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Depends on the business of course. Try getting interviewed by competent developers, they'll quickly find the holes.

vinceguidry 9y ago
I used to believe this, now I'm skeptical. Even if they find holes in the developer's competence, interviewing is not a task, it's a business process orchestrated and controlled by middle management. Say the competent developer finds holes in the interviewee's knowledge and skills, his findings become a line item in the report passed up to said middle management. The middle manager, hopefully not in HR, has to weigh all the items in the report, and as a result the actual skill level of the developer gets buried deep, under cultural factors and attitude. There's also the human aspect, does Jimmy Mid-Level know how to raise issues with an interviewee's competence convincingly? If he doesn't, his concerns are likely to get written off. This all ties back to the lack of political cover that software development shops in non-technically oriented organizations usually exhibit. Developers need to be in those middle management positions if they want their concerns to be taken seriously.
- dkarl 9y ago
  This is a symptom of managers not understanding the jobs of the people they're managing. I don't know if that kind of management works under any circumstances, but it definitely can't work if people who don't understand programming (and I specifically mean programming, no matter how well they understand the rest of a developer's job) are managing junior developers.
  - vinceguidry 9y ago
    Of course it is. But in most organizations, managers do not understand software development. That competence is extremely hard to hire.
    - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
      I'm fortunate to work for a manager who is a half-time developer. He's really good at interviewing people, and finding out if they're what we want.
  - bitwize 9y ago
    This is why it's imperative that software devs get on the management track.

I used to believe this, now I'm skeptical. Even if they find holes in the developer's competence, interviewing is not a task, it's a business process orchestrated and controlled by middle management. Say the competent developer finds holes in the interviewee's knowledge and skills, his findings become a line item in the report passed up to said middle management. The middle manager, hopefully not in HR, has to weigh all the items in the report, and as a result the actual skill level of the developer gets buried deep, under cultural factors and attitude. There's also the human aspect, does Jimmy Mid-Level know how to raise issues with an interviewee's competence convincingly? If he doesn't, his concerns are likely to get written off. This all ties back to the lack of political cover that software development shops in non-technically oriented organizations usually exhibit. Developers need to be in those middle management positions if they want their concerns to be taken seriously.

dkarl 9y ago
This is a symptom of managers not understanding the jobs of the people they're managing. I don't know if that kind of management works under any circumstances, but it definitely can't work if people who don't understand programming (and I specifically mean programming, no matter how well they understand the rest of a developer's job) are managing junior developers.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  Of course it is. But in most organizations, managers do not understand software development. That competence is extremely hard to hire.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    I'm fortunate to work for a manager who is a half-time developer. He's really good at interviewing people, and finding out if they're what we want.
- bitwize 9y ago
  This is why it's imperative that software devs get on the management track.