Morrie the Toupee Salesman

2 responses so far ↓

• 1 Eli // Feb 7, 2008 at 1:33 am

  Owen, I agree but I think that this broad look gets a little to general in some cases.

  For the most part, yes, I agree. Having 6 months, preferably a year, working exclusively in a language does get you to the 90% mark. Requiring 3-5 years in a specific language, is a bit silly.

  However, there are two counter points. One is that the quality of that knowledge can vary. You can have a guy who worked for some companies that did amazing stuff with that language, and therefore his 1 year experience is solid. And then someone who ‘tinkered’ with the language at the job, or never did anything more complex than hello world, and so the knowledge just isn’t there.

  That’s a hard one to figure out, but I agree just saying 3-5 years, isn’t going to do that for you.

  One might argue that ’1 year with the language’ can give between a 50% and 90% knowledge of it, and you have to weed from there.

  There is also the fact that as development teams grow, you do end up needing some of the 95%, 99% etc folks, who know the ‘extra bits’ that start being needed.

  Overall though, I think that the bigger issue that is often overlooked, is simply the years of experience within a certain field of technology, language aside.

  So asking for 3-5 years of writing Web Apps, with at least 1 year in PHP. That sounds like an excellent writeup. Because the extra time you spend within a certain field (Web Apps, Desktop Apps, system software, etc), seems to impart much greater, and better, general knowledge of how to do ‘that job’ … and the language does become somewhat less important.

• 2 Owen // Feb 7, 2008 at 9:49 am

  I think I agree with you. While a lot of developers out there obsess over the latest language, the real learning curve is in learning the associated technologies. I’m on my 5th server-side language now, but I’m still writing webapps, and the past experience is still relevant.
  Also there is definitely a “quality” level to experience. Recruiters probably have a hard time measuring it, often just looking at the company name.

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