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Several times in my career I have worked with people in software developer roles who could not write basic code. This was not a situation of mistaken title, the

Several times in my career I have worked with people in software developer roles who could not write basic code. This was not a situation of mistaken title, they were in a position where they were expected to write code and could not. In several cases, they struggled to operate Visual Studio in spite of claiming to be a proficient .NET developer. Non-technical management could not tell the difference or nepotism was involved. In each case, it took months to weed them out while other developers had to shoulder their work. I am now in a position where I lead an organization that hires hundreds of software engineers every year. We start our interview process with take at home coding tests as a first line screening. These tests are not hard (I am no longer a day to day developer, they are not hard even for me) and of course you can always go to Stack Overflow. ~20% of our candidates fail them routinely. I am glad we are not wasting time interviewing them. Those are facts. There are no facts in the article. Until this industry deals with its fraud problem and certifies engineers like other fields, technical testing is here to stay.

newcrobuzon 7y ago
> they struggled to operate Visual Studio in spite of claiming to be a proficient .NET developer Just out of curiosity: were these junior devs? Were they maybe more proficient in other language/IDE? Couldn't better mentoring/on-job training help - rather than just to "weed them out"? I might be naive but (and I have also been on leading positions) I still believe that if it seems that somebody "cannot code" it (most of the time) just means that somebody a bit more senior just have to invest a bit of time to coach them...
- scarface74 7y ago
  From a company’s perspective, why spend time mentoring juniors and doing on the job training - both of which takes time away from your senior resources - instead of just hiring someone else who can hit the ground running? Yes I realize someone has to train them, but you might as well let someone else do it and poach them once they have experience and they are looking for another job. Inevitable as they gain experience at the other company, their market value will go up quicker than their HR policy will allow for raises (salary compression) and you can still offer them slightly below market rates and they will be glad to take it because they don’t know their worth and it’s a big jump for them. They probably don’t know how to negotiate either. I’m not making a value judgement. This is just the world we live in.
austincheney 7y ago
As a personal rule I immediately abandon the hiring process when I encounter an at home coding assessment that is not accompanied by a grading criteria. I once wasted my time on one of these only to be burned for not providing something the hiring company never asked for even though I completed the application assigned with a working original API and provided thorough documentation. Never again will I waste my time on some companies unpaid labor.
watwut 7y ago
Even more dangerous were people who could operate IDE, could FizzBuzz, read all the soft blogs, had all the correct opinions about frameworks and methodologies. Guy I have in mind now knows that functional programming is the right and can code examples of it. He is even fun to talk about programming and people who dont work with him invariably assume he is good programmer. And still could not produce in real world situation, because he cant do anything except self-contained examples and gets demotivated with pretty much any task quickly. He is good at remembering what blogs and forums said and repeating it to other people.

newcrobuzon 7y ago

> they struggled to operate Visual Studio in spite of claiming to be a proficient .NET developer Just out of curiosity: were these junior devs? Were they maybe more proficient in other language/IDE? Couldn't better mentoring/on-job training help - rather than just to "weed them out"? I might be naive but (and I have also been on leading positions) I still believe that if it seems that somebody "cannot code" it (most of the time) just means that somebody a bit more senior just have to invest a bit of time to coach them...

scarface74 7y ago
From a company’s perspective, why spend time mentoring juniors and doing on the job training - both of which takes time away from your senior resources - instead of just hiring someone else who can hit the ground running? Yes I realize someone has to train them, but you might as well let someone else do it and poach them once they have experience and they are looking for another job. Inevitable as they gain experience at the other company, their market value will go up quicker than their HR policy will allow for raises (salary compression) and you can still offer them slightly below market rates and they will be glad to take it because they don’t know their worth and it’s a big jump for them. They probably don’t know how to negotiate either. I’m not making a value judgement. This is just the world we live in.

austincheney 7y ago

As a personal rule I immediately abandon the hiring process when I encounter an at home coding assessment that is not accompanied by a grading criteria. I once wasted my time on one of these only to be burned for not providing something the hiring company never asked for even though I completed the application assigned with a working original API and provided thorough documentation. Never again will I waste my time on some companies unpaid labor.

watwut 7y ago

Even more dangerous were people who could operate IDE, could FizzBuzz, read all the soft blogs, had all the correct opinions about frameworks and methodologies. Guy I have in mind now knows that functional programming is the right and can code examples of it. He is even fun to talk about programming and people who dont work with him invariably assume he is good programmer. And still could not produce in real world situation, because he cant do anything except self-contained examples and gets demotivated with pretty much any task quickly. He is good at remembering what blogs and forums said and repeating it to other people.