Ask HN: What skills are essential for a back end engineer?
What skills would you consider to be necessities when hiring for a backend engineer for the web? Soft skills, related software skills, programming knowledge, or anything else you can think of.
2 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 14.5 ms ] thread- Strong data modelling skills
- Strong SQL skills
- Fluency in at least two of PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Go, C, C++, C#, Java (more exotic languages like haskell, erlang, lisp a plus)
- Basic unix (most likely Linux) skills (basic commands, ip-route, unix-permissions, acls, superuser vs normal users, unix sockets, sysv, systemd, basic bash scripting) and hands on of at least two different "families" (redhat, debian, arch, slackware, gentoo, exherbo, and many more - ubuntu is in the debian family for example) of linux (or BSDs).
- Conceptually understanding of how networking works (ip-addresses (4&6), ports, unix sockets, subnets, routing, nat, ).
- Curious nature and an ability to keep asking questions in a friendly fashion (if the answer is not complete or shows that the question has been misunderstood)
- Basic HTML/CSS/Javascript skills