If you’re in tech and have been thinking about your work and role in your company, I highly encourage you to watch this talk by Tanya Reilly ¹

Setting myself a reminder to rewatch this again 6 months from now.

… You should mention what technologies you are using (because listing WCF or Java will save me the hassle of applying, and you the hassle of rejecting me), but don’t list specific tools, languages and frameworks as requirements.

Good developers who know Rails can learn Django or Node.

Going between Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL and Postgres is all pretty trivial.

… I remember being asked quite eagerly, during a pre-interview, if I knew a specific view engine (like erb, or haml…). Seriously, a view engine!?!? A shitty programmer can learn a new view engine in 10 minutes. Or a more common one that always gets to me is listing some specific version control software. Or a specific library that solves a trivial problem (I see this all the time from the .NET world with DI and mocking frameworks)

If you’re in the business of hiring programmers, the article linked is a must read. It’s concise and a gold read. No excuse for not reading it.

• Avoid nano-questions
• A good engineer thinks abstractly in terms of designing and building systems, they think in terms of algorithms, components, and engineering design. They do not necessarily know all of the details of syntax of a given language, especially if they are used to a good IDE…
• … it is more important that I be able to tell you when and where I should use inheritance, and when and where I should use polymorphism, than to be able to spit off the definition. ((bolded text my own))
• Basically: Any question that takes 5 seconds to answer with Google is not a good question. My favorite phone interview question? “What’s your favorite language?” followed by “What are it’s weaknesses?”

definitely dated, but interesting yardsticks.

via Hacker News

You’d be surprised how valuable the skill of eloquent communication is even in the field of IT. Keeping users apprised with your progress is perhaps the most important thing to do when working with clients. But keeping them apprised is tricky business and the ability to clearly put down in words,what to expect, is a basic necessity today.

Even if you have nothing to do with CS or computers, you should read the linked article. Fantastic advice.