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The Web Development Skills Crisis
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Jul 11, 2008 03:28 PM
from the those-ajax-guys-are-hard-to-find dept.
from the those-ajax-guys-are-hard-to-find dept.
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister raises questions regarding Web development skills in an era of constant innovation. Sure, low barriers to entry give underdog technologies ample opportunity to thrive without the backing of name-brand vendors. But doesn't this fragmentation of the Web development market put undue pressure on developers to specialize? Choosing one tool to be your bread and butter from a field this broad is one thing, McAllister writes. Recruiting talent for a Web project when your technology requirements eliminate most of the applicants is another. The result is a crisis, McAllister concludes, one in which maintaining a marketable skill set gets more and more difficult as the so-called state of the art changes on an almost daily basis."
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change emphasis away from specifics (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the emphasis needs to be less on specific and proprietary technologies and more on how a candidate thinks. While the task and platform/architecture at hand is important, picking someone because they know flash, and you're "doing" flash may be the wrong reasoning. Instead, focus on picking someone who has some proven background, strong in at least a couple of areas. Verify they really are strong, but then ask them questions that make them think. Give them problems to solve. Give them something unsolvable to solve. See how the react.
Getting a sense of how they maneuver in problem-solving situations is going to be a much better indicator of their eventual worth than some credential (certificate, etc.) in the chosen technology du jour. A good tech can always and easily adapt to new and different ways to do things.
Re:change emphasis away from specifics (Score:5, Funny)
I know what he means! I've put this job offer through our HR folks literally WEEKS ago and have not seen a SINGLE candidate's resume!
Wanted to hire, Jr. Web Developer.
Required Skills, minimum 10 years experience in the following:
Silverlight .NET
Microsoft(tm) AJAX(tm)
C-pound
SQL Server 2005
MySQL 5.0
ColdFusion
ATOM
IBM(tm) SOA
MS-Groovy
PRISM
Compensation: $14K/yr
Parent
Re:change emphasis away from specifics (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:change emphasis away from specifics (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't laugh. A couple of years ago I saw a very similar job ad. They ran it for months. Nobody with the skill set they wanted would have taken the job at the offered rate (less than $10/hour). I don't remember if I emailed them asking if they were out of their fucking minds.
Parent
Re:change emphasis away from specifics (Score:5, Interesting)
You'd be surprised how often people run ridiculous ads because the people doing the hiring already know who they want to hire, but corporate policy requires that they advertise the position.
I've done it.
Fortunately, these days I work at a much saner employer.
Parent
Re:change emphasis away from specifics (Score:5, Informative)
Those types of jobs ( especially if they include only a PO Box) are written in order to show that no US Citizens are interested/qualified for the job. The are called Labor Market Tests. The job can then be given to an employee that requires company based sponsorship (eg H1-B Visa).
To see an example of such a job ad (for a job at Cisco) click here: http://www.jobdestruction.info/ShameH1B/Library/Archives/FragomenCiscoJobAd.htm/ [jobdestruction.info]
Parent
Re:change emphasis away from specifics (Score:5, Funny)
We had no problem finding junior devs with those skills, but finding people with PhDs and 20 years of experience in Silverlight and AJAX proved problematic for the senior positions.
Parent
Re:change emphasis away from specifics (Score:5, Interesting)
You're obviously joking, but I've had it happen to me. I actually had an incident in which the employer was requesting, for a mid level position, 2 years more experience in Java than were possible except for its creators: the JDK had been out for about 4 years at the time and they were asking for 6. I decided it was a simple error on their part and applied anyway. To my shock, I got an angry call from their HR department, who were actually calling to chew me out for applying even though I was "unqualified" for not having the required 6 years of experience. At first I thought it was a joke and laughed, but it became clear they were serious. I tried to explain to them that there were perhaps 7 people on earth with what they were asking for because the JDK had only been out for 4 years, but they were having none of it, and with some parting insults, hung up on me.
In all I'm glad I don't work for them, any company that stupid and unprofessional would not be good for my reputation to have on my resume.
Parent
Re:change emphasis away from specifics (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it does happen. I think Java was one of the most common offenders in during the dot-com era. From what I hear, it happens because the hiring manager asks for a middle or senior-level person who "knows Java" or whatever. To HR drones, the definition of junior/middle/senior pretty much boils down to # of years experience with the skillset requested, they don't follow the tech enough to know.
The sad thing is, companies with good HR people that work with the hiring manager are relatively few. At most companies HR exists as a gatekeeper to the hiring process, and good hiring managers learn to work around them. Of course, once HR realizes people are bypassing them, they find ways to expand to the rules to block it, which of course makes it even harder for hiring managers to find people.
In the end, companies with clueless, controlling, and inflexible HR departments get exactly the kind of workforce they deserve.
Parent
Re:change emphasis away from specifics (Score:4, Funny)
During the dot-com boom, I got my first job by answering a silly ad like that.
I just put the huge list of skills into the application email, and next to them just noted "yes, yes, no, no, sorta, yes, a little, yes, no, no, no, yes".
Turned out what they wanted was greatly different from that list, but the sheer fact I responded meant I was more or less the only applicant :)
Parent
Honest question (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the state of the art really changing that fast or is it all a problem of "buzzword turbulence", if you will?
Re:Honest question (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly.
I would add, the real problem isn't even the buzzwords. It's the incompetence in HR departments.
I see this in my own company when I try to hire developers.
I've learned how to navigate this bureacracy now, but it was tough at first. I had candidates with 10 years experience with JavaScript who were given phone screens. They explained they'd used hidden iFrames and tags to retreive server-side interaction since the late 90s, but their resumes were never handed off to me because they never specifically used the XMLHttpRequest object so it wasn't precicely "AJAX" as its currently defined.
This kind of madness just takes so much energy to overcome, for both candidates and hiring managers.
Now, when I create a Req for a new hire, I keep it simple. If we're hiring a web developer, I look for self-described proficiency in Java, ASP.Net, Python, Ruby or PHP. Any will do.
When I hire a windows developer, I look for the same with Java, C#, or C++.
I'm of the belief that if you're been developing web apps with C# for 3 years, you can be an expert in Python and PHP inside 6 months.
So far, this has worked great.
Parent
What's the crisis? (Score:5, Funny)
Real programmers don't care what language they need to write applications in. They write them in C.
Re:What's the crisis? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:What's the crisis? (Score:4, Funny)
Excuse me, but REAL programmers use butterflies.
Parent
your technical requirements eliminate candidates (Score:5, Insightful)
because you are a moron.
if someone was building a house, they would hire carpenters.
if someone was building a gigantic stadium, they would hire welders.
they wouldnt hire somebody 'who has experience with ryobi chop saws and drills' or 'must have 10 years experience with fiberglass hammers'. you would assume the person could figure out that a fiber glass hammer is not a big deal compared to a wooden hammer or a plastic hammer, and a ryobi chop saw works pretty much like every other damn chop saw.
then again, if you were in the building trades, you wouldnt call yourself an 'engineer' just because you can do amazing things with a crane or a nail gun.
Re:your technical requirements eliminate candidate (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
My very recent experience in hiring a web dev (Score:5, Interesting)
My (admittedly high) goals was a web developer that new PHP, could work with Linux (SSH), and had very basic client-side programming (C, Perl, whatever) to develop more tools for us down the road. Oh, and someone that could do some graphic art work would be a definite value-add.
Every single person that came in was an mainly ASP or ASP.NET programmer. Only two had Linux experience. Three or four had Photoshop experience. As a programmer myself, I ventured to the hopeful candidates on what languages they would like to learn next, or what skills they want to improve upon. Across the board, they were all happy staying with ASP, didn't want to learn PHP, and some inquired into when we would want to move from PHP to ASP. I had intentionally kept the field open to non-PHP people to try and find a true programmer that just didn't have those letters on their resume, but the majority were sticking themselves to a single language.
When all was said and done, we hired someone. He didn't know Linux, and didn't know PHP, but he was a definite "Active Learner [wikipedia.org]". He was self-taught in nearly everything he knew, and was willing to learn any language we needed him to learn. He was one of the two candidates that had expressively mentioned that programming was just picking up a language and using it; all the rest were ASP specialists and thought that using another language wasn't worth their investment.
Re:My very recent experience in hiring a web dev (Score:4, Interesting)
I wish I'd met you in some of my job interviews. I've found that in general, admitting to an employer that I don't already know everything about the language and have 20 Fortune 500 sites to show for it is the kiss of death.
When I hire technical people, I look for them to have some knowledge relationship to what we're doing (for example, when I was hiring a DBA to manage a sybase system, I didn't care if we got Oracle applicants, as long as they knew a little SQL), and I look for relatively junior people. I find when I hire senior people they tend to tell me everything will be fine, but then when they actually start work they want to throw out all my work so they can redo it with their pet technologies, while junior people will let me train them up to do it my way. And my way works for me. And junior people cost less.
There are relatively few programmers (or, for that matter, managers) who understand that a good programmer can just pick up the required technologies and deal with it, rather than having to hire specialists for every stupid language and format.
I've long since understood that the way to make money as a web developer is to get certified on the latest drivel that comes out of Microsoft, no matter how bad it is, and get jobs doing it. If you instead determine what is the best technology for each client/employer and use it, you'll get marginalized.
Parent
Crikey - Big Discounts (Score:5, Insightful)
Web development is such a dead-end job. Most web sites are by kids, imbeciles and graphic designers who fancy themselves as coders. Trying to maintain or develop their code is soul-destroying.
The next time you try to use a small business web site to buy something, do yourself a favour and look at the page source.
If your details aren't being sent out over the intartubes unecrypted, and if you still want to make the "purchase" you might see a way to pay nothing, or bare minimum with a discount.
Scotland is a good place to start looking.
Too much to keep track of (Score:4, Insightful)
I've run into this very thing before in trying to decide what to study. There are so many different web languages, each of which come with their own toolsets and frameworks. How are we expected to keep up with it all? I don't want to commit to a language or technology that might easily be eclipsed within 2-3 years.
My biggest concern is the amount of time required just to keep up with the Jonses. How much time can I siphon away from paying work on php to learn about rails or django? What about the X number of new Ajax toolkits that have recently emerged, or some supposedly fantastic deployment set? I think of how fast javascript has accelerated since 2005 from digraceful reject to shining star, and it truly terrifies me how little I know of it. I'm used to mastering a language, understanding its uses and differences from others, then applying it towards the future. Do I have time to do that any more?
In the end, I came to the conclusion that I would just study Java and its ilk, because it seems to have made major inroads in enterprise applications and it's free-ish. That's good enough for me, and it bodes well for long term stability.
Re:Too much to keep track of (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
The problem is even worse when you add HR people (Score:4, Insightful)
Since they only match acronyms and can't discriminate from a person capable of easily assimilating new technologies vs. someone can't can't and/or is very inexperienced.
More acronyms = more HR inefficiency.
-M
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Always kinda blew my mind when people get anal about specific technologies.
Do I know JavaEE? PHP? Ajax?
Doesn't matter.
Why?
Because I know programming. WTF does that mean? It means that language/technology is irrelevant because it takes me a matter of days to pick up on new languages/technologies.
Anyone who touts a single language as some kind of achievement is fucking pathetic.
FLAME ON!
There's a shortage, and it's bad (Score:5, Interesting)
This just in: people who can constantly master and excel at new technologies with minimal lead time, constantly changing specs, expectations, tools, and standards, and put them in front of end users in rapid, frequent development bursts are hard to come by.
Wow, who'dathunkit?
I think there's a trifecta of issues that plague the hiring of web developers:
(1) Rapid Technological Change means no OJT via college. Unless you're doing your web tech in Java, there's a decent chance you're not getting college grads trained in your language and tools. The good ones will have adaptable skills of course. You do know how to distinguish between the good just-graduated devs and the bad, right? No? Oh...
(2) Crowd of Pretenders lowers expectations of skill/quality, and salary. Shockingly, unqualified idiots are willing to work for less. Some places hear about these mythical highly skilled web devs willing to work full time (+?) for $32k a year, and generously offer $40k. They get no response, or they get morons. This reflects poorly back on web developers in general, especially those who are skilled programmers.
(3) An incredibly low barrier to entry for many models means talented people start their own companies. If I'm one of the most skilled, and can handle (or partner) to provide design, programming, and business aspects of a web page, there's a decent chance I can find a niche where I can make a run at a real business. Which is why there are a thousand Bantrs and Flickrs and Cheezbrgrs and Meebo Zeebo Zimbra Flumbrs all spun up. The expected value for a buyout by Google or being the next SmugMug is so high, even a small chance makes it worth it, especially if you can get enough funding to put food on the table.
And #3 has an inverse: the low barrier to entry also means that a lot of people get their godaddy hosting, start tossing together web pages with their pirated photoshop, and think they're ready to make 80k a year.
It's so horrifically bad, I've considered going into business as an interviewer. I've had remarkable success getting good devs on my team. I think a major problem with companies hiring web developers is: they don't know how. They don't know which skills out there are transitive to skills they need. They don't know which related skills (security, networking, system administration and integration, database architecture) might be critical for their project.
As a lot of cogent programmer/bloggers have pointed out, you can only really hire someone better than you are by luck. I keep coming across companies who could really, really use some programming/IT experience - in fact, it's so bad, they don't even know WHY they need it. Their knowledge isn't sufficient to even inform them to what good staff could do for them. You start a little project for them and ask, "Well, why not do this?" "Oh, you can do that?" "Sure, and we could also..." "Really? Can you...?"
Ultimately, you also get what you pay for. If people expect "good" web developers to work for way less than skilled programmers in other languages, they're nuts.
OTOH, I think the specialization argument is bunk. How many specialties are there in application programming? Everything from databases to development tools to reporting, 3d software, operating systems, embedded, RTOS, a/v en/decoding - we could go on all day. But web is fragmented? Heck, web isn't *that* fragmented. It's one of the things that makes development so fun, fast, and effective using it as a platform.
Re:There's a shortage, and it's bad (Score:4, Insightful)
I think a major problem with companies hiring web developers is: they don't know how. They don't know which skills out there are transitive to skills they need. They don't know which related skills (security, networking, system administration and integration, database architecture) might be critical for their project.
Large company or small, that's it right there. If you want good people, you have to know how to interview for good people. This is one reason why, in new companies or even new teams in big companies, a top-1% "rock star programmer" is so damn valuable as a "seed engineer". Get one really smart guy, teach him how to interview properly, and you'll have a team of highly qualified engineers down the road.
you can only really hire someone better than you are by luck
The reverse is quite important too: really good people can easily detect when they're bing interviewed by a dumbass, and won't work for that company. Bright people who ask obviously good and on-target interview questions attract other bright people, more than any salary you can probably afford to pay.
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's a shortage of companies willing to take the effort and risk to train. I had this conversation with my father, who was bemoaning the lack of skilled mechanical engineers. If your requirements are specific, don't expect a huge pile of people (without jobs, mind you!) to be waiting in the wings for your spot to open up. You need someone who might take a year or two to get up to speed, but once there will be good.
THEN - and this is important - you have to be a good place to work and... raise compensation when the person is now the highly trained mythical creature that you would have given your right arm for the year before. Your goal should be to keep his resume un-updated and off monster.
So yeah, there is a definite shortage of people pre-trained for your job opening. There's also a shortage of gold at the end of rainbows and fountains of youth. I think this is a matter of unreasonable expectations.
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the entire problem. Companies love to whine about shortages of employees, while it's their own fault. It was always easier when companies treated skilled employees like assets, now they treat them like disposable labor and are paying dearly for it.
The list:
pensions
training
raises
bonuses
perks
All gone except a 3% cost of living raise that is just compensating for inflation. They complain and bitch and moan about turnover and no "loyalty" when they're the ones at fault. They took away all of the reasons to be loyal to cut costs, so employees jump for a new job with higher salary because salary is the only benefit left.
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Tell me about it. I kept my programming and web development skills up to date, but I was fired for being sick and being there for four and a half years. If I had been there for five years or more, they would be paying me more for pension, bonuses, more vacation time, raises, more perks, and bonuses.
So it is better to get rid of people like me who get sick on the job from the stress, and hire someone who will work for peanuts and be disposable in a few years and keep their 90% IT turn-a-round time for getting rid of old employees and keep hiring on new ones at cheaper rates.
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
You seem a little....
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
At-will employment is also part of the problem. Because I can just jump ship if I want to (many parts of employee contracts are unenforceable) the company has little incentive to train me. Why spend the money to train me when another company can then hire me for slightly higher wages and reap the benefits of the other guys sending me to school?
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
At will employment works both ways.
Companies can, and will, drop you at any moment without a reason given if it serves their needs.
Loyalty is earned. If a company doesn't value me and pay me/train me accordingly of course I will jump ship if I find what looks to be a better opportunity.
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I'm not so sure about all this whining about I can be fired at any moment because this kind of behavior has been around for far more decades than the internet. And the article isn't about people getting fired/hired.
What I do see is a growing problem of new software development becoming full of bad practices.
Old code example. Perl CGI. It's ancient and by modern terms considered a has-been. But it has some advantages: It's very well documented and it works very well. But it's not easy to write big fancy applications using CGI. So people say it sucks.
Moderate code example. Perl HTML::Mason. It's a better application platform than CGI that allows for people to start using real software to write real applications that do real things. It's very well documented and works.
Modern code example. Ruby on Rails. This is a fantastic platform for making applications very quickly with a lot of bells and whistles. But there is little documentation compared to prior platforms and precious little documentation for what it does.
So where is the crisis? When you use Rails you only know Rails. But you don't have good exposure to how to do Ruby, CSS, JavaScript. Case in point: Rails uses prototype and scriptolicious for JavaScript. These libraries are dependent upon Oject JavaScript, which is not trivial. But sooner or later, you get into a jam with Rails where you have to know now only JavaScript, but Objective JavaScript, and then prototype, and finally Rails. So in order to use any javascript that Rails is based on you have to be a pretty proficient user of JavaScript.
Multiply this by Ruby, HTML, CSS and you have a high investment in four core languages just to write a real application. So you have this entry barrier problem where some guy buys a book on Rails and becomes good enough to do something. But not something that can have any functional extension beyond what Rails can present.
The crisis is that you get a long ways in a few lines of code. And if something goes awry -- you have to know a hell of a lot about all the underlying languages. Each one of them can become a nearly full time job trying to keep up with.
Specialization will continue on the Rails level of focus. But you can't get an effective development team (can it be done alone anymore?) unless you keep a few core members who have great skills at one or maybe two of the underlying core components.
I don't think there is a solution to this until we can eliminate all the junk in these core components (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) so that writing code isn't such a complete pain in the butt. There's some evolution that has to happen out there.
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
The bitch, in my opinion, is that the guy who knows Perl::CGI and Perl::Mason can probably learn Ruby on Rails and have a better understanding of the underlying concepts (having been doing this sort of thing for years), but most companies would rather higher the guy who read the Ruby on Rails book. He has the "right skill set" (meaning he has a vague understanding of the language we're working with right now). The other guy has a conceptual grasp of the whole pie, and could easily learn the specific skill, but his lack of experience with "whatever we happen to be using at the moment" makes him somehow unsuitable.
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the curse of HR. Human resource people have no idea what we do or how to hire us so they go by the buzz word of the week (usually spelled wrong - looking for Pearl programmers?). Companies that let engineers hire engineers get a much better quality of employee I think. If they then offer a good work environment then they'll probably have an awesome crew that can kick serious ass.
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Long working hours, no compensation
6-day work weeks
I am in the Casino/Sports Betting industry and good enough to tell them 7-15 5days a week or bye-bye .. but most of my colleagues are working for shit, 6 days a week 2 shifts ... That is in Costa Rica....
Moral of the story : learn stuff, do not count on training, have an attitude, and be good. ...
We just lost a support guy who was answering phones (software developer engineer), and a designer, because he was sick of answering the phone on sunday afternoons - yes, designers make nice pix 9-5, then they wanna go home and be with their family or smoke pot .... they are artists, just like programmers ....
BOSSES DO NOT UNDERSTAND THAT. Period. But they will learn, as all you IT people stop being pussies and tell that what you want, then do not make exclusions.
I can do it, you can do it ...
OK, terrible week, 8+ 4-5 hours a week of coding at work + coding at home (for other clients).... so I had my Friday night drinks before shooting some people on PS3 ...
Anyways, everyone stop whining, start downloading ebooks from pirate bay, learn how to use prototpype, PHP and get a job and have an attitude.
Problem is: people (especially in the US) want free (mostly useless) training. Elsewhere (esp, Europe and Asia) people download/buy a book on whatever, and then write a program just to learn it. They end up in a good job where they perfect.... Problem solved.
Ok that is the drunk version, but I went to all kinds of trainings, and 99% was useless. Just write an app that does .SOMETHING. in language @#$%, then you learn something. Then read a book about it, and you will be better than any certified monkey.
For the record: I am a software engineer with many years in unix/net administration, and I coded PHP/MYSQL before landing in a full time coding MSSQL ASP (!!!JSCRIPT!!), and JS.
I am working on a sportsbook software, and have 3x the assignments I can do. I am a healty nerd who rides bikes, exercises and scuba dives I do not live in my grandma's basement. In other words; I am a normal person and can learn enough technologies and sustain+save well enough, because I care and want to train.
Can you do it? Yes. Just want it?
No I am not the writer of "Oprah you can do it" or "Chicken soup for the soul" ... I am jsut a slightly drunk (now) programmer/IT admin/tech geek who thinks that instead of all the wining, all these people can make a very nice living without ripping people off, and without learning things day by day.
ahmm.... I go and watch some chick-flick my wife wants to watch .... life is not perfect
Just my 2c ..
Parent
As an steam turbine engineer... (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't skimp on the training. Its exactly what makes your employees experts in their areas and want to stick around. We also have casual Friday every day, and that doesn't hurt either.
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
You're right, but that flies in the face of contemporary management theory.
The way companies do it now is they "buy" the skills they want: they demand outrageous skill combinations, and don't settle until they get them. Then they offer the person the bare minimum they think they'll take, and plan to never promote them. At a management job I had a few years ago, I got told by senior management that my staff would never get promotions, because that would cost money, and that the employer didn't care if they left because of it, because we'd just replace them. (I started looking for a new job the next day. I didn't want a promotion, but I figured if they're that stupid I didn't want to be there.) I told them I preferred to hire junior people, who were cheaper and more malleable, train them up and them promote them to mid-level. They basically told me I was amusing.
Meanwhile, these employers who don't care if their people leave and will lay them off at the drop of a poor earnings report are the first to complain about "lack of company loyalty" among their employees. I've reached the point that if an employer complains to me about lack of company loyalty, I tell them outright that I have no more loyalty to them than they have to me, and explain to them that I base that assessment on how I've seen them treat their other people, and give examples.
Surprisingly, they've actually tried to keep me after that.
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
They were offering something like $40K a year.
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a shortage of web developers, it's a shortage of web developers with skills.
Correction:
It's not a shortage of web developers, it's a shortage of web developers with currently in-demand/what's hot now skills.
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude, it's a shortage of people. It's caused by decades of birth control and a philosophy that you should wait till you're 30 before you start a family. It's in every field of endeavor. It has nothing to do with education, or loyalty, or any of that shite. It has to do with demographics, and it's going to keep getting worse, most likely for the rest of your life.
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a shortage of web developers with the skill of learning new skills. There are plenty of one-trick ponies that will be flipping burgers in 5 years when their "skill du jour" expires and they can no longer operate a computer with any meaningful capacity. For example, if you are great with flash but you refuse to believe that a large MB flash app on the index page may cause a drop in traffic, then better practice up your "would you like fries with that?"
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what java developers said about PHP guys 5 years ago.
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
True story: I just interviewed at a very small company. I already had another job offer on the table, mind you, and just went for the interview because a friend/former coworker had just gotten hired there. So it wasn't a big deal to me if I got the job or not. But I really did want to work with my friend again.
The job was a LAMP dev position. I have been a web developer for 8 years and have loads of experience with some very hot skill sets, lots of successes under my belt, plus the all important aptitude and desire to learn new things all the time. Don't have a lot of PHP experience, though the consulting firm made me take an online test and I scored 80% on it. Why? Because I know how to program, and PHP is just another language that lets you write web pages. So I used my existing programming knowledge to do well on a PHP test. I scored perfectly on another test given me by the firm.
I disclosed all of this to the interviewer because I don't want to get a job on false pretenses. The tool proceeded to ask me reference manual questions like "What does function x do?"
This isn't sour grapes about not getting the job; I had another one waiting (ironically using another technology I don't have much experience with, got it on the strength of other skills) and I don't know if I would have taken it anyhow after seeing the place. I laughed afterwards that this guy's idea of an interview was to ask me ref manual questions as a way of determining my programming aptitude. I hope he gets someone who knows every PHP function and still doesn't know how to write decent code. That'd serve him right. You get what you ask for.
Parent
Re:I gave up (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The Real Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Sillyness (Score:4, Informative)
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