Re:What happens to tech workers when their skills become obs...
by EliRivers on Friday September 13, 2019 @03:51PM
(#20965761)
My fundamentals include a basic knowledge of algorithms, data structures and essentially just how to think about problems in a way that solutions can be programmatically represented.
Basically, can you write simple software? Everything you mentioned is also needed, but I really, first and foremost, need them to be able to write some simple software. If they can't do that, I really can't afford to teach them. A CS degree often makes this check simpler than for the candidates with other educations, such as the history degree holder we have.
If you don't need that then sure, it's a different hiring game for you.
It's easy for senior engineers on the team to address gaps in CS knowledge, but much harder to address a lack of soft skills, writing, or over-designing/too much abstraction (because you were taught the patterns, but not when to use them). I could go on, but IMO, this is why interviews are still so broken, and why the field of software development still faces the same issues it always has. Granted, I'm not building a DB, but compared to maintenance and over-engineering, performance is rarely an issue, and easily solved via profiling.