[HN Gopher] Having no experience can be better than having the w... ___________________________________________________________________ Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience Author : collate Score : 127 points Date : 2022-07-25 20:40 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (twitter.com) (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com) | tester756 wrote: | Just skew the odds | lazyant wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin | thaumaturgy wrote: | I'm experiencing this now and it's taking some energy to not | become disillusioned with the industry. | | Generalists, or people with a "wide T", are also a lot less | valuable than specialists. For any given technology or stack | right now, some company out there is doing something cool with | it, and they only want to hire people who are already familiar | with their particular configuration. The couple of tech | interviews I've had so far have really obviously been looking for | me to keyword or namedrop some experience with whatever it is | that they're using already. There have even been positions where | I had like 95% of the desired experience, but that missing 5% was | enough to bin me, despite having a pile of unrelated experience. | | To be clear, you can make a living as a dev in the guts of a | BigCo or for a consultancy or web firm, and these days it's not | even a bad living (for now). But if you want to work on something | closer to the cutting edge, or more stimulating, you have to make | big decisions early on about what you're most interested in and | then pursue a deep specialization in it. | jmcgough wrote: | As a counterpoint, having a broad range of skills and | experiences has been hugely important for me and my employer, | and hasn't limited my career or compensation. I fill in the | gaps where I'm needed, and it's up to me to create visibility | and take on projects that look good on my resume. Naturally I | tend to go deep wherever I end up at a startup (so I have | specialized experienced that helps my career), and my breadth | allows me understand the entirety of the stack and design | systems better than someone who only knows one part of the | stack. | | At startups you really want someone who can jump into any part | of the technical work and ship quickly. | jacksnipe wrote: | Hmm this has not been my personal experience (as a highly | generalist dev), but maybe I'm just lucky. If anything, my | extremely broad lens has led to some really great systems | design rounds, and I always crush the behavioral. | halfmatthalfcat wrote: | > Generalists, or people with a "wide T", are also a lot less | valuable than specialists | | I actually disagree with this. Speaking anecdotally but also | someone who works at a FAANG-esque co, full stack or "wide | stack" (front, back, infra, sre) are the most desirable due to | their versatility and knowledge of the interworkings of various | parts of the stack. | opportune wrote: | This doesn't match my experience at all. A lot of companies at | the cutting edge know that nobody is ramped up on their area | and aren't trying to limit themselves to only poaching from | competitors. In particular at big tech your previous scope and | projects (like launching features, leading a feature or | infrastructure team, shipping an entire product) are so much | more important than eg your background in advertising - a | background in advertising may be a plus for an advertising | team, especially if you're getting hired at a very high level | (8+), but not a requirement or even target for recruiting | purposes. | | I know HN loves to hate on big tech but a lot of the cutting | edge is there. IME startups and "less selective" companies are | more focused on getting people with very specific experience | because they can't afford to train someone up or risk them | being a bad fit - and while startups almost by definition are | doing something different than incumbents, that doesn't mean | they're the whole cutting edge. Or, they are old-school and bin | everyone as a "Java spring boot dev" either because HR doesn't | understand what things are easy to learn and what are hard, or | engineering buckets themselves into these fixed categories and | has a kind of "my turf"/static mindset with no expectation to | learn or work on new things. | firebaze wrote: | How do you come to this conclusion? Sincere question. I'm not | posting personal anecdotes to support or disprove your | argument, I have an opinion, and it may or may not overlap with | yours. | postalrat wrote: | Are you speak from experience or repeating something you read | on hn or reddit? | cupofpython wrote: | > you have to make big decisions early on about what you're | most interested in and then pursue a deep specialization in it | | I am seeing similar trends to you wrt Generalists, and this is | annoying but good advice. | | Even when hired, generalists tend to get stuck with all the | most tedious work from every department that simply no one | wants to do. You end up being a one-stop shop for all intern | and junior related work, with the added bonus of being invited | to a lot of meetings and not getting credit (appropriate $ | compensation) for your influence in those meetings. | | I've settled on the belief that general knowledge is something | you do for yourself, and to help set you apart from other | specialists. It doesn't pay you directly. I've got almost a | decade of general business and analytics knowledge, and always | seems to stall out on the climb in ways you describe (not | dropping the right software name brand). Time to make a bet | em-bee wrote: | _generalists tend to get stuck with all the most tedious work | from every department that simply no one wants to do_ | | someone has to do it, and if the pay is adequate, it's a | matter of attitude. | | _not getting credit (appropriate $ compensation) for your | influence_ | | i don't understand this part. you already have your salary, | as negotiated. are you saying that such a positions are | always underpaid? | | and if such a position really has influence, it actually | sounds appealing to me. | cupofpython wrote: | IME from doing general work at 3 companies in different | industries (which might not be fully representative): Also | sorry, turns out i ended up venting | | >someone has to do it, and if the pay is adequate, it's a | matter of attitude. | | the pay is adequate for the value of the work (which is | low), and it eats up your time which actually lowers the | average value of your work to the company. it isnt anything | other people cant do, it's just the stuff that piles up | because it isnt really critical to get done but should | still get done. think about what you would have a coworker | help you with at your job if you had a lot to do and they | asked you if you needed help with anything. | | >are you saying that such a positions are always underpaid? | | Yes they are underpaid because the job responsibilities are | usually pretty fuzzy. you are typically given some basic | responsibilities but then expected to find more work to do | yourself via talking to people. so its on you to both find | valuable work to perform using your general knowledge (kind | of fun / interesting tbh) and also somehow be convincing | that your contributions are better than what they would | have gotten from an average generalist (nigh impossible). | It becomes very hard to get people to recognize you going | above and beyond, which is necessary for raises. So you are | very dependent on having an incredibly observant manager | who applies above average attention to detail when | reviewing you. | | how you get this work as a generalist, btw, is you ask | people what they need help with. It isnt an issue with | attitude, it is just one of relevance. An average | generalist can be fine with this, but if you are above | average at multiple roles then it becomes a point of | opportunity cost. you will never work on the high-value | things that someone else more specialized at the company is | capable of working on. you will work on the things that | were preventing that person from spending more time on the | high-value things. they might talk to you about it and you | might give them thoughts on the work, but it will be so | casual as to be awkward for them to give you any credit for | it. | | >if such a position really has influence, it actually | sounds appealing to me | | It can be a very enjoyable position BUT you stall out - it | will typically fall under some sort of generic business | analyst job title at a small to mid-size company (ie not at | a company with an analytics department for you to advance | in). youll be encouraged to "build" that department by | yourself, in your downtime, without any approved budget for | it, without adding anything to anyone elses processes (ie | requiring them to stick to a data entry format). So people | at the company will typically like you, but you'll hit a | lot of resistance trying to get past like $70k (near NYC). | It makes me think that 1 good generalist is valued close to | but beneath 2 junior employees with a bit of different | specialization each. | | the only way I can recommend a generalist position is if | you are buying significant amount of stock in the company, | fully believe in the product/service, and understand that | sometimes in order for a team to do its best there needs to | be a thankless support player somewhere in there. | | you dont have noticeable influence, btw, you just know what | you did and feel personally good about it. you get to sit | in on meetings, typically as a note-taker (because you | offered to and it makes sense because you have a bunch of | misc responsibilities anyway), which means you get to make | sure the most important things from a meeting are | emphasized, questionable things are highlighted, and you | can speak up in the meeting itself to help address | misalignment's before they happen. the meetings themselves | tend to get credit for your contribution rather than you, | albeit sometimes you can make pretty direct call-outs that | will get you credit for. | | the general vibe was kind of like, you are an alert system | and garbage collector. a lot of the time the alerts are | received as helpful reminders of issues that would have | been caught somehow anyway. but that's kind of a catch-22 | for proving your value. you feel fairly confident they | wouldnt have caught the issue based on the nature of the | due diligence you applied to the situation and your | intimate knowledge of the related business operations. you | cant exactly point why you think the issue would have gone | unnoticed without throwing someone under the bus, which | isnt fair to do before the issue actually arises. the | catch-22 is that the issue isnt going to arise because you | pointed it out, but you cant prove it was necessary for you | to point it out unless you dont point it out. | | So you need an observant, reasonably skeptical manager on | the same page as you to notice the shitstorms you prevent. | But even then there's typically no direct means of | compensating you for it. you get labelled a good employee, | quickly jump to that 70k area pay cap into yearly inflation | adjustments, then you end up just getting more soft | benefits like openness to alternative work hours, no | resistance to taking time off, and such. With the caveat | that you have to correctly read the room on these things | and assert them yourself because you wont be getting an | email detailing such perks. that is all well and good, but | it seems better fit for someone near retirement then | someone with goals of trying to buy a house and raise a | family. | lmm wrote: | > i don't understand this part. you already have your | salary, as negotiated. are you saying that such a positions | are always underpaid? | | Generalism is more difficult than specialism to leverage in | that initial notification. And if you end up doing work | that's spread across multiple departments then it's | generally harder to advance within that organisation. | madrox wrote: | As a hiring manager, I've found entry level roles to be the | hardest to fill well. No metric is a guarantee of a quality | candidate. I loathe whiteboard programming, but for entry level | jobs it's at least a signal that they're putting in the work to | figure out how to be successful within a structure. | | Beyond that, I want a narrative for the candidate's career...both | where they've been and where they want to go. It helps me figure | out if their development goals will be a good fit and what their | experience will bring to the team. I've run into a lot of | candidates whose careers seem to be guided simply by "I work for | the highest bidder" and they don't end up being the best on the | team...nor the most enduring. | | I can see how this might equate to having the "wrong experience." | I hope candidates who wait to apply for that big dream job (or | don't get it) at least are taking jobs that prepare them for it. | Barring that, I hope they're finding other ways to gain | experience. We can't always choose the jobs we want, but I hope | everyone is figuring out how to build towards it. | heavenlyblue wrote: | > "I work for the highest bidder" | | Uhm, I find people like these are actually the easiest to keep. | They know their price and define it. You know what to expect. | [deleted] | strgcmc wrote: | There is a difference between (A) a skilled expert who takes | pride in their craft, and understandably goes with whichever | employer appreciates their skills and compensates | accordingly, vs (B) a middle-of-the-pack journeyman who just | DGAF about their work and treats all jobs as equally | disposable and replaceable (these are also the types of | people who are likely to try out /r/overemployed, cuz why | not). | | We may all pretend to be more like type (A) employees, but in | reality not everyone can be above average and there's a lot | of (B) out there. As an employer, it makes total sense to | invest in and pay more for (A)'s, but you're throwing money | away to try and woo (B)'s or pretending like enough money | will buy you better engagement or more motivation from them. | madrox wrote: | This is well said and sums up my experience | dilyevsky wrote: | > As an employer, it makes total sense to invest in and pay | more for (A)'s, but you're throwing money away to try and | woo (B)'s | | By that same logic most managers also fall into B just like | ICs. So that statement is incorrect - Bs are perfect | material for empire building and As are usually not | [deleted] | opportune wrote: | You can't have all A's. I'd rather have B's than a | hypothetical C who is just trying to hold down a job and | not get fired, or a D who DGAF but isn't middle of the pack | and takes your lower-paying job because it's the best they | could do (sure, the B is basically the same, but at least | there is some theoretically higher quality on average). | mbg721 wrote: | How should they know where they want to go if they're entry- | level? They haven't seen what the future paths are really like. | This leads to a mentality of "the only safe entry-level | candidate is one with five years' experience doing exactly what | we do," and I saw that in how one of the places I worked did | their hiring. It led to much lower-quality entry-level | candidates than if the company had accepted some risk and taken | the plunge, recognizing that some of the time it wouldn't work | out. | r3012 wrote: | > How should they know where they want to go if they're | entry-level? | | I think it's totally reasonable to expect people to have a | plan. It's also totally reasonable, and expected really, for | that plan to change over time. But working without a plan, | which implies working without goals, is rarely a recipe for | success. | mbg721 wrote: | Then if you're hiring entry-level employees, you need to be | prepared to accept a naive and unrealistic plan. If they | have a plan that sounds like an experienced person's plan, | maybe they did their homework and got lucky, maybe they | know somebody and got interview coaching, but it's unlikely | that their destiny from birth was exactly your job opening. | madrox wrote: | I think hiring managers tend to be pretty realistic about | this (can't speak for recruiters). All we want to hear is | that the candidate has a sense of how they want to | develop themselves. The best entry level candidate story | I've ever heard was from an intern who expressed a desire | to learn how to biuld movie animation pipelines. We were | an app dev team, but I was able to offer enough insight | and experience that we helped him get his next job at | WETA. | | A candidate's intrinsic development goals become the | basis of how managers can best motivate and retain | employees. Without this, employees quickly stagnate and | fall back to doing the bare minimum of their role. This | is true of all levels and not just entry level. | ceras wrote: | This doesn't really match my experience for my own career | or as a manager. Plenty of great engineers don't have a | plan beyond "learn and get better," including those that | have traditionally-successful careers (e.g. director+ at | top tech company). | | I'd expect that to matter more if you're, say, trying to be | a founder - I can see that benefitting from intentional | planning. But for careers at big companies, "learn and get | better" seems good enough (and if that qualifies as a plan, | I don't think I've worked with anyone that _doesn 't_ have | a plan). | madrox wrote: | "Learn and get better" is absolutely a plan and a great | basis to build on, though it's nice to know if there's | something in particular they'd like to learn. I've never | encountered a candidate who will say they want to learn | but not have an idea of what they want to learn...just | candidates who have an idea what they want to learn but | are afraid of saying the wrong thing in the interview. | shalmanese wrote: | There's also a difference between not having a plan and | not being able to articulate your plan. Articulation is a | skill that needs training and people who rarely need it | are rarely good at it. I can take people who have strong | plans and train them to articulate it in a few weekend | sessions but someone who doesn't have a plan requires | multiple years of work to develop a plan. | CSMastermind wrote: | Entry level management positions are the hardest to fill in my | experience, which is why I've ended up almost always | transferring people to management from within rather than | seeking out external candidates. | | > Beyond that, I want a narrative for the candidate's | career...both where they've been and where they want to go. It | helps me figure out if their development goals will be a good | fit and what their experience will bring to the team. I've run | into a lot of candidates whose careers seem to be guided simply | by "I work for the highest bidder" and they don't end up being | the best on the team...nor the most enduring. | | Strongly agree with this point. | eastbound wrote: | I'd love to have a candidate who tells me "I love creating | products". I've hired a 100% junior, no school (formerly | teacher), he kicks ass, I've increased his salary by 10% every | 2 months since 8 months. He just loves the art of creating a | product, maintaining it in prod, interviewing customers... | | You are correct, it's incredibly hard to detect. | baobabKoodaa wrote: | Can you disclose which company you work for / what your | company does? | eastbound wrote: | Not much, I'd like to remain anonymous, sorry. We're doing | apps for Jira and Confluence Cloud. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | I generally enjoy Dan Luu's advice, but IMO it's best approached | with the understanding that his professional and social network | is somewhat of a bubble that doesn't reflect the average person. | | Specifically, he cites a statistic that 50% of the people with | "no experience" he knows are getting ML and other such jobs at | Big Tech companies. In this case, I think he's likely pre- | filtering his sample set to people with significant | programming/math or other such experience. | | I do a lot of mentoring of college grads. If anyone shows an | interest in Big Tech I always encourage them to apply and help | them get the process started. However, it is not my experience | that 50% of your average (or even above average as mentoring | programs tend to select for the more ambitious) CS grads are | walking into something like a Big Tech ML job with no relevant | experience. | | Always apply if you're curious. If nothing else, you will learn | the interview process and see where you need to improve for next | time. However, don't feel bad if you don't get the dream job | right away. Most people really do have to pivot up through some | more average jobs first before landing the Big Tech jobs with | huge paychecks. | [deleted] | foobiekr wrote: | The ML thing would not surprise me at all. ML is so hot that if | you know the buzzwords and have done some hello world project, | someone will give you a job. It is very much like "html coding" | in 1999 and will probably have the same outcome. | SamvitJ wrote: | Hard disagree. ML is hard to break into, even with strong | credentials. (Source: ML engineer) | skrtskrt wrote: | I think they probably mean "ML engineering" as in training | pre-existing models in jupyter notebooks, the new "data | science". | | The people that actually create/engineer anything new and | useful in ML is <1% of people that "work in ML". | hinkley wrote: | Honestly, with no experience how would you even know what your | dream job was? I had some clue how good I had it, but that was | at a philosophical level ("I'm very fortunate to be here blah | blah blah.") Once "it" was taken away, I started to understand | at a more visceral level. And yet there are aspects that I only | managed to unpack last year, which makes me wonder what I'll | notice next year. | jt2190 wrote: | > Most people really do have to pivot up through some more | average jobs first before landing the Big Tech jobs with huge | paychecks. | | But the assertion here is that too many "pivoting up" jobs are | a negative indicator. (An "upper class" programmer wouldn't | spend time in the "lower" classes.) | | Not saying I agree or disagree with this, but the existence of | a class system in tech jobs is the OP's central point. | | Edit: The OP says it clearly: | | > In many ways, having no experience is better than having the | wrong experience because people don't unfairly prejudge you for | having the wrong experience. | | https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1551665467864977408?s=21&t... | moeris wrote: | > he cites a statistic that 50%... | | Not a statistic so much as an anecdote. He makes it pretty | explicit, I thought. | ketzo wrote: | Eh, even if it's an anecdote, it comes off as actionable | advice: "make sure you apply to Google/Amazon/Facebook as | your safety jobs, since you've got a 50% chance of getting in | there anyway." | | Which feels... optimistic. | [deleted] | honkdaddy wrote: | Well said as usual, PragP. | | My experience working in big tech is that the bar for actually | getting an interview for the junior positions is actually | relatively low, and your standardized interview performance | matters 10x more than the content of your resume. Some people | apply for L3 out of college, some people after many years of | experience. I've never seen someone turned down for "too much | of the wrong experience", what more often happens is that the | ruts they got into from their previous job start to show and it | affects their interview performance. | zwieback wrote: | ML is maybe a good example of a hot field that's sucking up the | best as well as upper middle performing developers only to later | spit them out when the meltdown comes. That in itself may not be | a problem if you get your foot in the door of a company you're | happy at. On the other hand, if you're just hanging on it might | be sobering to have to switch from Google to a smaller company in | a more affordable region. | [deleted] | svnt wrote: | In my experience, very high-performing teams are not rare outside | of prestige employers, but the distribution is longer-tailed. | | Employees at prestige employers don't want to consider that they | might not be the best, or might not have to put up with all the | corporate bureaucracy, so they erect barriers. | | For recruiters, recommending prestige resumes is just the | equivalent of "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". | | Nobody on tech teams is putting in 20 hour weeks and | watercoolering to get by in those small teams at small companies. | Everything they do counts. | eastbound wrote: | Cue a random example: 2-people company bought for millions by | Atlassian or 18-people company bought for billions by Facebook | (Wasn't Whatsapp 18 people?). | homie wrote: | is there any way out if you find yourself stuck with a couple | years of wrong experience? | svnt wrote: | Get another degree (one year masters) and then reapply as NCG, | or just delete exp from your resume and see if you can pass as | NCG. | tfehring wrote: | I went from a life insurance company in the Midwest to a pretty | desirable tech company in the last few years. This tweet [0] | from patio11 (linked from the posted tweet) basically sums up | my path: | | > _If you're early career, try to get into a high-status | engineering employer or consider a status arbitrage like e.g. a | stint at one of the many startups which are known to recruiters | but can't match Google offers and so feel perpetually | understaffed._ | | I went to a YC-funded startup. It wasn't a well-known startup | by any means, and there were fewer than 30 employees when I | left. I don't think anyone there was ex-FAANG, and they didn't | pay at anywhere near FAANG levels. But startup employees are in | the talent pool for big tech companies in a way that insurance | company employees generally are not. | | Anyway, when I had been at the startup for a year, I cold | applied for my current position on my current employer's | website, and here I am. Zero chance I would have gotten a | callback if I'd applied directly from the insurance company, | even though I would still have been able to do my current job | effectively if I'd never gone to the startup. | | [0] https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1379852979868631041 | mhotchen wrote: | Referring to the title I think this is exceedingly the exception, | not the norm (excluding bad hiring policies). Learning what not | to do is more valuable than starting with a clean slate | | Referring to the twitter post, I agree. No point wasting time if | a better opportunity already presents itself | soneca wrote: | Is this advice only to be hired by FAANG-like companies? It seems | so. | I_complete_me wrote: | A personal anecdote that gives some credence to this theory: | | Some years ago, after the Economic Crash of 2009, I attended a | course in Progammable Logic Controllers which was designed to be | a module for electrician's Continuing Professional Development. | I, a Civil Engineer, had no background in this topic and said as | much to the tutor. "Don't worry, he said, "the people with no | experience nearly always do better than anyone else". This | surprised me. It also surprised me when I came joint top in the | course results. | heavenlyblue wrote: | People with experience can't be asked doing the course because | they know better anyway :) of course you do better because you | probably take it seriously | shmde wrote: | I can tell you this is 110% true in my case. I graduated and | landed a very shitty testing job at a big consulting firm. I | worked hard like a mule( more like a donkey ) for 11 months. | | Then one day I woke up in the middle of the night and screamed | into the pillow that I rather kill myself then do my job. I | resigned the next month. | | Fucked around for a few months, got interested in making backend | apps and started applying again but this time in development | roles( instead of QA ). | | Lo and behold, did not get a single response from even a small | scale startup. Removed my QA experience and just put my | Node,Express projects at the top. Guess what, finally recruiters | started to call me. | | I realised how I fucked up big time by jumping on the first job | offer that I got and my experience for almost an year was just a | shit stain on my resume, which completely stalled my career if I | hadn't removed it. | AyyWS wrote: | That same experience will be a boon later. You can show your | progression from QA > Dev > Whatever you want. It's no longer | an anchor weighing you down, it's a Rocky Balboa underdog | story. | cxr wrote: | > your progression from QA > Dev | | Although it may be true of the specific person you're | replying to (though I'm not sure that it is), this presumes | something, so ends up missing the point. To see the point | made here about luck, castes, et cetera requires grappling | with the existence of folks who were developers _before_ | taking the "shitty testing job". There is no QA-to-dev | progression there--just someone without the good fortune to | be able to say "no" to the first job they were offered. | | A recent guest on Tyler Cowen's podcast made this point wrt | to law school graduates: | | > _The bigger thing I would change is the calendar for | professional hiring in law. This is a little bit esoteric, | but it matters a lot to our students. If you want to go into | a job at a major law firm, and you go to a good law school, | those jobs get offered to you at a time when you have no | other alternatives. And so, regardless of one's individual | preferences, it makes no sense to turn down those jobs when | you actually have no alternative.P I think that creates a lot | of distortions, where you end up with people who are at these | firms who don't want to be there. And it biases the market so | that people who want to go into public interest, for example, | are the ones who are able to take that risk on, which is not | a very good match between who's genuinely interested in | alternative avenues and who just can't afford to take certain | kinds of risks._ | | <https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/jamal-greene/> | JacobThreeThree wrote: | QA gets looked down on for sure. Only put your QA experience | for a job with QA in the title. | | Ironically, and perhaps unsurprisingly, finding good QA people, | and people who want to do QA, is difficult. | | Has anyone else experienced QA stigma? | foobiekr wrote: | Congratulations. | | Honestly, I have always felt really bad about hiring someone | into a QA role. It is almost always a trap and I try to | discourage people from going down that path for exactly the | reasons you describe. | | I am glad you've gotten past it. Excellent. Good luck to you. | wizofaus wrote: | I've been involved in screening candidates where we basically | did just put aside applications from people whose commercial | experience was not exactly what the JD was asking for, and | indeed some were those with a background in testing/QA when we | specifically needed a developer. But that's because we had a | ton of resumes sent through by recruiters where it seemed like | they'd done very little to ensure they were sending us relevant | candidates. To be fair we would have put your resume aside if | you'd removed your QA experience too if you didn't also have | significant commercial experience as a developer. | | But in general if I was responsible for the final call on a | junior hire I'd definitely prefer someone with industry | experience even in a different role over someone with none at | all. | glthr wrote: | I have the same personal experience. | curiousgal wrote: | wulke wrote: | This was also true in the military: | | At basic training, our drill instructors often said that recruits | with no experience shooting weapons were easier to train than | other recruits who had experience because it was much easier to | teach best practices to someone who was a "blank slate" than it | was to retrain best practices to someone who learned improper | methods. | | I haven't exactly seen this idea like-for-like in the "corporate" | world, but I believe the general premise is accurate. | cxr wrote: | This is a good analogy but inadequate. What Dan is saying goes | beyond that. In the scenario you're describing, it is rational | to prefer those recruits--for exactly those reasons. The | behavior that Dan describes involves a heap of irrationality. | | Dan's piece that he linked (about "Mike") really is important | to understand the thing that he's referring to. | | <http://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/> | | (Kudos on being able to _yes-and_ the post, though. Huge swaths | of HN 's user base somehow lacks this ability and shows the | proof any time some of Dan's writing shows up here.) | thenerdhead wrote: | The one thing you do learn when in a job that gives you "wrong | experience" is that you're in the "wrong job" for what the "right | job" would be in the future. | | I think you have to be in a "wrong job" before you can understand | what a "right job" is. | | I do not agree with the premise though as it's assuming that | people cannot discern the difference. It's akin to talking about | knowledge vs. wisdom and the typical explanation of fruits and | vegetables. It makes little sense in this context as people are | much smarter than given credit. | TrackerFF wrote: | I believe this has to do with the perception and signaling of | potential. | | Potential, when unrealized, contains more parts unknown than the | known. You can measure some things - like GPA, school ranking, | standardized test results, and so on. | | If/when you do get employed, then that also becomes a new measure | - and to some degree, lays the foundation for other speculation. | | Put this way: If someone opts to work for a "C" level company, | does this change the expected value of that candidate? If the | candidate is "A" level, why would they join a "C" level company? | The simplest answer for an observer, would probably be that they | are simply not "A" level material, and probably closer to where | they've been. | | IMO - that's flawed thinking, as there are tons of variables, but | it seems to be how many think. It's like with sports - often | times top clubs will get top talent. | | But yeah, back to the perception. Now you have a new datapoint - | which could could drag you down - while your competitors still | have the benefit of less information. These candidates can | leverage their potential more, simply because the people hiring | know less about them, and will have to take a larger chance / | risk on hiring them. But as long as their other measures are ok, | that might be worth it. | bastardoperator wrote: | This is how Disney tends to or used to operate its theme parks. | If you're coming from another theme park chances are you have | been trained incorrectly meaning a person with no experience has | the advantage. Not saying I agree or disagree, but I can | understand why someone could think otherwise. | antonymy wrote: | I think it's also about the "culture fit" that these high | prestige tech companies look for. Young people fresh out of | school will not have been "tainted" by the workplace culture of | other companies. Moreover, young people in general, but | especially those still in the highly social school mindset, tend | to be influenced by peers more easily than adults, especially | jaded adults. This all makes young people fresh out of school | much more easily molded to the company culture. | beebeepka wrote: | My current employer is investing heavily into - I wouldn't say | hordes, but they are many - juniors because "culture" sculpting | Devs for our specific needs. | | Or at least that's the official story. While these reasons may | be real, I think it boils down to money and loyalty. Can't | blame them but yeah, makes me feel a bit uneasy | antonymy wrote: | Yes, naivete is the the other issue besides culture. People | without work experience, especially tech work experience, | won't push back as hard or negotiate as effectively with | their management, which translates to lower salary and a | willingness to go along with what the company wants. I don't | want to paint young folks with too broad a brush though, I've | met some young coworkers that were pretty savvy, it's just in | general what I have seen. | mlcrypto wrote: | Some people are luckier than others | antisthenes wrote: | This is true for more than just programming. | d--b wrote: | > When I tried to get my first programming job, I got zero | responses from major software companies. | | > I accidentally did the right thing when I took a hardware job I | was referred into at Google, because having a prestigious company | on my resume was the right programmer class marker. | | Yeah... Not everyone gets referred into Google. | avgDev wrote: | I work for a non-tech company as a solo full stack dev. | | I have been able to interview with fortune 500 companies and get | offers. | | I have been getting contacted by recruiters from hot startups, | Microsoft, Google, AWS, Amazon and Meta. | | I am not sure if I'm stupid but I really don't know how "no | experience" can be better than wrong experience. There is always | things you learn, better negotiation tactics, your value to a | business, and all the mistakes you have made. | | This sounds like, "if you don't work for these tech companies, | you are doing programming wrong". There are many ways to be | successful and this POV is toxic imo. | | Edit: I would love to hear what the wrong experience is. | halfmatthalfcat wrote: | Just a side note: FAANG recruiters/startups spam pretty much | any developer with buzzwords on their socials | (LinkedIn/GH/etc). That's not necessarily a signal you're | hirable at those companies. | avgDev wrote: | It is a signal you can get an interview. | halfmatthalfcat wrote: | You can get a phone screen and potentially a take | home/first round, sure. | bboylen wrote: | Aren't the technical interviews the primary component at | these companies at lower levels though? | | Hard to imagine someone with a few years of "the wrong | experience" who is well versed technically and can handle | the coding interview will consistently fail interviews | just because the interviewer doesn't recognize their | company. | halfmatthalfcat wrote: | I'm not speaking to whether one with "the wrong | experience" can or cannot pass FAANG-level interviews, | I'm just commenting on the recruiter outreach from FAANG | or startups (particularly AMZ) don't necessarily know or | care about your skill, they only care about the buzzwords | listed on your social profile(s) and maintaining a "hot" | pipeline; aka getting bodies through the pipeline and | hoping not to piss off engineering because of the amount | of low quality candidates. | | Recruiters are (usually) not technical and/or have never | been engineers, so the barrier to the first round (if | you've been reached out to) is super low and not | necessarily indicative as to whether you have what it | takes to make it through the whole loop/offer stage. | bboylen wrote: | I don't disagree, it just seems to me the main barrier of | entry is getting the interview in the first place since | interviews focus on the technical component, not your | resume. So if getting an interview is easy, then it | follows that worrying about getting "the wrong | experience" is not worthwhile. | | I'm mostly responding to the article's claims - not | saying you made these claims. | civilized wrote: | > This sounds like, "if you don't work for these tech | companies, you are doing programming wrong" | | He's saying that some people will judge you for working in less | prestigious places. He's explicitly condemning that but saying | it still happens. | felideon wrote: | Have never worked for FAANG/MAGMA, but the theory is that if | you have `n` years of, say, MUMPS experience at an insurance | company, the next candidate with `y` years of Python experience | will have a better chance of getting hired---even if `y=0`. | | More realistically, you (arguably) have a better chance of | getting hired with 3 years of Python exp at a ML startup or | whatever, than with 10 years of exp with $unsexy_lang at | $unsexy_corp. | ghaff wrote: | As I read that thread, an engineer--possibly just out of a good | school--who does well on interviews is perhaps assumed to be a | good hire even though they don't have much experience. (Though | maybe they did an interesting project or two.) | | On the other hand an engineer who took a job out of school in | the IT department of some (perceived) boring stodgy company | even if they really aren't (Walmart was mentioned) obviously | has something wrong with them in the eyes of some even if it's | not obvious what exactly. Better to pass and go for the right | new grad who is probably a bit cheaper as well. | pedrosorio wrote: | > Walmart was mentioned | | I believe you mean Walgreens (in patio11's original thread). | ghaff wrote: | You're right. I did incorrectly read Walmart. Although I | think the same thing probably applies to Walmart Labs in a | lot of circles. | zdragnar wrote: | Really? Purely from an outsiders perspective, the last I | had heard was they used a healthy mix of java, clojure | and nodejs- definitely not stuffy or stodgy at the time. | | No ideas what they've been up to the past 5 or so years | though. | | Edit: granted, I have no idea if they'd any ML type | services running, and doubted they were blazing any | trails with K8s or the like at the time. Still, it didn't | seem all that bad. | ghaff wrote: | The question is about outside perceptions about various | companies. I agree that Walmart Labs has done some fairly | cutting edge stuff. | bumby wrote: | This shows the distinction between the value of resumes (whether | it's school or job or whether) is in large part just signaling | and not actually about skill set. | cxr wrote: | Relevant comment of mine from a previous, mostly unrelated | thread (context was "Berkeley gives you a parking space if you | work there and win a Nobel"): | | > _The rich get richer. I remember filling out school and early | job applications. I was struck by how my list of awards and | recognitions was kind of a sham--most of them were each a | consequence of some earlier achievement, and so on. It felt | like getting a check and being able to cash it more than once._ | | <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24760101 | nnoitra wrote: | Yes, it's called ageism. Young and fresh is perceived as better | than experienced because some bozo will make the argument that | they've been doing software engineering "wrong". | ChrisPebble wrote: | This is definitely true sometimes, but the "wrong" kind of | experience can definitely hamper people. | | I have a highly skilled senior developer with a desktop app | development background who joined our web team, he's excellent | at many tasks but keeps getting tripped up when dealing with | state. He logically knows how it works, but his muscle memory | when programming is so used to being able to rely on state that | it's hard for him stop letting those concepts leak in and trip | him up. | | He's still an amazing asset to the team, but in this case he | does have some experience that's hampering him in a new role. | nnoitra wrote: | Lol, it's web development it's not rocket science. He doesn't | need to wait for the next reincarnation cycle before he can | be made fresh again to learn Redux. | crispyambulance wrote: | > He's still an amazing asset to the team, but in this case | he does have some experience that's hampering him in a new | role. | | OK, but how much could it possibly "hamper" him if he's still | an "amazing asset"? Is it a permanent condition? Or is it | just something that you noticed once or twice and made a | mental note of? | | We all have gaps and shortcomings. Overcoming them is a | matter of practice, but if someone is second-guessing and | judging every brain-fart, that's not good for anyone. | ChrisPebble wrote: | This was just an example where someone with no experience | may have had an advantage. They would have had to learn as | well, but wouldn't be fighting against their muscle memory. | | We all have strengths and weaknesses. I was arguing against | the concept that this can all be attributed to ageism. That | there are types of experience that can hamper you. | bob1029 wrote: | This is something that I have always suspected at some level. | | I think wrong experience isn't bad as long as you are willing to | be convinced otherwise. For me, the pain kicks in when someone | with the wrong experience is not open to alternatives. | | Unfortunately, the _true_ willingness of a candidate to entertain | alternatives is not something you discover until many weeks | /months into the real deal. | | As a consequence, resumes with very little technical matter in | them have been appealing to me far more than those loaded up with | framework-of-the-week and "best practices" word salads. | bena wrote: | I think I've felt this a little bit. | | As a non-degreed individual, I didn't hear anything from places I | would apply. Eventually, I applied for a non-development job at a | company that also claimed it developed software. With the hopes | I'd be able to kind of prove my chops while in the other role to | get moved over. | | Luckily, the company I applied for had no fucking clue what they | were doing and hired me for a software development position | because their entire technology team had just quit like a week | ago or something. And while that job essentially started me on my | path to where I am now, and I don't consider myself incompetent. | They honestly had absolutely no clue on how to evaluate | technology credentials. | | My resume was my incomplete education, my work in retail, and a | bit of the hobbyist development I had done on the Dreamcast. | | Now, the job turned out to be an entire shit-show. This was a | company who claimed to develop software but didn't have a license | for Visual Studio. No one knew how to manage a SQL Server. Etc. | They were looking for a glorified help desk technician who could | write some config file level stuff for the software package they | were a reseller for. | | However. They did contract the bulk of their networking to | another company. And also contracted with the owner to be the | effective CTO or something. Eventually, that guy knew I wasn't | happy or challenged at the job. And when he heard I was looking, | he just offered me a job. So I became a contractor for him. | | Eventually, one of our clients had their developer just walk in | the middle of a project and they needed me there like every day | to salvage the situation. After a while, they realized it would | be more cost effective to just essentially buy me. So now I work | for them, and I have for the past 6 or 7 years. Timeline is a | little fuzzy. This client is major. You've heard of them. Now, I | get recruiters contacting me and solicitations in my email even | though I haven't actively looked for a job since 2007. Even | though the place I work for is not even a technology company. | | Names do matter. | kingrazor wrote: | I also had no degree and wound up working for a small software | company as an IT "intern" which quickly lead to being their | sole IT person. That company was also a complete shit-show, but | had I not worked there I wouldn't have gained the skills that | lead to my current role, which is the best job I've had yet. | darth_avocado wrote: | It is definitely true for the most part. I took a software | engineering job in A software firm that's considered on of the OG | Silicon Valley company after I graduated. Unfortunately, I very | quickly realized that whenever I applied to FAANG or other "SV | cool kids" companies, I would not get an opportunity, meanwhile, | new grads from my same Uni kept getting those jobs. You don't get | interviews because you work at a non glamorous company, but you | work at a non glamorous company because you don't get interviews. | It's a tough cycle that takes some serious work to get out of. | | A thing that may be at play here is that you add "years of | experience" on your resume, and therefore as a lateral hire, are | expected to get paid more and therefore the risk aversion. | | Another thing at play could be the recency of experience. Your | most recent item on the resume is what catches the most | attention, so if it is something like SWE at Walgreens vs Senior | at MIT, the latter sounds more promising (even if it's not true). | | TLDR; there are consequences of not starting at the right | company, because they compound over time. | nnoitra wrote: | What should a new grad do to avoid starting at the wrong | company? Stay unemployed? | foobiekr wrote: | Find a job at a company before graduation. | | But basically, go somewhere that isn't a black mark on your | resume. I mean, there are obvious companies like Veritas, | IBM, Symantec, Oracle, Cisco, HP (not Aruba), PornHub, ... | which should be avoided because they have, for good or for | bad, poor reputations for the junior candidates coming out of | them (senior is quite a bit better - if they still code, | which you have to watch out for). Anonymous startup (not | crypto) probably a better choice, plus you will learn more. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-26 23:00 UTC)