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Comment by syndicatedjelly | Hacker News Reader

So you don’t interview anyone whose work is company proprietary?

nope. tech is so fast moving if you're not at least experimenting with your own code then you're not going to be a good fit. we tend to also hire engineers who have contributed to open source.

I experiment, of course. At work.

And if you don't let people experiment during work, but only hire people that do, then that's a bad sign.

I got irrationally angry about this at a previous job. Everyone was all excited management was having us all do a "hackathon" and I am loud and grumpy about how this should just be part of the normal course of business.

We found solutions and tools that better solve problems but to this day have still not been implemented.

Not everything needs a novel solution but not making room for innovation because the company is operating as a feature factory is boring.

Most code is not written with the latest technologies or techniques though.

Why would being up to date matter?

I think you just gave the answer and then the question.

I do not understand your reply.

Good to know there are hiring managers out there who think like this. Thanks for the reply.

May I ask what industry you work in?

I just want to know the company name so I don't accidently ever apply there.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40211188

The company that demands cutting edge experience is a strava for skateboarders app?

I thought he was going to say that it was something like a foundational R&D lab or cybersecurity firm

Yeah sounds like the measure of "cutting edge experience" here is defined as "has recently thrashed around in latest trendy JS framework"

No kidding. I'd be happy to walk through the stuff I have on github but I also don't want my coworkers measured by whether they do the same.

If anything, personal projects can end up being distractions from focusing singularly on work. Even though I'm entirely in favour of them, I also remember when I had a newborn at home and a family member in hospital, and such projects were not at all feasible.

there's also the issue where the stuff i put on github is for hacky throwaway stuff and not representative of my professional standards for a "real" job. it'd be like interviewing a chef and judging their abilities based off of what they made themselves for dinner last night rather than what they cook in a restaurant

>tech is so fast moving

I recently meet a programmer in his 50s, still working on Cobol. Sure, you aren't gonna hire him, but do you think he has any worries about his job?

I had to learn cobol last year. Not hard if you have read lots of books from the 70s and 80s and have a strong background in algorithms. It is expensive and annoying to maintain these systems, but until there's a business case to replace the underlying application, he's safe

>tech is so fast moving if you're not at least experimenting with your own code then you're not going to be a good fit

Huh? What kind of stuff ya do?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com