@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Watching Now:

@grey said in What Are You Watching Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Watching Now:

@kelly said in What Are You Watching Now:

Rogue One is on Netflix. Good times ahead.

No way! Once I get some sleep I will check that out.

I still haven't seen that movie. I'm so behind. I really like Forest Whitaker, too. He's a great actor. I hope he did well in R1.

I want to watch it because I am a long time Diego Luna fan.

I have literally seen zero movies on his entire IMDB except Rogue One. I think the only movies I've watched for the last 8 years have been Star Wars, DC, Marvel, and X-Men flicks.

Why bother with any of them? MS changes absolutely everything about their roadmap and certs every two years anyway! lol

Another one of their charts.

This chart makes it seem like MS wants you to go through MCTs on the "path". And "MCP" isn't even in here.

Just finished season 4 of The 100 on Netflix. I was pretty hooked.

Don't come to my town, you'll be lucky to scratch $14/hr to start anywhere doing anything.

Define "good"

Cool! Just downloaded a bunch of books I'll probably not get queued up until 2028!

I never did have problems with them until recently. It appears they can't handle power dips very well.

If I could only work one day a week, it would be Monday, because that's when all technology likes to fail, and I could just chill by the lake the rest of the week.
Websites don't work. Services can't connect. Printers disappear. Backups fail. Systems crash. Quickbooks won't open. Something can't see something over the network. A "static" IP from the ISP changes anyway, cause they like to do that to our static IP sometimes. An auto-update fails.

And today, no internet. Come to find ports 1 and 2 are dead on the router.
And the shipping department has a messed up thermal printer.
And email isn't being received by just one workstation.

Everything happens on Monday.

@scottalanmiller said in Making Business to Candidate Hiring Connections:

@dafyre said in Making Business to Candidate Hiring Connections:

@scottalanmiller said in Making Business to Candidate Hiring Connections:

A CPA at a farm and one for a restaurant across town do essentially the same job and can fill in for each other easily. Two IT people at two different businesses might have careers that are nothing alike.

This is true, but if they are snagged by a third company, it's not like none of their concepts and skills won't transfer.

But they easily won't transfer. Bring the average generalist from the SW community into our shop and they'd not even be able to log in. The different in skills and knowledge between someone who is looking at a desktop GUI and clicking installer icons and a shop that is doing state files to manage automation is enough different than it's like comparing a chef to a dancer. Yeah, they both get dressed before going to work, but it pretty much stops overlapping there.

Can't this just be rolled up into the idea that most of the time, if not 100% of the time, any new hire in an IT position is going to need time to adjust and learn the architecture and systems in use and get some initial training?

I think the quality of an IT person is not that they studied everything under the sun and thus understand and know all systems everywhere, all hardware, all software, all network designs, all system management methods, techniques, and tools.

The quality is that an IT person is a nerd, and they like this stuff, and learning it comes relatively naturally and relatively quickly.

I've tried for 6 years to get people to understand that when one website doesn't work, they shouldn't run around the office saying "the Internet is down!" But they don't get it.
An IT person just "gets it". They have some kind of basic understanding of how tech works. Their brains don't go into shock with cognitive dissonance at the idea that left clicks and right clicks are two different things, and when to use them.

I guess I'm just saying, it's one thing to demand a specific list of skills or experience with specific hardware or software; but on the other hand, most good IT people could learn a simple piece of software in an afternoon. Or the configuration of a simple piece of hardware in a week. Or if worse comes to worse, a more complex software or hardware in a matter of weeks or a few months.

In this light, it's better to find a person who has some level of nerdy intuition, who just loves technology, who can understand concepts quickly and can learn, rather than only looking for a person who already knows precisely your entire technology stack. Unless that is what the company absolutely needs.

I know it's not that simple, but it's not like a chef and a dancer. It's like, an Asian chef who has to learn Italian cuisine. Lots of learning, lots of new stuff, but they "get it", they "know food", so it won't be that bad of a learning experience.

I don't think we're talking in the same train of thought here. But I think it's a bit off topic anyway.

As for finding talent. I've seen some new marketplaces come up which help people in certain industries find jobs near and dear to their heart.
For example GitHub's job market. Or StackOverflow's market. Or CodePen's market.
People who are a bit heavily invested in those platforms would be apt to find jobs from companies who also love those platforms and what they represent as far as potential talent.

In other words, instead of one huge market covering everything like Monster, you have mini-markets ran within various "networks" where desired talent is bound to be found.

If I'm a designer, I'll probably be hanging out at this or that place. Or programmers on Github. Or general developers on Stack. Or whatever industry. I even see job boards now on many Slack channels that grow in popularity.

Linkedin was kind of this way. A "network" of "business-y" people, companies and employees, all hanging out trying to find each other. But it became something else.

So it kind of reverses the role of the recruiter. Instead of me hiring a recruiter to go find stuff, the company hires a recruiter that hunts down the talent where they like to hang out and post jobs there.

Why would any company keep around worthless talent or "unemployable people" to begin with?

If we drag these ideas to their farthest extremes, it seems there are some logical issues.
If every company decided to not promote within the ranks. AND if every company only hired people who have been in that position in other companies. AND only that position in other companies in different sorts of fields. Then we are starting with a talent pool that came from nowhere and is going nowhere.

How did they get those positions if not by promotion? How did they get their first job if they didn't already work it in another company?

Perhaps some of this is politics, but some is moral, to a degree. Companies should, to some degree, help bring up talent, and not simply play these numbers games in such a way where no new people can enter the market at all.
Somebody has to take the risk of hiring somebody where it's their first time in the position.
Somebody has to take the risk of molding good upper management.

People in these positions don't just appear in a basket by a stork! So where does "best hiring practices" give way to politics or to moral goodness? How do new people get into these jobs?

@scottalanmiller said in Making Business to Candidate Hiring Connections:

@guyinpv said in Making Business to Candidate Hiring Connections:

I'm making an assumption that it's a bit easier to hire for lower positions than higher. Higher positions have more security clearance, more responsibilities, more control. That must be difficult to make the decision to hire.

I agree here. But good lower level people are more likely to leave you. If your process is to depend on hiring from within, you have a brain drain problem.

I would guess also that if you hire someone on the idea that it's a benefit they have worked for many companies, bouncing around and becoming adaptable, that you can also count on them leaving you also.

I think we can just assume everybody is mediocre to some degree. Most of us just work for a paycheck after all.

So, the conversation seems to be changing from "how can companies find people?", to "how can companies find the absolute best people because existing talent is too mediocre?".

Well then my assumption here is that they steal the talent from other competing organizations!

@scottalanmiller said in Making Business to Candidate Hiring Connections:

@guyinpv said in Making Business to Candidate Hiring Connections:

Also, I would assume for larger companies, hiring from within the walls is the first/best bet. Promote someone up, and another and another, and then after promoting people all you have left are bottom level positions to fill.

That's what the worst companies do, but obviously good ones cannot because the best people won't come work for you that way. Wegmans in NY does this, promoting all IT from the ranks of cashiers, and it shows. Even the most basic tasks need to be outsources and everything is shoddy, slow and costly.

Are we talking about IT companies?

There is a huge benefit to promoting internal talent. I.e. they already know the work ethic and temperament and how they work with others. That they've shown some leadership ability and drive, or actually enjoy the work and the product. You don't get a lot of that in a couple job interviews. It's a safe bet to promote internal talent if you see the potential in someone to move up.
And what employee wouldn't like a fresh set of responsibilities and a nice pay bump?

It's also a benefit to start people at low positions because you tend to get the beginners and new talent. People you can mold a little bit and grow into what the company needs.
This as opposed to hiring some veteran person stuck in their ways and has a hard shell for change.
I'm making an assumption that it's a bit easier to hire for lower positions than higher. Higher positions have more security clearance, more responsibilities, more control. That must be difficult to make the decision to hire.

But obviously, what you described can happen too. I'm just surprised you think that is the norm rather than the exception.

Well from what I've seen when job hunting, is that any company with a little technical ability is going to have their own "Career" section right on their own website.

If I were in the job market and actually wanted to work for any large company be it a university or fortune whatever or just any company I happen to like, I'll go see if jobs are open on their own websites.

Even if I use a company like Monster first, just to notice a position, I'll then skip Monster and go strait to the corporate website to the career page. There usually is one.

Also, I would assume for larger companies, hiring from within the walls is the first/best bet. Promote someone up, and another and another, and then after promoting people all you have left are bottom level positions to fill.

Because Monster/Indeed/etc are all fronts for legal purposes.

Everybody knows you get hired due to who you know Bob in the mail room, his sister's old boyfriend's cousin's drinking buddy used a computer once, the cousin highly recommends him. HIRED!

@wirestyle22 said in Gaming - What's everyone playing / hosting / looking to play:

@guyinpv said in Gaming - What's everyone playing / hosting / looking to play:

I recently started Guild Wars.

I was a Lineage player before that but all my clan went to GW. I'm trying to get used to it.

Guild Wars 1 had the best pvp I've ever taken part in. I did not enjoy Guild Wars 2 as much.

I never liked pvp in the first place, so GW lets me avoid it. I just wanted a more casual game to run around and goof for a while here and there when family/work lets me.

@BRRABill said in Laser printer sometimes trips an APC and shuts off computer??:

This is the second time today someone has accused me of not reading a thread.

I will not mention how many times it has been true.

I think somewhere in here is a male/female communication analogy.