Skills at 100%, and better less
In 2011, when interviewing for the position of lead developer, an interesting document came into my hands, which does not allow me to calm down until now. It prevents me from putting myself 100% ownership of IT hard and soft skills. And I hope now hurt you.
At the interview there were two tasks. The first was to design a geo-search service from scratch. Literally: “We have a base with the coordinates of a cafe, the user has a device with a GPS navigator and he can give us his coordinates + search radius, and we have to give everything that is in the specified radius from him. Slowly, with feeling, sensibly, with an arrangement. " It seemed to me that I had designed everything in an hour. Everything. Generally everything. Only the staff did not get :) Well, there were many leading questions, there were clues. However, internally, I was elated - I designed 2GIS!
The second was the questionnaire. A4 sheet, double-sided. Here it is . List of terms by groups, score for each term from 0 to 4.
This leaf was lying on my desk for a long time. Month after month I “flipped” the fad there. Some were interesting, some were boring. Of all this process, I was especially infuriated by the scoring. In the original, this should have been calculated on a calculator, but I also have JavaScript! Made the version on KnockoutJS, the bill went faster.
Then I used this document to help my colleagues. Now we have already worked together to improve our level, conducted rallies-reviews. Those who told, received a two, and those who listened - one. It happens in practice that they used something.
During this time, PHP slightly increased the number of its version. Therefore, it is necessary to supplement the questionnaire with new concepts and terms. It means that yesterday it was rated at maximum points or 100%, today it has become less. And there was also ReactPHP. And still new versions of frameworks. And the application began to break to the front and back. And on the front, jQuery started replacing with Backbone, Ember, Knockout, Angular.
As soon as the questionnaire was included or supplemented with terms, the ratings instantly went down. The most important thing is that now I didn’t know what exactly to include in the list, too many sections, I did not have time to scan sections to supplement the questionnaire. We are divided. Part of the team studied the technology at the front and gradually supplemented the questionnaire, others clarified information on the back-up.
Last year I did a little research on this form. The survey involved 40 people of different levels of knowledge of web technologies, from schoolchildren to architects. In my research there were such questions:
I did one more study among IT specialists, in whose summaries or on their web pages they found assessments of their skills, such graphs with percentages. Skillbars or Skills. "I know JavaScript by 90%." I called up with them via Skype and figured out how they calculated their percentage of technology ownership, asked questions using their own questionnaire. In general, they do not have those percentages, as I once did not have. Because they do not know the reference against which to measure. Their line of thought in grading is something like this: “I will not put 100 so that they will not find fault; but I'm not an idiot, I have been busy with this for 3 years now - I’ll set myself 83% ”. Finger in the sky, from the ceiling. Do not believe the skillbar.
Today I want to give this questionnaire to the community in SaaS format for discussion, addition and use in practice. up.uptlo.com Profile can be used for personal needs, you can create new sections. The questionnaire does not require authorization, it is stored in localStоrage. In the last sentence, I want to open you the path to continuous learning:
At the interview there were two tasks. The first was to design a geo-search service from scratch. Literally: “We have a base with the coordinates of a cafe, the user has a device with a GPS navigator and he can give us his coordinates + search radius, and we have to give everything that is in the specified radius from him. Slowly, with feeling, sensibly, with an arrangement. " It seemed to me that I had designed everything in an hour. Everything. Generally everything. Only the staff did not get :) Well, there were many leading questions, there were clues. However, internally, I was elated - I designed 2GIS!
The second was the questionnaire. A4 sheet, double-sided. Here it is . List of terms by groups, score for each term from 0 to 4.
If class is a familiar term, put [1]; if you can tell what it is, then [2]; if you had to face in practice, then [4]. For each block, we count the sum of points, write next to the block, then sum it over all the blocks.Hm And I, it turns out, I know not everything. It turns out that I don’t know much. It is especially sad that it was already used in the company. Can I be considered the leader if here and so the first person in the company will tell me about what I didn’t even guess.
This leaf was lying on my desk for a long time. Month after month I “flipped” the fad there. Some were interesting, some were boring. Of all this process, I was especially infuriated by the scoring. In the original, this should have been calculated on a calculator, but I also have JavaScript! Made the version on KnockoutJS, the bill went faster.
Then I used this document to help my colleagues. Now we have already worked together to improve our level, conducted rallies-reviews. Those who told, received a two, and those who listened - one. It happens in practice that they used something.
During this time, PHP slightly increased the number of its version. Therefore, it is necessary to supplement the questionnaire with new concepts and terms. It means that yesterday it was rated at maximum points or 100%, today it has become less. And there was also ReactPHP. And still new versions of frameworks. And the application began to break to the front and back. And on the front, jQuery started replacing with Backbone, Ember, Knockout, Angular.
As soon as the questionnaire was included or supplemented with terms, the ratings instantly went down. The most important thing is that now I didn’t know what exactly to include in the list, too many sections, I did not have time to scan sections to supplement the questionnaire. We are divided. Part of the team studied the technology at the front and gradually supplemented the questionnaire, others clarified information on the back-up.
Last year I did a little research on this form. The survey involved 40 people of different levels of knowledge of web technologies, from schoolchildren to architects. In my research there were such questions:
Did you learn something new for yourself simply by viewing the list of terms during the survey?Of the 40 respondents, 75% answered "Yes, I found what I did not know."
Do you plan to look for something from where you put the mark 1?32 out of 40 answered “Yes.”
Do you plan to try something from where you put a mark of 1 or 2?19 out of 40 answered “Yes.”
I did one more study among IT specialists, in whose summaries or on their web pages they found assessments of their skills, such graphs with percentages. Skillbars or Skills. "I know JavaScript by 90%." I called up with them via Skype and figured out how they calculated their percentage of technology ownership, asked questions using their own questionnaire. In general, they do not have those percentages, as I once did not have. Because they do not know the reference against which to measure. Their line of thought in grading is something like this: “I will not put 100 so that they will not find fault; but I'm not an idiot, I have been busy with this for 3 years now - I’ll set myself 83% ”. Finger in the sky, from the ceiling. Do not believe the skillbar.
Today I want to give this questionnaire to the community in SaaS format for discussion, addition and use in practice. up.uptlo.com Profile can be used for personal needs, you can create new sections. The questionnaire does not require authorization, it is stored in localStоrage. In the last sentence, I want to open you the path to continuous learning:
Wish you never get 100%!