
How to Get a Job Using a Technology You Don't Know - jasonswett
http://www.jasonswett.net/how-to-get-a-job-using-a-technology-you-dont-know/
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jsaxton86
Summary: If you want to learn a new technology, consider implementing a side
project with that technology.

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jere
It's a fine article, but the implied answer to the title is: you can't. Know
the technology, then get the job. I was hoping it was about getting a job when
you wouldn't know the technology until you started.

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reledi
I got a job as a Rails developer without knowing Rails. Here's how I did it.

I went out to local community events with a focus on software and networked
with other developers. Word got out that I (a student at the time) was a
competent developer with open source experience. When I graduated, a few of my
new developer friends tried to recruit me.

I took a job at a local startup as a software developer. I was going to build
a new product, though the tech stack wasn't decided yet. Soon it was decided
to be Ruby on Rails. I worked through the Rails guide on building your own
blog, then continued to learn it on the job by doing a small project that
shipped. At that point I had enough experience to design the important project
and start building it.

It's worth noting that while learning Ruby/Rails, I completely surrounded
myself with resources. I would answer questions on StackOverflow, follow Rails
blogs, watch screencasts, hang out in the IRC channels, read and review Ruby
books, watch and learn from public projects on GitHub, etc.

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cheepin
Cached version, because it's down for me:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iG01hdg...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:iG01hdgwv6kJ:www.jasonswett.net/how-
to-get-a-job-using-a-technology-you-dont-know/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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fecak
If we're talking about full-time salaried jobs (and not just consulting gigs),
the easiest way of getting a job using a technology you don't know is to find
one of the many companies that value the overall engineering background over
things like syntax.

For many years I recruited for companies (mostly mid/large) that would only
hire engineers with a highly specific technical background - X years of this
language, Y years of this framework. Then I started working with smaller shops
that weren't nearly as concerned about the specific tools, but were more
focused on overall software development knowledge. I've placed Ruby devs into
Python shops and vice versa, Java devs into Scala and Clojure shops, etc.

This is not as easily done if you're looking for someone to hire you as an
independent consultant, but for perm hire it's now common.

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eldavido
This has actually been opposite of my experience.

I've seen that bigger cos, owing to being better resourced, can be more
patient about the payoffs of long-term bets (including training
young/inexperienced employees). Microsoft can afford to fight 10-year wars of
attrition; small startups with 3 months of runway can't.

Overall I've found that consulting gigs turn on value delivered immediately,
whereas the stronger of a "software" culture that a company has, the more
willing they've been to invest in training and letting people get up to speed
with newer tech.

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fecak
Larger companies can be more patient about long-term bets, but in my
experience I've found that they aren't regarding experienced hires. Of course
they'll train the young and inexperienced, but I don't see as many large firms
hiring experienced developers with a different skill set than they are ideally
seeking. Part of this can probably be explained by the traditional big firm HR
departments.

Tech culture is probably the key ingredient regardless of company size, though
I'd theorize that the type of culture open to diverse tech backgrounds is
generally found in smaller shops.

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vonmoltke
This has been my experience as well. With large companies, once you have
"Senior" in your title, you are officially pigeon-holed. I broke out of that
by going to a small company[1], but I think my varied background and career
path is now blocks me from ever going back to a large one.

[1] Incidentally, a non-enterprise Java shop, where I was hired despite not
having written much code in Java.

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coreymgilmore
For those of you getting a DB error:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20140718143333/http://www.jasonsw...](http://web.archive.org/web/20140718143333/http://www.jasonswett.net/how-
to-get-a-job-using-a-technology-you-dont-know/)

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jasonswett
Thanks. Didn't expect to make first page. Working on getting the actual site
back up.

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eklavya
Still it's pretty hard to sell GitHub projects to HR drones who want
"commercial experience" and might not even know about GitHub. No matter how
good your code is, if it's not seen by someone who can judge it, you can't
even get your foot in the door.

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beeskneecaps
My solution to this is to write beautifully formatted README.md's with demo
links and gifs.

Since most HR (and most engineering managers) aren't going to clone your repo
and install your code to test it, this is the most efficient way to illustrate
your awesomeness.

I just record the desktop with QuickTime screen record then edit in something
like GifBrewery to get brief gif loops.

You'll want to make sure the demos are short and to the point... maybe 15
seconds per gif.

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eklavya
I don't expect them to clone my repo and see my work AND I don't expect them
to see the readme. They won't understand (quite understandably) most of the
work I do and it will not have any GUI candies to show either :)

What you suggest is useful in many scenarios given that they are willing to go
thorough the trouble of following the links and checking up the work. All they
want to hear is "x years on y tech a z company". Not all of them are like this
but so many are.

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chairmankaga
Seems to be overloaded, cached:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.jas...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.jasonswett.net/how-
to-get-a-job-using-a-technology-you-dont-know/)

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hkarthik
This is exactly how I went from not knowing Rails, to getting a high paying
gig with a Fortune 100 working on a high scale Rails app within 3 years.

I went from first Rails side project -> Freelance consulting -> Early Stage
startup -> Acquired startup at Fortune 100.

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beauzero
...amen

