Interview
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From: Ken T. on 30 Sep 2009 21:14 I had an interview today. It didn't go as well as I would have liked. It didn't go badly but I wasn't familiar with everything my potential employer did. When did it become necessary for a developer to not only know the language used inside out, but also the APIs used, the third party tools used, and basically to have done the same job for the last five years. I thought that the whole point of a good computer science education was that you could apply what you learned to any language or API. BTW, this was for a Java position with a focus on Swing. I'm an expert Java developer and a damn good swing developer. There are just parts of the API swing API that I have yet to have needed and those I'm unfamiliar with (many having to do with look and feel). -- Ken T. We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we will all hang separately. -- Benjamin Franklin
From: Scott A. Hightower on 30 Sep 2009 22:12 "Ken T." <nowhere(a)home.com> wrote in message news:4ac40260$0$21109$ec3e2dad(a)unlimited.usenetmonster.com... >I had an interview today. It didn't go as well as I would have liked. > It didn't go badly but I wasn't familiar with everything my potential > employer did. > > When did it become necessary for a developer to not only know the > language used inside out, but also the APIs used, the third party tools > used, and basically to have done the same job for the last five years. > > I thought that the whole point of a good computer science education was > that you could apply what you learned to any language or API. > > BTW, this was for a Java position with a focus on Swing. I'm an expert > Java developer and a damn good swing developer. There are just parts of > the API swing API that I have yet to have needed and those I'm unfamiliar > with (many having to do with look and feel). > > > > > > -- > Ken T. > > We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we will all hang > separately. > -- Benjamin Franklin It happens. In my years of experience as a contract programmer, I found that nobody at contract agencies had any idea what their contractors did, and not very many hiring managers did, either. So the "interview" consists of buzzwords, arbitrary tool and language version numbers and a arbitrary assortment of language, API and tool features. Just tell yourself how terrified the interviewer was that you would see through his ignorance and move on.
From: Roedy Green on 30 Sep 2009 22:50 On 01 Oct 2009 01:14:08 GMT, "Ken T." <nowhere(a)home.com> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who said : > >When did it become necessary for a developer to not only know the >language used inside out, but also the APIs used, the third party tools >used, and basically to have done the same job for the last five years. Read the ads. They are so specific. They want to you spend 0 time learning, even a slightly different SQL engine. -- Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products http://mindprod.com There is one brain organ that is optimised for understanding and articulating logical processes, and that is the outer layer of the brain, called the cerebral cortex. Unlike the rest of the brain, this relatively recent evolutionary development is rather flat, only about 0.32 cm (0.12 in) thick, and includes a mere 6 million neurons. This elaborately folded organ provides us with what little competence we do possess for understanding what we do and who we do it. ~ Ray Kurzweil (born: 1948-02-12 age: 61)
From: Eric Sosman on 30 Sep 2009 23:27 Ken T. wrote: > I had an interview today. It didn't go as well as I would have liked. > It didn't go badly but I wasn't familiar with everything my potential > employer did. > > When did it become necessary for a developer to not only know the > language used inside out, but also the APIs used, the third party tools > used, and basically to have done the same job for the last five years. When the hirer has an immediate, short-term need to get something done with that specific combination of goodies. If the task at hand is "Omigosh, the one person in the company who maintained the Brueghel Flugel application has just been drowned in a butt of Malmsey, and a million-splonder contract hinges on our being able to extend it to handle Strudel Noodles as well! We need a Strudel Flugel Noodle Brueghel expert, and we need one yesterday!" IMHO, it's short-sighted to take on a permanent employee on such a basis, because the need for a Brueghel Noodle Strudel Flugel expert will pass in three months, and then you find out you've got someone who's unable or unwilling to learn about the Allegash Calabash Succotash API's you'll need for the project that'll start in January. For urgent short-term needs, hire an expert consultant, pay him his exorbitant rate, and bid him good- bye when he's done what you need. But for permanent positions, the hirer should be thinking not just about today's crises, but about whether the candidate is the sort of person who'll be helpful with the crises that aren't even imagined yet. For short- term needs seek specific experience and skill sets; don't ignore them for long-term hires, but pay attention to intangibles like "native ability." (There's a similar tension in elections: The candidates are always talking about their positions on the issues that make headline news today, but the one you elect will still be in office when today's headlines are yesterday's news and matters not yet thought of have come to the fore.) > I thought that the whole point of a good computer science education was > that you could apply what you learned to any language or API. Dunno; I never had a "good computer science education." (I've taught programming courses to undergraduates -- for credit! -- but took only a couple such courses, years later.) "Any language or API" seems to me an awfully ambitious goal, though. Even the simplest languages and API's can contain (and often *do* contain) subtle traps of various kinds -- just look at all those cross-site scripting bugs that systems get pwn'ed by every day. (Confess: How many weeks of your CS curriculum were spent studying cross-site scripting bugs? Were you taught how to detect them, how to avoid creating new ones? Were they even *mentioned* in the lectures or homework? Would you say that a Web developer knowing only as much about cross-site scripting as you were taught is well-qualified to develop Web applications?) And some of the gotchas are language-specific, which means you won't learn about them from a "fundamental truths" kind of curriculum, but only from familiarity with the language in question. Education (and experience) may equip you with the tools to discover and learn to deal with the idiosyncrasies of the Bebop API's in the Sumatra language, but I don't think they can qualify you as a Sumatra/Bebop practitioner from Day One. > BTW, this was for a Java position with a focus on Swing. I'm an expert > Java developer and a damn good swing developer. There are just parts of > the API swing API that I have yet to have needed and those I'm unfamiliar > with (many having to do with look and feel). You may be up against the dichotomy of "We need help on Project X" versus "We need another good person." That's a toughie -- but don't be too uncharitable to the hiring manager, because he may have had to use "We need Project X help" as a justification to get the personnel requisition funded ... Keep looking, and try to pitch your long-term value, try to shift at least some of the focus off the Project X work that must be done by year's end and toward the "What happens in 2010,11,12,..." question. If he needs help on Project X you'll have to show at least some ability to help with it, but make sure he realizes that Project X is not Forever, and get him to start thinking about what happens after X is over, and how valuable you'd be for the as-yet-undreamed-of Project Y. Good luck! -- Eric Sosman esosman(a)ieee-dot-org.invalid
From: Sabine Dinis Blochberger on 1 Oct 2009 04:13
Roedy Green wrote: > On 01 Oct 2009 01:14:08 GMT, "Ken T." <nowhere(a)home.com> wrote, quoted > or indirectly quoted someone who said : > > > > >When did it become necessary for a developer to not only know the > >language used inside out, but also the APIs used, the third party tools > >used, and basically to have done the same job for the last five years. > > Read the ads. They are so specific. They want to you spend 0 time > learning, even a slightly different SQL engine. > They also want an expert in every technology they use or ever used. As a canditate, remember that they can't find that person on this earth, and will "settle" as it were. They don't really have a choice. -- Op3racional - www.op3racional.eu --------------------- If you're reading this, you're on Usenet <http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/unice.htm> |