
You cannot have more than 10 years of experience in Rails - bugsbunny123
http://www.strategic-options.com/insight/you-cant-have-more-than-10-years-of-experience-on-rails/
======
jetti
Since there was no indication on the job ad that the position actually
required 10 years of Rails experience, I'm going out on a limb and say that
they just didn't want you/the author. From this brief article it seems that
the author has a inflated ego, I mean I could never mess with an interviewer
like that just because I know that people make mistakes. I think that this
particular company didn't do anything wrong and calling them out like the
author did doesn't make the company look bad but just makes the author look
bad.

~~~
MrDom
Why is this always the first comment on posts like these?

"This hiring process is messed up." "This guy has an inflated ego. We
shouldn't listen to him. DISQUALIFY!"

Pretty much anytime somebody posts a story about bad hiring practices this is
the first response I see. Why? What does it add to the discussion but an
unhealthy dose of ad hominem?

~~~
jetti
This isn't about the hiring process, this is about an individual that didn't
make it to the next round and started pointing out flaws of the interviewer
and then going out of their way to try to "shame" the company.

Take a look at the post again and you will see the Craigslist ad that the
individual responded to. You'll notice that there is no mention of requiring
any amount of experience in any framework or language. The ad looks like a
normal ad and wouldn't make it close to the front page of HN without the
author raising a hubbub.

People make mistakes. That is a general trait of humans. It seems like the
interviewer made the mistake when talking about Bootstrap. It could have been
a non-technical project manager. It could have been a consulting project
manager (since they appear to be a consultancy) we don't know. But then the
author criticizes the company for that. Not only that, it seems that he openly
mocked the interviewer about the mistake.

Then the problem compounds when the author gets an email from the company that
says that they went with two other candidates that have 10+ years experience.
Instead of letting it go (as the author doesn't even seem to care) he goes off
trying to prove them wrong. Odds are that the company was saying that to be
nice. Hearing that is a lot better than something like "Sorry, you're
personality sucks and we don't want you" (I'm not saying that is what is going
on but it could be an option). It is a line that is hard for the author to
dispute since he admittedly doesn't have that experience. Now, keep in mind,
that the company may have meant Ruby but instead put Rails. Even the author
makes that mistake by calling it Rudy when it makes more sense to write Rails
instead of Ruby.

I have seen articles about truly messed up hiring processes on this site,
however, this is not one of them. There are only two incidents and one of them
the author admits to "playing games". Not only that, but after "playing games"
with the project manager the author expected professionalism and courtesy of a
follow, despite not showing that to the interviewer. The way I see it is that
the author wasted this company's time, then tried to profit off of it by
writing a blog post that has ads on it. There is nothing wrong, from what is
described in the article, with how the company acted.

"Pretty much anytime somebody posts a story about bad hiring practices this is
the first response I see. Why? What does it add to the discussion but an
unhealthy dose of ad hominem?"

Honestly, I haven't seen that much but I have not seen a more fitting story
about "bad hiring processes" that deserve people to call BS than this one. We
have only been given a small glimpse of what happened, so it could be much
worse but from what is written and looking at the job posting on Craigslist
that was in the post, it doesn't seem like the author has much of a case.

I would be curious to hear what you think about this though. Do you think the
author is in the clear for writing something like this? Do you honestly think
that the author was a victim of a "messed up hiring process"?

------
philliphaydon
"there was also some confusion as to Bootstrap. According to the project
manager Bootstrap is also responsive. (No kidding?) I said that’s great
because I use Twitter Bootstrap and that is responsive as well. (I was playing
games at that point) Then I was told they where not the same? I don’t know if
that was the breaking point, but it was amusing."

^ This whole thing makes 0 sense to me. I can't tell who is wrong without the
full conversion. But it almost sounds like neither side knows what they are
talking about.

/my 2c

~~~
peterjancelis
Yes didn't get this part either. It's perfectly possible the interviewer asked
the interviewee to explain the difference between Responsive Design (the
concept) and Twitter Bootstrap (the framework that implements it).

~~~
stephen_g
Not to mention that Bootstrap hasn't been called 'Twitter Bootstrap' for
almost two years now...

~~~
pistle
OP is likely wonderful at parties. He's great when you need someone to
randomly shame people without really having much to go on.

------
rabble
I've got more than 10 years of rails experience. I started with Rails 0.5 in
July 2004. So looking at the calendar we're at 10.5 years. There were only
like 5 people including DHH when i joined the #rubyonrails irc channel. And on
top of that i've done lots of other things in the rails world, like managing
people since then. The thing is, rails has changed so much, i'm not sure how
much value there is in that. If i were hiring it'd be a red flag that somebody
only stayed doing rails for 10 years. A good developer learns new languages
and frameworks. A language a year and all that.

Perhaps the hiring drone was saying 10 years of web development experience
maybe?

~~~
pekk
"A language a year" is pretty pointless, especially if practice in any given
language is not good.

~~~
cheald
You might be surprised. New languages can teach you quite a lot more than
simply a new syntax - there are concepts that will be present and visible in a
new language or stdlib that you might not have encountered before, and
constant exposure to unfamiliar territory helps to keep you in constant
learning mode.

The idea isn't that you abandon your existing languages every year. Nobody
will be effective if they're always working exclusively in a language they've
just started with, but you can take lessons learned in a new toy language and
apply them to your broader work as a programmer, even if you never use that
language again.

------
knappe
Ruby the programming language wasn't developed by DHH. It was developed by
Matz
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_%28programming_language%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_%28programming_language%29)).
Second sentence, first paragraph.

Also, the guy was replying to a Craigslist ad. I'm not really sure what he was
expecting.

~~~
yzzxy
It says 10+ years of rails specifically in the email.

~~~
juliangregorian
Article author informs us DHH created "Rudy" 10 years ago.

------
tonyedgecombe
All this tells me is they didn't want to say why they rejected you, lack of a
required experience is a benign excuse.

The reality might be you were too old, too young, too smart, too stupid, wrong
race, looked like the guy who ran off with the managers wife, who knows.

I would never expect to learn anything from a job rejection, or for that
matter from a lost sale.

~~~
Jgrubb
I've been rejected from numerous job attempts and I learned a lot from the
majority of them. Whether it was the lack of fundamentals on data structures
and (sometimes) stupid algorithmic interview questions, or a CTO with whom I
totally clicked but the founders just didn't get me, or "ew, I'd kill myself
if I had to work in this office", most of them were learning opportunities.

------
chvid
"But then I remember that I follow @DHH on twitter and Ruby is kind of new.
(Just an FYI @DHH created Rudy and he did it ~10 years ago. I follow @DHH not
because of Rails, mostly because of his libertarian oriented tweets, much like
myself.)"

Let's not throw the first stone, eh ...

------
gaius
_if you are looking for a Senior PHP programmer or an algorithmic trading
programmer let me know_

That is a very unusual mix of skills. Very unusual indeed.

~~~
lordnacho
I have similar experience. I've been doing algo trading for a decade, but out
of interest I came up with a side project. It's a web service that uses
django, with phone apps written for Android and iOS.

There's a certain trepidation to learning a new stack, but if you've done one
you can do another.

~~~
gaius
I dabble in a bunch of stuff too, but those are different enough skillsets
that I'd wonder about a guy claiming equal expertise in both.

------
anonfunction
Earlier this year I saw a job listing for someone with 3+ years of experience
with the swift programming language.

~~~
infinitone
In theory it is possible, as I'm sure swift was in skunkworks at Apple for a
good time before its public release.

------
danieltillett
I thought these sort of requirements were so companies could hire H1B
candidates? The basic idea is you create an impossible to fill position and
then have your chosen H1B candidate lie.

~~~
ivanche
Care to elaborate this a bit, for us outside of USA? I'm genuinely interested
- what are advantages for company to hire H1B candidate(s)?

~~~
hga
Pay a fraction of a citizen or permanent resident's salary to a quasi-
indentured servant, in that if you fire them it's iffy if they can find
another H-1B gig before they have to leave the country.

In the one case I observed first hand while at Lucent in 2001, an arguably
more qualified and very smart Jamaican doing the same job as me was paid $48K
(H-1B salaries have to be posted) while I was making $80K. He knew he was
being exploited, but all things considered it was better than the
alternatives. In another case with an acquaintance at HP, he and a lot of
older engineers were laid off at the same time, and he later caught them
trying to explicitly hire an H-1B replacement for his job.

~~~
yummyfajitas
It is difficult to find a replacement job in 30 days if fired. Its not hard to
quietly look for a better job while on an h1b. And once company A already
sponsored the visa, finding company B to extend it is pretty easy.

Its very far from indentured servitude unless you come to the states and
refuse to speak to anyone outside your community.

~~~
HarryHirsch
You forgot to mention that the aim of H1B workers is to get a green card, and
that for the EB1/EB2-NIV track, where the applicant files himself, a PhD
degree is a near requirement. In the majority of cases it's the company that
files for green card; if you change employer the process starts again all
over. And there is a maximum of 5 years on H1B. It's not nearly as easy as you
say.

The environment is structured so that raises come with a change in employment,
which explains the aim of the H1B program. It is to create a climate in which
employees are reluctant to change employers to put an overall cap on salary
growth.

The issue has come up multiple times here on this very board. Do you not know
better, or do you intentionally speak the thing that is not?

~~~
yummyfajitas
You are criticizing the GC process, not the h1b process. The h1b is to address
a temporary worker shortage, not put people on a long term immigration track
due to high skill.

It would be great if we had such a track (beyond people of extreme talent),
but we don't.

~~~
HarryHirsch
What temporary worker shortage? If there was one, there would be rising
salaries, as we see in the North Dakota oil patch, but in IT wages are
stagnant.

I'm criticizing US immigration, in general, temporary and permanent, because
the present system benefits neither the majority of Americans nor the majority
if immigrants. Large employers, though, benefit disproportionately.

~~~
yummyfajitas
There are rising salaries for good people in tech. Where have you been?

You may say there is no benefit for immigrants, but most of my friends in IT
(as qualified as any american) make less than a lac a month (comparable to a
mcjob). So that's a tough case to make.

------
jusben1369
"We worried that you took everything too literally and that would make you
inflexible in the work environment"

------
Dolphin_Micro
Note to the OP:

Hi Chad,

We're sorry you had a bad experience with our interviewing process. Our ad
specifically asks for someone that's been "programming professionally for
around a decade, have a few years of full stack web experience". We're not
looking for people with 10 years of Rails experience...though if Mr. Hannson
is interested in a job here, we'd love to talk to him :-).

Our phone screens are not technical interviews. They look to see if you've
been building things similar to what you'll work on here, as well as if you'd
be a cultural fit. We specifically have non-technical folks do our phone
screens to give our programmers as much time possible to actually program. Our
screeners do tend to deliver very high quality candidates for initial,
technical interviews.

With your specific phone screen, we found two other candidates that were
better fits for us and our HR person made a mistake when she told you they had
"10+ years of Rails experience". Our bad.

Good luck with your career and if you think you are a good fit for us and that
our phone screen missed the mark, let me know and I'd be happy to talk to you
personally.

Sincerely,

Eric Scott CEO, Dolphin Micro

------
lkrubner
I recall in January 1995 I subscribed to the Hotwire newsletter, and in their
next issue they announced that they were hiring. The job demanded that you
have at least 2 years experience with HTML (and have a homepage that you could
point to, so they could see your work). I've always wondered, how many people
had 2 years experience with HTML in January of 1995? The initial release of
Mosaic was in January of 1993, so basically they were asking for someone on
that team (I exaggerate only slightly; the number of people who were into HTML
before 1993 was vanishingly small). I applied but I was not hired. I have
always wondered if they got someone with 2 years experience, or if they
settled for someone else.

Sometimes the requirement list on some jobs seems a bit far fetched.

~~~
wavefunction
Folks were writing HTML pages before MOSAIC, they just weren't very
interesting compared to MOSAIC-era websites or later.

I know because I was one of them, albeit a kid.

------
fit2rule
Translation: "We've decided to move on with candidates who don't make us feel
like idiots.. Peter Principle at its finest.

~~~
pistle
Alternatively, it could be, "The answer is 'No.' Let me randomly tell
something so you'll go fuck off while we get things done. If we wanted you,
we'd call you back."

------
Animats
Would more than one year of experience with Rails be useful? It's supposed to
be an _easy_ approach to web development.

~~~
Hates_
The difference between knowing Rails and knowing how to best apply its
abilities come with experience IMO. While it provides an easy approach to web
development it's still extremely easy to approach things in the wrong manner
with Rails. There is a _lot_ of bad Rails code out there written by people
who've been doing using Rails for more than a couple of years.

------
Disruptive_Dave
"This is why programmers dislike account people / business people…"

Quality way to open a silly little blog post.

------
alialkhatib
It's possible that the email meant 10+ years of _collective_ experience
between those 2 developers, but then it would be a bizarre detail to include
(especially given the brevity of the email). Still, it sounds based on the
interview details like they didn't bother to put someone technical on the
phone interview, which makes me reluctant to give them the benefit of the
doubt.

------
snickmy
Unless you signed a not disclosure document during the hiring process, I would
have revealed the company name. It's time to point out this faulty processes,
especially on company that have public stakeholders. Employees are often the
most important assets, therefore the way you hire is crucial. If you get it
wrong from begin with you can't expect much.

~~~
vellum
He did reveal the name. It's in the pic at the bottom of the post.

------
raverbashing
I would have answered back with some info and the reply from DHH

Really

This is the year I lost complete faith in the hiring process of companies

~~~
ryan-allen
Not all companies are like this, so don't get too down :)

~~~
raverbashing
Yeah, I know, I'm back to be employed, so no problems there now

------
hrabago
I wonder about the other way around. I've been writing Swift since it was
introduced, but since I only do iOS apps as a hobby in my spare time, I don't
have 6 months experience with it yet, really only about 4 weeks.

Makes one think what constitutes a year of experience really requires.

------
jobu
There was a job posting I applied for in 2005 that was asking for 5+ years of
.Net experience. Since .Net came out in 2002, I assumed they meant 5+ years
_development_ experience with some .Net as well. I made it to a phone screen
with someone in HR and they were very sticky on this 5 years of .Net
experience. When I tried to explain that it was impossible without a time
machine, she said she would have to talk to the hiring manager and get back to
me.

Never heard back, and I'm not even sure if I would've taken it anyway. If that
kind of bullshit makes it into the hiring process I can't imagine what it
would be like to work for them.

------
aikah
In my country it's the rule not the exception, like "10+ years of experience
in nodejs and angularjs"(seen 2 years ago).

So most candidates end up lying about their real experience,which makes the
whole 10+ thing irrelevant today.

------
mgkimsal
The reply was perhaps worded too quickly, but the ad itself indicates

"If you’ve been programming professionally for around a decade, have a few
years of full stack web experience (Rails, Django, PHP, Java Spring, and
similar), and love learning, you’ll be a great fit."

I don't understand how any of those listed technologies qualify as "full
stack", but that's another discussion. Their main point was someone with 10+
year of experience, and experience with some of those technologies on top of
that.

~~~
Kiro
What's your definition of full stack?

~~~
mgkimsal
Well... any inclusion of front-end technologies - that list is server side web
app frameworks.

------
hilem
Considering that OP doesn't have the strongest grasp on the english language.

"We are moving forward with 2 other candidates who have 10+ years of Rails
experience."

Could be interpreted to mean that those 2 individuals have over 10 years
experience collectively between them and not each. There are a lot of people
who have 5+ years of Rails experience.

------
ytjohn
This reminds me a lot of when Guido gets job offers for python.

[https://plus.google.com/115212051037621986145/posts/R8jEVrob...](https://plus.google.com/115212051037621986145/posts/R8jEVrobbRj)

------
JoeAltmaier
If a 'year of experience' is 40 hours times 50 weeks (vacation), then its
clearly possible to have much more than 10 standard years of experience.
Whether anybody did that its doubtful.

------
clyfe
I remember back in 2007 when job ads were like: "5+ years Rails experience".

------
chrismcb
What is the point of a criminal background check?

------
_almosnow
A lot of people say they have/need senior mobile developers with 10+ years of
experience...

