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In most all the systems I have worked on its more about screwing the user from a technical perspective than a deliberate business action, though there have been

In most all the systems I have worked on its more about screwing the user from a technical perspective than a deliberate business action, though there have been some of those too. Either way it all comes down to some combination of mental laziness and no ethics. There is no ethical code, that I am aware of, for writing software. Here are my experiences as a web developer: * Frustration at the general technical incompetence of my industry: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22821318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22821318 * Many software developers need things to be easy, unprofessionally so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22859326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22859326 * JavaScript developers can't interface to the browser: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22740897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22740897 * People (only software developers on security) who self-admittedly have no education, no experience, no credibility, and no practice of the art find themselves subject matter experts and cannot understand why an actual expert would disagree with their hastily formed opinion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22868620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22868620 * Hiring software developers is still somehow an arcane mystery few people can objectively figure out.

nradov 7y ago
IEEE Code of Ethics: https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html ACM Code of Ethics: https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics There are incompetent people in every industry. So what. Hiring is an arcane mystery in every industry where productivity can't be quantified. So what.
- austincheney 7y ago
  Those are nice. Thanks for sharing that! I have never seen anything remotely close to that in a place of corporate employment ever. I have been doing this in the corporate world since 2006, but if you count my time as a security analyst in the military than I could push that date back to 2001. The military does force feed you (memorization verbatim) ethical standards, though, at a huge contrast to the loosey goosey corporate world: * https://www.army.mil/values/nco.html https://www.army.mil/values/nco.html * https://www.army.mil/values/ https://www.army.mil/values/
  - craftinator 7y ago
    I had a similar shock, after 10 years as an analyst in the Marine Corps. It's a strange country we live in.
  - andor 7y ago
    Those are not ethical standards or concepts. "Loyalty" and "duty" don't help evaluating if an action is good.
    - austincheney 7y ago
      The values are vague intentionally so that they can be broadly applied. They are not a code of ethics but a guiding set of virtues. The NCO Creed, however, absolutely is a code of ethics.
- roland35 7y ago
  Hiring is hard even in places where everything is quantified, such as baseball! Only a few teams have consistent success signing good value contracts even with all the statistics available.
  - discreteevent 7y ago
    Baseball is a bit different because there is only one winning team. Those people can still all bat (or whatever) much much better than the average qualified electrician can wire. But the point is that the average qualified electrician can wire. Whereas with the average programming interview candidate it seems to be a bit of a lottery.
jorblumesea 7y ago
As someone who worked in the frontend space, and now doesn't, I think this has much to do with the fact that "anyone can learn to code" but often don't have any formal background. Lots of bootcamp grads, lots of people hearing about fat programmer salaries trying to get into the industry, people completing udacity courses and throwing buzzwords on their resume. My experience in frontend feels like everyone learns ad hoc without digging deep into basics. Overall, I felt if you have aptitude or real passion for the work, you would just get a computer science degree and be attracted to other parts of the stack or other problems to solve. This obviously doesn't apply to large tech companies which make it a point to hire talent (frontend, backend, whatever). > Hiring software developers is still somehow an arcane mystery few people can objectively figure out. This is actually one space where I feel the frontend world shines. Almost every frontend interview question has been very practical.
nitrogen 7y ago
JavaScript developers can't interface to the browser I'm not sure I've worked directly with anyone recently who could pass a DOM test like that. Everything is React and and Axios and the browser (and HTTP, TCP, DNS, etc) is a mystery. Edit: mystery isn't even the right word really, if you mention any of the other layers I've seen people get actually hostile.
- munchbunny 7y ago
  From that particular post, this line stuck out to me: Only 3 candidates were able to pass this code filter. The people that did pass either did well enough to pass or extremely excellent. The people that failed, maybe 19 of 22 people, all failed epically. In practice I highly doubt that the population of candidates is actually this bimodal. It might lean heavily below the hiring bar, but I have trouble believing that it's bimodal. My own personal experience has been that it looks a lot like a normal distribution where the hiring bar is just two standard deviations above the mean (which would imply that you give offers to about 1 out of 25 people who apply, which sounds approximately in the right ballpark). As a consequence, if your question is producing bimodal results, I can't help but wonder whether it's a good interview question, because knowledge tests exhibit much of the same type of distribution of outcomes. In my experience, if you give the candidate only one hour, access to documentation only helps with recalling past experience, because one hour is too much time pressure to actually calm down, pick through, and digest documentation on something you haven't seen before. If you knew the DOM functions existed and just needed their names, it'll work, but if you're unfamiliar with what the DOM already offers, even if you could learn it fine on the job, you won't learn it fine under time pressure. I recently adjusted one of my interview questions specifically to reduce the need for looking up documentation because I noticed exactly this phenomenon.
  - austincheney 7y ago
    > but I have trouble believing that it's bimodal It surprised me just as much. I cannot speak to the capabilities or thoughts of any given candidate. Ultimately the test was a test of using a single standard API that is based upon a standard model. If it were just a matter of instructions or syntax I suspect a candidate would gotten over that by either asking the right questions, trial and error, using a reference of whatever. I think what really destroyed people was a complete inability to perceive the page as a series of nodes all interconnected with various relationships. > In my experience, if you give the candidate only one hour, access to documentation only helps with recalling past experience That is only partially true in this case, because the candidates knew coming in they would have a code filter accessing a page using vanilla JavaScript. I cannot remember if I specifically mentioned refreshing on the DOM methods or not. I might have. This was 8 years ago. But they had at least a day prior notice to catch up on how to interact with a web page using JavaScript using only their code. The time pressure would have applied to the specific tasks asked of the candidates.

nradov 7y ago

IEEE Code of Ethics: https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html ACM Code of Ethics: https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics There are incompetent people in every industry. So what. Hiring is an arcane mystery in every industry where productivity can't be quantified. So what.

austincheney 7y ago
Those are nice. Thanks for sharing that! I have never seen anything remotely close to that in a place of corporate employment ever. I have been doing this in the corporate world since 2006, but if you count my time as a security analyst in the military than I could push that date back to 2001. The military does force feed you (memorization verbatim) ethical standards, though, at a huge contrast to the loosey goosey corporate world: * https://www.army.mil/values/nco.html https://www.army.mil/values/nco.html * https://www.army.mil/values/ https://www.army.mil/values/
- craftinator 7y ago
  I had a similar shock, after 10 years as an analyst in the Marine Corps. It's a strange country we live in.
- andor 7y ago
  Those are not ethical standards or concepts. "Loyalty" and "duty" don't help evaluating if an action is good.
  - austincheney 7y ago
    The values are vague intentionally so that they can be broadly applied. They are not a code of ethics but a guiding set of virtues. The NCO Creed, however, absolutely is a code of ethics.
roland35 7y ago
Hiring is hard even in places where everything is quantified, such as baseball! Only a few teams have consistent success signing good value contracts even with all the statistics available.
- discreteevent 7y ago
  Baseball is a bit different because there is only one winning team. Those people can still all bat (or whatever) much much better than the average qualified electrician can wire. But the point is that the average qualified electrician can wire. Whereas with the average programming interview candidate it seems to be a bit of a lottery.

jorblumesea 7y ago

As someone who worked in the frontend space, and now doesn't, I think this has much to do with the fact that "anyone can learn to code" but often don't have any formal background. Lots of bootcamp grads, lots of people hearing about fat programmer salaries trying to get into the industry, people completing udacity courses and throwing buzzwords on their resume. My experience in frontend feels like everyone learns ad hoc without digging deep into basics. Overall, I felt if you have aptitude or real passion for the work, you would just get a computer science degree and be attracted to other parts of the stack or other problems to solve. This obviously doesn't apply to large tech companies which make it a point to hire talent (frontend, backend, whatever). > Hiring software developers is still somehow an arcane mystery few people can objectively figure out. This is actually one space where I feel the frontend world shines. Almost every frontend interview question has been very practical.

nitrogen 7y ago

JavaScript developers can't interface to the browser I'm not sure I've worked directly with anyone recently who could pass a DOM test like that. Everything is React and and Axios and the browser (and HTTP, TCP, DNS, etc) is a mystery. Edit: mystery isn't even the right word really, if you mention any of the other layers I've seen people get actually hostile.

munchbunny 7y ago
From that particular post, this line stuck out to me: Only 3 candidates were able to pass this code filter. The people that did pass either did well enough to pass or extremely excellent. The people that failed, maybe 19 of 22 people, all failed epically. In practice I highly doubt that the population of candidates is actually this bimodal. It might lean heavily below the hiring bar, but I have trouble believing that it's bimodal. My own personal experience has been that it looks a lot like a normal distribution where the hiring bar is just two standard deviations above the mean (which would imply that you give offers to about 1 out of 25 people who apply, which sounds approximately in the right ballpark). As a consequence, if your question is producing bimodal results, I can't help but wonder whether it's a good interview question, because knowledge tests exhibit much of the same type of distribution of outcomes. In my experience, if you give the candidate only one hour, access to documentation only helps with recalling past experience, because one hour is too much time pressure to actually calm down, pick through, and digest documentation on something you haven't seen before. If you knew the DOM functions existed and just needed their names, it'll work, but if you're unfamiliar with what the DOM already offers, even if you could learn it fine on the job, you won't learn it fine under time pressure. I recently adjusted one of my interview questions specifically to reduce the need for looking up documentation because I noticed exactly this phenomenon.
- austincheney 7y ago
  > but I have trouble believing that it's bimodal It surprised me just as much. I cannot speak to the capabilities or thoughts of any given candidate. Ultimately the test was a test of using a single standard API that is based upon a standard model. If it were just a matter of instructions or syntax I suspect a candidate would gotten over that by either asking the right questions, trial and error, using a reference of whatever. I think what really destroyed people was a complete inability to perceive the page as a series of nodes all interconnected with various relationships. > In my experience, if you give the candidate only one hour, access to documentation only helps with recalling past experience That is only partially true in this case, because the candidates knew coming in they would have a code filter accessing a page using vanilla JavaScript. I cannot remember if I specifically mentioned refreshing on the DOM methods or not. I might have. This was 8 years ago. But they had at least a day prior notice to catch up on how to interact with a web page using JavaScript using only their code. The time pressure would have applied to the specific tasks asked of the candidates.