[HN Gopher] Having no experience can be better than having the w...
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Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience
Author : collate
Score : 127 points
Date : 2022-07-25 20:40 UTC (1 days ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| tester756 wrote:
| Just skew the odds
| lazyant wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin
| thaumaturgy wrote:
| I'm experiencing this now and it's taking some energy to not
| become disillusioned with the industry.
|
| Generalists, or people with a "wide T", are also a lot less
| valuable than specialists. For any given technology or stack
| right now, some company out there is doing something cool with
| it, and they only want to hire people who are already familiar
| with their particular configuration. The couple of tech
| interviews I've had so far have really obviously been looking for
| me to keyword or namedrop some experience with whatever it is
| that they're using already. There have even been positions where
| I had like 95% of the desired experience, but that missing 5% was
| enough to bin me, despite having a pile of unrelated experience.
|
| To be clear, you can make a living as a dev in the guts of a
| BigCo or for a consultancy or web firm, and these days it's not
| even a bad living (for now). But if you want to work on something
| closer to the cutting edge, or more stimulating, you have to make
| big decisions early on about what you're most interested in and
| then pursue a deep specialization in it.
| jmcgough wrote:
| As a counterpoint, having a broad range of skills and
| experiences has been hugely important for me and my employer,
| and hasn't limited my career or compensation. I fill in the
| gaps where I'm needed, and it's up to me to create visibility
| and take on projects that look good on my resume. Naturally I
| tend to go deep wherever I end up at a startup (so I have
| specialized experienced that helps my career), and my breadth
| allows me understand the entirety of the stack and design
| systems better than someone who only knows one part of the
| stack.
|
| At startups you really want someone who can jump into any part
| of the technical work and ship quickly.
| jacksnipe wrote:
| Hmm this has not been my personal experience (as a highly
| generalist dev), but maybe I'm just lucky. If anything, my
| extremely broad lens has led to some really great systems
| design rounds, and I always crush the behavioral.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| > Generalists, or people with a "wide T", are also a lot less
| valuable than specialists
|
| I actually disagree with this. Speaking anecdotally but also
| someone who works at a FAANG-esque co, full stack or "wide
| stack" (front, back, infra, sre) are the most desirable due to
| their versatility and knowledge of the interworkings of various
| parts of the stack.
| opportune wrote:
| This doesn't match my experience at all. A lot of companies at
| the cutting edge know that nobody is ramped up on their area
| and aren't trying to limit themselves to only poaching from
| competitors. In particular at big tech your previous scope and
| projects (like launching features, leading a feature or
| infrastructure team, shipping an entire product) are so much
| more important than eg your background in advertising - a
| background in advertising may be a plus for an advertising
| team, especially if you're getting hired at a very high level
| (8+), but not a requirement or even target for recruiting
| purposes.
|
| I know HN loves to hate on big tech but a lot of the cutting
| edge is there. IME startups and "less selective" companies are
| more focused on getting people with very specific experience
| because they can't afford to train someone up or risk them
| being a bad fit - and while startups almost by definition are
| doing something different than incumbents, that doesn't mean
| they're the whole cutting edge. Or, they are old-school and bin
| everyone as a "Java spring boot dev" either because HR doesn't
| understand what things are easy to learn and what are hard, or
| engineering buckets themselves into these fixed categories and
| has a kind of "my turf"/static mindset with no expectation to
| learn or work on new things.
| firebaze wrote:
| How do you come to this conclusion? Sincere question. I'm not
| posting personal anecdotes to support or disprove your
| argument, I have an opinion, and it may or may not overlap with
| yours.
| postalrat wrote:
| Are you speak from experience or repeating something you read
| on hn or reddit?
| cupofpython wrote:
| > you have to make big decisions early on about what you're
| most interested in and then pursue a deep specialization in it
|
| I am seeing similar trends to you wrt Generalists, and this is
| annoying but good advice.
|
| Even when hired, generalists tend to get stuck with all the
| most tedious work from every department that simply no one
| wants to do. You end up being a one-stop shop for all intern
| and junior related work, with the added bonus of being invited
| to a lot of meetings and not getting credit (appropriate $
| compensation) for your influence in those meetings.
|
| I've settled on the belief that general knowledge is something
| you do for yourself, and to help set you apart from other
| specialists. It doesn't pay you directly. I've got almost a
| decade of general business and analytics knowledge, and always
| seems to stall out on the climb in ways you describe (not
| dropping the right software name brand). Time to make a bet
| em-bee wrote:
| _generalists tend to get stuck with all the most tedious work
| from every department that simply no one wants to do_
|
| someone has to do it, and if the pay is adequate, it's a
| matter of attitude.
|
| _not getting credit (appropriate $ compensation) for your
| influence_
|
| i don't understand this part. you already have your salary,
| as negotiated. are you saying that such a positions are
| always underpaid?
|
| and if such a position really has influence, it actually
| sounds appealing to me.
| cupofpython wrote:
| IME from doing general work at 3 companies in different
| industries (which might not be fully representative): Also
| sorry, turns out i ended up venting
|
| >someone has to do it, and if the pay is adequate, it's a
| matter of attitude.
|
| the pay is adequate for the value of the work (which is
| low), and it eats up your time which actually lowers the
| average value of your work to the company. it isnt anything
| other people cant do, it's just the stuff that piles up
| because it isnt really critical to get done but should
| still get done. think about what you would have a coworker
| help you with at your job if you had a lot to do and they
| asked you if you needed help with anything.
|
| >are you saying that such a positions are always underpaid?
|
| Yes they are underpaid because the job responsibilities are
| usually pretty fuzzy. you are typically given some basic
| responsibilities but then expected to find more work to do
| yourself via talking to people. so its on you to both find
| valuable work to perform using your general knowledge (kind
| of fun / interesting tbh) and also somehow be convincing
| that your contributions are better than what they would
| have gotten from an average generalist (nigh impossible).
| It becomes very hard to get people to recognize you going
| above and beyond, which is necessary for raises. So you are
| very dependent on having an incredibly observant manager
| who applies above average attention to detail when
| reviewing you.
|
| how you get this work as a generalist, btw, is you ask
| people what they need help with. It isnt an issue with
| attitude, it is just one of relevance. An average
| generalist can be fine with this, but if you are above
| average at multiple roles then it becomes a point of
| opportunity cost. you will never work on the high-value
| things that someone else more specialized at the company is
| capable of working on. you will work on the things that
| were preventing that person from spending more time on the
| high-value things. they might talk to you about it and you
| might give them thoughts on the work, but it will be so
| casual as to be awkward for them to give you any credit for
| it.
|
| >if such a position really has influence, it actually
| sounds appealing to me
|
| It can be a very enjoyable position BUT you stall out - it
| will typically fall under some sort of generic business
| analyst job title at a small to mid-size company (ie not at
| a company with an analytics department for you to advance
| in). youll be encouraged to "build" that department by
| yourself, in your downtime, without any approved budget for
| it, without adding anything to anyone elses processes (ie
| requiring them to stick to a data entry format). So people
| at the company will typically like you, but you'll hit a
| lot of resistance trying to get past like $70k (near NYC).
| It makes me think that 1 good generalist is valued close to
| but beneath 2 junior employees with a bit of different
| specialization each.
|
| the only way I can recommend a generalist position is if
| you are buying significant amount of stock in the company,
| fully believe in the product/service, and understand that
| sometimes in order for a team to do its best there needs to
| be a thankless support player somewhere in there.
|
| you dont have noticeable influence, btw, you just know what
| you did and feel personally good about it. you get to sit
| in on meetings, typically as a note-taker (because you
| offered to and it makes sense because you have a bunch of
| misc responsibilities anyway), which means you get to make
| sure the most important things from a meeting are
| emphasized, questionable things are highlighted, and you
| can speak up in the meeting itself to help address
| misalignment's before they happen. the meetings themselves
| tend to get credit for your contribution rather than you,
| albeit sometimes you can make pretty direct call-outs that
| will get you credit for.
|
| the general vibe was kind of like, you are an alert system
| and garbage collector. a lot of the time the alerts are
| received as helpful reminders of issues that would have
| been caught somehow anyway. but that's kind of a catch-22
| for proving your value. you feel fairly confident they
| wouldnt have caught the issue based on the nature of the
| due diligence you applied to the situation and your
| intimate knowledge of the related business operations. you
| cant exactly point why you think the issue would have gone
| unnoticed without throwing someone under the bus, which
| isnt fair to do before the issue actually arises. the
| catch-22 is that the issue isnt going to arise because you
| pointed it out, but you cant prove it was necessary for you
| to point it out unless you dont point it out.
|
| So you need an observant, reasonably skeptical manager on
| the same page as you to notice the shitstorms you prevent.
| But even then there's typically no direct means of
| compensating you for it. you get labelled a good employee,
| quickly jump to that 70k area pay cap into yearly inflation
| adjustments, then you end up just getting more soft
| benefits like openness to alternative work hours, no
| resistance to taking time off, and such. With the caveat
| that you have to correctly read the room on these things
| and assert them yourself because you wont be getting an
| email detailing such perks. that is all well and good, but
| it seems better fit for someone near retirement then
| someone with goals of trying to buy a house and raise a
| family.
| lmm wrote:
| > i don't understand this part. you already have your
| salary, as negotiated. are you saying that such a positions
| are always underpaid?
|
| Generalism is more difficult than specialism to leverage in
| that initial notification. And if you end up doing work
| that's spread across multiple departments then it's
| generally harder to advance within that organisation.
| madrox wrote:
| As a hiring manager, I've found entry level roles to be the
| hardest to fill well. No metric is a guarantee of a quality
| candidate. I loathe whiteboard programming, but for entry level
| jobs it's at least a signal that they're putting in the work to
| figure out how to be successful within a structure.
|
| Beyond that, I want a narrative for the candidate's career...both
| where they've been and where they want to go. It helps me figure
| out if their development goals will be a good fit and what their
| experience will bring to the team. I've run into a lot of
| candidates whose careers seem to be guided simply by "I work for
| the highest bidder" and they don't end up being the best on the
| team...nor the most enduring.
|
| I can see how this might equate to having the "wrong experience."
| I hope candidates who wait to apply for that big dream job (or
| don't get it) at least are taking jobs that prepare them for it.
| Barring that, I hope they're finding other ways to gain
| experience. We can't always choose the jobs we want, but I hope
| everyone is figuring out how to build towards it.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| > "I work for the highest bidder"
|
| Uhm, I find people like these are actually the easiest to keep.
| They know their price and define it. You know what to expect.
| [deleted]
| strgcmc wrote:
| There is a difference between (A) a skilled expert who takes
| pride in their craft, and understandably goes with whichever
| employer appreciates their skills and compensates
| accordingly, vs (B) a middle-of-the-pack journeyman who just
| DGAF about their work and treats all jobs as equally
| disposable and replaceable (these are also the types of
| people who are likely to try out /r/overemployed, cuz why
| not).
|
| We may all pretend to be more like type (A) employees, but in
| reality not everyone can be above average and there's a lot
| of (B) out there. As an employer, it makes total sense to
| invest in and pay more for (A)'s, but you're throwing money
| away to try and woo (B)'s or pretending like enough money
| will buy you better engagement or more motivation from them.
| madrox wrote:
| This is well said and sums up my experience
| dilyevsky wrote:
| > As an employer, it makes total sense to invest in and pay
| more for (A)'s, but you're throwing money away to try and
| woo (B)'s
|
| By that same logic most managers also fall into B just like
| ICs. So that statement is incorrect - Bs are perfect
| material for empire building and As are usually not
| [deleted]
| opportune wrote:
| You can't have all A's. I'd rather have B's than a
| hypothetical C who is just trying to hold down a job and
| not get fired, or a D who DGAF but isn't middle of the pack
| and takes your lower-paying job because it's the best they
| could do (sure, the B is basically the same, but at least
| there is some theoretically higher quality on average).
| mbg721 wrote:
| How should they know where they want to go if they're entry-
| level? They haven't seen what the future paths are really like.
| This leads to a mentality of "the only safe entry-level
| candidate is one with five years' experience doing exactly what
| we do," and I saw that in how one of the places I worked did
| their hiring. It led to much lower-quality entry-level
| candidates than if the company had accepted some risk and taken
| the plunge, recognizing that some of the time it wouldn't work
| out.
| r3012 wrote:
| > How should they know where they want to go if they're
| entry-level?
|
| I think it's totally reasonable to expect people to have a
| plan. It's also totally reasonable, and expected really, for
| that plan to change over time. But working without a plan,
| which implies working without goals, is rarely a recipe for
| success.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Then if you're hiring entry-level employees, you need to be
| prepared to accept a naive and unrealistic plan. If they
| have a plan that sounds like an experienced person's plan,
| maybe they did their homework and got lucky, maybe they
| know somebody and got interview coaching, but it's unlikely
| that their destiny from birth was exactly your job opening.
| madrox wrote:
| I think hiring managers tend to be pretty realistic about
| this (can't speak for recruiters). All we want to hear is
| that the candidate has a sense of how they want to
| develop themselves. The best entry level candidate story
| I've ever heard was from an intern who expressed a desire
| to learn how to biuld movie animation pipelines. We were
| an app dev team, but I was able to offer enough insight
| and experience that we helped him get his next job at
| WETA.
|
| A candidate's intrinsic development goals become the
| basis of how managers can best motivate and retain
| employees. Without this, employees quickly stagnate and
| fall back to doing the bare minimum of their role. This
| is true of all levels and not just entry level.
| ceras wrote:
| This doesn't really match my experience for my own career
| or as a manager. Plenty of great engineers don't have a
| plan beyond "learn and get better," including those that
| have traditionally-successful careers (e.g. director+ at
| top tech company).
|
| I'd expect that to matter more if you're, say, trying to be
| a founder - I can see that benefitting from intentional
| planning. But for careers at big companies, "learn and get
| better" seems good enough (and if that qualifies as a plan,
| I don't think I've worked with anyone that _doesn 't_ have
| a plan).
| madrox wrote:
| "Learn and get better" is absolutely a plan and a great
| basis to build on, though it's nice to know if there's
| something in particular they'd like to learn. I've never
| encountered a candidate who will say they want to learn
| but not have an idea of what they want to learn...just
| candidates who have an idea what they want to learn but
| are afraid of saying the wrong thing in the interview.
| shalmanese wrote:
| There's also a difference between not having a plan and
| not being able to articulate your plan. Articulation is a
| skill that needs training and people who rarely need it
| are rarely good at it. I can take people who have strong
| plans and train them to articulate it in a few weekend
| sessions but someone who doesn't have a plan requires
| multiple years of work to develop a plan.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| Entry level management positions are the hardest to fill in my
| experience, which is why I've ended up almost always
| transferring people to management from within rather than
| seeking out external candidates.
|
| > Beyond that, I want a narrative for the candidate's
| career...both where they've been and where they want to go. It
| helps me figure out if their development goals will be a good
| fit and what their experience will bring to the team. I've run
| into a lot of candidates whose careers seem to be guided simply
| by "I work for the highest bidder" and they don't end up being
| the best on the team...nor the most enduring.
|
| Strongly agree with this point.
| eastbound wrote:
| I'd love to have a candidate who tells me "I love creating
| products". I've hired a 100% junior, no school (formerly
| teacher), he kicks ass, I've increased his salary by 10% every
| 2 months since 8 months. He just loves the art of creating a
| product, maintaining it in prod, interviewing customers...
|
| You are correct, it's incredibly hard to detect.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Can you disclose which company you work for / what your
| company does?
| eastbound wrote:
| Not much, I'd like to remain anonymous, sorry. We're doing
| apps for Jira and Confluence Cloud.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I generally enjoy Dan Luu's advice, but IMO it's best approached
| with the understanding that his professional and social network
| is somewhat of a bubble that doesn't reflect the average person.
|
| Specifically, he cites a statistic that 50% of the people with
| "no experience" he knows are getting ML and other such jobs at
| Big Tech companies. In this case, I think he's likely pre-
| filtering his sample set to people with significant
| programming/math or other such experience.
|
| I do a lot of mentoring of college grads. If anyone shows an
| interest in Big Tech I always encourage them to apply and help
| them get the process started. However, it is not my experience
| that 50% of your average (or even above average as mentoring
| programs tend to select for the more ambitious) CS grads are
| walking into something like a Big Tech ML job with no relevant
| experience.
|
| Always apply if you're curious. If nothing else, you will learn
| the interview process and see where you need to improve for next
| time. However, don't feel bad if you don't get the dream job
| right away. Most people really do have to pivot up through some
| more average jobs first before landing the Big Tech jobs with
| huge paychecks.
| [deleted]
| foobiekr wrote:
| The ML thing would not surprise me at all. ML is so hot that if
| you know the buzzwords and have done some hello world project,
| someone will give you a job. It is very much like "html coding"
| in 1999 and will probably have the same outcome.
| SamvitJ wrote:
| Hard disagree. ML is hard to break into, even with strong
| credentials. (Source: ML engineer)
| skrtskrt wrote:
| I think they probably mean "ML engineering" as in training
| pre-existing models in jupyter notebooks, the new "data
| science".
|
| The people that actually create/engineer anything new and
| useful in ML is <1% of people that "work in ML".
| hinkley wrote:
| Honestly, with no experience how would you even know what your
| dream job was? I had some clue how good I had it, but that was
| at a philosophical level ("I'm very fortunate to be here blah
| blah blah.") Once "it" was taken away, I started to understand
| at a more visceral level. And yet there are aspects that I only
| managed to unpack last year, which makes me wonder what I'll
| notice next year.
| jt2190 wrote:
| > Most people really do have to pivot up through some more
| average jobs first before landing the Big Tech jobs with huge
| paychecks.
|
| But the assertion here is that too many "pivoting up" jobs are
| a negative indicator. (An "upper class" programmer wouldn't
| spend time in the "lower" classes.)
|
| Not saying I agree or disagree with this, but the existence of
| a class system in tech jobs is the OP's central point.
|
| Edit: The OP says it clearly:
|
| > In many ways, having no experience is better than having the
| wrong experience because people don't unfairly prejudge you for
| having the wrong experience.
|
| https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1551665467864977408?s=21&t...
| moeris wrote:
| > he cites a statistic that 50%...
|
| Not a statistic so much as an anecdote. He makes it pretty
| explicit, I thought.
| ketzo wrote:
| Eh, even if it's an anecdote, it comes off as actionable
| advice: "make sure you apply to Google/Amazon/Facebook as
| your safety jobs, since you've got a 50% chance of getting in
| there anyway."
|
| Which feels... optimistic.
| [deleted]
| honkdaddy wrote:
| Well said as usual, PragP.
|
| My experience working in big tech is that the bar for actually
| getting an interview for the junior positions is actually
| relatively low, and your standardized interview performance
| matters 10x more than the content of your resume. Some people
| apply for L3 out of college, some people after many years of
| experience. I've never seen someone turned down for "too much
| of the wrong experience", what more often happens is that the
| ruts they got into from their previous job start to show and it
| affects their interview performance.
| zwieback wrote:
| ML is maybe a good example of a hot field that's sucking up the
| best as well as upper middle performing developers only to later
| spit them out when the meltdown comes. That in itself may not be
| a problem if you get your foot in the door of a company you're
| happy at. On the other hand, if you're just hanging on it might
| be sobering to have to switch from Google to a smaller company in
| a more affordable region.
| [deleted]
| svnt wrote:
| In my experience, very high-performing teams are not rare outside
| of prestige employers, but the distribution is longer-tailed.
|
| Employees at prestige employers don't want to consider that they
| might not be the best, or might not have to put up with all the
| corporate bureaucracy, so they erect barriers.
|
| For recruiters, recommending prestige resumes is just the
| equivalent of "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM".
|
| Nobody on tech teams is putting in 20 hour weeks and
| watercoolering to get by in those small teams at small companies.
| Everything they do counts.
| eastbound wrote:
| Cue a random example: 2-people company bought for millions by
| Atlassian or 18-people company bought for billions by Facebook
| (Wasn't Whatsapp 18 people?).
| homie wrote:
| is there any way out if you find yourself stuck with a couple
| years of wrong experience?
| svnt wrote:
| Get another degree (one year masters) and then reapply as NCG,
| or just delete exp from your resume and see if you can pass as
| NCG.
| tfehring wrote:
| I went from a life insurance company in the Midwest to a pretty
| desirable tech company in the last few years. This tweet [0]
| from patio11 (linked from the posted tweet) basically sums up
| my path:
|
| > _If you're early career, try to get into a high-status
| engineering employer or consider a status arbitrage like e.g. a
| stint at one of the many startups which are known to recruiters
| but can't match Google offers and so feel perpetually
| understaffed._
|
| I went to a YC-funded startup. It wasn't a well-known startup
| by any means, and there were fewer than 30 employees when I
| left. I don't think anyone there was ex-FAANG, and they didn't
| pay at anywhere near FAANG levels. But startup employees are in
| the talent pool for big tech companies in a way that insurance
| company employees generally are not.
|
| Anyway, when I had been at the startup for a year, I cold
| applied for my current position on my current employer's
| website, and here I am. Zero chance I would have gotten a
| callback if I'd applied directly from the insurance company,
| even though I would still have been able to do my current job
| effectively if I'd never gone to the startup.
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1379852979868631041
| mhotchen wrote:
| Referring to the title I think this is exceedingly the exception,
| not the norm (excluding bad hiring policies). Learning what not
| to do is more valuable than starting with a clean slate
|
| Referring to the twitter post, I agree. No point wasting time if
| a better opportunity already presents itself
| soneca wrote:
| Is this advice only to be hired by FAANG-like companies? It seems
| so.
| I_complete_me wrote:
| A personal anecdote that gives some credence to this theory:
|
| Some years ago, after the Economic Crash of 2009, I attended a
| course in Progammable Logic Controllers which was designed to be
| a module for electrician's Continuing Professional Development.
| I, a Civil Engineer, had no background in this topic and said as
| much to the tutor. "Don't worry, he said, "the people with no
| experience nearly always do better than anyone else". This
| surprised me. It also surprised me when I came joint top in the
| course results.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| People with experience can't be asked doing the course because
| they know better anyway :) of course you do better because you
| probably take it seriously
| shmde wrote:
| I can tell you this is 110% true in my case. I graduated and
| landed a very shitty testing job at a big consulting firm. I
| worked hard like a mule( more like a donkey ) for 11 months.
|
| Then one day I woke up in the middle of the night and screamed
| into the pillow that I rather kill myself then do my job. I
| resigned the next month.
|
| Fucked around for a few months, got interested in making backend
| apps and started applying again but this time in development
| roles( instead of QA ).
|
| Lo and behold, did not get a single response from even a small
| scale startup. Removed my QA experience and just put my
| Node,Express projects at the top. Guess what, finally recruiters
| started to call me.
|
| I realised how I fucked up big time by jumping on the first job
| offer that I got and my experience for almost an year was just a
| shit stain on my resume, which completely stalled my career if I
| hadn't removed it.
| AyyWS wrote:
| That same experience will be a boon later. You can show your
| progression from QA > Dev > Whatever you want. It's no longer
| an anchor weighing you down, it's a Rocky Balboa underdog
| story.
| cxr wrote:
| > your progression from QA > Dev
|
| Although it may be true of the specific person you're
| replying to (though I'm not sure that it is), this presumes
| something, so ends up missing the point. To see the point
| made here about luck, castes, et cetera requires grappling
| with the existence of folks who were developers _before_
| taking the "shitty testing job". There is no QA-to-dev
| progression there--just someone without the good fortune to
| be able to say "no" to the first job they were offered.
|
| A recent guest on Tyler Cowen's podcast made this point wrt
| to law school graduates:
|
| > _The bigger thing I would change is the calendar for
| professional hiring in law. This is a little bit esoteric,
| but it matters a lot to our students. If you want to go into
| a job at a major law firm, and you go to a good law school,
| those jobs get offered to you at a time when you have no
| other alternatives. And so, regardless of one's individual
| preferences, it makes no sense to turn down those jobs when
| you actually have no alternative.P I think that creates a lot
| of distortions, where you end up with people who are at these
| firms who don't want to be there. And it biases the market so
| that people who want to go into public interest, for example,
| are the ones who are able to take that risk on, which is not
| a very good match between who's genuinely interested in
| alternative avenues and who just can't afford to take certain
| kinds of risks._
|
| <https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/jamal-greene/>
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| QA gets looked down on for sure. Only put your QA experience
| for a job with QA in the title.
|
| Ironically, and perhaps unsurprisingly, finding good QA people,
| and people who want to do QA, is difficult.
|
| Has anyone else experienced QA stigma?
| foobiekr wrote:
| Congratulations.
|
| Honestly, I have always felt really bad about hiring someone
| into a QA role. It is almost always a trap and I try to
| discourage people from going down that path for exactly the
| reasons you describe.
|
| I am glad you've gotten past it. Excellent. Good luck to you.
| wizofaus wrote:
| I've been involved in screening candidates where we basically
| did just put aside applications from people whose commercial
| experience was not exactly what the JD was asking for, and
| indeed some were those with a background in testing/QA when we
| specifically needed a developer. But that's because we had a
| ton of resumes sent through by recruiters where it seemed like
| they'd done very little to ensure they were sending us relevant
| candidates. To be fair we would have put your resume aside if
| you'd removed your QA experience too if you didn't also have
| significant commercial experience as a developer.
|
| But in general if I was responsible for the final call on a
| junior hire I'd definitely prefer someone with industry
| experience even in a different role over someone with none at
| all.
| glthr wrote:
| I have the same personal experience.
| curiousgal wrote:
| wulke wrote:
| This was also true in the military:
|
| At basic training, our drill instructors often said that recruits
| with no experience shooting weapons were easier to train than
| other recruits who had experience because it was much easier to
| teach best practices to someone who was a "blank slate" than it
| was to retrain best practices to someone who learned improper
| methods.
|
| I haven't exactly seen this idea like-for-like in the "corporate"
| world, but I believe the general premise is accurate.
| cxr wrote:
| This is a good analogy but inadequate. What Dan is saying goes
| beyond that. In the scenario you're describing, it is rational
| to prefer those recruits--for exactly those reasons. The
| behavior that Dan describes involves a heap of irrationality.
|
| Dan's piece that he linked (about "Mike") really is important
| to understand the thing that he's referring to.
|
| <http://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/>
|
| (Kudos on being able to _yes-and_ the post, though. Huge swaths
| of HN 's user base somehow lacks this ability and shows the
| proof any time some of Dan's writing shows up here.)
| thenerdhead wrote:
| The one thing you do learn when in a job that gives you "wrong
| experience" is that you're in the "wrong job" for what the "right
| job" would be in the future.
|
| I think you have to be in a "wrong job" before you can understand
| what a "right job" is.
|
| I do not agree with the premise though as it's assuming that
| people cannot discern the difference. It's akin to talking about
| knowledge vs. wisdom and the typical explanation of fruits and
| vegetables. It makes little sense in this context as people are
| much smarter than given credit.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I believe this has to do with the perception and signaling of
| potential.
|
| Potential, when unrealized, contains more parts unknown than the
| known. You can measure some things - like GPA, school ranking,
| standardized test results, and so on.
|
| If/when you do get employed, then that also becomes a new measure
| - and to some degree, lays the foundation for other speculation.
|
| Put this way: If someone opts to work for a "C" level company,
| does this change the expected value of that candidate? If the
| candidate is "A" level, why would they join a "C" level company?
| The simplest answer for an observer, would probably be that they
| are simply not "A" level material, and probably closer to where
| they've been.
|
| IMO - that's flawed thinking, as there are tons of variables, but
| it seems to be how many think. It's like with sports - often
| times top clubs will get top talent.
|
| But yeah, back to the perception. Now you have a new datapoint -
| which could could drag you down - while your competitors still
| have the benefit of less information. These candidates can
| leverage their potential more, simply because the people hiring
| know less about them, and will have to take a larger chance /
| risk on hiring them. But as long as their other measures are ok,
| that might be worth it.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| This is how Disney tends to or used to operate its theme parks.
| If you're coming from another theme park chances are you have
| been trained incorrectly meaning a person with no experience has
| the advantage. Not saying I agree or disagree, but I can
| understand why someone could think otherwise.
| antonymy wrote:
| I think it's also about the "culture fit" that these high
| prestige tech companies look for. Young people fresh out of
| school will not have been "tainted" by the workplace culture of
| other companies. Moreover, young people in general, but
| especially those still in the highly social school mindset, tend
| to be influenced by peers more easily than adults, especially
| jaded adults. This all makes young people fresh out of school
| much more easily molded to the company culture.
| beebeepka wrote:
| My current employer is investing heavily into - I wouldn't say
| hordes, but they are many - juniors because "culture" sculpting
| Devs for our specific needs.
|
| Or at least that's the official story. While these reasons may
| be real, I think it boils down to money and loyalty. Can't
| blame them but yeah, makes me feel a bit uneasy
| antonymy wrote:
| Yes, naivete is the the other issue besides culture. People
| without work experience, especially tech work experience,
| won't push back as hard or negotiate as effectively with
| their management, which translates to lower salary and a
| willingness to go along with what the company wants. I don't
| want to paint young folks with too broad a brush though, I've
| met some young coworkers that were pretty savvy, it's just in
| general what I have seen.
| mlcrypto wrote:
| Some people are luckier than others
| antisthenes wrote:
| This is true for more than just programming.
| d--b wrote:
| > When I tried to get my first programming job, I got zero
| responses from major software companies.
|
| > I accidentally did the right thing when I took a hardware job I
| was referred into at Google, because having a prestigious company
| on my resume was the right programmer class marker.
|
| Yeah... Not everyone gets referred into Google.
| avgDev wrote:
| I work for a non-tech company as a solo full stack dev.
|
| I have been able to interview with fortune 500 companies and get
| offers.
|
| I have been getting contacted by recruiters from hot startups,
| Microsoft, Google, AWS, Amazon and Meta.
|
| I am not sure if I'm stupid but I really don't know how "no
| experience" can be better than wrong experience. There is always
| things you learn, better negotiation tactics, your value to a
| business, and all the mistakes you have made.
|
| This sounds like, "if you don't work for these tech companies,
| you are doing programming wrong". There are many ways to be
| successful and this POV is toxic imo.
|
| Edit: I would love to hear what the wrong experience is.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| Just a side note: FAANG recruiters/startups spam pretty much
| any developer with buzzwords on their socials
| (LinkedIn/GH/etc). That's not necessarily a signal you're
| hirable at those companies.
| avgDev wrote:
| It is a signal you can get an interview.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| You can get a phone screen and potentially a take
| home/first round, sure.
| bboylen wrote:
| Aren't the technical interviews the primary component at
| these companies at lower levels though?
|
| Hard to imagine someone with a few years of "the wrong
| experience" who is well versed technically and can handle
| the coding interview will consistently fail interviews
| just because the interviewer doesn't recognize their
| company.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| I'm not speaking to whether one with "the wrong
| experience" can or cannot pass FAANG-level interviews,
| I'm just commenting on the recruiter outreach from FAANG
| or startups (particularly AMZ) don't necessarily know or
| care about your skill, they only care about the buzzwords
| listed on your social profile(s) and maintaining a "hot"
| pipeline; aka getting bodies through the pipeline and
| hoping not to piss off engineering because of the amount
| of low quality candidates.
|
| Recruiters are (usually) not technical and/or have never
| been engineers, so the barrier to the first round (if
| you've been reached out to) is super low and not
| necessarily indicative as to whether you have what it
| takes to make it through the whole loop/offer stage.
| bboylen wrote:
| I don't disagree, it just seems to me the main barrier of
| entry is getting the interview in the first place since
| interviews focus on the technical component, not your
| resume. So if getting an interview is easy, then it
| follows that worrying about getting "the wrong
| experience" is not worthwhile.
|
| I'm mostly responding to the article's claims - not
| saying you made these claims.
| civilized wrote:
| > This sounds like, "if you don't work for these tech
| companies, you are doing programming wrong"
|
| He's saying that some people will judge you for working in less
| prestigious places. He's explicitly condemning that but saying
| it still happens.
| felideon wrote:
| Have never worked for FAANG/MAGMA, but the theory is that if
| you have `n` years of, say, MUMPS experience at an insurance
| company, the next candidate with `y` years of Python experience
| will have a better chance of getting hired---even if `y=0`.
|
| More realistically, you (arguably) have a better chance of
| getting hired with 3 years of Python exp at a ML startup or
| whatever, than with 10 years of exp with $unsexy_lang at
| $unsexy_corp.
| ghaff wrote:
| As I read that thread, an engineer--possibly just out of a good
| school--who does well on interviews is perhaps assumed to be a
| good hire even though they don't have much experience. (Though
| maybe they did an interesting project or two.)
|
| On the other hand an engineer who took a job out of school in
| the IT department of some (perceived) boring stodgy company
| even if they really aren't (Walmart was mentioned) obviously
| has something wrong with them in the eyes of some even if it's
| not obvious what exactly. Better to pass and go for the right
| new grad who is probably a bit cheaper as well.
| pedrosorio wrote:
| > Walmart was mentioned
|
| I believe you mean Walgreens (in patio11's original thread).
| ghaff wrote:
| You're right. I did incorrectly read Walmart. Although I
| think the same thing probably applies to Walmart Labs in a
| lot of circles.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Really? Purely from an outsiders perspective, the last I
| had heard was they used a healthy mix of java, clojure
| and nodejs- definitely not stuffy or stodgy at the time.
|
| No ideas what they've been up to the past 5 or so years
| though.
|
| Edit: granted, I have no idea if they'd any ML type
| services running, and doubted they were blazing any
| trails with K8s or the like at the time. Still, it didn't
| seem all that bad.
| ghaff wrote:
| The question is about outside perceptions about various
| companies. I agree that Walmart Labs has done some fairly
| cutting edge stuff.
| bumby wrote:
| This shows the distinction between the value of resumes (whether
| it's school or job or whether) is in large part just signaling
| and not actually about skill set.
| cxr wrote:
| Relevant comment of mine from a previous, mostly unrelated
| thread (context was "Berkeley gives you a parking space if you
| work there and win a Nobel"):
|
| > _The rich get richer. I remember filling out school and early
| job applications. I was struck by how my list of awards and
| recognitions was kind of a sham--most of them were each a
| consequence of some earlier achievement, and so on. It felt
| like getting a check and being able to cash it more than once._
|
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24760101
| nnoitra wrote:
| Yes, it's called ageism. Young and fresh is perceived as better
| than experienced because some bozo will make the argument that
| they've been doing software engineering "wrong".
| ChrisPebble wrote:
| This is definitely true sometimes, but the "wrong" kind of
| experience can definitely hamper people.
|
| I have a highly skilled senior developer with a desktop app
| development background who joined our web team, he's excellent
| at many tasks but keeps getting tripped up when dealing with
| state. He logically knows how it works, but his muscle memory
| when programming is so used to being able to rely on state that
| it's hard for him stop letting those concepts leak in and trip
| him up.
|
| He's still an amazing asset to the team, but in this case he
| does have some experience that's hampering him in a new role.
| nnoitra wrote:
| Lol, it's web development it's not rocket science. He doesn't
| need to wait for the next reincarnation cycle before he can
| be made fresh again to learn Redux.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| > He's still an amazing asset to the team, but in this case
| he does have some experience that's hampering him in a new
| role.
|
| OK, but how much could it possibly "hamper" him if he's still
| an "amazing asset"? Is it a permanent condition? Or is it
| just something that you noticed once or twice and made a
| mental note of?
|
| We all have gaps and shortcomings. Overcoming them is a
| matter of practice, but if someone is second-guessing and
| judging every brain-fart, that's not good for anyone.
| ChrisPebble wrote:
| This was just an example where someone with no experience
| may have had an advantage. They would have had to learn as
| well, but wouldn't be fighting against their muscle memory.
|
| We all have strengths and weaknesses. I was arguing against
| the concept that this can all be attributed to ageism. That
| there are types of experience that can hamper you.
| bob1029 wrote:
| This is something that I have always suspected at some level.
|
| I think wrong experience isn't bad as long as you are willing to
| be convinced otherwise. For me, the pain kicks in when someone
| with the wrong experience is not open to alternatives.
|
| Unfortunately, the _true_ willingness of a candidate to entertain
| alternatives is not something you discover until many weeks
| /months into the real deal.
|
| As a consequence, resumes with very little technical matter in
| them have been appealing to me far more than those loaded up with
| framework-of-the-week and "best practices" word salads.
| bena wrote:
| I think I've felt this a little bit.
|
| As a non-degreed individual, I didn't hear anything from places I
| would apply. Eventually, I applied for a non-development job at a
| company that also claimed it developed software. With the hopes
| I'd be able to kind of prove my chops while in the other role to
| get moved over.
|
| Luckily, the company I applied for had no fucking clue what they
| were doing and hired me for a software development position
| because their entire technology team had just quit like a week
| ago or something. And while that job essentially started me on my
| path to where I am now, and I don't consider myself incompetent.
| They honestly had absolutely no clue on how to evaluate
| technology credentials.
|
| My resume was my incomplete education, my work in retail, and a
| bit of the hobbyist development I had done on the Dreamcast.
|
| Now, the job turned out to be an entire shit-show. This was a
| company who claimed to develop software but didn't have a license
| for Visual Studio. No one knew how to manage a SQL Server. Etc.
| They were looking for a glorified help desk technician who could
| write some config file level stuff for the software package they
| were a reseller for.
|
| However. They did contract the bulk of their networking to
| another company. And also contracted with the owner to be the
| effective CTO or something. Eventually, that guy knew I wasn't
| happy or challenged at the job. And when he heard I was looking,
| he just offered me a job. So I became a contractor for him.
|
| Eventually, one of our clients had their developer just walk in
| the middle of a project and they needed me there like every day
| to salvage the situation. After a while, they realized it would
| be more cost effective to just essentially buy me. So now I work
| for them, and I have for the past 6 or 7 years. Timeline is a
| little fuzzy. This client is major. You've heard of them. Now, I
| get recruiters contacting me and solicitations in my email even
| though I haven't actively looked for a job since 2007. Even
| though the place I work for is not even a technology company.
|
| Names do matter.
| kingrazor wrote:
| I also had no degree and wound up working for a small software
| company as an IT "intern" which quickly lead to being their
| sole IT person. That company was also a complete shit-show, but
| had I not worked there I wouldn't have gained the skills that
| lead to my current role, which is the best job I've had yet.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| It is definitely true for the most part. I took a software
| engineering job in A software firm that's considered on of the OG
| Silicon Valley company after I graduated. Unfortunately, I very
| quickly realized that whenever I applied to FAANG or other "SV
| cool kids" companies, I would not get an opportunity, meanwhile,
| new grads from my same Uni kept getting those jobs. You don't get
| interviews because you work at a non glamorous company, but you
| work at a non glamorous company because you don't get interviews.
| It's a tough cycle that takes some serious work to get out of.
|
| A thing that may be at play here is that you add "years of
| experience" on your resume, and therefore as a lateral hire, are
| expected to get paid more and therefore the risk aversion.
|
| Another thing at play could be the recency of experience. Your
| most recent item on the resume is what catches the most
| attention, so if it is something like SWE at Walgreens vs Senior
| at MIT, the latter sounds more promising (even if it's not true).
|
| TLDR; there are consequences of not starting at the right
| company, because they compound over time.
| nnoitra wrote:
| What should a new grad do to avoid starting at the wrong
| company? Stay unemployed?
| foobiekr wrote:
| Find a job at a company before graduation.
|
| But basically, go somewhere that isn't a black mark on your
| resume. I mean, there are obvious companies like Veritas,
| IBM, Symantec, Oracle, Cisco, HP (not Aruba), PornHub, ...
| which should be avoided because they have, for good or for
| bad, poor reputations for the junior candidates coming out of
| them (senior is quite a bit better - if they still code,
| which you have to watch out for). Anonymous startup (not
| crypto) probably a better choice, plus you will learn more.
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