Comment by atmosx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by atmosx | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a professional developer but I would be very interested even in low-salary junior developer job in Ruby. But most jobs posting I see require excellent knowledge of virtually every technology out there.

I wonder how many developers are excellent at:

* UNIX admin (setting up sql + nginx + unicorn on BSD/Linux) Rails/JS/CSS3/HTML5 * TDD * Excellent Closure and/or Scala * Virtualisatin/scaling/concurrency (put another dozens of varying subjects here... and you're spot on).

I mean, I do linux/unix setup/admin writing firewall rules, setting services for FUN at home since 2000 and there's nothing I can't do given a little bit of time some documentation and a guy to ask a few questions if I get into serious trouble.

But saying I or everyone else is a master in all these things, seriously?

My gut tells me that most companies want the miracle-man or don't know what they are looking for. Hope I'm wrong.

My favorite is this one from FogCreek...

Incredible coding skills. Your friends and coworkers describe you as an "animal."

...A little intimidating ain't it? Not sure what an animal developer truly is.

> Your friends and coworkers describe you as an "animal."

That made me laugh so hard. Sounds like a borderline HR issue. :-)

Well, one programming teacher I had said that i was like a hunting dog, because I would stick with a problem until I've solved it, If I had incredible coding skills I would probably apply

> Your friends and coworkers describe you as an "animal." You don't shower, you have a thick covering of fur, and you growl at strangers.

Intimidating is often the point. I'd imagine it's a reflection of the culture, in this case that timidity may be eaten for brunch at the daily stand up.

Spolsky did write for years about how he only hired devs who (very rough paraphrasing from memory):

- were geniuses - top of class - CS only - Ivy League - could recall the ins and outs of pointer arithmetic - Solve binary-recursive-whatcha-ma-callem puzzles in their sleep - are rockstars

Apply anyways. The person reading the resumes usually knows what they really want.

And so all job postings list expert skills in everything under the sun, and all applicants apply to every job. Thus we get this mutually-assured diluted applicant pool which benefits neither side. And with no feedback to de-selected applicants, things never change. So it goes....

HR does not understand engineering.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com