I had never thought of it from this perspective - thanks and cool stuff!
Do you think there's value in (trying) to communicate the comparison of skills; not necessarily just the knowledge levels of each skill in isolation?
To me, the scales for each individual skill is indeed subjective and shouldn't be taken at face value for all the reasons above. However, knowing someone self identifies as a 2/5 stars in C# and 4/5 stars in Photoshop... that seems more meaningful to me?!
Although, maybe it's no different from the traditional non-visual "Beginner," "Intermediate," "Expert..."
If you really want to use a scale, define the scale somewhere. I like the way Google does that during the interviews. They'll ask you to rank yourself from 0 to 10 on several skills relatives to the job (Python, TCP/IP, etc) but they will explain you the scale. While I don't remember it exactly each number basically it's something like:
0 — don't know at all
5 — you're the person everybody in the company goes to see if they have questions about it
10 — you've invented the damn thing
Even if you don't use the scale, you can describe your skill level in relationship to others. Like:
Python — Beginners refer to me
JavaScript — Teaching it at university
etc
But more than anything what matters is proofs. You want to communicate JavaScript experience? Put JavaScript experience in your job descriptions, possibly with links and references.
(Also it's forbidden to reveal the Google hiring process publicly so I guess that Google's never going to hire me, oh nooooo)
No human is able to grasp the functionings of every lib or package made for python. 100% is not possible, even if you authored the language to begin with.
You are very welcome and thank you for commenting!
I think it's all rather subjective. Actual knowledge aside, if you're a modest person, you'll probably rate yourself a bit lower on the scale. If you're more egotistical, maybe you'll rate yourself higher. Some of the best developers and engineers I've worked with call themselves beginners.
Don't know if that answers your question. Honestly, I haven't really understood what you meant by "communicate the comparasion of skills", sorry :)
I think nuSei meant that, you might not know where is the boundaries of a specific technology thus we all agree to say displaying a percentage is pointless, but you can rate the difference of skills between several technologies. For example in my case, it will be 100% in PHP, because that is the technology I master the most. Then, I would say 70% Laravel, 60% Vuejs, 40% CSS and so on. Maybe if you take this from this point of view, bar chart make more sense, because those percentage represent how much you feel comfortable relative to the skill you master the most I guess.
Maybe, but it still doesn't make sense to use percentages because they are relative units. You say you know 100% of PHP, but are you really sure? Everytime you learn something new, you gain new experience and that adds up to your knowledge of PHP. Do you then know 105% of PHP or other percentages become smaller?
Maybe you can graphically show the relation between experiences with different technologies, but I wouldn't include any numbers, especially percentages.
I think the best way is just to let your projects speak for you. I can write in my resume I have 20 years of experience with some tech stack, but:
That doesn't necessarily makes me any good at it and
I can simply lie or fake it.
This is turning more and more into philosophical debate with every new comment :)
I also noticed this phenomenon in night with friends, it always either turn into a philosophy or political debate 😂 great article by the way 😉 I agree, one cannot say he knows 100%,I think it is more like my best skill is X so I will consider others skills compared to this in my pov.
I wish my code was half as good as my expectations for how my code should be. My lattes are better than my code, so maybe I should make latte art instead of ascii art
I wonder if a radar chart is a good way to show where your skills land in comparison to each other, versus as a metric to be used against the rest of the world.
It makes sense to me to say that I’m more comfortable with React and JS than I am with CSS, although I know both of those enough to get most jobs done. That way if an employer is looking for someone who’s main focus is CSS, they can know that I may not be the best suited candidate for that role.
A radar chart is always a bad idea no matter what you try to represent. It is so confusing because it creates a 2D area while you want to compare 1D data, so basically anything you show on it is biased. Also you still can't measure your skills, so changing to a more confusing graph won't help you.
Hmm, I hate these types of ratings as well, though your idea of a radar chart actually sounds interesting. Especially as someone dual disciplined, overlapped. My JS QA skills may be awesome while I'm not experienced in JS development like I am in Python or R. That could be visuallized something like this example: chartjs.org/docs/latest/charts/rad...
There's still inherently a numerical score, though, so I doubt I'd use it :\ I'd much rather just list what I know in order of comfort rather than assign scores.
I had never thought of it from this perspective - thanks and cool stuff!
Do you think there's value in (trying) to communicate the comparison of skills; not necessarily just the knowledge levels of each skill in isolation?
To me, the scales for each individual skill is indeed subjective and shouldn't be taken at face value for all the reasons above. However, knowing someone self identifies as a 2/5 stars in C# and 4/5 stars in Photoshop... that seems more meaningful to me?!
Although, maybe it's no different from the traditional non-visual "Beginner," "Intermediate," "Expert..."
???
If you really want to use a scale, define the scale somewhere. I like the way Google does that during the interviews. They'll ask you to rank yourself from 0 to 10 on several skills relatives to the job (Python, TCP/IP, etc) but they will explain you the scale. While I don't remember it exactly each number basically it's something like:
Even if you don't use the scale, you can describe your skill level in relationship to others. Like:
But more than anything what matters is proofs. You want to communicate JavaScript experience? Put JavaScript experience in your job descriptions, possibly with links and references.
(Also it's forbidden to reveal the Google hiring process publicly so I guess that Google's never going to hire me, oh nooooo)
Exactly, exactly, exactly, couldn't agree more! There is nothing I can add after this.
And sorry about never getting job at Google 😆
Of course. 10 should always be, you invented the damn thing. If python, I think Guido gets to be the first to sit at the Table of 10!
No human is able to grasp the functionings of every lib or package made for python. 100% is not possible, even if you authored the language to begin with.
Hence the scale not measuring your knowledge of 100% of what exists but rather how do you compare in relation to your peers
You are very welcome and thank you for commenting!
I think it's all rather subjective. Actual knowledge aside, if you're a modest person, you'll probably rate yourself a bit lower on the scale. If you're more egotistical, maybe you'll rate yourself higher. Some of the best developers and engineers I've worked with call themselves beginners.
Don't know if that answers your question. Honestly, I haven't really understood what you meant by "communicate the comparasion of skills", sorry :)
I think nuSei meant that, you might not know where is the boundaries of a specific technology thus we all agree to say displaying a percentage is pointless, but you can rate the difference of skills between several technologies. For example in my case, it will be 100% in PHP, because that is the technology I master the most. Then, I would say 70% Laravel, 60% Vuejs, 40% CSS and so on. Maybe if you take this from this point of view, bar chart make more sense, because those percentage represent how much you feel comfortable relative to the skill you master the most I guess.
Maybe, but it still doesn't make sense to use percentages because they are relative units. You say you know 100% of PHP, but are you really sure? Everytime you learn something new, you gain new experience and that adds up to your knowledge of PHP. Do you then know 105% of PHP or other percentages become smaller?
Maybe you can graphically show the relation between experiences with different technologies, but I wouldn't include any numbers, especially percentages.
I think the best way is just to let your projects speak for you. I can write in my resume I have 20 years of experience with some tech stack, but:
This is turning more and more into philosophical debate with every new comment :)
I also noticed this phenomenon in night with friends, it always either turn into a philosophy or political debate 😂 great article by the way 😉 I agree, one cannot say he knows 100%,I think it is more like my best skill is X so I will consider others skills compared to this in my pov.
Thank you. I’m about to have one of those nights 😂
I wonder if a radar chart is a good way to show where your skills land in comparison to each other, versus as a metric to be used against the rest of the world.
It makes sense to me to say that I’m more comfortable with React and JS than I am with CSS, although I know both of those enough to get most jobs done. That way if an employer is looking for someone who’s main focus is CSS, they can know that I may not be the best suited candidate for that role.
A radar chart is always a bad idea no matter what you try to represent. It is so confusing because it creates a 2D area while you want to compare 1D data, so basically anything you show on it is biased. Also you still can't measure your skills, so changing to a more confusing graph won't help you.
Hmm, I hate these types of ratings as well, though your idea of a radar chart actually sounds interesting. Especially as someone dual disciplined, overlapped. My JS QA skills may be awesome while I'm not experienced in JS development like I am in Python or R. That could be visuallized something like this example: chartjs.org/docs/latest/charts/rad...
There's still inherently a numerical score, though, so I doubt I'd use it :\ I'd much rather just list what I know in order of comfort rather than assign scores.
Yup, list by experience and comfort looks like a winner :)