
Ask HN: What skills are essential for a back end engineer? - powerslacker
What skills would you consider to be necessities when hiring for a backend engineer for the web? Soft skills, related software skills, programming knowledge, or anything else you can think of.
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svennek
(disclamer: I belong to the "show me your tables, and I don't need to see your
code" camp)

\- Strong data modelling skills

\- Strong SQL skills

\- Fluency in at least two of PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Go, C, C++, C#, Java
(more exotic languages like haskell, erlang, lisp a plus)

\- Basic unix (most likely Linux) skills (basic commands, ip-route, unix-
permissions, acls, superuser vs normal users, unix sockets, sysv, systemd,
basic bash scripting) and hands on of at least two different "families"
(redhat, debian, arch, slackware, gentoo, exherbo, and many more - ubuntu is
in the debian family for example) of linux (or BSDs).

\- Conceptually understanding of how networking works (ip-addresses (4&6),
ports, unix sockets, subnets, routing, nat, ).

\- Curious nature and an ability to keep asking questions in a friendly
fashion (if the answer is not complete or shows that the question has been
misunderstood)

\- Basic HTML/CSS/Javascript skills

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pragmaticlurker
\- Pragmatism \- CVS \- Ability to identity and isolate tasks and rely on CVS
for incremental changes \- Strong Database knowledge \- Strong Algorithm &
Data Structure knowledge \- Any kind of C-derived programming language \- Unix

