Linked by David Adams on Fri 11th Jul 2008 02:59 UTC, submitted by snydeq
Neil McAllister raises questions regarding Web development skills in an era of constant innovation. Sure, low barriers to entry give underdog technologies ample opportunity to thrive without the backing of name-brand vendors. But doesn't this fragmentation of the Web development market put undue pressure on developers to specialize? The result is a crisis, McAllister concludes, one in which maintaining a marketable skill set and hiring for a particular Web project gets more difficult as the state of the art changes on an almost daily basis.
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Member since:
2005-07-05
The author asks, "If you're in charge of a Web-based software project, how do you go about recruiting development talent?"
That's easy. You throw out any resumes that only show one or two languages (especially if they are languages like VB, C# or Java).
When I hire somebody, I look for engineers who have programmed in languages like Python, Perl, Lisp, or Ruby, or some obscure language, and ignore programmers who have only used mainstream, corporate languages like C# and Java.
Why? Because engineers who only know C# and/or Java tend to be career engineers who are in it for the money, whereas the others tend to be in the field due to their love of technology. Those are the people I want because they tend to be more knowledgeable, flexible, and creative.