That's very true. Hiring is hard. Ultimately as an employer you're
making a big fat guess but hopefully you've considered all the
available data points.
The criteria I usually end relying on are: passion, intelligence and
getting stuff done. Communication skills also factor in too, which
helps if you're working on a team.
As Lachie points out, certification and github accounts don't feature
in those criteria. They both however represent excellent ways of
determining all of those things.
Cheers,
Josh
On 22/02/2010, at 8:50 AM, Lachie <lach...@gmail.com> wrote:
Stepping back from the issue another pace, its clear that no pat,
neatly boxed answer ("certification!" or "github!") is a reliable
indicator of employability.
I've been involved in the employment & working with process of both
kinds of folk. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they really didn't.
The problem as I see it is determining ahead of time what the person
will be like to work with. Is the candidate able to be passionate
about their work, and if so, will they become passionate about *your*
product or client for the duration of the contract?
For example, if you hire someone based on their passion for open
source, are you hiring the evident coding chops or the coding chops
*and* the enthusiasm for consistent, fine work? And can they apply
that same enthusiasm to the end of a long, unglamorous-but-paid
project?
Can you tell that from anything but working through an entire project
and seeing how it goes?
In other words, I have no idea how to hire people. I know only that a
candidate being certified or being visible in the community or github
isn't enough to go on.
Sorry Navin, I don't think this really answers your original question,
but its an interesting discussion nonetheless.
:lachie
On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 8:16 PM, Ben Schwarz <ben.schw...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Good argument Josh, although I'm far less convinced. I'd look
sideways
at anyone who bothered with certification. Open source code speaks
far
greater volumes - After all, we're all supported by open source
technology.
Those who patch, extend and collaborate in such an environment are
highly valuable.
That being said, it won't cause any harm either ;)
--
On Feb 21, 8:11 pm, Josh Price <jos...@gmail.com> wrote:
I think the more balanced answer is that it depends on the context.
Like others, I'm generally quite skeptical of certifications as a
rule. In your case however, I think a certification may make a lot
of sense.
As a newcomer and non-programmer, a certification gives a
potential employer some minimum understanding of your skillset.
This is especially useful if you happen to be bootstrapping your
Ruby career, without any commercial experience.
For a lot of the regulars in the Ruby community and particularly
those of us with much more experience, any kind of certification
is absolutely useless.
As a community, we are in the interesting position where current
demand for Ruby and Rails skills far exceeds supply. Therefore we
need to not dismiss the concept of training or certification just
because it doesn't suit us in our current position. I believe it
is potentially useful for those coming into our industry and
community.
Josh
On 21/02/2010, at 5:39 PM, Navin wrote:
Hello,
As a newcomer to ruby and rails (and as someone working on
rejuvenating a career as a programmer) I am trying to establish how
the "Ruby Association Certified Ruby Programmer" accreditation
(http://
www.ruby-assn.org/en/certification.htm) is regarded by this
community.
I am taking an online course with rubylearning.org (and finding
it to
be somewhat useful) and following Michael Hartl's excellent Rails
Tutorial as he develops it (railstutorial.org) - also working
through
the canonical textbooks on the subject ... Thought I would try
and get
some feedback before considering the certification further.
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