[kolektiv]

Or, to put it another way, why are you so averse to investing in people/your company that you're looking for the finished article on the job market, rather than finding good people and helping them learn the specific skills you need?

[Finster]

This is exactly what we do, and it's worked really well. Of course, we're doing Agile, which I think helps this process.

But if I have a good candidate that has attention to detail, knowledge of basic concepts, etc. but doesn't know our language of choice, I'm confident we can teach him our language. Especially if he has already learned similar languages. Even if he hasn't, we've hired people with almost no experience as programmers but that have the ability to absorb knowledge and have a passion for wanting to be a programmer.

Then, we've also had applicants that could "talk the talk" and had experience, but ended up being terrible programmers because they lacked attention to detail, or didn't want to be bothered with writing unit tests, or whatever.

Obviously, I'd much rather have someone that I could train with good habits than someone who has experience with bad habits.

[debt]

I think most software companies will find it hard to get someone up to speed on their existing codebase. If a candidate is relatively green in regards to some programming language, most of the time a candidate can learn a language pretty quickly. The undocumented mess of a codebase typically takes longer to digest. Also, understanding the dev process in use takes some time as well getting comfortable with.

[delinka]

Because we need a solution now and can't take time to teach you anything. Can you start last week?

/s

[LarryMade2]

You forgot the part about saving the company...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfxTc7_1UVE

[arethuza]

I've met managers who say that but then are surprised when developers in their team complain bitterly about working on anything other than the "hot" technologies.

[logfromblammo]

Because human resources are mined, not grown.

It's because recent trends in corporate management have prioritized cost cutting over re-investing in the company's assets. Besides that, training is a dangerous investment when your employees are all "at will". They could take the training and then flip to your competitor, and there's nothing you could do about it.

...other than, perhaps, paying them what they are worth and giving them a measure of basic human dignity. But you can't put that on the quarterly reports!

[vonmoltke]

CFO asks his CEO, “What happens if we invest in developing our people and then they leave the company?” CEO answers, ‘What happens if we don’t, and they stay?”

Variations of that exchange float around the intertubes, but its really true. I saw it first-hand at a defense contractor that mostly reserved enrichment training for those being groomed for bigger things.

[bleakcabal]

I had written something on this. I remember speaking to 2 people in a company who needed someone with X years in Silverlight and they weren't considering anyone who didn't have those on their resume. 6 months later they still had an open position and were still trying to hire someone.

http://gillesleblanc.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/hire-talent-no...