The problem that I see is that employers don't want to spend the time to train people, or even wait for them to train themselves. They figure, if they can get someone who can hit the ground running, why would they waste time waiting for someone like you who needs to learn the language, regardless of how long it actually takes?
Re:Don’t “Hire by Keyword”
by quantumhobbit on Monday July 25, 2016 @11:12AM
(#12159203)
What they don't realize is that they it takes longer to find the perfect candidate than to train a good enough candidate. It might take a month or so to train someone on whatever web framework if they have similar experience. Yet the position could stay unfilled for six months or more waiting for that perfect candidate.
You have identified one reason we have a "talent shortage".
Re:Don’t “Hire by Keyword”
by shubhamjain on Monday July 25, 2016 @10:28AM
(#12158898)
Considering the amount of interviews it takes to hire "the one", I guess the better bet is to hire quick learners who have the enthusiasm. How much time will it take to be an average RoR developer? One month? Two months tops! I know someone who was hired without any substantial background in HTML or CSS, and as of now, after three years, he knows enough to be able to speak at a major CSS conference.
so true. Of course they wait 3 months maybe to hire somebody expensive vs. hiring someone smart that can do a very good job after one month.
Re:Don’t “Hire by Keyword”
by logfromblammo on Monday July 25, 2016 @10:31AM
(#12158923)
It never fails to amuse me to see job advertisements that state "hit the ground running" that have been up for more than a month. It especially amuses me when the critical skill keyword, paired with "developer" or "engineer", surveys above median pay for "software developer" or "software engineer".
They are literally searching harder and waiting longer, to pay more for a narrower skill set.
Good luck finding that "javascript applications developer" or "ruby on rails engineer" or "SPARK/RTEMS engineer", guys. If you needed someone to be productive today, all you had to do would have been to hire them last month and give them a $200 book budget.
When I've asked why tech employers don't want to train people in the past, the prevailing answer was always that they didn't want other companies to get the benefit of the investment when they poach. This was what was behind the anti-competitive suit brought against Google, Apple, Adobe, etc
Re:Don’t “Hire by Keyword”
by danielweber on Monday July 25, 2016 @11:08AM
(#12159173)
If you are going to have them on your team for 3 years, do the first two weeks matter?
Where I work the first two weeks are explicitly training. You will not contribute to the bottom line at all, even if you are an expert already. And sometimes this feels like not enough.
As a PHP programmer, I picked up Node.js really quickly.
Every PHP developer who I've seen pick up a nodejs project has end up fighting against asynchronous code and promises. You're fortunate that you were able to grok that aspect of node easily.
Re:Don’t “Hire by Keyword”
by arenaninja on Monday July 25, 2016 @09:37AM
(#12158561)
The thing is, that's pretty much what JavaScript is. Callbacks, promises, closures and async. If you already figured out that while working with Frontend Javascript the transition to Node is pain-free. But I can see how, if you're a PHP-only developer you would suffer.
I had to deal with asynchronous code when working with client-side JavaScript, it wasn't a new thing for me. If anything, I expect Ruby to be a little nicer if I have to work with RoR. But I probably won't because everyone wants 10 years of RoR experience nowadays.
I bet I could be a perfectly fine RoR developer, given a little bit of time. I don't know Ruby, but I pick up languages quickly. Or, I mean, you could just keep the position open for a few months and just screen for keywords. It's really your choice.