You cannot have more than 10 years of experience in Rails | Hacker News Reader

You cannot have more than 10 years of experience in Rails

strategic-options.com

122 pointsbugsbunny12382 comments

Since there was no indication on the job ad that the position actually required 10 years of Rails experience, I'm going out on a limb and say that they just didn't want you/the author. From this brief article it seems that the author has a inflated ego, I mean I could never mess with an interviewer like that just because I know that people make mistakes. I think that this particular company didn't do anything wrong and calling them out like the author did doesn't make the company look bad but just makes the author look bad.

Immature OP gets rejected for job by the front-line gatekeeper... builds a castle of vengeful pith.

When you get to the technical interview, with the more senior engineer, you can pull out your bike-shedding hipsterism.

Hope you find a kindred spirit OP, because your present persona isn't getting you very far.

Not related to this specific case since I generally think calling people out is bad form. However, I remember back in 2011 when looking at job postings for iOS Positions that "Required" 5+ years developing for "iOS" I could not help but chuckle that the only people that would have that would be the Apple developers who worked on it before it was released. 5+ years in Objective C sure, but at the time iOS was only 3 years old. Recently I've been seeing the same type of postings for "Swift" so it's important to keep in mind that just because the recruiter or first line interviewer does not know A from Z does not mean the organization as a whole is clueless. People make mistakes on job postings and in the case I think it's likely they just did not like him and that was the excuse they came up with to let him save face.

Why is this always the first comment on posts like these?

"This hiring process is messed up." "This guy has an inflated ego. We shouldn't listen to him. DISQUALIFY!"

Pretty much anytime somebody posts a story about bad hiring practices this is the first response I see. Why? What does it add to the discussion but an unhealthy dose of ad hominem?

This isn't about the hiring process, this is about an individual that didn't make it to the next round and started pointing out flaws of the interviewer and then going out of their way to try to "shame" the company.

Take a look at the post again and you will see the Craigslist ad that the individual responded to. You'll notice that there is no mention of requiring any amount of experience in any framework or language. The ad looks like a normal ad and wouldn't make it close to the front page of HN without the author raising a hubbub.

People make mistakes. That is a general trait of humans. It seems like the interviewer made the mistake when talking about Bootstrap. It could have been a non-technical project manager. It could have been a consulting project manager (since they appear to be a consultancy) we don't know. But then the author criticizes the company for that. Not only that, it seems that he openly mocked the interviewer about the mistake.

Then the problem compounds when the author gets an email from the company that says that they went with two other candidates that have 10+ years experience. Instead of letting it go (as the author doesn't even seem to care) he goes off trying to prove them wrong. Odds are that the company was saying that to be nice. Hearing that is a lot better than something like "Sorry, you're personality sucks and we don't want you" (I'm not saying that is what is going on but it could be an option). It is a line that is hard for the author to dispute since he admittedly doesn't have that experience. Now, keep in mind, that the company may have meant Ruby but instead put Rails. Even the author makes that mistake by calling it Rudy when it makes more sense to write Rails instead of Ruby.

I have seen articles about truly messed up hiring processes on this site, however, this is not one of them. There are only two incidents and one of them the author admits to "playing games". Not only that, but after "playing games" with the project manager the author expected professionalism and courtesy of a follow, despite not showing that to the interviewer. The way I see it is that the author wasted this company's time, then tried to profit off of it by writing a blog post that has ads on it. There is nothing wrong, from what is described in the article, with how the company acted.

"Pretty much anytime somebody posts a story about bad hiring practices this is the first response I see. Why? What does it add to the discussion but an unhealthy dose of ad hominem?"

Honestly, I haven't seen that much but I have not seen a more fitting story about "bad hiring processes" that deserve people to call BS than this one. We have only been given a small glimpse of what happened, so it could be much worse but from what is written and looking at the job posting on Craigslist that was in the post, it doesn't seem like the author has much of a case.

I would be curious to hear what you think about this though. Do you think the author is in the clear for writing something like this? Do you honestly think that the author was a victim of a "messed up hiring process"?

"there was also some confusion as to Bootstrap. According to the project manager Bootstrap is also responsive. (No kidding?) I said that’s great because I use Twitter Bootstrap and that is responsive as well. (I was playing games at that point) Then I was told they where not the same? I don’t know if that was the breaking point, but it was amusing."

^ This whole thing makes 0 sense to me. I can't tell who is wrong without the full conversion. But it almost sounds like neither side knows what they are talking about.

/my 2c

No kidding. That entire blog post was quite painful to read.

Yes didn't get this part either. It's perfectly possible the interviewer asked the interviewee to explain the difference between Responsive Design (the concept) and Twitter Bootstrap (the framework that implements it).

Not to mention that Bootstrap hasn't been called 'Twitter Bootstrap' for almost two years now...

OP is likely wonderful at parties. He's great when you need someone to randomly shame people without really having much to go on.

I'm surprised no one here has taken him to task for that horrible first sentence. I can only imagine the response on HN if the roles were reversed.

There are a lot of grammar and spelling errors on the site. I am pretty bewildered by it overall.

For awhile I thought he was maybe ESL, but now I'm leaning towards legitimately a moron.

At one point I actually questioned whether it might be satire, but it's not!

Poke around the rest of the site and stand in bewilderment at this wonder.

I've got more than 10 years of rails experience. I started with Rails 0.5 in July 2004. So looking at the calendar we're at 10.5 years. There were only like 5 people including DHH when i joined the #rubyonrails irc channel. And on top of that i've done lots of other things in the rails world, like managing people since then. The thing is, rails has changed so much, i'm not sure how much value there is in that. If i were hiring it'd be a red flag that somebody only stayed doing rails for 10 years. A good developer learns new languages and frameworks. A language a year and all that.

Perhaps the hiring drone was saying 10 years of web development experience maybe?

Or maybe 10 years between the both of them?

  > The thing is, rails has changed so much, i'm not sure how 
  > much value there is in that.

To corroborate this point: I've been doing Rust for over three years now, but if you think that knowing Rust circa Oct 2011 gives you any friggin clue how to write the language today, you're extremely out of the loop.

The same can be said for C++ (which is pivoting toward a massively different style with C++11), Java (unless, like so many I've encountered, you think the language and its surrounding ecosystem hasn't changed a whit since 2002), Python... heck even PHP is changing its basic character over time, if slowly.

I have 2.5 years Rails experience and use/maintain apps all the way from 1.2.6 to 4.2. Using the older versions has given me a real clear picture of the the framework as a whole; where it's been and where's it's going. I think having this experience is highly valuable.

"A language a year" is pretty pointless, especially if practice in any given language is not good.

You might be surprised. New languages can teach you quite a lot more than simply a new syntax - there are concepts that will be present and visible in a new language or stdlib that you might not have encountered before, and constant exposure to unfamiliar territory helps to keep you in constant learning mode.

The idea isn't that you abandon your existing languages every year. Nobody will be effective if they're always working exclusively in a language they've just started with, but you can take lessons learned in a new toy language and apply them to your broader work as a programmer, even if you never use that language again.

I'd be one of those folks in already #rubyonrails at the time. :)

What can a person with 10 years of experience in a framework know that someone with 2 doesn't?

Ruby the programming language wasn't developed by DHH. It was developed by Matz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_%28programming_language%29). Second sentence, first paragraph.

Also, the guy was replying to a Craigslist ad. I'm not really sure what he was expecting.

It says 10+ years of rails specifically in the email.

Article author informs us DHH created "Rudy" 10 years ago.

Well it's obvious to me that he meant Ruby on Rails.

But isn't the whole premise of the article that you're an idiot if you say things about languages/frameworks that aren't accurate?

Yeah, that part made me cringe. Among other parts. This whole post is a mess tbh and makes it seem like the person is not fluent in English maybe?

All this tells me is they didn't want to say why they rejected you, lack of a required experience is a benign excuse.

The reality might be you were too old, too young, too smart, too stupid, wrong race, looked like the guy who ran off with the managers wife, who knows.

I would never expect to learn anything from a job rejection, or for that matter from a lost sale.

I've been rejected from numerous job attempts and I learned a lot from the majority of them. Whether it was the lack of fundamentals on data structures and (sometimes) stupid algorithmic interview questions, or a CTO with whom I totally clicked but the founders just didn't get me, or "ew, I'd kill myself if I had to work in this office", most of them were learning opportunities.

> I would never expect to learn anything from a job rejection, or for that matter from a lost sale.

It isn't always (or even usually) the case, but it does happen.

When I was looking to leave my first development job (where I was the sole developer at a very small non-profit) I made sure to highlight during interviews that I was the only developer. Two companies let me know they were passing on me largely because of my lack of team experience. After that I didn't overly emphasize the fact I was the only developer and had three offers in under a month. [And sure there most likely were additional factors but the point is you can get meaningful feedback from a rejection].

Exactly. After all, are they supposed to "excuse" it at all ?

"Sorry <dude>, you are a really strong candidate and we were happy to talk with you, but in the end we decided to go forward with other candidates that are a better fit for the profile we are seeking."

No harsh feelings, no lies, no harm done.

"But then I remember that I follow @DHH on twitter and Ruby is kind of new. (Just an FYI @DHH created Rudy and he did it ~10 years ago. I follow @DHH not because of Rails, mostly because of his libertarian oriented tweets, much like myself.)"

Let's not throw the first stone, eh ...

Earlier this year I saw a job listing for someone with 3+ years of experience with the swift programming language.

In theory it is possible, as I'm sure swift was in skunkworks at Apple for a good time before its public release.

I thought these sort of requirements were so companies could hire H1B candidates? The basic idea is you create an impossible to fill position and then have your chosen H1B candidate lie.

Care to elaborate this a bit, for us outside of USA? I'm genuinely interested - what are advantages for company to hire H1B candidate(s)?

Pay a fraction of a citizen or permanent resident's salary to a quasi-indentured servant, in that if you fire them it's iffy if they can find another H-1B gig before they have to leave the country.

In the one case I observed first hand while at Lucent in 2001, an arguably more qualified and very smart Jamaican doing the same job as me was paid $48K (H-1B salaries have to be posted) while I was making $80K. He knew he was being exploited, but all things considered it was better than the alternatives. In another case with an acquaintance at HP, he and a lot of older engineers were laid off at the same time, and he later caught them trying to explicitly hire an H-1B replacement for his job.

It is difficult to find a replacement job in 30 days if fired. Its not hard to quietly look for a better job while on an h1b. And once company A already sponsored the visa, finding company B to extend it is pretty easy.

Its very far from indentured servitude unless you come to the states and refuse to speak to anyone outside your community.

And/Or your only "talent" is developing CRUD Java applications

You forgot to mention that the aim of H1B workers is to get a green card, and that for the EB1/EB2-NIV track, where the applicant files himself, a PhD degree is a near requirement. In the majority of cases it's the company that files for green card; if you change employer the process starts again all over. And there is a maximum of 5 years on H1B. It's not nearly as easy as you say.

The environment is structured so that raises come with a change in employment, which explains the aim of the H1B program. It is to create a climate in which employees are reluctant to change employers to put an overall cap on salary growth.

The issue has come up multiple times here on this very board. Do you not know better, or do you intentionally speak the thing that is not?

You are criticizing the GC process, not the h1b process. The h1b is to address a temporary worker shortage, not put people on a long term immigration track due to high skill.

It would be great if we had such a track (beyond people of extreme talent), but we don't.

What temporary worker shortage? If there was one, there would be rising salaries, as we see in the North Dakota oil patch, but in IT wages are stagnant.

I'm criticizing US immigration, in general, temporary and permanent, because the present system benefits neither the majority of Americans nor the majority if immigrants. Large employers, though, benefit disproportionately.

There are rising salaries for good people in tech. Where have you been?

You may say there is no benefit for immigrants, but most of my friends in IT (as qualified as any american) make less than a lac a month (comparable to a mcjob). So that's a tough case to make.

In my experience, it's gone more like this:

Find an awesome candidate for a position. He's on an H1B. Learn that he can only be hired into a position that can't be filled by a permanent resident, but can be filled by him. Create such a job description.

This is also my understanding of how these requirements come about. You have someone you want to hire, but you need to go through the pretence of trying and failing to hire.

Aside from what hga covered, there's the case that sometimes you want to hire a specific H1B candidate. I've seen a similar thing for moving positions within a University, where policy says you need to advertise for the position but really you're just trying to promote a person. Though there the approach wasn't "lie" but rather "be crazy specific about any random thing in the person's resume".

"We worried that you took everything too literally and that would make you inflexible in the work environment"

Note to the OP:

Hi Chad,

We're sorry you had a bad experience with our interviewing process. Our ad specifically asks for someone that's been "programming professionally for around a decade, have a few years of full stack web experience". We're not looking for people with 10 years of Rails experience...though if Mr. Hannson is interested in a job here, we'd love to talk to him :-).

Our phone screens are not technical interviews. They look to see if you've been building things similar to what you'll work on here, as well as if you'd be a cultural fit. We specifically have non-technical folks do our phone screens to give our programmers as much time possible to actually program. Our screeners do tend to deliver very high quality candidates for initial, technical interviews.

With your specific phone screen, we found two other candidates that were better fits for us and our HR person made a mistake when she told you they had "10+ years of Rails experience". Our bad.

Good luck with your career and if you think you are a good fit for us and that our phone screen missed the mark, let me know and I'd be happy to talk to you personally.

Sincerely,

Eric Scott CEO, Dolphin Micro

I recall in January 1995 I subscribed to the Hotwire newsletter, and in their next issue they announced that they were hiring. The job demanded that you have at least 2 years experience with HTML (and have a homepage that you could point to, so they could see your work). I've always wondered, how many people had 2 years experience with HTML in January of 1995? The initial release of Mosaic was in January of 1993, so basically they were asking for someone on that team (I exaggerate only slightly; the number of people who were into HTML before 1993 was vanishingly small). I applied but I was not hired. I have always wondered if they got someone with 2 years experience, or if they settled for someone else.

Sometimes the requirement list on some jobs seems a bit far fetched.

Folks were writing HTML pages before MOSAIC, they just weren't very interesting compared to MOSAIC-era websites or later.

I know because I was one of them, albeit a kid.

Would more than one year of experience with Rails be useful? It's supposed to be an easy approach to web development.

Surely it would be useful with more than one year.

In addition to the core framework there are lots of modules to make your life easier (payment integration, multi-user system with admin dashboard, creating PDF invoices, HTML emails, etc.).

Presumably “experience” means having worked long enough with it to know how to quickly roll a solution for these things. Maintaining somebody’s custom CMS written in Rails 3 / Ruby 1.8 for a year would probably not provide you with such experience.

The difference between knowing Rails and knowing how to best apply its abilities come with experience IMO. While it provides an easy approach to web development it's still extremely easy to approach things in the wrong manner with Rails. There is a lot of bad Rails code out there written by people who've been doing using Rails for more than a couple of years.

I've been at it since 2006 and I still learn things every day, fwiw.

It's kind of like asking if it takes very long to learn to use STL, or the standard C library. Sure, the libraries themselves are not that long if you're reading them straight through, but the capabilities they enable are pretty vast.

"This is why programmers dislike account people / business people…"

Quality way to open a silly little blog post.

It's possible that the email meant 10+ years of collective experience between those 2 developers, but then it would be a bizarre detail to include (especially given the brevity of the email). Still, it sounds based on the interview details like they didn't bother to put someone technical on the phone interview, which makes me reluctant to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Unless you signed a not disclosure document during the hiring process, I would have revealed the company name. It's time to point out this faulty processes, especially on company that have public stakeholders. Employees are often the most important assets, therefore the way you hire is crucial. If you get it wrong from begin with you can't expect much.

He did reveal the name. It's in the pic at the bottom of the post.

They are called Dolphin Micro http://www.dolphinmicro.com/

I would have answered back with some info and the reply from DHH

Really

This is the year I lost complete faith in the hiring process of companies

Not all companies are like this, so don't get too down :)

Yeah, I know, I'm back to be employed, so no problems there now

I wonder about the other way around. I've been writing Swift since it was introduced, but since I only do iOS apps as a hobby in my spare time, I don't have 6 months experience with it yet, really only about 4 weeks.

Makes one think what constitutes a year of experience really requires.

There was a job posting I applied for in 2005 that was asking for 5+ years of .Net experience. Since .Net came out in 2002, I assumed they meant 5+ years _development_ experience with some .Net as well. I made it to a phone screen with someone in HR and they were very sticky on this 5 years of .Net experience. When I tried to explain that it was impossible without a time machine, she said she would have to talk to the hiring manager and get back to me.

Never heard back, and I'm not even sure if I would've taken it anyway. If that kind of bullshit makes it into the hiring process I can't imagine what it would be like to work for them.

In my country it's the rule not the exception, like "10+ years of experience in nodejs and angularjs"(seen 2 years ago).

So most candidates end up lying about their real experience,which makes the whole 10+ thing irrelevant today.

The reply was perhaps worded too quickly, but the ad itself indicates

"If you’ve been programming professionally for around a decade, have a few years of full stack web experience (Rails, Django, PHP, Java Spring, and similar), and love learning, you’ll be a great fit."

I don't understand how any of those listed technologies qualify as "full stack", but that's another discussion. Their main point was someone with 10+ year of experience, and experience with some of those technologies on top of that.

What's your definition of full stack?

Well... any inclusion of front-end technologies - that list is server side web app frameworks.

Considering that OP doesn't have the strongest grasp on the english language.

"We are moving forward with 2 other candidates who have 10+ years of Rails experience."

Could be interpreted to mean that those 2 individuals have over 10 years experience collectively between them and not each. There are a lot of people who have 5+ years of Rails experience.

This reminds me a lot of when Guido gets job offers for python.

https://plus.google.com/115212051037621986145/posts/R8jEVrob...

If a 'year of experience' is 40 hours times 50 weeks (vacation), then its clearly possible to have much more than 10 standard years of experience. Whether anybody did that its doubtful.

I remember back in 2007 when job ads were like: "5+ years Rails experience".

What is the point of a criminal background check?

if you are looking for a Senior PHP programmer or an algorithmic trading programmer let me know

That is a very unusual mix of skills. Very unusual indeed.

I have similar experience. I've been doing algo trading for a decade, but out of interest I came up with a side project. It's a web service that uses django, with phone apps written for Android and iOS.

There's a certain trepidation to learning a new stack, but if you've done one you can do another.

I dabble in a bunch of stuff too, but those are different enough skillsets that I'd wonder about a guy claiming equal expertise in both.

Yes, an algo-trader in the financial hotbed of... Denver.

Not to mention senior PHP is junior anything else.

Translation: "We've decided to move on with candidates who don't make us feel like idiots.. Peter Principle at its finest.

Alternatively, it could be, "The answer is 'No.' Let me randomly tell something so you'll go fuck off while we get things done. If we wanted you, we'd call you back."

A lot of people say they have/need senior mobile developers with 10+ years of experience...

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