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Comment by brohee | Hacker News Reader

"Finally, whilst I have never coded, because Clojure/Scala is on the JVM it’s very easy to pick up for a good Java developer."

I guess it's another recruiter wondering why he gets no respect from the cattle he handles...

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Oxford Knight are one of the few "good" recruitment companies in London in my opinion. I've never dealt with Abdul directly, but I've met with some of his colleagues over the years and hold them in higher regard than the bigger agencies. At least he's making an effort to understand the landscape in which he operates, which is more effort than most recruiters in London put in!

Oxford Knight is a technical recruitment agency. None of our consultants have written a line of code... yet.

So it seems to be a company-wide feature. It's hard to see though how technically semi-literate technical recruiters can be a good thing at all. Perhaps this explains in part this other telling quote from the article:

I recall the candidate in question being perfect in every aspect (CompSci from top university, sound understanding of data structures, algorithms, complexity... coupled with actual practical programming experience, and oh yeah – decent knowledge of Exotic Risk and Pricing).

Note the order of qualifications, suggesting that having top marks from Oxford is just as relevant/important as knowing how to crank through data structures/algorithms questions; with having actual programming or domain/relevant experience as just a nice plus.

Very telling of their mindset, but also understandable if they are not qualified enough to assess the technical competence of candidates on technical terms alone.

I got the impression that this was someone just out of college. "Knowing how to crank through data structures/algorithms questions" probably means knowing how to talk about them in an interview, not lots of real-world experience. If that's the case, top marks from Oxford may in fact be the most relevant fact about the candidate.

I agree - it sounded very much like someone trying to be "out there writing" rather than a real expert. It was just written like an amateur. That said, who am I to pick on someone trying to improve their online presence?

Interesting - I mentally parsed that as "easy to try in my environment" and skipped right by the implication of "on the JVM it's very easy" as a Clojure/Scala degree-of-difficulty qualifier.

I actually found this article from a non-technical recruiter informative and do respect this effort from the author. It's nice to read from a recruiter who has taken, at first glance, a deeper look at functional programming in the marketplace and shares some insights. There's some hyperbole in the article, but it seems to be coming from a honest perspective.

Actually that may also be a side effect of the half lies techies tell to sell some technical orientations to management... Someone wanting to use Clojure or Scala will certainly use the JVM familiarity as a selling point.

Maybe they were talking about how easy is to find existing libraries that do what you need with that "pick up", instead how easy is "to learn" those languages for a Java dev?

Otherwise it makes little sense to me too. :)

" They are low risk simply because Scala/Clojure are built upon the JVM …meaning if tomorrow Scala/Clojure become obsolete, you get to retain the JVM."

Oh, well, of course.

I worked with Adbul when I got my current job. He's very capable and professional and I can strongly recommend him.

Usually the recruiter prefaces everything with "I'm nawwwwt reaaally a technical guuy, like I know code, dabbled a bit." A post like this is refreshing imo, at least he's looking to understand the landscape.

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