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I disagree with this article's thesis, that the industry is incorrectly framing the talent problem. Whether people are talent or have talent is philosophical; t

I disagree with this article's thesis, that the industry is incorrectly framing the talent problem. Whether people are talent or have talent is philosophical; the truth of the matter is that it is really hard to find software practitioners that can come in and do the job and do it well. The problem, IMO, is that we don't have a good and clear understanding of what is the professional skill set. Even companies like Google, etc have lamented the very difficult problem of interviewing and identifying talent that correlates to on-the-job success. I know (believe) that there is an acquirable skill set of a professional software practitioner that maps to real value. It's just that we as an industry haven't successfully codified it yet, we haven't yet shown which of the practitioner's skills are the most valuable, and we haven't shown how to measure and evaluate those skills in a candidate. Only when we can be specific about what is the talent, the skill set will we be in a better position to consider the shortage (or not) of that talent; and only then will we also be able to be specific with individuals on how to acquire that skill set.

dboreham 11y ago
Agree. If you compare to for example lawyers and doctors there is a highly structured, consistent (even consistent across different countries and cultures) route to achieving "made man" status (apologies for using a sexually biased term, but I couldn't think of a better one). This consistent structure, beyond university, is what's missing. This of course is hardly surprising in a field that is roughly 100X less mature.
taurath 11y ago
It could also be that there are many paths to and definitions for the skillsets that make good professional workers. Even if you create a list of the most desirable features of a software developer there are infinite ways of actually getting those features and they will not even look the same for 2 people. One person who could be driven to learn and improve themselves by sheer ego, and another by absolute anxiety from bad things happening in their lives and a need for security and understanding. Those people look quite different when they work, and respond very differently to the high pressure situations of an interview. In the end you'll end up trending towards the same people that are in charge of interviews, because you'll tend to want to work with people that match your expectations of what a productive professional looks like (which can sometimes be "diversity" itself, though usually with a lot of degrees). The other problem is that people tend to stick with what they know through their careers, and be around similar people. Its a fact of life of any interviewing programmer that with the exact same job requirements you can completely bomb one interview and look like a saint in the next. This is something that isn't easily quantified, which pretty much goes against the whole point of software to begin with, creating quite an interesting problem.

dboreham 11y ago

Agree. If you compare to for example lawyers and doctors there is a highly structured, consistent (even consistent across different countries and cultures) route to achieving "made man" status (apologies for using a sexually biased term, but I couldn't think of a better one). This consistent structure, beyond university, is what's missing. This of course is hardly surprising in a field that is roughly 100X less mature.

taurath 11y ago

It could also be that there are many paths to and definitions for the skillsets that make good professional workers. Even if you create a list of the most desirable features of a software developer there are infinite ways of actually getting those features and they will not even look the same for 2 people. One person who could be driven to learn and improve themselves by sheer ego, and another by absolute anxiety from bad things happening in their lives and a need for security and understanding. Those people look quite different when they work, and respond very differently to the high pressure situations of an interview. In the end you'll end up trending towards the same people that are in charge of interviews, because you'll tend to want to work with people that match your expectations of what a productive professional looks like (which can sometimes be "diversity" itself, though usually with a lot of degrees). The other problem is that people tend to stick with what they know through their careers, and be around similar people. Its a fact of life of any interviewing programmer that with the exact same job requirements you can completely bomb one interview and look like a saint in the next. This is something that isn't easily quantified, which pretty much goes against the whole point of software to begin with, creating quite an interesting problem.