applying for jobs is the worst, people never get back to you when they say they will, job listings are out of date, and everyone insists you move to their physical location to spend your day in front of a computer

so true

That xkcd bit in the jobs thread has been bugging me a bit. While I hope it’s tongue in cheek, and goodness knows Randall Monroe is as inclusive and humane a figure as anyone, it still bothers me that we often include cultural markers in job postings that can suggest to folk outside the dominant geek tribe: you’re an outsider.

It's harsh treatment, but sometimes it's also effective.

If the goal is to recruit a bunch of people who gel quickly.

Too bad too much diversity can be a hindrance.

it is like a posting looking for a roommate, not a posting looking for a professional

their intent, I am sure, is to be winky and fun, which, you know, great, fun is fun

Well, one can always say that Sturgeon's law equally applies to job postings.

"too much diversity can be a hindrance” I am not aware of research affirming that. I am aware of considerable research supporting the efficacy of diversity.

@alandipert, @borkdude: re. thread from #C05006WDW - my former company hired >30 remote mostly-scala consultants. some of them very unexperienced. All of them are constantly improving their skills, all mentoring is being done remotely, and we are having a good time every time when we meet together. I saw at least a few of them advancing from fresh graduates to senior devs. just my 2 euros

and notice that scala takes much more time to learn than clj

also, "senior dev" isn't a recognized unit in the SI system

yeah, i should have written experienced

jan.zy: that is in line with the new trend, that instead of "outsourcing" something, you do "teamboosting"

i really like it, since it means someone actually becomes part of your team for a small time, and spread their knowledge, rather than focussing on deliverables (= "make this code")

so it’s just like hiring a remote coach

I'm a part of development team with ~20 devs, 50%/50% on-site/remote, grew from the fully on-site team (I was the first remote contributor).

It was a bumpy road at the beginning, but somehow it worked out well.

the team must be very organized when dealing with employees on-site and remote

We basically gave up on doing everything online, because it's too slow, but 5-6 on-site folks are always in Slack and they are distributing knowledge from the office to the rest of the team.

Works okay. Not the best solution, but not a dysfunctional one either.

We're a mixed team. We use screenhero and slack a lot.

I find mentoring remote easier than on-site, and I've done both at the same place. Remote mean pairing and code reviews, it allows the mentee to take a minute to breath and think about things.

On a side note about hiring clojure people. I was doing Python work years ago before you could find Python devs. You hired someone with experience doing something as close as you could and let them learn the new language.

I'm a senior dev (17 years exp), but clojure noob, I don't even think about applying to clojure jobs

+1 for screenhero when working remotely

@Imergen: my (limited) experience, is that the management really likes have everyone in one place. whenever we flew everyone in to the office (2-3 times a year, the office had an onsite sales team) the ceo would get jazzed about having everyone there, and talk about how great it was to see so much activity in the office, for the actual developers it was less productive, we general treated those weeks as a write off work wise (but they were fun)