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This was an interesting story. Sounds like an astute interviewer, the kind who can really get at the core of technical knowledge. And of course, people have e
by geebee 15y ago
This was an interesting story. Sounds like an astute interviewer, the kind who can really get at the core of technical knowledge. And of course, people have every right to set whatever standard they like in their hiring.
But every time I read about someone like Alice, it does cause me to reflect on the "hiring troubles" companies are experiencing, the "shortage" of top candidates.
She has contributed to open source, shown the ability to learn and write small apps in new languages. She can code, definitely, but she shows some weakness... NO HIRE. Not only no hire, she's a faker, a cargo cult-er, she "pulled the wool over your eyes." She's not just unqualified (by high standards, in my opinion), she's insincere.
Please, understand that I'm not saying that hiring standards shouldn't be high, or that weak team members don't do more damage than good. I get all these things. But the bar is high enough that it should be utterly unsurprising that there's a shortage of "qualified" people, and that a lot of people (who might have become good programmers) bail out, get forced out, or want nothing to do with it after their first taste.
I'm ok with these high standards, but I think we celebrate it a little too much.
EDIT: raganwald, jbooth, peter...
thanks for replying rather than just downmodding - unfortunately (for me), yeah, you're right, I misread this.
I'd like to take it down, but once someone has responded, I leave it up with an EDIT...
- peter_l_downs 15y agoMaybe I'm misinterpreting both the original post and this response, but it seems that you think Alice is the "cargo cult-er". I interpreted raganwald's post as critical of _Ted_, criticizing _him_ as a "cargo cult-er".
- raganwald 15y agoI may have done a poor job of conveying why the story is related to Cargo Cult religions. The term cargo cult programmer may also apply when an unskilled or novice computer programmer (or one not experienced with the problem at hand) copies some program code from one place and pastes it into another place, with little or no understanding of how the code works, or whether it is required in its new position. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming I don’t know if this term can be applied to Alice, but I am pretty certain that the story describes Ted blindly copying the surface form of something Bob did in an interview with Carol into Ted’s interview with Alice with little or no understanding of how Bob's conversation worked, or whether it was required in Ted’s conversation with Alice.
- Alex3917 15y agoThe message was clear, some people just see what they want to though.
- jbooth 15y agoI think the article was agreeing with you. The cargo culter was the one who saw someone ask an improvised question about implicit and turns it into a litmus test.