On 26/08/2012 04:11 AM, Darren New wrote:
> Or maybe the boss' nephew just lost his job and asked to cut to the
> front of the line.

In which case... lucky escape. :-P

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Am 25.08.2012 12:47, schrieb Orchid Win7 v1:

>    The hiring manager goes over to the pile of CVs, grabs half of it,
> and chucks it in the bin. "Well, the LAST thing this company needs is
> unlucky people!"

Now THAT is some smart reasoning :-P

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On 25-8-2012 11:25, Stephen wrote:
> On 24/08/2012 5:29 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> When I was working at Motorola my boss told me that he wasn't going to
> hire someone because he had a copy of the daily mail in his pocket. Work
> that one out. o_O

His horoscope?

-- 
Women are the canaries of science. When they are underrepresented
it is a strong indication that non-scientific factors play a role
and the concentration of incorruptible scientists is also too low

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>> 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.

Well, sure.

But remember, we're not talking about training somebody to be an expert 
carpenter when they've never sawn a block of wood in their life. We're 
talking about taking somebody who's an expert programmer and giving them 
two to three weeks to learn a new programming language. If you're going 
to employ somebody for 5+ years, then giving them a week or two to learn 
a necessary skill is peanuts.

I guess part of it is that the majority of applications apparently lie 
to a quite shocking degree. (Exhibit A: Fizz Buzz exists.) Hiring 
somebody who can *prove* that they already wrote something in C# (or 
whatever) is the safest way to get rid of the utter time wasters. But it 
seems a pity to also get rid of some really great people...

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On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 08:43:45 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>> 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.
> 
> Well, sure.
> 
> But remember, we're not talking about training somebody to be an expert
> carpenter when they've never sawn a block of wood in their life. We're
> talking about taking somebody who's an expert programmer and giving them
> two to three weeks to learn a new programming language. If you're going
> to employ somebody for 5+ years, then giving them a week or two to learn
> a necessary skill is peanuts.

It depends on the programmer.  I've worked with programmers who studied 
syntax of the language they're most familiar with (C, for example), who 
would be completely lost in C++ because they didn't learn OOP.

Some programmers only learn syntax - and in their language they do pretty 
well, but learning a new one is more difficult for them.

Don't make the assumption that because you pick up languages easily that 
everyone does.

> I guess part of it is that the majority of applications apparently lie
> to a quite shocking degree. (Exhibit A: Fizz Buzz exists.) Hiring
> somebody who can *prove* that they already wrote something in C# (or
> whatever) is the safest way to get rid of the utter time wasters. But it
> seems a pity to also get rid of some really great people...

That's the nature of hiring - sometimes you miss the right person because 
you fail to ask the right questions or they fail to provide answers that 
accurately communicate their skills.

Jim

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>>> Training employees is expensive.  If you hire someone who has exactly
>>> what you're looking for, it saves you money.
>>
>> Well, sure.
>>
>> But remember, we're not talking about training somebody to be an expert
>> carpenter when they've never sawn a block of wood in their life. We're
>> talking about taking somebody who's an expert programmer and giving them
>> two to three weeks to learn a new programming language. If you're going
>> to employ somebody for 5+ years, then giving them a week or two to learn
>> a necessary skill is peanuts.
>
> It depends on the programmer.
>
> Some programmers only learn syntax - and in their language they do pretty
> well, but learning a new one is more difficult for them.

Well, sure. I've certainly met people who can throw together crappy Java 
code, but would be /totally lost/ if they had to actually *learn* a new 
programming language. Like, it would take months if not years of 
training for them to do that.

And then there are other programmers who already know a dozen languages 
and can easily learn a bit of new syntax for another one.

In summary, there are flexible programmers and inflexible ones. I would 
argue that the flexible ones are the "good" ones - the ones that will 
still be useful to you in the future if you decide to move your codebase 
to some other platform. But hey, it's your enterprise; you decide. :-P

(At least, that /would/ be my attitude if it weren't that *every* 
enterprise sees only the value of whether you can write the type of code 
they want /today/...)

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On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 16:57:11 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> Well, sure. I've certainly met people who can throw together crappy Java
> code, but would be /totally lost/ if they had to actually *learn* a new
> programming language. Like, it would take months if not years of
> training for them to do that.

Yep.

> And then there are other programmers who already know a dozen languages
> and can easily learn a bit of new syntax for another one.
>
> In summary, there are flexible programmers and inflexible ones. I would
> argue that the flexible ones are the "good" ones - the ones that will
> still be useful to you in the future if you decide to move your codebase
> to some other platform. But hey, it's your enterprise; you decide. :-P

Yes, it comes down to what the /need/ is and how well the candidate meets 
the need.
 
> (At least, that /would/ be my attitude if it weren't that *every*
> enterprise sees only the value of whether you can write the type of code
> they want /today/...)

Well, no, that's not actually the case.  It may be what you've seen, but 
again, you're giving in to hyperbole and assuming that because you've 
talked to a small sample of companies who are looking for 'x' that that 
means that that's all anyone is looking for.

Jim

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>> In summary, there are flexible programmers and inflexible ones. I would
>> argue that the flexible ones are the "good" ones - the ones that will
>> still be useful to you in the future if you decide to move your codebase
>> to some other platform. But hey, it's your enterprise; you decide. :-P
>
> Yes, it comes down to what the /need/ is and how well the candidate meets
> the need.

Well, yes, it does depend on what you need. And that no doubt depends 
fairly specifically on your individual enterprise.

But what I'm really talking about here is the companies (i.e., almost 
all of them) who screen out *all* applicants who do not have skill X 
today, without even *speaking* to them to find out what other important 
qualities they may or may not have.

This seems an extremely short-sighted approach to hiring.

>> (At least, that /would/ be my attitude if it weren't that *every*
>> enterprise sees only the value of whether you can write the type of code
>> they want /today/...)
>
> Well, no, that's not actually the case.  It may be what you've seen, but
> again, you're giving in to hyperbole and assuming that because you've
> talked to a small sample of companies who are looking for 'x' that that
> means that that's all anyone is looking for.

I've applied to several hundred jobs and looked at job descriptions for 
several thousand jobs. That seems like a reasonable sample size to me...

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On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 17:06:34 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>>> In summary, there are flexible programmers and inflexible ones. I
>>> would argue that the flexible ones are the "good" ones - the ones that
>>> will still be useful to you in the future if you decide to move your
>>> codebase to some other platform. But hey, it's your enterprise; you
>>> decide. :-P
>>
>> Yes, it comes down to what the /need/ is and how well the candidate
>> meets the need.
> 
> Well, yes, it does depend on what you need. And that no doubt depends
> fairly specifically on your individual enterprise.
> 
> But what I'm really talking about here is the companies (i.e., almost
> all of them) who screen out *all* applicants who do not have skill X
> today, without even *speaking* to them to find out what other important
> qualities they may or may not have.

Again, you're making an assumption based on limited experience.

> This seems an extremely short-sighted approach to hiring.

If it were the case that most companies did that, it would be.

>>> (At least, that /would/ be my attitude if it weren't that *every*
>>> enterprise sees only the value of whether you can write the type of
>>> code they want /today/...)
>>
>> Well, no, that's not actually the case.  It may be what you've seen,
>> but again, you're giving in to hyperbole and assuming that because
>> you've talked to a small sample of companies who are looking for 'x'
>> that that means that that's all anyone is looking for.
> 
> I've applied to several hundred jobs and looked at job descriptions for
> several thousand jobs. That seems like a reasonable sample size to me...

Weren't you the one who was saying something about there being billions 
and billions of jobs in the world?  What percentage of 'billions and 
billions' is 'a few hundred'?

And looking at job descriptions doesn't tell you how the hiring company 
is going to respond to an applicant who is missing a few of the 
'required' (which is often 'desired' and not a hard requirement) skills 
or attributes.

Jim

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On 28/08/2012 06:59 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Again, you're making an assumption based on limited experience.

Well, here's the thing: It is not possible to experience everything that 
exists in the entire world. Hence, /everybody/ has to make 
generalisations based on the limited data available to them. Following 
your chain of logic, you're basically saying that nobody can ever know 
anything about anything. :-P

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