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This whole article reads like an celebration of confirmation bias, which could be summarized as: "The people that pass our interviews tend to be the ones that u

This whole article reads like an celebration of confirmation bias, which could be summarized as: "The people that pass our interviews tend to be the ones that use the tools that we prefer." I don't think there is any value in looking at this blog post and making any conclusions about which editor and/or scripting language to learn next. You might go interview at a .net shop and get the opposite result from the one that you wanted. Disclaimer: I personally match their preferred technologies very closely, but work with some really smart people that write C#/F# in VSCode.

davesque 9y ago
These were my thoughts exactly. Other things can also come into play. For example, what if certain technologies demand higher levels of skill? Then the interview pass rate might naturally be lower because the bar is higher. There could be countless ways that these numbers actually mean something different than what is implied.
cableshaft 9y ago
There are a lot of really smart C# programmers out there... but there are a lot of subpar C# developers out there too, especially outside of Silicon Valley. I've had a boss who brought in at least 60 people in (while I was there) for an unsupervised (unless you had a question) 60-90 minute test, where he'd leave them alone, let them google, etc, but would sit down and discuss what they did and why afterwards, and the amount of people who couldn't get past the first FizzBuzz question was pretty high. Those that got past that, the number who didn't know the basics, like what an Interface was or how they worked (or how you're not supposed to write implementation code directly into them) was higher still. And these are people who say they have 5-15 years of direct experience on their resumes. I'm not a huge fan of tests and I do tend to struggle myself, but not that badly, and not when unsupervised.
- kevindqc 9y ago
  I never understood and that can happen. What have they been doing for 5-15 years? I can understand performance anxiety being a factor.. but 60-90 minutes and still can't answer FizzBuzz?
  - flukus 9y ago
    > What have they been doing for 5-15 years? In the MS world you can get a fair bit done via drag'n'drop coding, this is the "visual" part of visual studio. From there on their a few effects come into play. One is that they are always putting out fires so they look good to management who don't realize they are also the arsonist. After a certain point most competent people with more options won't go near their creations, or at least they won't stick around long if they do. These people fail into job security. Also, never underestimate how little work you can get away with in a large organisation.
danielvinson 9y ago
I agree on confirmation bias, but the actual correlation appears to be that people from more wealthy backgrounds tend to do better in interviews. Anyone who uses MacOS (ie. can afford a MacBook Pro) to work on has to have enough money to buy one despite being in a job interview. Most people who use vim and emacs are going to be older, more experienced engineers, and as such, have the resources the acquire the tools they need to succeed (time to learn, books, computer, paid IDE). I see statistics like this and just think about all of the kids who didn't get a free ride through college and a MacBook given to them who aren't succeeding.
- xelxebar 9y ago
  I didn't really read the article as positing any causal connection, but the warning about confirmation bias is reasnoable. It would be interesting to see more data on things like age, experience, demographics, etc. Despite the "correlation isn't causation" mantra, there are only 27 different possible causal graphs, so with enough data maybe we could get to the bottom of this Best Editor business. :P
- kbp 9y ago
  > I agree on confirmation bias, but the actual correlation appears to be that people from more wealthy backgrounds tend to do better in interviews. > Anyone who uses MacOS (ie. can afford a MacBook Pro) to work on has to have enough money to buy one despite being in a job interview. > Most people who use vim and emacs are going to be older, more experienced engineers, and as such, have the resources the acquire the tools they need to succeed (time to learn, books, computer, paid IDE). > I see statistics like this and just think about all of the kids who didn't get a free ride through college and a MacBook given to them who aren't succeeding. I think having money and resources is definitely a deciding factor, but I don't think it has much to do with wealthy backgrounds or free rides through college. Like your third paragraph says, the bias seems to favour older, more experienced programmers. It makes sense to me that more experienced programmers would do better in interviews than kids fresh out of school, and that experience just ends up being reflected in the data as being able to afford expensive tools. Like the article says when it discusses the MacOS bias: "if you walk into any tech company in San Francisco you’re inevitably going to count far more than 60% MacBooks. While our interviews are background-blind, having a few years of professional programming experience usually helps!"

davesque 9y ago

These were my thoughts exactly. Other things can also come into play. For example, what if certain technologies demand higher levels of skill? Then the interview pass rate might naturally be lower because the bar is higher. There could be countless ways that these numbers actually mean something different than what is implied.

cableshaft 9y ago

There are a lot of really smart C# programmers out there... but there are a lot of subpar C# developers out there too, especially outside of Silicon Valley. I've had a boss who brought in at least 60 people in (while I was there) for an unsupervised (unless you had a question) 60-90 minute test, where he'd leave them alone, let them google, etc, but would sit down and discuss what they did and why afterwards, and the amount of people who couldn't get past the first FizzBuzz question was pretty high. Those that got past that, the number who didn't know the basics, like what an Interface was or how they worked (or how you're not supposed to write implementation code directly into them) was higher still. And these are people who say they have 5-15 years of direct experience on their resumes. I'm not a huge fan of tests and I do tend to struggle myself, but not that badly, and not when unsupervised.

kevindqc 9y ago
I never understood and that can happen. What have they been doing for 5-15 years? I can understand performance anxiety being a factor.. but 60-90 minutes and still can't answer FizzBuzz?
- flukus 9y ago
  > What have they been doing for 5-15 years? In the MS world you can get a fair bit done via drag'n'drop coding, this is the "visual" part of visual studio. From there on their a few effects come into play. One is that they are always putting out fires so they look good to management who don't realize they are also the arsonist. After a certain point most competent people with more options won't go near their creations, or at least they won't stick around long if they do. These people fail into job security. Also, never underestimate how little work you can get away with in a large organisation.

danielvinson 9y ago

I agree on confirmation bias, but the actual correlation appears to be that people from more wealthy backgrounds tend to do better in interviews. Anyone who uses MacOS (ie. can afford a MacBook Pro) to work on has to have enough money to buy one despite being in a job interview. Most people who use vim and emacs are going to be older, more experienced engineers, and as such, have the resources the acquire the tools they need to succeed (time to learn, books, computer, paid IDE). I see statistics like this and just think about all of the kids who didn't get a free ride through college and a MacBook given to them who aren't succeeding.

xelxebar 9y ago
I didn't really read the article as positing any causal connection, but the warning about confirmation bias is reasnoable. It would be interesting to see more data on things like age, experience, demographics, etc. Despite the "correlation isn't causation" mantra, there are only 27 different possible causal graphs, so with enough data maybe we could get to the bottom of this Best Editor business. :P
kbp 9y ago
> I agree on confirmation bias, but the actual correlation appears to be that people from more wealthy backgrounds tend to do better in interviews. > Anyone who uses MacOS (ie. can afford a MacBook Pro) to work on has to have enough money to buy one despite being in a job interview. > Most people who use vim and emacs are going to be older, more experienced engineers, and as such, have the resources the acquire the tools they need to succeed (time to learn, books, computer, paid IDE). > I see statistics like this and just think about all of the kids who didn't get a free ride through college and a MacBook given to them who aren't succeeding. I think having money and resources is definitely a deciding factor, but I don't think it has much to do with wealthy backgrounds or free rides through college. Like your third paragraph says, the bias seems to favour older, more experienced programmers. It makes sense to me that more experienced programmers would do better in interviews than kids fresh out of school, and that experience just ends up being reflected in the data as being able to afford expensive tools. Like the article says when it discusses the MacOS bias: "if you walk into any tech company in San Francisco you’re inevitably going to count far more than 60% MacBooks. While our interviews are background-blind, having a few years of professional programming experience usually helps!"