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who's Ayn Rand? and why must you be a blogger to be a programmer? These are silly questions imho.

xlnt 18y ago
The degree question is also silly, but has non-zero predictive capability. So do these. Certainly they rule out plenty of good programmers, but the issue is: do they leave plenty of good programmers, and a higher quality pool of remaining applicants? If good programmers read Rand or write blogs at a higher rate than bad programmers, then it works, even if it's frequently wrong about individual people.
- xenoterracide 18y ago
  Linus Torvalds - best programmer I've heard of doesn't write a blog. You still haven't told us who Ayn Rand is.
  - xlnt 18y ago
    You haven't addressed the point and you can google her.
    - xenoterracide 18y ago
      they are generic and poor filters. for example do you read person x. If person X isn't a household name (e.g. Bill Gates) Then it says nothing about them other than none ever introduced them to that person. I'm willing to bet there are a significant number of good C++ programmers that don't/can't care or know who Bjarne Stroustrup is. I had to look up the spelling of his name (although I don't consider myself a good c++ programmer). The ability to write blogs is irrelevant here too as what we most likely care about is the ability to program. Hence, the programming test.
      - xlnt 18y ago
        Take the group of programmers who have written more than 30 blog posts about programming. X% of them are good hires, and 100-X% are bad hires. Now take the group of programmers who have written less than 30 blog posts about programming. Y% of them are good hires, and 100-Y% are bad hires. Is X > Y, or X == Y, or X < Y? That is the issue. And that is the way degrees are used (when used rationally). The claim with degrees is that X is more than Y, not that most good programmers have degrees or anything else. That may be so. Then someone defended using degrees by saying there is a lack of alternative tests that are sufficiently cheap. That's not true. There are lots of cheap tests, and I have suggested 2 for which I believe X>Y is likely, and which, if studied, might turn out to have a higher X than the degree test.
    - xenoterracide 18y ago
      to a degree I did. Maybe not to the degree you desired. My point was is that even though it filters out many of the worst programmers it would also filter out all of the really great programmers. I'd rather have my search take longer and cost more to have those great programmers on my team than end up with just good programmers.
- pfedor 18y ago
  The difference is, if companies started using the filters you suggest, then the candidates would soon catch up and everyone would have a programming blog and have read Cliff's notes for "Atlas Shrugged." So it's not, as they say, an evolutionarily stable strategy. That's why no one does it on a larger scale I guess.
  - raganwald 18y ago
    For a demonstration of this principle, compare the quality of a person with a degree in Computer Science. Has the average gotten better in the last 30 years, stayed about the same, or gotten worse? My feeling is it has gotten much worse as people have sought degrees solely for the purpose of using them to get jobs in the field, precisely as you suggest would happen to blogs and reading cliff's notes. However, may I point out that blogging is very different from reading the cliff's notes of a book? A hiring manager can read your blog. If they simply check that you have a blog, well, whoop-de-doo. I have a blog, so that clearly proves nothing. However, if the hiring manager reads your blog, they can deduce a great deal about what you pretend to think and how you communicate it. So it is a small example of your work, much as posting source code is a small example of your work.

xlnt 18y ago

The degree question is also silly, but has non-zero predictive capability. So do these. Certainly they rule out plenty of good programmers, but the issue is: do they leave plenty of good programmers, and a higher quality pool of remaining applicants? If good programmers read Rand or write blogs at a higher rate than bad programmers, then it works, even if it's frequently wrong about individual people.

xenoterracide 18y ago
Linus Torvalds - best programmer I've heard of doesn't write a blog. You still haven't told us who Ayn Rand is.
- xlnt 18y ago
  You haven't addressed the point and you can google her.
  - xenoterracide 18y ago
    they are generic and poor filters. for example do you read person x. If person X isn't a household name (e.g. Bill Gates) Then it says nothing about them other than none ever introduced them to that person. I'm willing to bet there are a significant number of good C++ programmers that don't/can't care or know who Bjarne Stroustrup is. I had to look up the spelling of his name (although I don't consider myself a good c++ programmer). The ability to write blogs is irrelevant here too as what we most likely care about is the ability to program. Hence, the programming test.
    - xlnt 18y ago
      Take the group of programmers who have written more than 30 blog posts about programming. X% of them are good hires, and 100-X% are bad hires. Now take the group of programmers who have written less than 30 blog posts about programming. Y% of them are good hires, and 100-Y% are bad hires. Is X > Y, or X == Y, or X < Y? That is the issue. And that is the way degrees are used (when used rationally). The claim with degrees is that X is more than Y, not that most good programmers have degrees or anything else. That may be so. Then someone defended using degrees by saying there is a lack of alternative tests that are sufficiently cheap. That's not true. There are lots of cheap tests, and I have suggested 2 for which I believe X>Y is likely, and which, if studied, might turn out to have a higher X than the degree test.
  - xenoterracide 18y ago
    to a degree I did. Maybe not to the degree you desired. My point was is that even though it filters out many of the worst programmers it would also filter out all of the really great programmers. I'd rather have my search take longer and cost more to have those great programmers on my team than end up with just good programmers.
pfedor 18y ago
The difference is, if companies started using the filters you suggest, then the candidates would soon catch up and everyone would have a programming blog and have read Cliff's notes for "Atlas Shrugged." So it's not, as they say, an evolutionarily stable strategy. That's why no one does it on a larger scale I guess.
- raganwald 18y ago
  For a demonstration of this principle, compare the quality of a person with a degree in Computer Science. Has the average gotten better in the last 30 years, stayed about the same, or gotten worse? My feeling is it has gotten much worse as people have sought degrees solely for the purpose of using them to get jobs in the field, precisely as you suggest would happen to blogs and reading cliff's notes. However, may I point out that blogging is very different from reading the cliff's notes of a book? A hiring manager can read your blog. If they simply check that you have a blog, well, whoop-de-doo. I have a blog, so that clearly proves nothing. However, if the hiring manager reads your blog, they can deduce a great deal about what you pretend to think and how you communicate it. So it is a small example of your work, much as posting source code is a small example of your work.