Assuming we're on the verge of a big boom in Ruby jobs, shouldn't
there be a place where employers can verify a candidates reputation?
I'm thinking a testimonial or trust-based system of some sort.
Speaking as someone who has done hiring in a area with lots
of "certification" (Cisco Networking). I can say it means nothing
when I see it on a resume. If I want to know if someone understands
BGP in an interview, I can ask one or two questions and within five
minutes have a pretty good handle on their level of expertise.
I found that there was very little correlation between what I could
discern from someone in person to what was on their resume relative
to "certification".
When the market for Java programmers exploded there were hug numbers
of highly (un)qualified people getting hired to do Java and causing
all sorts of grief to everyone involved. Lots of them had (or claimed
to have) certification.
Sounds like bad hiring practices to me. I think *technical* knowledge
is one of the *easiest* things to figure out in an interview. What I
find really hard to figure out is if the person is going to have a good
attitude, work well with others, be good with customers, and so on.
Gary Wright
···
On Nov 3, 2005, at 11:41 AM, Obie Fernandez wrote:
That's what Open Source is for. It's not just a hobby, it's a
portfolio.
-mental
···
On Fri, 2005-11-04 at 01:41 +0900, Obie Fernandez wrote:
Assuming we're on the verge of a big boom in Ruby jobs, shouldn't
there be a place where employers can verify a candidates reputation?
I'm thinking a testimonial or trust-based system of some sort.
Assuming we're on the verge of a big boom in Ruby jobs, shouldn't
there be a place where employers can verify a candidates reputation?
I'm thinking a testimonial or trust-based system of some sort.
You can rank your peers on RubyForge, although I realize relatively few
Ruby programmers have accounts there.....just the best ones.
Just a totally unbiased opinion from a guy who also happens to have an
account on RubyForge.
In article <8bf510930511030841n1dce715al510f95b3ff0607c9@mail.gmail.com>,
Assuming we're on the verge of a big boom in Ruby jobs, shouldn't
there be a place where employers can verify a candidates reputation?
I'm thinking a testimonial or trust-based system of some sort.
Maybe these employers should look at things like ruby-talk particpation,
projects listed on Rubyforge and in the RAA, blogs and articles written
by the candidate.
When the market for Java programmers exploded there were huge numbers
of highly (un)qualified people getting hired to do Java and causing
all sorts of grief to everyone involved. Lots of them had (or claimed
to have) certification.
Let's look at it from a different angle: when Java really 'hit'
there were very few people that had more than a year's worth of Java
experience (many had far less). Since the employers wanted to use Java
for their project (probably based on Sun's hype more than anything) they
put themselves in the situation of needing to train Java programmers on
the job (how else would people get significant experience with Java other
than on-the-job?). Can one really expect to find an experienced pool of
Noo_lang programmers prior to significant industry adoption of Noo_lang?
The only way for this to happen is if Noo_lang was used in open source
development prior to industry adoption - we could say that this is the case
with Ruby.
Ruby's adoption by industry is probably going to look a lot different than
Java's adoption. Ruby's adoption is likely being driven more from the
bottom-up, while Java's adoption was primarily driven from the top-down.
Reminds me of a passage I saw today in the Peopleware book (paraphrased):
** HIRING A JUGGLER **
Interviewer: Can you juggle?
Juggler: Sure.
I: 3 balls, 4 balls?
J: No problem, even 5 balls.
I: Can you handle knives and bowling balls.
J: No problem. Chain saws too.
I: And do you have a funny patter to go with it.
J: It's hilarious!
I: Great, you're hired.
J: What? You don't want to see me juggle?
I: ??
···
On Thursday 03 November 2005 11:41 am, Obie Fernandez wrote:
When the market for Java programmers exploded there were huge numbers
of highly (un)qualified people getting hired to do Java and causing
all sorts of grief to everyone involved. Lots of them had (or claimed
to have) certification.
obie, who believes in learning from history
--
-- Jim Weirich jim@weirichhouse.org http://onestepback.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct,
not tried it." -- Donald Knuth (in a memo to Peter van Emde Boas)
In article <B106AF0C-AB40-4515-B877-9043A19C891F@mac.com>,
Assuming we're on the verge of a big boom in Ruby jobs, shouldn't
there be a place where employers can verify a candidates reputation?
I'm thinking a testimonial or trust-based system of some sort.
Speaking as someone who has done hiring in a area with lots
of "certification" (Cisco Networking). I can say it means nothing
when I see it on a resume. If I want to know if someone understands
BGP in an interview, I can ask one or two questions and within five
minutes have a pretty good handle on their level of expertise.
I found that there was very little correlation between what I could
discern from someone in person to what was on their resume relative
to "certification".
When the market for Java programmers exploded there were hug numbers
of highly (un)qualified people getting hired to do Java and causing
all sorts of grief to everyone involved. Lots of them had (or claimed
to have) certification.
Sounds like bad hiring practices to me. I think *technical* knowledge
is one of the *easiest* things to figure out in an interview. What I
find really hard to figure out is if the person is going to have a good
attitude, work well with others, be good with customers, and so on.
I would even maintain that a technical interview is not a very good way to
guauge someone's technical expertise and talent. There are very talented
people who lock-up in that situation. And it is an artificial
situation:
In real life how often do you find yourself locked in a room without any
reference books and no internet access?
It would be better to consider a candidate's community involvment
including open source code the candidate has produced. Lacking that, I'd
like to see more 'real-world' technical interviews where the interviewer
brings in a laptop (with wifi access, a compiler or interpretter,
program editors, IDEs, etc), some reference books and outlines a
problem s/he would like to have the interviewee solve. The interiewer
then leaves the room for 2 or 3 (maybe more) hours and checks back later
to see the code written by the interviewee.
Phil
···
<gwtmp01@mac.com> wrote:
On Nov 3, 2005, at 11:41 AM, Obie Fernandez wrote:
Assuming we're on the verge of a big boom in Ruby jobs, shouldn't
there be a place where employers can verify a candidates reputation?
I'm thinking a testimonial or trust-based system of some sort.
You can rank your peers on RubyForge, although I realize relatively few
Ruby programmers have accounts there.....just the best ones.
Just a totally unbiased opinion from a guy who also happens to have an
account on RubyForge.
Indeed, I believe Dan's RubyForge user ID number is 1337, is it not?
On Fri, 2005-11-04 at 01:41 +0900, Obie Fernandez wrote:
Assuming we're on the verge of a big boom in Ruby jobs, shouldn't
there be a place where employers can verify a candidates reputation?
I'm thinking a testimonial or trust-based system of some sort.
That's what Open Source is for. It's not just a hobby, it's a
portfolio.
On Fri, 2005-11-04 at 01:41 +0900, Obie Fernandez wrote:
Assuming we're on the verge of a big boom in Ruby jobs, shouldn't
there be a place where employers can verify a candidates reputation?
I'm thinking a testimonial or trust-based system of some sort.
That's what Open Source is for. It's not just a hobby, it's a
portfolio.
-mental
Couldn't agree more - since I started contributing to various projects, my owns skills have improved dramatically, and I can now point to commit logs in interviews - before I had to hope that web project x by company y was still running, otherwise my CV had no real backing.
Reminds me of how java programmers see VB programmers, guess hubris is
cyclical...
···
On 11/4/05, Jim Weirich <jim@weirichhouse.org> wrote:
On Thursday 03 November 2005 11:41 am, Obie Fernandez wrote:
> When the market for Java programmers exploded there were huge numbers
> of highly (un)qualified people getting hired to do Java and causing
> all sorts of grief to everyone involved. Lots of them had (or claimed
> to have) certification.
>
> obie, who believes in learning from history
Reminds me of a passage I saw today in the Peopleware book (paraphrased):
meone's technical expertise and talent. There are very talented
people who lock-up in that situation. And it is an artificial
situation:
In real life how often do you find yourself locked in a room without any
reference books and no internet access?
You've given a very nice illustration of a problem with the
interviewer not the interviewee. There are some questions that
should be able to be answered without the aid of a reference book.
There are other questions that might require those resources and an
interviewer is free to make them available.
I understand that some folks don't do well in *any* type of interview
situation but that is a completely different ball of wax.
It would be better to consider a candidate's community involvment
including open source code the candidate has produced.
I often ask about this sort of thing in interviews but I also *always*
ask if there is anything about the person that we haven't covered but
would be important in making a hiring decision. This is an open door
for someone to point out open source projects and such.
