

Looking for a Job? Learn Ruby, Python and be a Team Player (infographic) - ddw
http://blog.infochimps.com/2011/12/05/looking-for-a-job-learn-ruby-python-and-be-a-team-player/

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Timothee
The part about "team player" doesn't make much sense to me.

How do you decide if someone is an "average team player" or an "above average
team player"? Hard overall, impossible from a LinkedIn profile. Unless of
course, they base their decision from what the people have entered themselves.
But then again, who would put "I'm an average team player"?

That being said, considering the similar setup for comparison, it's
interesting that "good communication skills" rates so poorly comparatively to
"team player". It's not completely surprising I guess for software development
(though I might disagree), but it also means I might want to update my
profile/resume…

On another note, even though I rarely take part in the
"programmer/developer/engineer" discussions, I find the "Python/PHP/Java…
engineer" titles to be odd. These people are probably "software engineers",
but "Python/PHP/Java… developers". The specific language doesn't mean much to
your ability to engineer software. (unless maybe, you actually work on the
language itself)

~~~
anthuswilliams
I was wondering the same thing. The most generous interpretation I can give
Mixtent is that the survey asked its respondents to rate these developers as
team players and then found that those developers who tended to be ranked as
above average team players also tended to be ranked as better overall
engineers. But in general, this "finding" destroyed all credibility the
article might have had with me.

~~~
riffraff
I think it does have some value.

I, like you, assume they did a cross questionaire (Do you prefer Alice or Bob?
Do you think Alice is a better team player than Bob? Do you think Alice has a
better work ethic than Bob? etc)

But while this does not tell us much about the fact that "better team players"
get chosen more, it does teel that "people who appear more like team players"
get chosen more.

Since most of what one puts in resume/cv is _trying to appear something_ the
information that appearing a good rails dev is less useful than appearing like
a good "team player" has some (arguable) value.

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jcromartie
Based on these figures: do NOT learn Ruby. Ruby is dead last in the "face-
off", and looks like it would put you at a _significant_ disadvantage compared
to Java or Python.

That makes me wonder about two things:

1\. Is Mixtent wrong?

2\. Do companies really see Ruby on a resume and say "nope! next?"

~~~
tptacek
No. Competent companies don't hire people for "Python" or "Ruby" per se. But
the Ruby developer community is disproportionately well-stocked with web
"programmers" who know enough Ruby + JQ + "SQL" (read: AR) to make good-
looking, fairly functional websites.

It is easy to shoot these superficial programmers down, even from a cursory
browse of a resume.

It's not that Ruby signals that you're a superficial programmer; it's that
there are fewer superficial Python devs, and more superficial Ruby devs.

For the most part, your choices of programming language are a _terrible_ way
to differentiate or market yourself. You are far better off being clever about
picking your _application domain_.

~~~
ohashi
How do you explain Perl not faring so well?

~~~
tptacek
web designers : rails :: sysadmins : perl

I don't like Python; I'm a Ruby developer (actually, I don't know why I
stopped calling myself a C dev). But I'll freely admit: most Python
programmers know Python because they spend their real day job programming.

------
jrabone
What is this bullshit? Looking for a job? Convince me you know what you're
talking about. Show me something I didn't know and convince me it's worth
knowing. Demonstrate you know big 'O' notation (and maybe tell me how little
'o' and \omega are different). Draw me a binary search tree. Show me how a
skip list works. Fill in a multithreaded producer / consumer skeleton and get
it correct, then make it fast. Explain how UTF-8 works from first principles
(i.e. what's wrong with ASCII? How would you fix it? Now how do you optimise
the answer?)

I don't give a crap if you know $TRENDY_WEB_LANG. We don't write anything in
either Python or Ruby, and likely never will.

~~~
sgrove
I thought the content of you comment was interesting (and sounds like
interviewing with you might be pretty cool), but the tone was really harsh and
unlikely to spark any interesting conversation. Something like this might have
worked a bit better:

"It's not the language that matters when looking for a job, it's important
that you _convince me_ you know what you're talking about. Show me something I
didn't know, then convince me it's worth knowing. Demonstrate you know big 'O'
notation (and maybe even tell me how little 'o' and \omega are different).
Draw me a binary search tree. Show me how a skip list works. Fill in a
multithreaded producer / consumer skeleton and get it correct, then make it
fast. Explain how UTF-8 works from first principles (i.e. what's wrong with
ASCII? How would you fix it? Now how do you optimise the answer?)

Python and Ruby are both trendy right now, and interesting in their own right,
but we don't write anything in either language and likely never will. The
underlying technical/CS understanding is not only more important, but common
to almost all problems."

~~~
achompas
Honestly, this tone is better. I downvoted you for suggesting an alternative
because, honestly, parent is just as indignant as I am at this article's
bullshit.

You generally don't get a job by just learning a language. That's no different
than looking for a journalist gig after you've written for a few months.
There's much more to do.

------
npc
Am I the only one who thinks it's terrible that companies are apparently
defining engineers based on languages? I know Python AND Ruby, would that make
their heads explode?

~~~
nassosdim
I agree with you and what really takes the cake away from taking their
research as reliable and valid is not only that they skimmed over any kind of
educational background and programming concepts (for the sake of the argument
I'll assume that they consider them as granted) but calling out loud that
engineers that work for Microsoft are worse than the rest is to my eyes a sad
generalization that is used just to pinch nerves and win smiles from people
who consciously and for reasons of their own don't like Microsoft products
(myself being one of them).

------
achompas
I'll post this for the new HN members, since I would've loved to hear this
after joining: the companies you want to work for don't give a damn about what
languages you know.

You want a job? Learn how a splay tree performs better than a binary search
tree, and what that says about worst-case algorithmic complexity. Grok the
difference between training versus inference, and how a well-trained model can
completely fail in practice. Learn how programming can be functional,
imperative, or logic-based, and then mess around with Haskell, C, and Prolog.
Then use Python to see how all three can blend into one dialect (okay maybe
not logic-based).

Good companies don't look for languages on your resume--they want people who
know their stuff. List comprehensions or decorators don't matter--you have to
demonstrate an ability to learn _anything_ , whether it's syntactic sugar or
obscure data structures with specific use cases.

~~~
dkasper
False dichotomy. You can be a programmer who "knows their stuff" and also know
the right languages.

~~~
achompas
Are those people really looking for work in this market? Or are they fighting
off recruiters from Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft?

------
tryitnow
I don't know what to make of this. I see no actual data (or even a link to
it). I don't know if they corrected for other variables and having "python" on
your LI profile is predictive or just correlative.

I think I have actually lost knowledge instead of gaining it after reading
this infographic.

------
hullo
Is it just me or is the text really, really hard to read? Maybe just today
I've finally gotten really old, but please: don't do that. If you _have_ to
write your text in a graphic, at least make it easily viewable.

~~~
rednum
I think the same, it seems that text is too small. Also I don't like 'generic
engineer Charlie' vs 'teamworking python engineer Anthony' - no info in this
particular part of graphic, just noise taking up half of a box. I'm not sure
if those pie charts are a good idea either - it seems that they are rather
discouraged (there was a post on HN few months ago discussing it), and making
them half-a-pie-charts make them even more confusing.

------
jnorthrop
.NET doesn't even make the cut for consideration? Am I wrong in thinking that
there are still plenty of opportunities for Microsoft developers?

~~~
nxn
I can say for certain that the demand for solid .NET devs is really high in
the Philadelphia area right now. I am constantly bombarded from recruiters,
and now even old employers that are offering me new positions. Beyond this,
I've actually gotten a chance to look at some resumes over the last 2-3 months
and it seems that the typical applicant who gets at least a decent
consideration isn't even all that skilled or experienced.

On the other hand, when I was searching for a new position some 7 to 8 months
ago, the few python places here seemed to have unrealistic expectations of
their applicants.

~~~
sudont
The exact same in Minneapolis. I'm definitely not learning Python for a
job—it's strictly for fun side projects, which you really don't get in either
.NET or Java. The main reason I'd avoid those languages would be to avoid
mercenary programmers, and instead find a dev who gives a shit.

Choice quote (paraphrased) from a .NET dev: "who cares what the code looks
like, you should be gone by the time anyone would look at it."

------
bbwharris
I think it says:

"learn Python, win over your peers".

"don't be a dick, win over your peers".

"learn ruby, convince your peers you're good at CSS too."

"work at facebook/google and be popular."

Mixtent is a popularity contest. My bet is, if you asked someone on the street
with no knowledge of programming "who is a better engineer". Split by name it
would be random 50/50. But if you included where they worked, then the
Facebook or Google person would win.

It is interesting though.

------
danishkhan
Interesting information. I am curious if they can tell whether this will be
the same over time or if things such as Node.js and other languages will take
over.

I figure being a team player will probably never change.

------
Craiggybear
Ruby is actually incredibly beautiful. I used to think Python was beautifully
concise and minimalist till I started playing with Ruby.

I don't use Rails, though. But I do write and use Ruby for hundreds of
everyday data and text manipulation tasks. Its also great fun for sucking data
from a database and slicing and dicing it into a dozen different formats
really quickly.

I love its natural language constructs. They're incredibly productive.

Python is like that, too but I find myself drawn to Ruby. It _is_ fun in
itself and it _does_ make drudge-programming fun again.

