Top Developer Skills That Will Get You Hired or Promoted | Hacker News Reader

Top Developer Skills That Will Get You Hired or Promoted

blog.smartbear.com

16 pointsBaustin15 comments

How could I read/skim that entire article and not take home anything? Seems like linkbait.

It's important to note there IS a difference between smartbear.com and asmartbear.com

Mostly fluff, non-actionable advice here. :-/

Here's my list keeping the same spirit of the article:

    - put 'rockstar', 'ninja' prefix in every skill you have.
    - use sunglasses and a leather jacket all the time even indoors.
    - learn every rad technology like rails, node, etc.
    - refuse to use old and boring technologies like enterprise java and C/C++.
    - have an aura of superiority around everything you say and do.
    - write many blog posts about expensive programmers vs. cheap hardware and slow cool languages vs. fast boring languages.
    - rant about java.
    - evangelize agile techniques.

In case you'd like to check them out - http://blog.smartbear.com/software-quality/?Author=Danny+Kal...

I like the creativity here. To be honest, the 'rockstar' and 'ninja' stuff is just us having some fun (we actually have a team that is internally known as the "ninja team"). It's stupid, I know.

The one thing I don't agree with here is that SmartBear doesn't use or talk about "old and boring" languages like C/C++. Some of the best content on the blog is about using C++ or C++11 (Danny Kalev writes some great posts). There's actually a new one being published on Wednesday

"Of course, the old standbys apply across the board: good personal hygiene, people schmoozing skills, and excellence in sucking-up techniques. But by and large, the skills that earn you the big money can be summed up in one neat little bumper-sticker: “Be First. Be Fast. Be Right.”

This is disgusting. Big Money? Be First? Did I choose this field to win a popularity contest?

In our office, foosball is a key for any new hire; winning the monthly tournament is a big deal and delivers instant cred,” said one developer.

Wasn't sure if this was a joke or not.

seriously, social media participation will demonstrate how good of a communicator I am? I don't think I would hire based on that.

I agree that random tweets will be of dubious value. Other ways of engaging in social media (blog posts, Google+ posts, etc) do help showcase your communication skills. It doesn't mean that using those communication channels is a requirement, but you typically have limited interaction points during the hiring process to illustrate your communication skills. Think of blog posts et al as a communication "portfolio" you can use to help prospective employers get a larger preview of what they could expect from you.

I don't mean to come off as dismissive but the article seemed to be talking about communication within a team or with customers and users in a face to face environment. Being able to post on a blog well is not going to get you very far talking to project owners/users to understand business problems. I think social media has an extremely limited usefulness when it comes to determining how well someone can communicate within a real world face to face business environment. I would rather rate a potential employee's ability to communicate on the 15-30 minutes I have to talk to them rather than their social media footprint.

Jason Cohen's blog is at asmartbear.com and I love it - I missed there is no "a" in the domain of the op and now I feel tricked.

Not a trick. Jason was actually one of our founders. Although he's no longer with the company, we still do have videos and content that he created in our archives.

Sorry if you don't agree with all of the points she makes here. It's definitely meant to hit on those extra, outside the box skills that could give you the upper hand. Really wasn't meant to be linkbait.

I don't think anybody disagrees with any of those points, but they're blatantly obvious. Which would be fine if there was useful advice for how to improve at those areas, but there isn't.

Surprised I didn't see the term "rock star" here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com