Hacker News Reader

Comment by Bahamut | Hacker News Reader

FWIW, I'm in a FAANG and finding Scala devs is even a problem within my own org and team. We've resorted to teaching largely Java devs Scala on the job with mixed results. A former senior manager who made the decision supposedly viewed going all in on Scala as a mistake in large part due to the huge time loss in ramping people up & problems hiring.

I like what I've used of the language at work, although I tend to write a lot of JavaScript on a day to day basis, but to say the right hiring process makes Scala an advantage is not quite right in my own experience.

View on HN

I'm not trying to guess where you work, or saying this applies to your company or team, but as usual, FAANG is not a very helpful acronym here.

From what I know there are very successful teams that use mostly Scala, at least at Apple and Netflix.

Now Amazon... I've had some AWS recruiter approach me specifically because I was looking for a new Scala job, who assured me they had a few products 100% in Scala. He then directed me to a team that didn't give a damn and was looking for a generalist. Not the first time I experienced the broken recruiting process at Amazon.

> We've resorted to teaching largely Java devs Scala on the job with mixed results.

If I had to hire and teach people for Scala, I would probably go with those familiar with TypeScript or C#.

https://twitter.com/alexelcu/status/1175293360963227648

Hiring Java devs is the problem. It's a lowest common denominator language.

Try looking for Ruby or JS devs. It's a lot easier to teach someone from a dynamic background how to leverage a type system than it is to teach an imperative developer to write side effect free code. State is a crutch.

They just happen to be people who has done Java - we hire the best devs we can, regardless of language experience (my own team has interviewed/hired people who have done primarily Python, Ruby, JavaScript, Clojure, and/or Java). A couple turned out pretty well, but several turned out to be much more junior than we expected. I should add that I have no love for Java myself, I rather not be writing Java at all if I can help it.

If there is one thing this profession has taught me about hiring, it is that it is very difficult to predict who the top performers will be. Blanket assumptions will often prove to be not true when searching for the cream of the crop.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com