Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.programming > #5266

Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one?

Show all headers | View raw

Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> writes:
(snip)
> The way the world *should* work is that companies hire bright people, 
> regardless of whether they know CORBA or Zend or Bogalog or whatever the 
> technology is.
>
> Does this ever happen? I don't know, but somehow I doubt it.

It /does/, but it's uncommon. For instance, when my employer went out of
business during the credit crisis, I got back into mainstream full-stack
stuff -- PL/pgSQL, Hibernate, Struts, Spring, Lucene, JavaScript etc. --
through being hired by such a company. You have to look for ones who
hire a lot of new graduates from good universities and expect them to be
able to work on the whole codebase (so they expect one to learn on the
job). As a professional used to managing teams on multiple projects at
once, this new job at a place used to hiring new graduates was a pain
from the point of view of now just being junior and working on only one
project while managed by people with more years in that company but
rather less experience overall than I -- it was more a word of mouth
thing that colleagues learned I could actually help with shell
scripting, LaTeX, image transformation, etc. too outside the role I
officially had -- but it was a nice holiday from having a more stressful
position and really boosted my resume with the latest buzzword
technologies for the next round of job applications.

Unfortunately, it takes a good programmer to know one, and the good
programmers are mostly busy doing work they're needed for instead of
filtering through job applicants. You're right: there's an issue.

And, related to my other post in this thread, it now occurs to me that a
mix of, say, Standard ML and Java will help me when I have to use Scala,
which I have seen just a few paid positions for. For this kind of thing,
when I apply for a job using a language I've not used before, I normally
offer to supply code samples, and if they'd like to specify a small
problem for me to work on and provide a solution in that language before
they agree to interview me, then for some of them that's just fine and
actually rather appreciated (some pick Project Euler problems). Also,
there are other large employers who have their own in-house stuff like
InterSystems Caché where they don't really expect to hire people who
already know MUMPS or whatever.

-- Mark

Back to comp.programming | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2015-02-25 05:58 -0800
  Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2015-02-25 16:46 +0000
    Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2015-02-26 04:31 -0800
      Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2015-02-26 12:48 +0000
        Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2015-02-26 05:33 -0800
        Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? Mark Carroll <mtbc@bcs.org> - 2015-02-26 13:47 +0000
      Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? Mark Carroll <mtbc@bcs.org> - 2015-02-26 13:11 +0000
        Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2015-02-26 05:45 -0800
          Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? Mark Carroll <mtbc@bcs.org> - 2015-02-26 13:56 +0000
            Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2015-02-26 06:20 -0800
              Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? Mark Carroll <mtbc@bcs.org> - 2015-02-26 14:47 +0000
                Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2015-02-26 07:17 -0800
                Re: is it better to learn a couple of platforms/technologies or just one? fir <profesor.fir@gmail.com> - 2015-02-26 07:30 -0800

csiph-web