Comment by coolsunglasses | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coolsunglasses | Hacker News Reader

Engineers are valuable for what they can learn (skills and about the problems they are solving) not for what they know at a particular point in time.

A myopic way to look at hiring.

Edit:

You should care about the delta of an engineer's career and knowledge. That says a lot more about how they'll perform now and in the future.

These days companies prove themselves to engineers. I'd rather see something like a more descriptive and meaningful glassdoor so that I can know what companies are worth my time.

Tags/attributes like:

"$company is in the 67% percentile for employee freedom in your job type [Software Engineer]"

"$company practices open allocation."

"$company is known for fast-firing. They are also known for paying XX% above average for your job type [Software Engineer]"

I don't want some bullshit tag-based skill endorsement clone of LinkedIn profiles. I hate LinkedIn for a reason. I definitely don't need to be even more discoverable by recruiters - my website is a fucking curse on that front as it is. I leave it up because I do get valuable conversations going because of it.

I'm more interested in sites that could further balance the lopsided information power dynamic between employers and employees.

I want to know if there's a chance of a fit between me and the company before I even email somebody.

A company is more likely to be able to recruit me the more substantive information I have about what it's like to work for them. Shut the fuck up about perks, tell me about how you empower your employees to perform their best and entrust them to do the job as it needs to be done.

Things like sourcing.io don't just hurt engineers, they hurt the companies that recruit like this (technology checklisting) too.

-

Making it even easier for lazy recruiters to be shitty is a bullshit thing to do. May the spam of a thousand recruiters looking for "Senior Java developers" flood your inbox and decimate your sanity MacCaw.

(I'm working with Alex on Sourcing.io.)

Hi Chris--I completely agree that an engineer's ability to learn is a huge part of their value. With that said, many companies are searching for engineers who are intimately familiar with particular languages or frameworks. Anyone can get comfortable with a new framework over a weekend--it takes much longer to be become an expert.

Your idea for a better Glassdoor is an interesting. In the future we're hoping to build a set of tools for engineers who are interested in getting a job--we'd like to cater to both sides of the market.

Alex and I do not want to increase the volume of recruiting spam in the world. Poorly-constructed, boilerplate emails are the mark of a bad technical recruiter--we're not building tools to help them. We want to give the great technical recruiters a tool to help them figure out if they should be sending an email to an engineer in the first place. Furthermore, we're encouraging our customers to have the C*O's and engineers construct and send the initial emails--an email from the person you'd be working with is much better than another piece of recruiting spam.

If you'd like to get in touch and chat more please feel to email on richard@sourcing.io.

I don't know if it's universal (Dutch freelance IT); but I would loooove to have a tool that would:

* broadcast my availability to a group of approved (company) recruiters

* let recruiters propose companies to me (and have me list companies I already have contacts at or was introduced at.)

* let me set up job interviews with the interesting opportunities

* and, most importantly, let the recruiters/companies place bids on me negotiate.

I've found that every time I'm on the market I'm essentially running this auction myself and it's a lot of work.

Given the massive impact it has on my earnings I'd love some tooling that would let me focus on the important parts of this process rather than the administrative minutiae.

That is an interesting idea to have some kind of broker platform where you trade skills against rates. I have been exploring a small job platform idea too, and maybe anyone out there wants to chat more?

During my latest round of searching for a new gig, I realized I could use an application to at least track the opportunities I had. If you juggle a bit of interviews at once it becomes a little difficult to keep things sane if you aren't careful. Having something to help me refine my crappy interviews or take adequate notes to realize the pros and cons for future endeavors would've been a godsend. I hadn't really done a lot of interviews for development shops around here so I had no clue what I was missing until I saw it first hand. I kept somewhat adequate notes in OneNote (yes, windows phone and yes I know I'm one of 3 users). I even made an Excel spreadsheet to keep most of the information together but nothing beats charts, graphs, or adequate reminders like "Hey, you should likely prepare for the interview you're about to have buddy" because the ones I weren't prepared for sucked hardcore and they were totally my fault.

I had the idea that it could be beneficial to freelancers/contractors as they do the same thing but usually in much more limited time scales to the x months I took. I'm one to share ideas because if someone makes it, I'll stop building it. As someone that wants to be a freelancer at some point, I don't look forward to the oDesks of the world (no offense to people that do great there) but having just something to keep all of these plates spinning more freely would help a lot of people I think.

Interesting, so you say it is also a problem to track the jobs that company offers? I totally agree that ODesks, elance, etc. are very poor to find a good match between project and interest and rate. These platforms are really about "out-"sourcing, often not about developing solutions to your unique problems.

Well, the main problem is that companies often don't know what skills they really need, and employees don't get a sense for the work culture from vague job descriptions.

Last, from what I heard was that most freelance jobs go via the personal network anyhow.

Just curious if there are others interested in discussing a better project platform for freelancers, and the way to meaningful work? Have a look at http://voki.me for a rough prototype.

I'm currently working on something like that. Still looking for a cofounder: www.innerloop.io

I used to say this as well, as someone who has done C# (5yrs), Perl(2yrs), and Python(5yrs) work. But the truth is that there is a training/ramp-up period during that learning period.

When I made the switch from C# to Python it probably took me a year or two before I became as good at Python as I was at C#. This is also true for a lot of the developers I currently work with who are using Python for the first time.

There is something to be said about being a master of a language, libraries, and tooling around a certain platform and getting there isn't a quick 1-2 week crash course in the language. Sure you can figure out the syntax and make things work, but if you are truly an expert in 1 language, you wont be comparable in another for at least a year while you use the language and learn the ins-and-outs.

People never ask me language questions at work, "how do I do a for loop", but I get daily questions on how virtualenvs work, python packaging, and what libraries to use.

A lot of people have a "Clojure" tag on their LinkedIn profile. It doesn't mean anything. You have to assume in any case that if you're seeking depth, you're going to have to talk to them.

The problem is the tacit assumption that the engineer doesn't also need to pre-validate the company before an interview.

> Engineers are valuable for what they can learn

This statement is also myopic and bordering on cliche. While true, there are a lot of times want to hire for a specific skill set. For instance, if there's a problem that needs solving right now, or a team that needs a new lead (assuming you must bring on outside leads), or a whole number of scenarios.

> You should care about the delta of an engineer's career and knowledge

This is, often times, a great indication of how competent an engineer will be.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com