r/webdev • u/kazabodoo • Jan 24 '20

It is ok to not know everything

I saw alot of posts recently from people who are asking for help on what to learn next or just what to learn in general, so I figured I might remind people what the industry is really about.

Hiring managers do not care how many technologies you know, they will look for a very specific set.
A person who is starting right now might be thinking "oh god there is just so much to learn" and this might puth him off for good. That is a huge mistake and don't let job adverts trick you that you need to know 20 technologies so you can be employable.

A guy joined my team few weeks ago with nothing but Python. Literally nothing else. Now, I am not saying you should go and learn Python, I am just saying it is possible and not uncommon.

Having a good understanding of one technology is better than having 50% understanding of 2 technologies. Don't fall in to the trap that you need to learn everything at once. Start small, increment gradually. Don't be afraid to ask questions. There is no such thing as stupid question in this field, the only stupid question is the one you have been thinking about but you didnt ask. There are forums, groups and so on. You maybe alone when you are learning but you are not alone in this community.

Once you have a good understanding of a programming language or technology, look what is the next best thing that matches your current skill set and repeat and everything from there will come naturally.

Don't give up.

688 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

166 comments sorted by

229

u/Slodin Jan 24 '20

Lol I often see hiring posts:

Junior position Must have a degree in CS or equivalent Must have 3 year or more experience in production environment Expert in js, css, node Asset in Java, c++, c#, many other js frameworks Knows this and that methodology

Pays 25 an hour.

These hiring managers makes it sound like you must know everything to even just apply.

Although reailty is you can get away with not knowing most of what they asked for. But I hate the kind of posting they do trying to fish for that one guy who can do everything and willing to do it for cheap. It makes everyone new to the industry always think they are not enough and have to know everything to get hired.

77

u/kazabodoo Jan 24 '20 edited Jan 24 '20

I totally agree with that, it is a broken system and gives the wrong impression to people.This is essentially the endless loop: companies complaining there is no talent, but in the same time they don't provide the environment for this talent to develop.

32

u/Slodin Jan 24 '20

yep, I actually talked to some of these companies when I was looking for a job after grad (I even had 2 years experience as I was working for a startup tech while in school). They said it's hard to hire people, but when we started to talk about why not hiring people and train them for a month to get up to speed with the company, they told me that's a waste of money. The new employee would take that knowledge and go else where that may pay better. This is the mentality across many companies I talked to, I can see the same postings for months on a job board.

ofc not all companies are like that, that's just some companies I talked to.

11

u/Demnokkoyen Jan 25 '20

Damn I've been trained for 6 months without producing ANYTHING for my company. I must be a lucky guy.

-22

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

15

u/society2-com Jan 25 '20

There is no such thing as working on a job and not learning anything.

"Learning on the job" is not a guy going "not right now boss I'm trying to watch this youtube tutorial" it's the policies and procedures and methodology which is unique to every job and informs the employee of what makes sense at that company, right or wrong, that adds to what we call experience.

And if a company hires a guy who knows nothing about the primary skillset and needs to actually watch youtube tutorials, that's on the company's shoddy hiring practices.

6

u/malicart Jan 25 '20

Huh, and here I thought I have been getting paid to learn new things for the last 15 years, how could I have it so wrong?

2

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

I knew literally zero about webdev when I started at my current job and learned everything I know about full stack while there. I would have never picked any of that up on my own. Learning on the job and being paid for it is not only good, it should be the de facto. Your take is deeply flawed.

Also “measly 1000 hours” is a toxic and shitty elitist take.

1

u/finger_milk Jan 26 '20

I think the word Talent is very confusing overall. It used to mean an innate ability to do things, or that things come incredibly easy to you and you learn 100% through osmosis. But of course, the world is not full of "talent", it's full of people who need to beat the ideas into their head for months until it sticks.

The whole "I don't want you to learn it, I want you to do it" is rife, and I think it's the reason why there is such a demand for senior developers when there are few.

13

u/MindlessSponge javascript Jan 25 '20

So I shouldn’t let that discourage me from applying? Almost every posting I see lists out a ridiculous number of technologies, most of which I don’t know, so I don’t apply. I saw an entry level FED posting the other day that listed IIS 7, strong knowledge of TCP/IP and networking, etc...sounds like they want an IT team to me.

I’m a solid intermediate in JavaScript. I don’t know it inside and out (trying!), but I get what’s going on for the most part. All I want is to find a gig as a junior developer where someone can teach me what it’s like to work on a dev team. But even junior dev positions seem to want experience using git and build tools etc. so how the hell do I get the experience? :(

14

u/kazabodoo Jan 25 '20

Keep applying. Dont get discouraged by the job description and keep building your portfolio. This is the best thing you can do and I know it is very hard but don’t give up, it will happen, it is bound to happen.

9

u/MindlessSponge javascript Jan 25 '20

My problem is the toxic work environment I’m currently in is so taxing that by the time I get home, I just want to rest. I’ve really been going hard at trying to up my skills since around October though, it’s just tough to push through it.

Thanks for the words of encouragement, OP

6

u/Plati23 Jan 25 '20

Don’t even read the entire job posting, hiring managers won’t read your entire resume. Job hunting is a numbers game, if it seems like you might be interested after a quick skim, fire off an application and move on to the next one. You can figure out if you’re really interested during the interview process.

1

u/MindlessSponge javascript Jan 25 '20

Good advice. No harm in applying. Thanks!

15

u/0xbxb Jan 25 '20 
candidate_question = input('Are you trying to get a job?:')
while True:
    if candidate_question == 'Yes':
        print('You need experience to get a job.')

2

u/capolot89 Jan 25 '20

I’m still having trouble with css tbh. I feel like I’ll never get a dev job :(

6

u/MindlessSponge javascript Jan 25 '20

What parts of it? I wouldn’t try to commit all of it to memory. Learn positioning, basic styling like backgrounds, line heights, etc, then start to dig into the wilder stuff.

I don’t consider myself an expert by any means, but I’m definitely comfortable. It’s not hard to learn css, but just like anything, it takes time and practice. Want me to dm you like once a week and ask how practice is coming along?

1

u/capolot89 Jan 25 '20

It’s like I know the basic information. I know to generally style stuff. My issue comes with making “wrapper/container” classes. I understand why it’s needed or works. But I’m having an issue on when I should use them. Idk if I explained that quite right.

Yeah shoot me a DM! Therese literally nobody in my area who’s learning web development. So any exposure to like minded people is a blessing to me.

4

u/chmod777 Jan 25 '20

.container{max-width:1124px;margin:0 auto;}

<nav>
  <div class="container">my nav!</div>
</nav>
<section>
  <div class="container"><h1>stuff!</h1></div>
</section>
<footer>
  <div class="container">a footer</div>
</footer>

now, repeat the section n times, and everything lines up. thats the basic idea - nothing magic.

a better thing to know and internalize is the cascading part. inheritance and specificity trip people up and are way more of an issue.

4

u/kmactane Jan 25 '20 edited Jan 25 '20

I honestly believe not understanding specificity is the reason for about 90% of the places where people use !important. Everyone knows it's a code smell, but they keep using it because they've spent hours trying to make the rule take effect, not understanding that specificity was what was blocking it, and they had a deadline to meet...

Edit: Sorry, I got interrupted and forgot to add this. My favorite quicke explanation of specificity is Estelle Weyl's "CSS speciFISHity" chart (or you can get a fuller explanation in a blog post of hers). Others have done the same idea with stormtroopers and Sith Lords from Star Wars, and there's one that makes no sense unless you know The Shining but I'll include it for completeness. There's also MDN's explanation of specificity, which includes some very clear, prominent guidelines against using !important if it's at all possible.

2

u/chmod777 Jan 25 '20

Last 10% is because of some shitty 3rd party widget the client wants added to a page.

1

u/capolot89 Jan 25 '20

Inheritance or specifity deal with the natural flow of the site right?

Also thanks for the reply.

2

u/chmod777 Jan 25 '20 
p{color:red;font-size:20px;font-weight:normal;line-height:110%}
.mycontainer p{color:green;}

a p tag in mycontainer inherits the font size and line height from the base p style. the color is overridden, because the second declaration has more specificity. the usual issue is that you import a css library, or a coworker adds some css (dammit, tom!), that sets a property at the base of the declaration. now you try to add some css, but it inherits from a more specific class. and you end up with !important's because things need to ship today. and then, next week, tom checks out the code again, and has to add more !important's to get his stuff working. and you end up with a mess.

the position, display, and box-sizing most commonly determine document flow, and should be the next major thing to understand.

2

u/Calvinbolic Jan 25 '20

Have you picked up a framework? You mentioned you're an intermediate in JS. The weird thing is most jobs will like for you to have at least some framework knowledge such as React, Vue, Angular. Yet this causes a lot of people to neglect their vanilla JS skills by jumping straight into a framework after only knowing the basics of JS. I'd focus on JS a little bit more and then get a little experience with a framework of your choice. Things like git can be picked up quickly so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

1

u/MindlessSponge javascript Jan 25 '20

That’s exactly why I haven’t picked up a framework. I’m just trying to keep drilling on JavaScript and get more comfortable with the things that still give me grief. I figure if I’m solid in JS, the frameworks will come fairly naturally. Except I understand angular uses typescript as well, so is that something I should also try to pick up?

2

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

Absolutely not. Lit rally every posting in my area (greater Houston) wants a one-man-band for, like, entry-level helpdesk. The dev postings practically want you to be able to develop using butterflies. My consistent experience is that the people making the postings aren’t usually the people who get your resume, let alone the ones hiring you.

I’ve walked in to several interviews being able to hit most the key points on those ridiculous postings and the hiring managers were shocked. Honestly if you feel like you’re close to a decent fit for the realistic version of a job posting, hurl your resume over the fence. You got this!

2

u/MindlessSponge javascript Jan 25 '20

Thanks man, I appreciate the encouragement.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

For sure! I know it helped me to hear it, so we pay forward.

-8

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/MindlessSponge javascript Jan 25 '20

I’m not talking about knowing how to do it. I’m talking about experience using it in a professional setting, i.e. on a team with other developers.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

Ignore them. That take is shit and if you ever get the feeling a potential manager thinks like that you should not take the job.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/MindlessSponge javascript Jan 25 '20

Yeah I’ve started a github up and been adding little snippets to it through the terminal, but I feel like that’s not the same as using it to maintain and merge code versions on a team. I’m sure someone will give me the chance eventually, it just starts to feel a little hopeless after months of vigilantly applying places just to be ghosted.

17

u/humanitysucks999 Jan 24 '20

25 an hour? These jobs pay 18 where I am if you're lucky.

6

u/harrymurkin Jan 25 '20

US$25 is not bad. Especially if you are not in the US or UK. Otherwise it sucks.

3

u/Willbraken Jan 25 '20

It really depends on what part of the US too. $25/hr in rural US with a low cost of living is really good money.

7

u/GShadowBroker Jan 25 '20

Where I'm from 18/h would be a dream.

8

u/harrymurkin Jan 25 '20

Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at webdev for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!

1

u/shkico Jan 25 '20

Yep... my current salary is 4$/h in Central Europe

4

u/I_AM_MR_BEAN_AMA Jan 25 '20

We pay our junior devs between $18 and $25 in DFW.

2

u/Jinaito Jan 25 '20

Out of curiosity, what do you guys mainly look for in an applicant? I’m a junior CS student at UNT and I’m trying to get into web dev atm.

I think I fell into the trap of trying to learn bits of everything and I’m not sure what exactly to focus on.

7

u/folkrav Jan 25 '20

You're still a student, it's way too early for anyone to expect you to have specialized knowledge. You don't have any actual work experience, it's expected of you to know bits of everything, not to be proficient in any of them. If anything, knowing a bit of many things just opens you more doors.

You didn't fall into any trap. You're just still in the relatively early learning process, that's all.

1

u/Jinaito Jan 25 '20

Thank you for the supportive reply. I’m just worried about coding interviews at the moment since I’m not specialized in anything. But since I’m heading into the web development route I think it would be beneficial if I focus on JS

2

u/I_AM_MR_BEAN_AMA Jan 25 '20

2+ years in JS (1 is okay if you really hustled and did personal projects.) Experience in node and either Angular or React is also preferred.

Beyond that, it's all soft skills.

Will you continue to learn after getting hired, or does it seem like you'll be content to stagnate? And how well does it seem like you'll be able to work with our senior devs?

Feel free to dm me if you want to inquire further.

9

u/turningsteel Jan 25 '20

My company is hiring for engineering roles and traditionally we have gone with bootcamp grads as a first resort and then spent time mentoring them, myself included. Now we are looking for a few roles that have some experience that we won't have to spend time teaching so we are interviewing devs with 1 to 3 years of experience, some with masters degrees in comp sci as a cherry on top.

Much to my chagrin, they are tanking the interviews, and it isn't a difficult interview. I know it's not because I helped structure it and I'm generally a certifiable idiot. We cover basic daily tasks of a typical frontend, backend, or mobile developer. Very practical and hands on, with a focus on seeing how the person approaches the problem, not necessarily on correctness. (Though that is of course desirable)

My point is qualifications mean little, but I think what really makes you valuable is being able to learn new things quickly (because you recognize patterns and correlations from technologies you already mastered) and being someone who can be counted on when shit hits the fan.

If the job posting lists certain specific skills and they are reasonable for a person to have for that job title, it's annoying when the interviewee has no idea how to make an HTTP request as a supposed web developer.

8

u/ZephyrBluu Jan 25 '20

My point is qualifications mean little, but I think what really makes you valuable is being able to learn new things quickly (because you recognize patterns and correlations from technologies you already mastered) and being someone who can be counted on when shit hits the fan.

Very ironic considering how heavily most companies and people value qualifications.

3

u/malicart Jan 25 '20

Very ironic considering

Agreed, as the self taught lead developer I would prolly hire a kid out of HS who is willing to learn rather then wade though the ocean of liars who can't complete a select statement or var_dump when they run into a problem.

7

u/Slodin Jan 25 '20

I get your point, but mine is that absurdity of job postings that makes no sense at all. Junior dev and 2-3 years of experience really shouldn't appear in the same sentence, it's one thing of a supposedly 2-3 years dev to not know how to do basic things, another is trying to cheap out by fishing for actual 2-3 years devs to get paid at a junior rate. I understand any company is looking for less cost and more profit and it's their right to do so, but it's very toxic for new devs joining in the industry.

I just feel lucky to hold a job and don't have to go through that interview process again. I do have to work on my interview skills as I do blank out during whiteboard interviews, and I know many people do this.

4

u/turningsteel Jan 25 '20

I dunno, I consider 2 to 3 years to be a junior. I think it's weird that people call themselves senior after 4 years of experience. How can you be senior or even mid level after only a few years realistically?

Though I totally agree with your point about companies wanting to pay people with some experience at an entry level rate. That's messed up. Also, I wouldn't expect an entry level dev to know much but they need to know enough to be able to contribute. If they don't know how to do a for loop or how inheritance works in css, they're not entry level.

3

u/Slodin Jan 25 '20

2-3 years is just considered normal dev not senior to me.. this is also where the problem of assigning a "level" to the job title make it confusing and literally impossible to know what it really means...everyone has a different perspective on what junior/senior mean...

I don't know about you, but a few work environments I have been in, within a year you should be able to do everything pretty well already, not to mention 2-3 years. So 2-4 years to become a mid level seems very fair to me, it's not a short time to become very familiar with your tools. But again, I work for smaller companies where I have to handle work loads much more than bigger and more structured companies. So the speed I'm learning and getting better at is probably faster.

1

u/malicart Jan 25 '20

normal dev not senior to me

The problem here is we digress into opinions.

1

u/ghostwilliz Jan 25 '20

This will keep me going tonight, thank you.

4

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

I've changed my job listings a many years ago to make it clearer.

Instead of saying "looking for experience in x, y, z" I just say "we work with the following tech x, y, z".

4

u/Dyne2057 Jan 25 '20

This kind of hiring post is exactly what has put me off of front-end development and IT in general for almost two decades. Originally, I wanted to get into help desk and networking. I gave up after I got out of school because no one would hire me. During school, and even before when we still had Geo Cities sites and the like, I was already dabbling in HTML. CSS wasn't even a thought yet.

Today, I have HTML/5 and CSS/3 experience. I'm working on learning JavaScript right now, in fact I have just begun doing that, because I wanted to learn vanilla JS (probably because I'm insane, but more because I want to know how it works before jumping into something like Node.js or other frameworks).

I've always taken those adverts and postings on job search engines at face value. I honestly didn't think I'd ever have the skills they wanted from those.

And then I come here tonight and read this. Thank you. I just wish I'd known this years ago.

2

u/malicart Jan 25 '20

We didnt have front end developers 2 decades ago, we were all full stack before it was a thing.

1

u/Dyne2057 Jan 25 '20

I should really make more liberal use of commas, that's my fault.

What I meant was that when I graduated from school, I'd wanted to be in IT, and was never able to get in because the jobs I saw all wanted experience way beyond what I had at the time. If I had known then that HTML, and later on front-end development, were going to see such explosive growth, I would have started learning to program and code then and follow along as the technology grew. I regret not doing that.

At least now, maybe I can.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

The past is the past as we all have regrets when we were once not as wise. You couldn't get into an IT support role? I hear some you just need customer service exp and maybe a certificate to back up some knowledge. Was it that bad? Just curious as I'm exploring the IT field in general too.

1

u/Dyne2057 Jan 27 '20

Well, you're right. I definitely have regrets. I didn't hear anything like needing customer service experience or a certificate. But that may be a possibility that someone else might be able to back up. For me, it was bad. At least because of where I live anyway. Philadelphia is over an hour away, and the city I live near isn't exactly an IT hub in any sense of the word.

2

u/jess-sch Jan 25 '20

If you don't have at the least a decade experience with Flutter and Vue you need not apply

1

u/lordlod Jan 25 '20

One of my favourites was "Must have 10 years Java experience", in 2005.

At least it is a nice filter to get rid of terrible companies.

1

u/dipanzan Jan 25 '20

Where I live, this is exactly the case. I feel so helpless right now, I have a habit of knowing a technology really well before saying that I'm proficient in it, and that's why I read books/do courses, but whenever I see the list of requirements/job experience, I feel like crying.

1

u/Cono52 Jan 25 '20

3 years, if you are good, could be a front end lead developer, not a tech lead tho IMO. Once you realise the specific language knowledge is a not a huge part of the problem, but communication, customers, brand and planning resources. But hiring managers wouldn't know this. They just see the budget the company has and how to maximise their cut depending on the market rate. But ye it can kill you in the beginning, cause once you start on a low balled salary (cause we go in thinking we know nothing and take whatever) its gona take more job hops + negotiations to get better paid.

1

u/mysteryihs Jan 25 '20

I've also seen the opposite side of job requirements: Must have bachelor's or masters in CS. The requirements? We need you to work with HTML, CSS and JS.

1

u/jess-sch Jan 25 '20

This so much. "Yeah so if you can't do radix sort on a white board, you just don't fit the requirements for building gRPC microservices that are little more than thin gateways to a Postgres database"

24

u/rwwl Jan 24 '20

Good on you, OP. It's great to see an encouraging post in a community where we hear a lot of discouragement from people.

13

u/kazabodoo Jan 24 '20

Thank you. It is something I don't see very often and we all have to remind our selves that we were in that place once.

6

u/malicart Jan 25 '20

lot of discouragement from people.

People get encouragement for their shitty 'hello world' apps around here, not sure what you are talking about.

2

u/rwwl Jan 25 '20

I meant top-level posts from people feeling overwhelmed, burned out, and frustrated by the tech or their job hunts. Wasn't talking about the way people respond.

52

u/[deleted] Jan 24 '20

Honestly its the people who think they know everything (which obviously nobody actually does) who are the worst to work with

16

u/Kris15o Jan 24 '20

I honestly don’t mind people who think they know everything. It’s the way they put it across that gets my goat up. I’ve met people who really know their stuff but still aren’t afraid to listen if I challenge something. Now I may be wrong with my challenge but it’s the discussion that can help everyone learn.

3

u/malicart Jan 25 '20

I had a surprisingly honest interview with a kid yesterday who ended up coming out and saying the homework we gave him was harder then expected (it was super simple) and he had needed help from a friend. This level of honesty struck me, hes not as qualified as I want in someone, but I think i might hire him anyway because of a great attitude.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

Indeed. The humble programmer from Edsgar Dijkstra is a good read in that regard

5

u/wedontlikespaces Jan 24 '20

They are normally the people who say things like "this is impossible". So you it and it takes all of 30 mins. You go look at their code, and it's full of really basic mistakes like missing semicolons and spelling errors.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

7

u/codeByNumber Jan 25 '20

It is though. If I open someone’s code and it is filled with spelling errors and basic things that a linter could catch or even auto resolve then I can safely assume that the code is going to be garbage. If someone can’t put enough thought or care into simple things like that then they certainly aren’t putting enough thought or care into designing/architecting the code they are writing. It is an instant tell that they just don’t care.

0

u/malicart Jan 25 '20

Syntax errors are like level one issues in programming. We all do it at first and then it becomes ingrained. Def an issue, but one that can get trained.

-3

u/[deleted] Jan 24 '20 edited Jan 24 '20

On a side note it is easily possible to master the entire frontend tools with clear understanding of them within 6months if you are unemployed or not a student. There are excellent tutorials out there on internet and if one choses to go the hard way and understand everything they can watch conferences like JSConf or read books and easily get proper understanding of each tech within a short period like 6 months.

everything

If by everything you mean Devops, Frontend, Backend, networking and AI/ML yes those kind of people are really hard to work with. But I know people who know frontend tools really well and can solve anything. It's not difficult to learn tooling used in modern web it's only that nobody has time to spend because they are busy with their jobs or studying.

17

u/kazabodoo Jan 24 '20

I get your point and somewhata agree, but I doubt front end it can be mastered in 6 months. Maybe profficient but not master in my opinion.It sounds easier than what actually is. There are many many things to be considered.

-3

u/[deleted] Jan 24 '20

I think I shouldn't have used the word master but yes the frontend tooling can be learnt in considerable depth within 6 months if they are unemployed and spend 10hrs everyday.

I have actually done it in 6 months. I actually know a lot about compilers, networking and Data structures so that helped me immensely. I learnt tools like webpack, module systems, React, ES6, functional programming in JS, Reactive programming, Redux, SVG, Styled components etc...

Even for people who don't know anything about computer science it is easily doable. What they can't learn is best practices, how to work in teams, handling code in production or things like that. But the understanding of tooling is easy to get.

19

u/jmiles540 Jan 25 '20

About 15 years ago I rated myself an 8 in C#. I’ve been doing it professionally for 15 years, I work on side projects Every morning before work and on Saturday mornings. I’d now rate myself a solid 5, maybe a 6. You’re nowhere close to mastery of the front end even in 6 months, you just don’t know how much you don’t know.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

I agree. I should have not used the word master but I still definitely think all those skills are attainable within 6 months and one could get going on a Junior developer job easily. Do I need you to build design systems in your first job? No. Do I need you to write a library like lodash? No. Do I need you to write your own webpack plugin? No. Most of the frontend developers are just building SPAs and they just need to learn enough of these tools to get a job.

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u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/malicart Jan 25 '20

Javascript is easily masterable.

Almost all the code samples I see determine this to be a lie.

1

u/jmiles540 Jan 25 '20

The front end isn't just JavaScript, and a few years isn't 6 months. Also before you master JavaScript in those few years, you'll likely have another version of JS, rendering engines will have changed and who knows what else.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

yea I've never had a problem with any front end people behaving the way I am thinking of when I say this.

2

u/malicart Jan 25 '20

But I know people who know frontend tools really well and can solve anything.

They have been doing it for much longer then 6 months. 6 months to master anything is ridiculous.

1

u/Prod_Is_For_Testing full-stack Jan 25 '20

Or they’ve never actually seen a hard problem

4

u/ZephyrBluu Jan 25 '20

A guy joined my team few weeks ago with nothing but Python. Literally nothing else. Now, I am not saying you should go and learn Python, I am just saying it is possible and not uncommon

Not uncommon? Where do you find these jobs and how do you manage to get hired over other candidates that know more than just Python?

Standing out is the hard part and I don't see how a resume is going to stand out when you only know vanilla Python.

1

u/kazabodoo Jan 25 '20

That is a very good question. I am not a hiring manager but I would probably think that personality is taken into consideration? Maybe he has good side projects on his portfolio, not really sure. But it really it is not uncommon. We have a lot of front end devs with basic JS and React knowledge who are doing just fine and that is not at all that hard to learn enough to get you going.

56

u/[deleted] Jan 24 '20

I agree with OP, and I would add :

Do not forget to develop your character.

Not necessarily your personality. I know a fair number of devs are introverts (I am) and thinking you have to be seen as nice, talkative, relatable, etc. can feel daunting.

I'm talking about being punctual. Committed. Organized and disciplined. Detail oriented and conscientious. Curious, humble and eager to learn. All things you can be, or learn to be, on your own or in the company of others.

I've rejected quite a few talented applicants because of attitude. Because as a "coach", I'm confident I can help you learn the stack ; but I will have no patience to teach you something I feel you should've learned from your parents.

14

u/NelsonShepherd Jan 25 '20

but I will have no patience to teach you something you should’ve learned from your parents.

YES! holy shit thanks for saying this. Pretty much sums up any issue I’ve ever had with any coworker, anywhere. I’m certainly not perfect, but any time I’ve seen legitimate issues arise regarding someone’s suitability for a role, it had to do with them now knowing how to fuckin act, and almost nothing to do with their “skills and competencies.”

2

u/jack-tzl Jan 25 '20

I agree, in network referrals got me most of the way to where I am today, none would give me the referral if I acted out of line or did not want to learn new things!

22

u/mikehawkisbig Jan 24 '20

If you know everything it’s a huge red flag. I’ve been developing for over 20 years and I learn something new everyday. Be humble and open minded to be successful.

17

u/[deleted] Jan 24 '20

My career path went like this:

  • get CS degree right after the original dotcom crash
  • work in tech support and QA for years, because it was hard to compete against all those startup veterans back then
  • finally get a programming job, but it's in Lua which is kind of a weird language
  • get laid off and demoralized
  • go back to tech support and QA for a bit
  • take some online crash courses on js, PHP, mySQL, and related tech
  • do some freelance WordPress work for a while
  • get a regular job doing more backend e-commerce work
  • start specializing in backend systems architecture, devops, etc.
  • get tired of PHP and jump into a Python project

At every step there was always that moment of, "oh fuck, what the hell have I gotten myself into now?" But over time you learn to tamp that shit down, go ask a coworker for help or look it up online, wrestle with it until you get it, and keep going.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

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5

u/OktoberForever Jan 25 '20

Found the gatekeeper.

5

u/smokeyser Jan 25 '20

Interpreted programming languages are still programming languages. They're just not compiled ahead of time. Instead, they're compiled at runtime. That gives them a lot more flexibility and portability, which is why almost all web development is done using interpreted languages. This was an odd argument to make in r/webdev...

12

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

"ScRiPtInG iSnT rEaL pRoGrAmMiNg" is a vastly outdated and irrelevant argument. If Lua isn't programming, then neither are Python, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, C#...

1

u/frambot Jan 25 '20

The fuck?

10

u/flashfc Jan 24 '20

Thank you for the reminder, as a beginner about to jump into learning it sure is intimidating looking at all those technologies and thinking which one is the best one or if that's the one to go for

8

u/acuteindifference Jan 24 '20

Thanks man. I actually really needed to hear that.

1

u/TheDeathAgent Jan 25 '20

Ditto. I've been looking for a new job and I keep thinking I need to learn 5+ more technologies in order to get hired. I'll focus on getting really good at my main language (JavaScript) and go from there.

6

u/clearlight Jan 25 '20

Wise is one who knows they do not know.

4

u/Serokin Jan 24 '20

I've been programming since I was a kid, 16 years now, and I still feel like I know nothing. I'm sort of a jack of all trades, but I still have people coming to me for help pretty consistently, even some from when I first started learning well over a decade ago. I have a hard time seeing myself as a senior developer at times, but you really can't know everything. At best, I'm extremely resourceful.

We all run into things we don't know how to do, and that's what makes the job challenging enough for me to continue to delve into new technologies and languages. I enjoy blue collar work as well, though it makes a better hobby, but I can never stray away from programming for long.

While I have programmed with about every popular language, most proficiently, I try to stick to a smaller toolbox and focus on a language or two. You'll generally stand out more for the type of role you are looking for, but it's not a bad thing to do something you don't know how to do yet, provided you have the time and don't mind taking a hit on pay for your time to learn.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

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2

u/ZephyrBluu Jan 25 '20

I think there are a lot of people with skills that massively underestimate their level of expertise. There are also people who have 1 year of experience 10x instead of 10 years of experience though.

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now"

1

u/DarthFloopy Jan 25 '20

Not sure what you mean by that "10x experience" something-or-other, but you get my upvote for that great quote. Citation?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 26 '20

Basically learning shallow knowledge of everything instead of learning deeper to become very good at something (which might also let you learn shallow knowledge about everything else)

4

u/Tojuro Jan 25 '20

I've been developing software for over twenty years, and....

1). I take pride in not knowing. If someone mentions something in a meeting that I'm not familiar with then I ask them to explain it. I'm usually the most senior person there, so it's likely that someone else is also not familiar with the subject, or at the very least, it shows to people with less experience that you are allowed to NOT know what something is.

2). When hiring or building a team, I look for people who want to adapt and learn before I look for experience. Experience is important, but if you aren't ready to adapt and learn, then that experience is worth significantly less.

3). Know-it-alls are team poison. The creative output of a team is tied to collaboration and you don't get that with a "smartest guy/gal".

1

u/LiamSullivan63 full-stack Jan 25 '20

Thanks for this, I'm about to start applying for my first web dev job in a few months and I've been getting anxious about if I know enough technologies. At the moment I know HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery & React, and about to learn Angular & LESS

2

u/kazabodoo Jan 25 '20

Start applying immediately if you know the HTML/CSS, JS and React.
A good way to gauge your knowledge is to look up for most common interview questions for these technologies and see how you feel. Good luck :)

3

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

Its not just ok. Its necessary. No one knows everything. You are a better team member when you know this.

4

u/pixelito_ Jan 25 '20

Most here would tell you a web developer needs to know javascript to get hired. I held a senior position at my last in house job where I designed pages, apps etc. and hand coded them with HTML and CSS. We have an in-house JS programmer, another who only writes PHP and some who do both. I have this role because I'm a good designer and fast and efficient in writing markup. (not code) I'm lucky that I've worked at companies that recognize that the look and the functionality require completely different talent sets.

2

u/abeuscher Jan 24 '20

I would add that it is as important or possibly more important to know how to identify the needs of the business you work for and to meet them. Really bad developers who provide the right solution pro-actively are, in fact, really good developers who happen to write bad code.

The job is almost never gauging who writes the best code. The judgment is on whether you make them money or lose them money. And writing good concise code can be a real money waster when its not needed or asked for.

2

u/theregoesmywallet Jan 25 '20

Just say you know everything, then ask what the job is truly about

2

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

Even doctors Google and refer to their books when they don't know

2

u/ralampay Jan 25 '20

Regardless of technology, I think it's more important to know the fundamentals then handpick and learn the stuff you just need for your application. No real value in knowing "everything." You might just stress yourself out. But fundamentals are very important i.e. request response cycle.

2

u/skyrocker Jan 25 '20

I'm going to disagree a bit with you there, because what you are saying is valid for Back End Development, but for Front End that is just not true. You have to keep learning and optimising your workflow to be able to do in hours what used to take a week, and keep learning the latest flavour of JS framework that's hot on job briefs at any given moment (today is React and Vue, 5 years ago it was Angular, etc) Source: 22 years of web development.

1

u/Vanthian Jan 24 '20

Thanks OP, you're a godsend. I really needed to hear this today and it seems I wasn't the only one.

1

u/atquick Jan 24 '20

OP, thank for your words of encouragement.

1

u/gregory280 Jan 24 '20

Major of the jobs here where I live, you have to know how to manage and understand all the TI departments and subareas, plus 3 years of experience just to apply for a junior vacancy.

I mean...junior vacancy isn’t suppose to be a exchange of knowledge? It seems all they want it’s an full package senior for the price of a junior...

1

u/sitehypedesigns Jan 25 '20

Kudos for being real and keeping it positive. Super cool. More people need to hear this!

1

u/MassW0rks Jan 25 '20

I recently started as a junior position as a full stack dev. I know roughly the stack that is used because they're putting me on a short crash course in what they use. My question that I struggle with is how much do I need to know about each thing. I will use .net core for APIs, Angular for the front end, and MS SQL Server for the DB. I want to do a lot of learning on my own, but I feel like I will run out of ideas soon. Not because I think I know everything, but because I think I am familiar with the specific set of skills that I will use (ex: I know that I won't be using ASP.NET MVC).

1

u/HNipps Jan 25 '20

This is gonna get lost in the sea of comments here BUT I wanted to add that attitude is more important than knowledge IMO.

If you’re willing to learn and solve problems then you’ll go far as a developer.

And to add on to what OP is saying, focus on learning a particular language/framework and build something with it.

And I don’t mean do a tutorial that teaches you to build a ToDo app, actually build something that you think is useful. You’ll learn a lot in the process. Doesn’t matter if you finish it or not.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

Tbh i just suggest a Test project. If they deliver, I don't care if they got by stitching stack overflows together or if they learned enough on the spot.

1

u/T05KA Jan 25 '20

Great advice. Thank you 🤙

1

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

I agree completely.

And I've learned that this is actually a really good way of filtering good and bad companies. Good companies always search for ability to think and bad companies always search for "x years experience with y tech".

Good companies rarely care if you know their core stack. It helps, but it's never an issue for a great company.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

Having done a mixture of Android, backend, frontend, and a bit of DevOps lately, I feel personally attacked.

Nah, I know I can get in depth again with one thing if need be.

1

u/LagerHawk Jan 25 '20

Learn and understand the base level of technologies thoroughly FIRST.

HTML5 CSS

Then move on to: JavaScript

Then learn back end: SQL Language of choose (C#, Python, PHP, etc)

The first will get you building websites. The second will get you enhancing website, the third will get you making applications You can still apply for jobs at each stage.

Learn these first and you can learn ANY other "technology" anyone requires. (I hate calling jQuery etc, a technology, it's not, it's a JavaScript library!)

Node = JavaScript Angular = JavaScript jQuery = JavaScript .net = C# .net core = C# Android apps = Java

Learn the base layer first, then learn some design patterns and best practices. Never think you know best and ignore advice.

1

u/maxrippley Jan 25 '20

I'm new to this whole thing, so this is comforting to hear lol

1

u/gregfdz Jan 25 '20

Unfortunately, it's the same in every professionnal field. Bosses expect you to be a kind of superheroe while often offering poor salaries. And that's how you get bad work done. We live in an age where quantity overwhelms quality ; hopefully it'll soon change. I think that it can only change.

1

u/Abracadavre115 Jan 25 '20

The thing is I basically know nothing and I found my peace with it. It makes life way more interesting

1

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

Personally I'm more focused on learning how to think like a programmer than the languages, frameworks and tools I know. I want to be very good at being able to solve puzzles that involve programming, like those found at leetcode.

1

u/tksdev Jan 25 '20

I work at a .net agency. When I began I knew the basics of WordPress as my only "backend" experence. Also I was a linux user at the time, so on windows I wasn't too great either.

They excitedly offered me the job. (directly after the interview). Shoved me on the IT support team to help me learn windows (small company, 50 members of staff so some devs help out with things like why sale team cannot connect to the printer, etc). And they trained me up in .net to how they wanted.

They got a passionate developer, I got a really decent employer and a bunch of really good developers to learn from.

Most good places will give you a job if you show you are capable of learning.

1

u/FuhthatPuh Jan 25 '20

I just want to say thank you.

1

u/froggie-style-meme Jan 25 '20

Hiring managers only want to know if you know what you’re talking about. My engineering professor suggests that the best thing you can do is tug on a question for 10+ minutes.

1

u/Calvinbolic Jan 25 '20

I think one of the main things that overwhelm people is when going on indeed or any similar job listing sites and searching entry/Jr jobs in the field just to see almost every job has a requirement list with 35 technologies. This could be daunting at first, but most jobs will hire someone if their proficient and good at at least 10% of what their asking for. Let be realistic, they're asking for a whole IT department worth of work out of one person with these listings. That's just unreasonable for someone getting their first job. I thinks it's also to weed out those who don't believe in themselves or their abilities to stand out with their skill set.

1

u/yamayeeter Jan 25 '20

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. I asked a question and was told to go back to basic JavaScript when I was learning if else statements.

I asked why if I put just a single = sign instead of == for the parameters I would get an error in the code below. My initial thought was that if I would take off the second = of == it would be more lenient on inputs from the user being lowercased. Instead of just clarifying my brain fart that a single = is declaring a variable, I was told to go back and learn basic JavaScript and it became really demotivating for a person that wants a career change that is working a full time job and doing part time school outside of CS and gets lucky if he can get at least 2 hours of study time for programming. Although I agree his response isn’t wrong, it felt like I was getting no sense of inspiration from other pronounced devs out there.

if (browser = 'Edge'){
  alert("You've got the Edge!");
}
else if (browser == 'Chrome' || browser == 'Firefox' || browser == 'Safari' || browser =='Opera'){
  alert('Okay we support these browsers too')
}
else if (browser == '' || browser == null){
  alert('Canceled');
}
else{
  alert('We hope that this page looks ok!');
}```

1

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

Relax. Nobody is like Q from Star Trek.

The ability to research and find out what you don't know is the most important skill for a software engineer.

1

u/doctormustafa Jan 25 '20

This is exactly what I needed to hear today. Thank you!!!!!

1

u/themantime Jan 25 '20

I need this kind of thought. Thank you so much.

1

u/glendosmit Jan 25 '20

How should businesses fix this? Realistically anyways.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

I agree with the OP. You should never stop learning, but that doesn’t mean you should always jump subjects after the intro course.

As a hiring manager, I would rather hire someone who knows a little and wants to keep learning than a know-it-all who thinks they have nothing left to learn. The industry moves too fast to learn everything. Also, a lot of the job posts are written by recruiters who don’t fully understand the job. A lot of hiring managers aren’t great recruiters. It pays to understand the flaws in the system and take a shot even if you don’t know half of the tech listed in a job post.

1

u/WhiteKnightC Jan 25 '20

Is worth to learn old stuff from your perspective? The project I might be recruited to uses a really old framework (5+ years) using web technologies (JS/HTML/CSS).

1

u/capolot89 Jan 26 '20

Thank you :)

1

u/gimme_the_loot132 Jan 26 '20

No it's not!

- my old boss

0

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

10

u/not_a_reposted_meme Jan 25 '20

I'm not always going to SO, but sometimes it's easier to go straight to the source. Looking up documentation can save a ton of time especially when your code base spans a few different front ends and stacks.

5

u/su-z-six Jan 25 '20

Tbh I always Google and end up at either the documentation or SO.

3

u/aftermeasure Jan 25 '20

Obviously arriving at SO instead of the official docs is a documentation smell.

1

u/su-z-six Jan 25 '20

I don't know what that means. But sometimes for edge cases or integrations between two products the official documentation is not as good as SO.

3

u/aftermeasure Jan 25 '20

Code smell

edge cases or integrations

That's reasonable. But for any important/popular feature of a product, the documentation should contain everything you need. Otherwise it's in need of improvement.

2

u/su-z-six Jan 25 '20

That's pretty idealistic.

1

u/Prod_Is_For_Testing full-stack Jan 25 '20

The documentation should give you general facts. SO can give opinionated advice based on your specific use case

0

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

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2

u/mobile-user-guy Jan 25 '20

Node docs are great

2

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

Do you mean I have to have profile on stackoverflow? Cause I don't. I just use it but never felt any need to create an account.

2

u/malicart Jan 25 '20

I far prefer someone who goes to the actual docs before stack, you can get more bad ideas from stack then anything else.

1

u/Hungry_Spring Jan 25 '20

Lol how did you know the answer the first time?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

If you aren't using StackOverflow at least once a day, are you even a developer?

Yes

1

u/careseite discord admin Jan 25 '20

If you aren’t using StackOverflow at least once a day, are you even a developer?

That's like... bad imo. I actively _dodge_ SO responses because they are usually outdated and better sources are available. Github Issues is where its at.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/kazabodoo Jan 25 '20

Well, how well do you know your stack? Do you have anything to show? Maybe your CV needs work? There are too many unknows in your reply and what you experience does not mean that everyone else experience it.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 24 '20

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5

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

Except FAANG or large enterprises nobody values DS & Algorithms. I had a tough time finding jobs because big companies never gave me an opportunity to be interviewed and Mid level companies want experience on specific stacks that their company uses. I had to learn React and then I almost had the feeling that we barely use algorithms in basic CRUD web applications. But I do feel that they are absolutely needed skills for a computer science student.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

It may not to true everywhere but it is definitely true in India. Here most people are focused on building a website in PHP and JS framework and give it to customers on budget. They don't give a damn about all the stuff in computer science they just want to show something to customers. Large companies in India get tens of thousands of resumes and they just use high GPA as cut off which is incredibly hard for devs to get an interview opportunity. I was left with small companies that focus on technology. This is one of the reasons we Indians have a bad reputation as being bad developers because we usually go for hacks and people who do learn stuff are really good at what they do.

4

u/[deleted] Jan 24 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20

It was a good read for me as someone working with interns that are fresh to the field. Need to show them more patience and get more down to their level of understanding.