Do you need a chain saw

Posted August 17th, 2009

Way too many friends have unexpectedly entered the job market. Some of them are being asked unfortunately short-sighted questions by potential employers. I suppose that's the way it is in a tight economy — the numbers allow the employers to get exactly what they need today.

Is it YAGNI for an employer to look beyond their present needs to think about what they might want from a good employee over time?

YAGNI is the Extreme Programming acronym for "you aren't going to need it". Pronounced "yagg – knee", it is supposed to be your defense against implementing clever solutions that will complicate your code to make it easier to allow you to provide features that the client has not yet specified.

The problem is that there are some needs you can anticipate and almost guarantee and some that may or may not occur.

When I was first dating Kimmy-the-wonderwife there were many features that I could have articulated then as being important to me, some that I could have anticipated as being important, and some I couldn't have foreseen no matter how carefully I thought things through. In the first category I would put things like her ability to make me laugh and her tendency to make me think. Those are no-brainers. The second category includes things like how important family is to her and that she is willing to try a wide range of foods and experiences.

The third category is full of the little surprises I get after sixteen years of marriage. Yesterday, Kim, her dad and I cleaned up the big branches that came down in our front yard from last week's windstorm. Her dad brought a pair of hand-saws with him and we quickly took off the small branches while Kim dragged them to the street. He then took a chain saw out of his trunk. When it didn't quite do the job, he took a second chain saw out of his trunk.

An hour later we had a stack of branches on the tree lawn, a nicely raked front yard, and  healthy supply of firewood stacked in the backyard.

I sure am glad I have a father-in-law who has a a couple of chain saws to go with sharp hand saws. I can't imagine anticipating this need when Kim and I were first dating and it wouldn't have been a deal breaker in any case. The chain saws are the second class of YAGNI. That's the class that shouldn't matter until the need arises.

Having a wife who is always willing to pitch in and help (and often works harder and longer than I do) is the other sort of YAGNI — I didn't need it at the time we were dating but it was an anticipated need.

I don't understand employers who ignore this flavor of YAGNI. You can't anticipate the specifics of the technology you'll be using next year at work but you can anticipate the qualities of the employee you want working for you as you evolve and grow. Can't you? 

What do you look for in an job candidate?

This post originally appeared in the Pragmatic Life blog.