33 ms·

I feel like this is a myth, what do you estimate the figure is? I think under 10%, maybe under 5%. I have significant experience interviewing senior, junior, an

I feel like this is a myth, what do you estimate the figure is? I think under 10%, maybe under 5%. I have significant experience interviewing senior, junior, and mid-range candidates. 99% of my candidates can code, as in iterate over collections, write case statements, and call functions. I've only had one junior candidate who couldn't code at all. Sloppiness is rampant, but sloppy code that gets things done is what my company wants (not me personally).

chillydawg 9y ago
It's not a myth. I see it when recruiting for my teams. My sample size is too small to give a proportion, but it's enough that not having tests would be a total waste of my and their time since I'd have to fire them on day 1.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Clubber 9y ago
  I'm amazed you can't tell an imposter just by talking to them.
  - twodave 9y ago
    The real problem is everyone looks like an imposter until you watch them code.
    - Clubber 9y ago
      I don't mean this the way it sounds, but if you can't tell if someone is an imposter by talking shop with them in your chosen profession, you probably shouldn't be doing the interviewing.
      - twodave 9y ago
        I think unless you're prideful enough to believe you can identify someone's level of productivity from a short conversation, it's probably better to see the proof. Again, why would I settle for a conversation when I can ask for first-hand proof? It's like a judge dismissing concrete evidence and just basing their verdict on the circumstantial. Sure, it's likely to be right most of the time, but what about when it isn't?
        Clubber 9y ago
        >I think unless you're prideful enough to believe you can identify someone's level of productivity None of the techniques discussed in this article are even attempting to judge productivity, they are attempts to judge coding ability. It's good that you bring up productivity though; that's what we are really after, isn't it? >from a short conversation I'd argue 30 minutes to an hour is not a short conversation. Do you think an imposter could fool you about tech (assuming you are an active programmer) for 30 minutes to an hour? >it's probably better to see the proof You're not proving anything except the fact that the candidate has memorized a merge sort algorithm (or whatever trivia you are testing for). What you really want to know is, can they ship? I think you should at least consider the idea that not only are these tests and homework assignments (past fizz buzz) a poor indicator of ability, they active repel any candidate good enough to be in even reasonable demand. I mean you have a lot of people on not only this thread, but many other threads saying the same thing. Time for a little reflection, what does your company offer that even a mediocre developer can't get in 20 other places in your city? I mean if I could get "market rates," and a "fine cubicle," and "standard PTO" in 20 places, tell me again why I would bother with this rigamarole?
        azemetre 9y ago
        I absolute agree with you. I have no idea where the idea that having someone come on site for 6+ hours wasting a dozen peoples time became the norm as opposed to talking to someone for 1 or 2 hours and truly speaking with them to understand what they know. You're completely right, if you can't talk shop and not know when someone is bullshitting you shouldn't be the one interviewing. How would this even fly in other industries? Are you telling me that someone can bluff their way discussing the intricacies of surgery to other surgeons without looking like a moron? Or discussing particle physics with a researcher and stand on equal footing? I honestly want to hear a conversation where a liar with no programming skills is able to convince a Senior level Software Engineer that they are on equal skill sets. The best interview experience I had, where I eventually worked for the company, was having an hour conversation with the Engineering Manager who I would be working under then being ask basic programming Qs based on our conversation we had. Everyone in the company was interviewed the same way. IMO the resulting team was very professional and skilled on various levels from various backgrounds. I actually felt like a human at that job and not a person hired because of x thing. I'll never forget I had an interview where they asked me a question about finding anagrams. At that moment in my life, I've never heard of an anagram or knew what it was. The Interviewer then explaining what it was to me made me feel very humiliated. I completely bombed every question because I had the audacity to not know about this thing where the interviewers knew about thing therefore I should know thing as well. I immediately understood how cultural biases can effect candidates getting jobs. I can only imagine how worst it is for people not from traditional backgrounds in this industry.
calcifer 9y ago
> 99% of my candidates can code, as in iterate over collections, write case statements, and call functions. Honestly, that's way too trivial to call "can code". I usually ask something less trivial, yet still extremely easy like "a function to check if a string is a palindrome" (I explain what a palindrome is) or "check if a substring exists in a given string". You wouldn't believe how many people "with 10 years experience" just lose all motor function in their hands and mouth, even without any time pressure.
- haskellandchill 9y ago
  The function to check palindrome will be composed of those building blocks, that's my meaning. Use those basic skills and composing them to solve a problem, such as palindrome, that's coding in the small to me. Coding in the large is project management and could be tested by a take home, but I'd rather tease it out by asking in person questions about organization, prioritization, and technology choice.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  Problem is: It's hard to judge the difference between someone who doesn't know what they are doing and someone who does but loses it under the extreme pressure of an interview wherein their entire future with the company is being determined by their performance on a 30 minute exercise. Throughout my career, I've been in professional situations where I was under a lot of pressure: Having to explain failures to executives, near-impossibly tight deadlines, production outages. At least I haven't had to testify in front of Congress yet. Absolutely NOTHING I've encountered in my professional day-to-day has the extreme level of pressure of a typical silicon valley job interview.
  - calcifer 9y ago
    I understand and truly symphatize with stress the candidate is in, but someone who claims to be a "senior developer with 10 years experience" should be able to write that palindrome function in 30 whole minutes in any kind of stress scenario. Because if I hire that person, they'll be in charge of critical production systems and will face much harder problems in much more stressful situations and if they can't handle the palindrome question, I have very little confidence they can handle the actual job.
spamizbad 9y ago
We set our in-house recruiter up with a coderpad question that screens candidates with a simple question: "Write a function that counts the number of vowels in a string" Candidates are allowed to run it multiple times and just have to produce a correct result within 10 minutes. It's not a trick question -- the test case in place makes sure you pay attention to case. Success rate for mid to senior devs? Only 60%.
- notyourloops 9y ago
  What's your process like after that screening measure? Because to me, that's honestly trivial, and a lot nicer than dealing with an extended (8+ hours) homework problem as an introduction to a company's hiring process.
  - spamizbad 9y ago
    A ~4 hour on-site (or google hangout) technical interview and discussion. The first 30-45 minutes is usually us selling you on the company, followed by 2-3 hours of technical stuff. We do throw a few more coding questions at you (ones that are technically trivial, but made more difficult with interview jitters etc), but go beyond that and ask how would you design an API, how would you think about the technical requirements about business problem etc. After that, Q&A, and more selling you on the company.
    - notyourloops 9y ago
      That sounds like a nice process. I don't know anything about your company, but I'm thankful that you keep it sane and reasonable for prospective developers.
- hfdgiutdryg 9y ago
  Is Y (Greek I) a vowel?
  - spamizbad 9y ago
    For this problem, we explicitly say no in the description.
scoggs 9y ago
I feel like sometimes it's out of the applicants hands if they come by way of a recruiter / head hunter. Sometimes non-junior devs who aren't quite to senior developer status yet have no control over the recruiters mistaking your pay at previous jobs and the pay you could make next time for the level of job you should be applying for / able to handle. I've run into this issue in different specific ways earlier in my career and no matter what I'd say about skill level / lack of knowing required technologies / being willing to take lower pay in order to justify aiming for another role it didn't matter in the face of the possibility that the recruiter could obtain a larger % for themselves off of that senior / higher-than-in-my-range job's salary. Maybe this isn't as applicable for senior dev role applicants as it is for some lower level dev roles but at the point an applicant is actually physically there in front of the interviewers I'm sure one of the last things they are going to want to admit is that they wished they were interviewing for a lower paying / easier job even if it's 110% in the favor of both parties.
- magduf 9y ago
  I'm a senior engineer and have worked with recruiters many times before, and I've pretty much come to the conclusion that they're a big waste of time unless you want to do the 6-month contracting thing to avoid resume gaps or you just like moving around the country and renting rooms. I've tried working with them before, have gone on job interviews through them, and then generally found that the jobs that hire through recruiters pay peanuts, and I end up finding a permanent job paying much more and taking that instead. I think if a company only works through 3rd-party recruiters, that means the company has no idea how to hire people, and doesn't want to pay much either (because they're paying the recruiter a huge commission).
  - scoggs 9y ago
    It's not in their favor to find you an ideal, direct hire / non-contract gig. There is no chance for future money from a client if they find you your perfect fit / long term career type job. Not to mention most of the one's I worked with early in their career not only had no idea about any of the technologies they were checking to see if I was fluent in but they also acted like they DID know everything about programming and beyond that they tried to flaunt this fact and treat me like I was trying to overstate my skills to sneak my way into a job out of my pay range. Such a frustrating ecosystem in order to find a career job. In ten years I can count on 1 hand how many times I've gotten a reply from a non-recruiter job I applied for (applied on my own without a staffing agency submitting / representing me). It's really crazy how that works. Another thing I dealt with was people who hired me saying (TO MY FACE): In this situation I'm making $35.00/hr as a Regular Developer (non-junior / non-senior dev, just a middle of the road contract developer): CEO of company in front of everyone: "scoggs we are paying way more for you than we are for our senior developers so we are expecting top notch work from you." Me (used to it by now, unfazed but I hate this situation): "Sir with all respect I'm only getting less than 1/2 of what you pay my staffing agency for my contract/" CEO: "well they don't really do anything / didn't really do anything but introduce us and get you a phone and in person interview with us." Me: "But you guys didn't have to pull programmers, HR, and design / copy writing people off of their normal work to create interview materal, submit interview material, review resumes, vet candidates, plan phone interviews and schedule them, set aside time for phone interviews, review phone interview candidates among 'hiring team', review candidates references, plan in person interviews and schedule them, execute in person interviews and have meetings with 'hiring team' to pick who to hire', make offers to people you want to hire, or hire them. All you had to do was tell the staffing agency what skills your were looking for and what kind of company you were. I'm not an employee of your company. I don't have insurance, I don't get paid for sick days, I don't get paid for holidays, and I have no job security." Of course I didn't say all of this, I said something along the lines of "They take care of the majority of the process" but in my head I feel like I'm always having to live up to the expectations of the people paying the total bill. The same way they think the staffing agency doesn't do any real work and isn't worth the cost / price of doing business -- most of these people feel the same way about developers. They don't understand what we do, they just expect us to solve anything and everything to do with computers / programming / technology and this is ALWAYS the way it is regardless if the final product / project outcome is directly tied to the company suddenly turning a profit based on the success of this project / programming endeavor. These companies want to underpay contract developers, pile stress on their shoulders, guilt them for the situation they have little to no control over, and then stick them with the majority of the blame if things don't go 200% well (because they are expecting work that's 2x as good as the amount of money I'm being paid). I've found it impossible to truly and personally (mentally) live up to the majority of expectations laid upon my shoulders by non-technical CEO's / Presidents / Bosses of companies I've worked for. This is the majority of what I deal with right outside of NYC in Northern New Jersey. There is the rare company that truly respects the programmers they hire (usually companies where programmers have become CEOs / Presidents / people in powerful positions within the company who wield influence). I love the money I make in this market but I truly hate the way everything makes me feel even when the situation is like this yet I am able to deliver above and beyond expectations. I hate working for people and in situations where it feels like I'm being told I'm robbing the company when meanwhile the recruiter is robbing us both yet they have us pitted against one another -- and beyond that the staffing agency has a 2 year lock on me being able to accept a job from that company without them "buying out" my contract. The cost of buying out a contract? A university wanted to do that once early in my career (I wish I was still working there frankly, 10 years later), but the staffing agency wanted 2x the amount the university was paying the staffing agency! I was making $60,000/yr at that point so on top of the University paying me somewhere in the realm of $60,000/yr they would have also had to pay the staffing agency ~$240,000 just for the right to hire me. That means they would have had to shell out $300,000 total including my salary and the buyout. Nothing about that seems right and / or legal. Under no circumstances would I ever be worth that much to the staffing agency and honestly with the amount of work they actually do I feel like it's damn near criminal. No State University that pays employees with citizen's tax money is ever going to be able to justify spending that type of money on 1 employee. It's just a fantasy of epic proportions.
twodave 9y ago
Well, this may be a location and tech-dependent problem, but specifically hiring .NET positions in Jacksonville, FL I would say maybe 10% of the hundreds of people I've interviewed can code. Recent graduates, 10 years of experience, everything in-between. It makes no difference.
wpietri 9y ago
I think it depends on how you're filtering the people who get to your interviews. If it's purely based on a resume screen, you can get a lot of people who can't code. Personally, my first-line screen is a short answer (3-5 sentences) to a programming-related question. [1] For me, about 90% of applicants who pass that can also code. I like that better than a resume screen, as plenty of people who haven't officially been programmers are decent coders. [1] Examples here under the "Join Us" section. https://web.archive.org/web/20151005181908/http://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs/chime https://web.archive.org/web/20151005181908/http://www.codefo...
InclinedPlane 9y ago
You must have a very efficient filtering process. I'd say probably about half of all CS graduates and a greater percentage of people in "coder" positions will struggle to code at an extremely basic level.
edanm 9y ago
It's absolutely not a myth. It does depend on how you're getting your candidates, but assuming you cast a net a bit wider than "only people you know personally", then you run into these cases. Our standard fizzbuzz question was something like: print the multiplication table. This is a loop inside a loop. I think every programmer should be able to do this given 10-20 minutes. Around 30%-40% couldn't. Like literally, didn't know how to do this in languages they supposedly work in. I'm sorry, I make lots of allowances for stress, I calm candidates, I tell them syntax doesn't matter, do it in pseoudo-code for all I care. But if after 10 minutes you can't print a multiplication table on the screen, I'm going to pass.

chillydawg 9y ago

It's not a myth. I see it when recruiting for my teams. My sample size is too small to give a proportion, but it's enough that not having tests would be a total waste of my and their time since I'd have to fire them on day 1.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Clubber 9y ago
I'm amazed you can't tell an imposter just by talking to them.
- twodave 9y ago
  The real problem is everyone looks like an imposter until you watch them code.
  - Clubber 9y ago
    I don't mean this the way it sounds, but if you can't tell if someone is an imposter by talking shop with them in your chosen profession, you probably shouldn't be doing the interviewing.
    - twodave 9y ago
      I think unless you're prideful enough to believe you can identify someone's level of productivity from a short conversation, it's probably better to see the proof. Again, why would I settle for a conversation when I can ask for first-hand proof? It's like a judge dismissing concrete evidence and just basing their verdict on the circumstantial. Sure, it's likely to be right most of the time, but what about when it isn't?
      - Clubber 9y ago
        >I think unless you're prideful enough to believe you can identify someone's level of productivity None of the techniques discussed in this article are even attempting to judge productivity, they are attempts to judge coding ability. It's good that you bring up productivity though; that's what we are really after, isn't it? >from a short conversation I'd argue 30 minutes to an hour is not a short conversation. Do you think an imposter could fool you about tech (assuming you are an active programmer) for 30 minutes to an hour? >it's probably better to see the proof You're not proving anything except the fact that the candidate has memorized a merge sort algorithm (or whatever trivia you are testing for). What you really want to know is, can they ship? I think you should at least consider the idea that not only are these tests and homework assignments (past fizz buzz) a poor indicator of ability, they active repel any candidate good enough to be in even reasonable demand. I mean you have a lot of people on not only this thread, but many other threads saying the same thing. Time for a little reflection, what does your company offer that even a mediocre developer can't get in 20 other places in your city? I mean if I could get "market rates," and a "fine cubicle," and "standard PTO" in 20 places, tell me again why I would bother with this rigamarole?
        azemetre 9y ago
        I absolute agree with you. I have no idea where the idea that having someone come on site for 6+ hours wasting a dozen peoples time became the norm as opposed to talking to someone for 1 or 2 hours and truly speaking with them to understand what they know. You're completely right, if you can't talk shop and not know when someone is bullshitting you shouldn't be the one interviewing. How would this even fly in other industries? Are you telling me that someone can bluff their way discussing the intricacies of surgery to other surgeons without looking like a moron? Or discussing particle physics with a researcher and stand on equal footing? I honestly want to hear a conversation where a liar with no programming skills is able to convince a Senior level Software Engineer that they are on equal skill sets. The best interview experience I had, where I eventually worked for the company, was having an hour conversation with the Engineering Manager who I would be working under then being ask basic programming Qs based on our conversation we had. Everyone in the company was interviewed the same way. IMO the resulting team was very professional and skilled on various levels from various backgrounds. I actually felt like a human at that job and not a person hired because of x thing. I'll never forget I had an interview where they asked me a question about finding anagrams. At that moment in my life, I've never heard of an anagram or knew what it was. The Interviewer then explaining what it was to me made me feel very humiliated. I completely bombed every question because I had the audacity to not know about this thing where the interviewers knew about thing therefore I should know thing as well. I immediately understood how cultural biases can effect candidates getting jobs. I can only imagine how worst it is for people not from traditional backgrounds in this industry.

calcifer 9y ago

> 99% of my candidates can code, as in iterate over collections, write case statements, and call functions. Honestly, that's way too trivial to call "can code". I usually ask something less trivial, yet still extremely easy like "a function to check if a string is a palindrome" (I explain what a palindrome is) or "check if a substring exists in a given string". You wouldn't believe how many people "with 10 years experience" just lose all motor function in their hands and mouth, even without any time pressure.

haskellandchill 9y ago
The function to check palindrome will be composed of those building blocks, that's my meaning. Use those basic skills and composing them to solve a problem, such as palindrome, that's coding in the small to me. Coding in the large is project management and could be tested by a take home, but I'd rather tease it out by asking in person questions about organization, prioritization, and technology choice.
ryandrake 9y ago
Problem is: It's hard to judge the difference between someone who doesn't know what they are doing and someone who does but loses it under the extreme pressure of an interview wherein their entire future with the company is being determined by their performance on a 30 minute exercise. Throughout my career, I've been in professional situations where I was under a lot of pressure: Having to explain failures to executives, near-impossibly tight deadlines, production outages. At least I haven't had to testify in front of Congress yet. Absolutely NOTHING I've encountered in my professional day-to-day has the extreme level of pressure of a typical silicon valley job interview.
- calcifer 9y ago
  I understand and truly symphatize with stress the candidate is in, but someone who claims to be a "senior developer with 10 years experience" should be able to write that palindrome function in 30 whole minutes in any kind of stress scenario. Because if I hire that person, they'll be in charge of critical production systems and will face much harder problems in much more stressful situations and if they can't handle the palindrome question, I have very little confidence they can handle the actual job.

spamizbad 9y ago

We set our in-house recruiter up with a coderpad question that screens candidates with a simple question: "Write a function that counts the number of vowels in a string" Candidates are allowed to run it multiple times and just have to produce a correct result within 10 minutes. It's not a trick question -- the test case in place makes sure you pay attention to case. Success rate for mid to senior devs? Only 60%.

notyourloops 9y ago
What's your process like after that screening measure? Because to me, that's honestly trivial, and a lot nicer than dealing with an extended (8+ hours) homework problem as an introduction to a company's hiring process.
- spamizbad 9y ago
  A ~4 hour on-site (or google hangout) technical interview and discussion. The first 30-45 minutes is usually us selling you on the company, followed by 2-3 hours of technical stuff. We do throw a few more coding questions at you (ones that are technically trivial, but made more difficult with interview jitters etc), but go beyond that and ask how would you design an API, how would you think about the technical requirements about business problem etc. After that, Q&A, and more selling you on the company.
  - notyourloops 9y ago
    That sounds like a nice process. I don't know anything about your company, but I'm thankful that you keep it sane and reasonable for prospective developers.
hfdgiutdryg 9y ago
Is Y (Greek I) a vowel?
- spamizbad 9y ago
  For this problem, we explicitly say no in the description.

scoggs 9y ago

I feel like sometimes it's out of the applicants hands if they come by way of a recruiter / head hunter. Sometimes non-junior devs who aren't quite to senior developer status yet have no control over the recruiters mistaking your pay at previous jobs and the pay you could make next time for the level of job you should be applying for / able to handle. I've run into this issue in different specific ways earlier in my career and no matter what I'd say about skill level / lack of knowing required technologies / being willing to take lower pay in order to justify aiming for another role it didn't matter in the face of the possibility that the recruiter could obtain a larger % for themselves off of that senior / higher-than-in-my-range job's salary. Maybe this isn't as applicable for senior dev role applicants as it is for some lower level dev roles but at the point an applicant is actually physically there in front of the interviewers I'm sure one of the last things they are going to want to admit is that they wished they were interviewing for a lower paying / easier job even if it's 110% in the favor of both parties.

magduf 9y ago
I'm a senior engineer and have worked with recruiters many times before, and I've pretty much come to the conclusion that they're a big waste of time unless you want to do the 6-month contracting thing to avoid resume gaps or you just like moving around the country and renting rooms. I've tried working with them before, have gone on job interviews through them, and then generally found that the jobs that hire through recruiters pay peanuts, and I end up finding a permanent job paying much more and taking that instead. I think if a company only works through 3rd-party recruiters, that means the company has no idea how to hire people, and doesn't want to pay much either (because they're paying the recruiter a huge commission).
- scoggs 9y ago
  It's not in their favor to find you an ideal, direct hire / non-contract gig. There is no chance for future money from a client if they find you your perfect fit / long term career type job. Not to mention most of the one's I worked with early in their career not only had no idea about any of the technologies they were checking to see if I was fluent in but they also acted like they DID know everything about programming and beyond that they tried to flaunt this fact and treat me like I was trying to overstate my skills to sneak my way into a job out of my pay range. Such a frustrating ecosystem in order to find a career job. In ten years I can count on 1 hand how many times I've gotten a reply from a non-recruiter job I applied for (applied on my own without a staffing agency submitting / representing me). It's really crazy how that works. Another thing I dealt with was people who hired me saying (TO MY FACE): In this situation I'm making $35.00/hr as a Regular Developer (non-junior / non-senior dev, just a middle of the road contract developer): CEO of company in front of everyone: "scoggs we are paying way more for you than we are for our senior developers so we are expecting top notch work from you." Me (used to it by now, unfazed but I hate this situation): "Sir with all respect I'm only getting less than 1/2 of what you pay my staffing agency for my contract/" CEO: "well they don't really do anything / didn't really do anything but introduce us and get you a phone and in person interview with us." Me: "But you guys didn't have to pull programmers, HR, and design / copy writing people off of their normal work to create interview materal, submit interview material, review resumes, vet candidates, plan phone interviews and schedule them, set aside time for phone interviews, review phone interview candidates among 'hiring team', review candidates references, plan in person interviews and schedule them, execute in person interviews and have meetings with 'hiring team' to pick who to hire', make offers to people you want to hire, or hire them. All you had to do was tell the staffing agency what skills your were looking for and what kind of company you were. I'm not an employee of your company. I don't have insurance, I don't get paid for sick days, I don't get paid for holidays, and I have no job security." Of course I didn't say all of this, I said something along the lines of "They take care of the majority of the process" but in my head I feel like I'm always having to live up to the expectations of the people paying the total bill. The same way they think the staffing agency doesn't do any real work and isn't worth the cost / price of doing business -- most of these people feel the same way about developers. They don't understand what we do, they just expect us to solve anything and everything to do with computers / programming / technology and this is ALWAYS the way it is regardless if the final product / project outcome is directly tied to the company suddenly turning a profit based on the success of this project / programming endeavor. These companies want to underpay contract developers, pile stress on their shoulders, guilt them for the situation they have little to no control over, and then stick them with the majority of the blame if things don't go 200% well (because they are expecting work that's 2x as good as the amount of money I'm being paid). I've found it impossible to truly and personally (mentally) live up to the majority of expectations laid upon my shoulders by non-technical CEO's / Presidents / Bosses of companies I've worked for. This is the majority of what I deal with right outside of NYC in Northern New Jersey. There is the rare company that truly respects the programmers they hire (usually companies where programmers have become CEOs / Presidents / people in powerful positions within the company who wield influence). I love the money I make in this market but I truly hate the way everything makes me feel even when the situation is like this yet I am able to deliver above and beyond expectations. I hate working for people and in situations where it feels like I'm being told I'm robbing the company when meanwhile the recruiter is robbing us both yet they have us pitted against one another -- and beyond that the staffing agency has a 2 year lock on me being able to accept a job from that company without them "buying out" my contract. The cost of buying out a contract? A university wanted to do that once early in my career (I wish I was still working there frankly, 10 years later), but the staffing agency wanted 2x the amount the university was paying the staffing agency! I was making $60,000/yr at that point so on top of the University paying me somewhere in the realm of $60,000/yr they would have also had to pay the staffing agency ~$240,000 just for the right to hire me. That means they would have had to shell out $300,000 total including my salary and the buyout. Nothing about that seems right and / or legal. Under no circumstances would I ever be worth that much to the staffing agency and honestly with the amount of work they actually do I feel like it's damn near criminal. No State University that pays employees with citizen's tax money is ever going to be able to justify spending that type of money on 1 employee. It's just a fantasy of epic proportions.

twodave 9y ago

Well, this may be a location and tech-dependent problem, but specifically hiring .NET positions in Jacksonville, FL I would say maybe 10% of the hundreds of people I've interviewed can code. Recent graduates, 10 years of experience, everything in-between. It makes no difference.

wpietri 9y ago

I think it depends on how you're filtering the people who get to your interviews. If it's purely based on a resume screen, you can get a lot of people who can't code. Personally, my first-line screen is a short answer (3-5 sentences) to a programming-related question. [1] For me, about 90% of applicants who pass that can also code. I like that better than a resume screen, as plenty of people who haven't officially been programmers are decent coders. [1] Examples here under the "Join Us" section. https://web.archive.org/web/20151005181908/http://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs/chime https://web.archive.org/web/20151005181908/http://www.codefo...

InclinedPlane 9y ago

You must have a very efficient filtering process. I'd say probably about half of all CS graduates and a greater percentage of people in "coder" positions will struggle to code at an extremely basic level.

edanm 9y ago

It's absolutely not a myth. It does depend on how you're getting your candidates, but assuming you cast a net a bit wider than "only people you know personally", then you run into these cases. Our standard fizzbuzz question was something like: print the multiplication table. This is a loop inside a loop. I think every programmer should be able to do this given 10-20 minutes. Around 30%-40% couldn't. Like literally, didn't know how to do this in languages they supposedly work in. I'm sorry, I make lots of allowances for stress, I calm candidates, I tell them syntax doesn't matter, do it in pseoudo-code for all I care. But if after 10 minutes you can't print a multiplication table on the screen, I'm going to pass.