Ask HN: IT industry book for an idiot?

15 points by mattnumbe 8 years ago | 9 comments

I'm currently working as a recruiter at a firm that dispatches engineers (IT, design, mechanical, etc.) in Japan. In the nature of Japanese companies, I'm going to be moved from this position into an area in which I have next to 0 experience. From July I will be the main sales person for our IT clients. I would like to say I have more knowledge than Joe Blow about the industry, and I also live in the 21st century/read hacker news. I'm looking for a book/website that would give me some general information about different languages and what they're used for/what other languages they're related to so I don't look like a complete idiot when talking to our clients. Anything would help.

joeclark77 8 years ago |

You might find "The Phoenix Project" interesting. It's a novel about IT operations management that I've assigned my MIS students to read in the past. You don't have to understand all of the technology buzzwords to get what it says about the roles and activities in IT.

ludwigvan 8 years ago | |

Seconded this book. It's also available on Audible.

feydaykyn 8 years ago |

What about learning to code yourself some bit ? You could follow beginner tutorials for the 3-4 most used languages, just enough to be able to do a simple fizzbuzz program, you would get the feel of each quickly. Granted it would take you a few days, but you could then relate to programmers explaining their choice because of ease of development, performance, compiler errors, etc

If you're the one fixing all computers in your family, you also know how a system administrator feels and what he/her dreams of: automation, removing user privileges as much as possible, tools for automation, tools to reproduce an issue without access to the computer and its user, etc.

For each major language, Google for "why use X".

Ask your developer collegues what's their favorite language and the one they hate the most, nobody will tell you the same reasons. Ask about language choice according to the context/task at hand. You'll have most fun if you can ask this when you have multiple developers around, you're in for a nice informative flamewar.

Blackstone4 8 years ago |

Maybe start here: https://wtfismyengineertalkingabout.com/2017/03/11/wtf-is-a-...

laurieg 8 years ago |

Learning about different languages and what they are for will give you an extremely superficial understanding of what's going on. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I recommend skimming a book like "Computer Science An Overview" to get a handle on some key ideas an terms. Then you can look at some case studies from from industry to find out about specific technologies. New technologies and buzzwords come all the time, so try not to get too hung up on specifics. Good luck!

My condolences on the sudden job transfer. I work in Japan too and the practice of moving employees to completely different areas of the company every 3 years is one that needs to die quickly.

ptr_void 8 years ago |

Specifying: What are you selling / who are your clients would be helpful. For a list and generic use of different languages, you can just do a search, there's way too many online articles on this.

Example (not super accurate but can give you general ideas): http://carlcheo.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/which-program...

forgottenacc57 8 years ago |

It's OK people don't expect recruiters to know anything.

mattnumbe 8 years ago | |

I'd like to catch them off guard.

Plus, I'll be moving from recruiting to sales, so I'm expected to know a bit more.

Aeolun 8 years ago | | |

I'd personally like my recruiters to know things. On both sides of the transaction that makes things a lot easier.

I imagine the same thing goes for salespeople