On Sat, 25 Aug 2012 22:35:31 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>>> Obviously, I would hire the first guy, because he has the skills that
>>> matter. But the IT manager? He's a ****ing moron, so he would hire the
>>> second guy. Just because the second guy has some superficial attribute
>>> which is nearly completely unimportant.
>>
>> It's not really unimportant when hiring for a programming position,
>> though - if there's existing code that needs to be maintained, you
>> would want someone who knows the language it was written in.
> 
> If you need something done in a real hurry, then having somebody who can
> hit the ground running can be very important. 

That's actually the case not just when you need something done in a real 
hurry.

Training employees is expensive.  If you hire someone who has exactly 
what you're looking for, it saves you money.

That's one of the things about my current contract that's useful - the 
engineering manager knows I'm good with the products, and he wanted to 
get me on board a month after my first contract with them (this is my 
second with the same team).  He sees the value in hiring someone who 
knows the software and can ramp up quickly (I know this because he 
specifically told me this).

Now I'm working with two products (and actually two different engineering 
teams), but one of the products is used in the testing environment for 
the other, and I'm having to learn both of them in a fair amount of depth.

They lost a number of their testing team for one of the products, so I'm 
guessing that they want me to learn the product they use in their test 
lab so I can work with the remaining testing team.  I know they want to 
bring me in full-time, and that helps for when they finally do get a 
position opened (right now, the company is only hiring new people if the 
CEO approves it, and they're being VERY tight on engineering jobs and 
ramping up sales instead).

> But most of the time, what
> you want is somebody who can be trained to do a job well. An aptitude
> for learning and a willingness to do so ought to be a higher priority
> than merely having some of the relevant knowledge already.

Sometimes, but not as often as it might seem.

Jim

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