On 20.09.2006, at 12:17, Andrew Piskorski wrote:
On Wed, Sep 20, 2006 at 09:23:35AM +0200, Zoran Vasiljevic wrote:
Well, if you have 10 contendents for the job and 10 of them
know PHP and JS and NOBODY knows Tcl and you just spend 5K
Euros for ads, you would think different...
Why is that a problem? Are candidates losing interest in your company
because of some sort of stigma associated with Tcl? If so that could
be bad, but it doesn't sound like that's the problem.
Candidates have mostly no problem with that. It is us.
Zoran, since you've been a Tcl expert for so long, maybe you've
forgotten that learning Tcl is EASY? It is, you know, at least for
anybody good. (Or at least, I've both heard and seen many examples
and claims supporting that assertion, and have neither seen nor heard
of even a single contrary example or claim.)
Hm... easy...
It is much better having somebody good in a tool and then you
get good results. If you have to learn the tool then you're not
fast in producing good results. You have a "experience-gathering-curve"
which can be quite long(er).
We need production-quality code and if you are new in something,
then what you produce is mostly not comparable to somebody who
is mastering the tool. But you know all this...
Now, learning AOLserver and all your in-house APIs is probably much
more work than learning Tcl, but, any new hire is going to be starting
from scratch there anyway. Seriously, just how much extra time is
learning Tcl going to add to the time it takes for a JavaScript wizard
to become productive at your company? Maybe a week, three at the very
most? Why is that a real problem?
Oh no... I'm speaking about a year to two-year´s time.
Because this is IMHO what you need to feel fully comfortable
with the tool and have hit all the "walls" you are supposed
to hit.
Hell, you Europeans take lots more vacation time than that every
single year. ;)
Perhaps, but you can't generalize :-) Last time I took vacation
(that is, more that 3 working days off) was about 7 years ago :-/
How long does your average programmer stay with your comany, years?
If so, and if you truly believe that your mostly Tcl environment is
highly productive for you, then you will easily recover that lost 1-3
weeks in increased productivity later on, no problem.
I cant say. All guys that started 7 years ago are still here.
From the previous company, it was about 3-5 years on average.
But it is really not 1-3 weeks. It is rather 1-2 years.
It's just that we need new people and they need to be pretty
quickly productive. We have no time to teach them all the
It may sound trite, but then my advice is: Do your very best to hire
only people you KNOW have a proven history of being highly productive,
learning fast, and being self starting. (If you're company is small,
then that might be feasible simply through personal contacts. But I
guess not in your case.)
It is difficult to find people. It is very difficult to find good
people.
If we had the chance to get to know "only people who have a
proven history of being highly productive learning fast, and being
self starting" we'd employ them ASAP. Yesterday.
But we must take what we get. And that what we get are mostly
Java, PHP and Javascript'ers.
That's nice when it happens, but I think it's highly overrated. What
you typically want in a general programming hire is not so much
someone who has less to learn, as someone who habitually learns many
new things quickly.
Hm... there is some truth in that, I admit. As said, to learn and
understand something is one thing. To be _productive_ is another.
For example: riding a bicycle can be learned fast (is the matter
of hour or two). But to be the bicycle professional, you need years.
