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So you're actually arguing for companies to hire employees who will likely produce negative output (their code will be so bad as to take not only their own time

So you're actually arguing for companies to hire employees who will likely produce negative output (their code will be so bad as to take not only their own time, but other programmers' time to fix) just to ...what, not hurt the feelings of the bottom 80 percent of developers? Your analogy is poor: Hiring a bad programmer is an extremely high probability event, even in a broad pool of candidates as would apply to a high-end company like Amazon, not a low priority event. There have been studies dating back to the 70's that show a 10-20x skill difference between average and great developers. If you're going to pay roughly the same for a 1x as a 10x developer, wouldn't you want the 10x? So they tune their hiring process to skew that number as high as possible. OP above may be an exception who fell through the cracks, not really ragging on them in particular. I did know at least one person who applied to Amazon and who was rejected -- and rightfully so, in my opinion. His skills were sub-par, and the interview process detected that. Most others that I worked with while I was at Amazon were also above average; people I've encountered at other jobs have been mediocre by comparison, with the exception of a number of game developers I know.

vonmoltke 10y ago
> So you're actually arguing for companies to hire employees who will likely produce negative output (their code will be so bad as to take not only their own time, but other programmers' time to fix) just to ...what, not hurt the feelings of the bottom 80 percent of developers? I did nothing of the sort. In fact, I am arguing that your hypothetical negative output employee is much rarer that some people think. > Your analogy is poor: Hiring a bad programmer is an extremely high probability event, even in a broad pool of candidates as would apply to a high-end company like Amazon, not a low priority event. I have seen no data to support this. My personal experience does not support this. > There have been studies dating back to the 70's that show a 10-20x skill difference between average and great developers. If you're going to pay roughly the same for a 1x as a 10x developer, wouldn't you want the 10x? So they tune their hiring process to skew that number as high as possible. Citation needed. I have certainly seen this bandied about the Internet quite a bit, but the best the citations only claim a 10x difference between great and terrible developers, and even those studies are likely flawed.[1] > I did know at least one person who applied to Amazon and who was rejected -- and rightfully so, in my opinion. His skills were sub-par, and the interview process detected that. Most others that I worked with while I was at Amazon were also above average; people I've encountered at other jobs have been mediocre by comparison, with the exception of a number of game developers I know. I'm not saying people shouldn't be rejected or that bad developers should have jobs at places like Amazon. I'm saying that optimizing for false negatives because you are paranoid of false positives is an anti-pattern and that there are better ways to deal with false positives. [1] http://blog.fogcreek.com/10x-programmer-and-other-myths-in-software-engineering-interview-with-laurent-bossavit/ http://blog.fogcreek.com/10x-programmer-and-other-myths-in-s...
- eecc 10y ago
  About the 10x difference in programmer productivity: it's a "leprechaun", a false myth emerged from misquoting of previous articles, poor review processes of the claims made and the generalized tendency to ape a scientific process in the software engineering world. Quite some tall claims but I have read a book that makes some good arguments supporting this as well as debunking a couple of these legends turned truths: https://leanpub.com/leprechauns https://leanpub.com/leprechauns
  - SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
    I personally have at least a 10x productivity advantage over an "average" dev on some tasks, so I guess I'm a leprechaun? The canonical reference is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month#The_surgical_team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month#The_sur...
    - azeirah 10y ago
      :|
- biocomputation 10y ago
  > My personal experience does not support this. My personal experience doesn't support this either. There are many different kinds of skill and it's really a management issue to find the right roles for people, and to lead them in a healthy, humane, productive, and profitable direction. There is much to be said for being a solid programmer who can sketch out a system; there's also a lot to be said for being an average programmer who is great at taking direction and methodical. Most companies need both types of engineers. The arguments used by people at certain tech companies are like saying "it's so hard to become President of the United States that anyone who becomes president is obviously the cream of the crop'. Imagine if we said the same thing about doctors or lawyers, or really any other profession. We all know that such generalizations are total BS.
- SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
  >My personal experience does not support this. Mine does. Sometimes all the work done by a new developer ends up needing to be ripped out and redone. I've had that happen to me in the last year (a developer with high credentials and who answered the questions well!), and I just had a friend show me a developer who would copy-and-paste code from StackOverflow into different places until the result was what he wanted -- leaving all of the other references because he didn't really understand WTF he was doing. >10x difference between great and terrible developers It's 10x between great and average. The studies were done on actively employed developers at large companies, and also showed the 10x developers produced more easily readable code that was better optimized. >Citation needed. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month#The_surgical_team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month#The_sur...
biocomputation 10y ago
> Most others that I worked with while I was at Amazon were also above average; > people I've encountered at other jobs have been mediocre by comparison > people I've encountered at other jobs have been mediocre by comparison > people I've encountered at other jobs have been mediocre by comparison > people I've encountered at other jobs have been mediocre by comparison Here you are flogging the horse of Amazonian exceptionalism, and your own, of course, whilst simultaneously deriding most of your current and former co-workers at other businesses as merely average. This raises an issue that is just as important as technical prowess: emotional intelligence. I'd personally green light ten or twenty 'inferior' ( by your standards ) developers over 1 technically superior ( again, by your standards ), but arrogant and morale-destroying, primadonna. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prima_donna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prima_donna Sorry, but technical chops aren't everything. Soft skills matter just as much.
- SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
  > simultaneously deriding most of your current and former co-workers at other businesses as merely average I specifically excepted game developers because they're an above-average bunch, but yes, I'm merely relating the facts as I see them. And honestly I think, based on the kind words I've received from many coworkers over the years, that many would actually agree with my appraisal, and would report that I was helpful in teaching them better ways to accomplish things. >This raises an issue that is just as important as technical prowess: emotional intelligence. I'd personally green light ten or twenty 'inferior' ( by your standards ) developers over 1 technically superior ( again, by your standards ), but arrogant and morale-destroying, primadonna. I'm assuming for sake of civil discussion that you're not implying that I am the arrogant, morale-destroying prima donna, because that would have been rude and confrontational. >Sorry, but technical chops aren't everything. Soft skills matter just as much. Technical chops can get you 10x-100x-infinitely more productivity. I've frequently accomplished things in minutes that other developers have been blocked on for weeks. Extremely poor soft skills can disqualify an otherwise good developer, sure. I'd block the hiring of someone who was excessively arrogant, abrasive, or otherwise a harm to morale. But many really good developers are actually really polite and helpful in a team setting -- I've worked with multiple developers that fit that description. And good technical chops are much more rare than decent soft skills, so the former is what's grilled most in an interview. The soft skills show through as well, though, and can equally get you disqualified. It does depend on the domain whether you really need a great developer. Presumably you work in a domain where you can get away with average developers. That's fine, you can get away with paying them less, go for it. But that attitude is a big part of why most companies' servers seem to get hacked sooner or later. Note that you don't hear about huge security breaches at Amazon revealing tons of private customer data, despite the fact that they likely are the top target for any exploit that could be used against them. And part of that is, in fact, that they have a higher bar for developers.

vonmoltke 10y ago

> So you're actually arguing for companies to hire employees who will likely produce negative output (their code will be so bad as to take not only their own time, but other programmers' time to fix) just to ...what, not hurt the feelings of the bottom 80 percent of developers? I did nothing of the sort. In fact, I am arguing that your hypothetical negative output employee is much rarer that some people think. > Your analogy is poor: Hiring a bad programmer is an extremely high probability event, even in a broad pool of candidates as would apply to a high-end company like Amazon, not a low priority event. I have seen no data to support this. My personal experience does not support this. > There have been studies dating back to the 70's that show a 10-20x skill difference between average and great developers. If you're going to pay roughly the same for a 1x as a 10x developer, wouldn't you want the 10x? So they tune their hiring process to skew that number as high as possible. Citation needed. I have certainly seen this bandied about the Internet quite a bit, but the best the citations only claim a 10x difference between great and terrible developers, and even those studies are likely flawed.[1] > I did know at least one person who applied to Amazon and who was rejected -- and rightfully so, in my opinion. His skills were sub-par, and the interview process detected that. Most others that I worked with while I was at Amazon were also above average; people I've encountered at other jobs have been mediocre by comparison, with the exception of a number of game developers I know. I'm not saying people shouldn't be rejected or that bad developers should have jobs at places like Amazon. I'm saying that optimizing for false negatives because you are paranoid of false positives is an anti-pattern and that there are better ways to deal with false positives. [1] http://blog.fogcreek.com/10x-programmer-and-other-myths-in-software-engineering-interview-with-laurent-bossavit/ http://blog.fogcreek.com/10x-programmer-and-other-myths-in-s...

eecc 10y ago
About the 10x difference in programmer productivity: it's a "leprechaun", a false myth emerged from misquoting of previous articles, poor review processes of the claims made and the generalized tendency to ape a scientific process in the software engineering world. Quite some tall claims but I have read a book that makes some good arguments supporting this as well as debunking a couple of these legends turned truths: https://leanpub.com/leprechauns https://leanpub.com/leprechauns
- SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
  I personally have at least a 10x productivity advantage over an "average" dev on some tasks, so I guess I'm a leprechaun? The canonical reference is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month#The_surgical_team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month#The_sur...
  - azeirah 10y ago
    :|
biocomputation 10y ago
> My personal experience does not support this. My personal experience doesn't support this either. There are many different kinds of skill and it's really a management issue to find the right roles for people, and to lead them in a healthy, humane, productive, and profitable direction. There is much to be said for being a solid programmer who can sketch out a system; there's also a lot to be said for being an average programmer who is great at taking direction and methodical. Most companies need both types of engineers. The arguments used by people at certain tech companies are like saying "it's so hard to become President of the United States that anyone who becomes president is obviously the cream of the crop'. Imagine if we said the same thing about doctors or lawyers, or really any other profession. We all know that such generalizations are total BS.
SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
>My personal experience does not support this. Mine does. Sometimes all the work done by a new developer ends up needing to be ripped out and redone. I've had that happen to me in the last year (a developer with high credentials and who answered the questions well!), and I just had a friend show me a developer who would copy-and-paste code from StackOverflow into different places until the result was what he wanted -- leaving all of the other references because he didn't really understand WTF he was doing. >10x difference between great and terrible developers It's 10x between great and average. The studies were done on actively employed developers at large companies, and also showed the 10x developers produced more easily readable code that was better optimized. >Citation needed. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month#The_surgical_team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month#The_sur...

biocomputation 10y ago

> Most others that I worked with while I was at Amazon were also above average; > people I've encountered at other jobs have been mediocre by comparison > people I've encountered at other jobs have been mediocre by comparison > people I've encountered at other jobs have been mediocre by comparison > people I've encountered at other jobs have been mediocre by comparison Here you are flogging the horse of Amazonian exceptionalism, and your own, of course, whilst simultaneously deriding most of your current and former co-workers at other businesses as merely average. This raises an issue that is just as important as technical prowess: emotional intelligence. I'd personally green light ten or twenty 'inferior' ( by your standards ) developers over 1 technically superior ( again, by your standards ), but arrogant and morale-destroying, primadonna. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prima_donna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prima_donna Sorry, but technical chops aren't everything. Soft skills matter just as much.

SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
> simultaneously deriding most of your current and former co-workers at other businesses as merely average I specifically excepted game developers because they're an above-average bunch, but yes, I'm merely relating the facts as I see them. And honestly I think, based on the kind words I've received from many coworkers over the years, that many would actually agree with my appraisal, and would report that I was helpful in teaching them better ways to accomplish things. >This raises an issue that is just as important as technical prowess: emotional intelligence. I'd personally green light ten or twenty 'inferior' ( by your standards ) developers over 1 technically superior ( again, by your standards ), but arrogant and morale-destroying, primadonna. I'm assuming for sake of civil discussion that you're not implying that I am the arrogant, morale-destroying prima donna, because that would have been rude and confrontational. >Sorry, but technical chops aren't everything. Soft skills matter just as much. Technical chops can get you 10x-100x-infinitely more productivity. I've frequently accomplished things in minutes that other developers have been blocked on for weeks. Extremely poor soft skills can disqualify an otherwise good developer, sure. I'd block the hiring of someone who was excessively arrogant, abrasive, or otherwise a harm to morale. But many really good developers are actually really polite and helpful in a team setting -- I've worked with multiple developers that fit that description. And good technical chops are much more rare than decent soft skills, so the former is what's grilled most in an interview. The soft skills show through as well, though, and can equally get you disqualified. It does depend on the domain whether you really need a great developer. Presumably you work in a domain where you can get away with average developers. That's fine, you can get away with paying them less, go for it. But that attitude is a big part of why most companies' servers seem to get hacked sooner or later. Note that you don't hear about huge security breaches at Amazon revealing tons of private customer data, despite the fact that they likely are the top target for any exploit that could be used against them. And part of that is, in fact, that they have a higher bar for developers.