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0 pointshoosieree2y ago0 comments

Talented people are valuable in general which gives them bargaining power so they can demand to use their preferred tech regardless of whether that tech is niche or not.

I generally agree with the notion that talented folks are more likely to explore niche tech. Just be careful making the leap from "they prefer niche X" to "therefore they are talented".

Two anecdotes:

1. I'm an average programmer who likes niche tech.

2. My friend is 10x more talented than me, but he likes mainstream tech.

0 comments

CharlieDigital2y ago

    > Just be careful making the leap from "they prefer niche X" to "therefore they are talented".

Not my approach, to be sure :)

I think I have a pretty good heuristic for finding curious and inquisitive people that doesn't rely on esoteric tech stacks.

My sense is that a lot of engineering teams have lost their way so the only mechanism they can use now are convoluted leetcode style interviews instead to filter out Senior Java Dev Candidate 43 versus Senior Java Dev Candidate 96.

I write a little about this here: Your Interview Process is Too Damn Long (and How to Fix It) (https://chrlschn.dev/blog/2023/10/your-interview-process-is-...)

TremendousJudge2y ago

In my experience the most used mechanism is "I worked with this person before, they're pretty good, give them a call"

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