various language, but have also programmed the language that I am looking for, because that does bring a wider outlook to the problem at hand.

Your thoughts perhaps are not that applicable to companies hiring contractors, because a company expects a contractor to be productive from day one (forgetting the domain knowledge part), and that puts pressure on the hiring managers to hire people that have at least some experience with the language.

By: Robert S. Robbins

Robert S. Robbins — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:47:17 +0000

I think your perspective is too limited. Nowadays programming is primarily web development which requires a far broader range of experience and expertise than being the master of a programming language. Web development requires a great deal of hard knowledge which you only gain through extensive research and experience. A web developer may be expected to use Photoshop. I’ve even been asked to do marketing because SEO is too technical! Just consider MySQL and all the little pitfalls and gotchas there are to trip you up if you decide to just “pick it up” on the project without having any experience with it. Your skills aren’t going to save you from what you don’t know that screws everything up, like that pesky Byte Order Mark that caused me a world of grief.

By: Blacktiger

Blacktiger — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:43:02 +0000

I think the reason so many employers seem to seek out the experienced candidates is that the people doing the hiring have no idea how easy it is for someone to learn a new programming language. Managers and HR people who have never written software compare learning a new programming language to learning a new natural language (takes years to master), but the reality is that a new programmer can pick up language basics in less than a week and learn more advanced techniques in just a month or two.

By: pranny

pranny — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:11:06 +0000

I support Dave. I am relatively fresh in software development (just 11 months industry work-ex . While looking for a job recently, i analyzed – the lesser keywords, the lesser chance of getting jobs. So, if you are working on online systems include everything from XML, HTML, SOAP to SQL and Python. One way this can be explained is that more keywords means more permutations and combinations, and hence higher probability of getting something. However it has a disadvantage. It results in higher volume of garbage results, which you might not be interested in. So, if you are seeking for a very specific job, go for a very specific keywords in your resume.
And yes, a great and careful analysis.