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And yet every hiring manager on here can tell you stories of hiring someone who passed all the screens, but on the job could not write a single line of competen

And yet every hiring manager on here can tell you stories of hiring someone who passed all the screens, but on the job could not write a single line of competent code. The industry provides too much cover to fake it with a title that sounds technical but isn't. You might hire a musician based on hours of discussion of their deep knowlege of violin theory, but it would still be a mistake without hearing them play.

shakna 9y ago
On the same line of thought, you wouldn't hire a violinist just because you heard them play the scales. In music, you often get handed some sheet music or asked to prepare something. In the cooking industry, you throw them at a kitchen and tell them to impress you. In the programming industry... We ask people to write toys and logic puzzles. That isn't what they'll spend their days doing, that's just practice, like scales.
- philwelch 9y ago
  That’s probably because you can’t write a production-ready service or application from scratch over the course of an interview. A violinist might be asked to play a technically difficult but short piece during an audition, even when most of the music they would play as a member of the orchestra would be less challenging and take a much longer time to play, with plenty of time for rehearsing ahead of time. Likewise, a software engineer is ideally asked to solve a small but technically challenging problem during the interview.
  - jnbiche 9y ago
    > A violinist might be asked to play a technically difficult but short piece during an audition, No. Compared to what we do as software developers, the correct analogy for a violinist interview would be to ask them to whiteboard all kinds of obscure music theory principles, like the set theory underlying serialism and Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.
    - philwelch 9y ago
      Thanks, I’ll be sure and consult with you on whether my opinions are “correct” in the future.

shakna 9y ago

On the same line of thought, you wouldn't hire a violinist just because you heard them play the scales. In music, you often get handed some sheet music or asked to prepare something. In the cooking industry, you throw them at a kitchen and tell them to impress you. In the programming industry... We ask people to write toys and logic puzzles. That isn't what they'll spend their days doing, that's just practice, like scales.

philwelch 9y ago
That’s probably because you can’t write a production-ready service or application from scratch over the course of an interview. A violinist might be asked to play a technically difficult but short piece during an audition, even when most of the music they would play as a member of the orchestra would be less challenging and take a much longer time to play, with plenty of time for rehearsing ahead of time. Likewise, a software engineer is ideally asked to solve a small but technically challenging problem during the interview.
- jnbiche 9y ago
  > A violinist might be asked to play a technically difficult but short piece during an audition, No. Compared to what we do as software developers, the correct analogy for a violinist interview would be to ask them to whiteboard all kinds of obscure music theory principles, like the set theory underlying serialism and Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.
  - philwelch 9y ago
    Thanks, I’ll be sure and consult with you on whether my opinions are “correct” in the future.