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Comment by aristofun | Hacker News Reader

You can’t be opportunistic in hi tech job market. This just doesn’t work.

What is always in demand is your deep meaningful work experience and this is the only parameter worth optimizing for.

If you can show a few years of building a complex software product - it doesn’t matter if you did it using C++ or brainfuck.

And you will always beat candidates with certificates but lack of such meaningful experience.

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Ha! The Netherlands would like to have a word with you. All non big tech companies are like "Oh, you don't have Java experience? That's okay, we know you have talent and are a capable individual... NEXT"

Source: my experience

And? You put in your cv you know Java, and solved. I mean, if you have experience with a few mainstream languages, it should be no problem to handle yet another one. I have done this several times. Yes, I lie in my cv, but that doesn’t mean I cannot work with yet another unknown programming language and be productive after a few weeks. More often than not, the real issue is to get to know the business logic in a new job, that may take a few months (more than enough time to get up to speed with a new language).

Notice I said “mainstream” languages. This means stuff like Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, Go, TS, etc. Now, stuff like Lisp, Haskell, Clojure, ok, that’s different enough.

What are you going to say in an interview when they ask you to describe your Java experience?

I would have no problem taking on people with excellent c++ or c# experience for a longer term role if they show they are committed to spending time improving their java skills. If you are hiring for a very short assignment then obviously you're going to want the specific skills you're hiring for.

But that's the problem. With big corporations you probably wouldn't be the one deciding who to hire. It will be some HR person who doesn't know what qualities are important. They just Ctrl+f through the stack of CV's looking how often keyword 'x' occurs.

Had a guy with c++ experience for C# job - never again. Yes it is generalization but he messed up basically half a year of company work.

If in the interview for C# or Java someone doesn’t write idiomatic C# or Java - but writes his c/c++ „for loops” it won’t work.

Management went over to hire that guy because we needed a developer and he was living close to the office… Worst hire ever - even a guy who we hired remotely that seemed to cheat because he did nothing or not much was waaay better because after 2 months we fired him and he did not break anything and did not make other team mates angry besides management.

I guess the problem was more that the guy was a jerk or not willing to learn. I do remember a C++ guy who would only ever do stuff in text files refusing to use a database which was ok up to a point, until it wasn't. What I meant was that someone who has the competency to understand complex C/C++ will not struggle to learn to work well with Java/C#

But that is The Netherlands- good luck buying a flat or house. Also good luck getting an employee because most people on normal salaries cannot afford to rent something decent that is not 2 hours commute time. While OV is quite nice in NL, trains ar e still expensive and also companies pay for travel costs but not for your time between home and office.

Agreed. Your comment inspired this blog post [0] expanding on the idea.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40908810

I love the idea of a second-order HN which is just content inspired by or in response to something posted on HN

Wow, Im flattered

You are certainly right for the higher level higher paying jobs that look for elite candidates. How would you modify your answer to also include less experienced candidates who are looking for something to specialize and build complex products for?

Technical skills come and go. Soft Skills and Project Management are universal and always (but not explicitly) in demand. No matter the technical stack or project domain, you will always be working as a team negotiating requirements, writing tickets, estimating work, and communicating across domain boundaries. Getting good at this process and then executing on that work is the one-two punch of a Senior developer and above. The management track is getting a team of people to do these steps in harmony.

> something to specialize and build complex products for

Generally you specialize in a particular business domain. Being realistic, you get this skill by repeating the above (PM and PR) in a particular domain enough that it soaks your brain like a brine. This is particularly true if you work in a regulated industry. If you wanted to get into a particular domain, target working for teams and companies explicitly working that domain as a way to immerse yourself. Once there, get cozy with the Product Manager as a way of drip-feeding learning the domain.

The only goal for less experienced candidate is to get a position in a good project.

So I’d invest in optimizing my cv to pass as many hr filters as i can and in my portfolio of pet projects or open source contributions — to demonstrate that I am capable to do meaningful work e2e.

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