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It’s No Surprise That “Skills-Based” Hiring Has Not Worked
(www.forbes.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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As much as I hate the higher education requirement, if I get another “boot camp” developer application I’m gonna puke.
This is why I only interview barefoot candidates.
I need to see between the toes if they wanna work with me 🦶
I take a little taste, just to be sure.
Would you elaborate?
That way you know they didn't attend a boot camp ...
LOL, yep, I missed that.
Can you talk about this more?
A boot camp means you paid someone; there is no accreditation, unlike university degree programs. A relevant degree is an indicator that someone might be suitable.
This is true in both cases
This is true. It's an interesting destination.
Edit: does a well rounded and accredited education provide more value to your organization than a narrowly scoped employee?
Yes, a well-rounded employee is generally more valuable than one with limited skills.
There are people who went to Boot Camps that are excellent developers. There are people who have a masters degree in computer science who are awful developers.
For entry level? Honestly, not usually. They know one thing, and if they deviate from that, their quality breaks down fast.
Well, there’s no guarantee right? But they’d have a more well rounded understanding of programming. Anyone can use a Class, but can you make one?
Any programming degree, along with an acceptable understanding of the technologies they need on day one.
For my job specifically, we need someone with PHP experience. Not just how to . My favorite interview question is, “explain to me your understanding of PHP magic methods and how you would use them, in a basic example.”
I get a lot of dumb looks, and wrong answers.
That being said, I hired someone who failed that test, but they had a good personality and a willingness to learn—and they have a CS degree.
I take the PHP, and I throw it in the trash.
And replace it with?
Python.
Is that because you’re more familiar with python than PHP? What framework do you use?
I built sites in PHP before I knew any Python.
All of my personal web stuff is now based on Flask. I basically just replaced the P in LAMP with Python.
Was this all pre-PHP 8?
Y'all keep asking that. Yes, this was a while ago. Did they completely start over from scratch with 8? Otherwise, the clusterfuck is only growing.
I think it would be easier for you to give me an idea of the clusterfuck you have experienced and I can let you know if that cluster is still fucking.
What I do know, is that it is significantly better. Nullable types, multi-catch, typed properties, arrow functions, etc.
I'm not going to dig up decades-old code for you to pick over - but I do recall that the labyrinthian and ever-increasingly complex and buggy behavior of the multitudinous builtins was an undending pain in the ass.
I was just wondering if you had anything off the top of your head. Any language can be spaghetti if you make it spaghetti. 🤷♂️
The problem is that PHP is inherently spaghetti.
When used incorrectly.
Using any of the builtins is incorrect usage, apparently.
Using them incorrectly, would be incorrect. Without an example, it’s hard to tell.
But, pretty much everyone was doing the web “wrong” back in the day. Server-side html generation? Gag me. Or worse, inserting PHP into html?! Shudder. But that’s how it was for many backed languages.
IMO, nowadays, if it’s not a reactive js front end using the backend as an API, it’s doing it wrong. But I’m sure in 10 years we will all be laughing at how seriously we were taking JavaScript.
It makes me shudder to think how the modern web is just treating browsers as JavaScript application environments. Converting a little backend load into a massive frontend headache is the exact opposite of where we thought we were headed twenty years ago.
Well, it’s not a massive front end headache if you do it right. And, by passing off a lot of the easy stuff to the browser, your server can handle more load. As a bonus, it’s easier to decouple your architecture. Not only is this more efficient, but it’s easier to maintain, test, and deploy.
It's sacrificing efficiency on the frontend for the backend. It makes the backend easier to test, while making the frontend more complex. It significantly jacks up requirements for the clients while reducing them for the host.
You backend people are forgetting that there are devices on the other end that need to process and render this bullshit. It sells more new iPhones, though, so who the fuck cares?
I’m equally proficient on the front end. I don’t have any problem making front end code that doesn’t require the latest and greatest processor.
Inefficient JavaScript and abusive css animation are the cause of all that. Preventing event flooding is crucial and often overlooked. And ffs, not everything has to be animated. If the fan kicks on, that developer is a moron.
My point is that the JavaScript is inherently inefficient.
The possibility that you might suck less than someone else doesn't fix that fact, or the fact that the modern web can bring a ten-year-old tablet to its knees.
JavaScript doesn’t run on a Commodore 64 either, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use it.
I’ll still argue that an efficient web app will be a significantly better experience than waiting for pages to load, even on a 10 year old tablet.
And to support that, I do most of my mobile testing on my old iPhone 6—which is, coincidentally, 10 years old. I don’t have trouble with JavaScript on that.
I think what it comes down to is there are a lot of unskilled developers out there that misuse JavaScript… and PHP.
And both are complete clusterfucks, so it's not that surprising.
But at this point it's literally just a case of "old man yells at cloud."
What isn’t a clusterfuck?
More than PHP and JavaScript?
🤷♂️ kinda sounds like you might be doing things the hard way.
By considering all aspects of a system, and identifying bottlenecks?
Bottlenecks like?
Did you already forget the prior thread?
Where you didn’t actually have any specific complaints other than your poor implementation of JavaScript and PHP? Yes I recall. I assume you don’t actually currently do this for a living?
Maybe go back and reread the thread, buddy.
I did. You just complain about JavaScript like someone who can’t use JavaScript and complain about PHP like someone who can’t use PHP. Your reasoning isn’t based on any real world examples, and your opinions of technologies that are widely praised seem to be based on a grudge. You weren’t kidding about yelling at clouds.
PHP and JavaScript are widely derided. What planet are you on?
I’m on the planet that gets paid. You spend too much time in /programminghumor and not enough time developing.
But nothing is good to you, since everything is a “clusterfuck” right?
PECAK.
Look, I get it. You have no idea what the computer is actually doing when it runs your little scripts.
That must be it.
Obviously, there's a lot of 'it depends on the person' in this topic. At least in my mind. I think you're right in that both things (degree/camp) create good and bad results.
Do you have any experience hiring a person who passed that test, who wasn't a degree holder?
Do you have any experiences where someone failed that test, wasn't a degree holder, and you hired them anyway?
Do you feel you could put a ratio to it in your field/employer?
I don’t have statistics for you.
I’ve never had a good experience personally, as a developer, with someone whose applicable education came only from a boot camp.
Boot camps are fine for supplemental education. For learning a new skill. But are not (usually) a good foundation, and don’t teach you enough to actually get a job.
Also, and this is more personal, it’s kind of annoying when someone thinks their 60 hour class should get them a high paying job.
The vast majority of boot camp grads are terrible candidates. A degree guarantees almost nothing but a boot camp cert guarantees even less.