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In my direct experience as an employer most people who apply for a programming job can actually program. I think it comes down to a question of degrees. People

by trotsky 16y ago

In my direct experience as an employer most people who apply for a programming job can actually program. I think it comes down to a question of degrees. People who spend their time on heady research projects might well proclaim me as someone who has "clearly never written a line of code in his life" (it's happened). And yet I've had competent programmers that I ran ask me how I got to be so good. Truth is I'm probably middle of the road - I know plenty I look up to, and plenty I could teach. Hell, my mom can program (she writes her own shell scripts at times). I think the practice of "write this program before we'll talk to you" is largely driven by technical staff who don't understand how to run an interview where a discussion of theory and practice can suss out someone who doesn't actually have the experience. Hell, even if they don't have a language under their belt if they can pass the theory & practice Q&A I have every confidence that they can pick it up and fake it enough in the meantime. I've had bad hires before - lazy, conceptually challenged, addicted to crystal meth - but all of them could have passed a functional programming test. Sure, you'd like to be hiring the "excellent" programmers - but a basic functional test isn't going to highlight them anyway - and may very well drive them away from you. I should note that I don't have a problem with asking for code samples - that's a good practice I think, I do it myself. Just the complete this arbitrary test style.

trotsky 16y ago
I take that back, I did hire someone about 11 years ago that just didn't belong in the position at all. It was clear within the first week and we let him go. I consider that my failure though, not the process.
RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
I don't know how you've done that, and I'd love to find out. We ran an ad, both direct to the media, and through a recruitment agency, asking for a skilled C programmer to join a team writing systems to apply well-known and well-understood algorithms to moderate sized datasets and image data. They were required to be able to write code in an editor and use GCC on Linux. When they came for interview we asked them to use whatever editor they liked to write and compile code. Some used pico, some used nano, some used vi, some used emacs, one used NotePad on their Windows laptop and transferred the code using a USB drive. We asked them to write a program that read a file of bytes and write a second file, of exactly the same size, where each byte was incremented by a number. The two file names and the amount by which to increment are to be given on the command line. They were told in advance that they would be asked to do something like this, and they had 'net access to look stuff up, as well as man pages. We found that of 17 applicants, 15 couldn't do it.
- trotsky 16y ago
  I don't have an explanation for you. I'm not saying you didn't have 15 out of 17 interviews that couldn't program, but that certainly hasn't been my experience. Maybe it's the market, how desirable the opening is, salary/experience ranges or screening processes? It certainly doesn't sound like your recruiter is a winner (most of them aren't). For the record I'm talking mostly about SF bay hires, 100K+, 3-5 years+, sourced mostly from internal recommendations, placement agencies we had a good track record with, and self listed openings. AFAIK never bulk advertised ones. If you have a 2/17 record with a placement agency you stop using them, right?
  - RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
    No recruiter has ever worked, except when we supply a trivial programming task to be supplied with the CV. + SF bay hires We're not in the bay area. We're really, really not in the bay area. + sourced mostly from internal recommendations We have no internal recommendations - most people who work here don't know any other programmers. + placement agencies we had a good track record with We have zero placement agencies with good records. + AFAIK never bulk advertised ones We have to - we have no other source of applicants. An obvious hypothesis is that if you want to employ programmers other than in the bay area, you're screwed.
    - trotsky 16y ago
      Well, it sounds like you have good reasons for using your techniques. I think it was a good discussion, in that it showed techniques that work for one situation may be wholly inappropriate for another. An obvious hypothesis is that if you want to employ programmers other than in the bay area, you're screwed. For the record, I've also hired folks in Boston, Boulder and Washington, DC with similar experiences. I'll admit, though, that the average quality in SF was the best.

by trotsky 16y ago

trotsky 16y ago

I take that back, I did hire someone about 11 years ago that just didn't belong in the position at all. It was clear within the first week and we let him go. I consider that my failure though, not the process.

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago

I don't know how you've done that, and I'd love to find out. We ran an ad, both direct to the media, and through a recruitment agency, asking for a skilled C programmer to join a team writing systems to apply well-known and well-understood algorithms to moderate sized datasets and image data. They were required to be able to write code in an editor and use GCC on Linux. When they came for interview we asked them to use whatever editor they liked to write and compile code. Some used pico, some used nano, some used vi, some used emacs, one used NotePad on their Windows laptop and transferred the code using a USB drive. We asked them to write a program that read a file of bytes and write a second file, of exactly the same size, where each byte was incremented by a number. The two file names and the amount by which to increment are to be given on the command line. They were told in advance that they would be asked to do something like this, and they had 'net access to look stuff up, as well as man pages. We found that of 17 applicants, 15 couldn't do it.

trotsky 16y ago
I don't have an explanation for you. I'm not saying you didn't have 15 out of 17 interviews that couldn't program, but that certainly hasn't been my experience. Maybe it's the market, how desirable the opening is, salary/experience ranges or screening processes? It certainly doesn't sound like your recruiter is a winner (most of them aren't). For the record I'm talking mostly about SF bay hires, 100K+, 3-5 years+, sourced mostly from internal recommendations, placement agencies we had a good track record with, and self listed openings. AFAIK never bulk advertised ones. If you have a 2/17 record with a placement agency you stop using them, right?
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
  No recruiter has ever worked, except when we supply a trivial programming task to be supplied with the CV. + SF bay hires We're not in the bay area. We're really, really not in the bay area. + sourced mostly from internal recommendations We have no internal recommendations - most people who work here don't know any other programmers. + placement agencies we had a good track record with We have zero placement agencies with good records. + AFAIK never bulk advertised ones We have to - we have no other source of applicants. An obvious hypothesis is that if you want to employ programmers other than in the bay area, you're screwed.
  - trotsky 16y ago
    Well, it sounds like you have good reasons for using your techniques. I think it was a good discussion, in that it showed techniques that work for one situation may be wholly inappropriate for another. An obvious hypothesis is that if you want to employ programmers other than in the bay area, you're screwed. For the record, I've also hired folks in Boston, Boulder and Washington, DC with similar experiences. I'll admit, though, that the average quality in SF was the best.