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These discussions are worse than useless. People with made-up numbers confront people with unreliable anecdotes. Productivity means, very simply, an average of

by zeteo 14y ago

These discussions are worse than useless. People with made-up numbers confront people with unreliable anecdotes. Productivity means, very simply, an average of X widgets per hour. Does such a measure even exist for developers? The discussion can apply to such varied situations as: - how fast can a developer add new features to a system they built themselves - how fast can they add features to a system designed by somebody else - how fast do they fix simple bugs - how fast do they find horribly complicated bugs - how fast can they architect a reliable, multithreaded backend - how fast can they work with program management to design a good UI etc. etc. etc. These are often conflicting requirements. People who develop a very elaborate personal coding style will be fast on single projects, but slow to work with other people's code. Those who are methodical and question all assumptions will find hard bugs much sooner, but waste time on simple bugs. Those who can construct elaborate systems in their head often have trouble tweaking hundreds of little CSS details for a single ticket. So I would venture that, for any pair of moderately experienced developers, it's almost always possible to find a pair of tasks such that one of them is twice (or even ten times) as fast as the other. Let's not even bring up how much the incentive structure can vary, even among people in the same department. The example that the article brings is terribly vague and uninstructive. Is that guy, for his whole life, going to be a "1/10 developer"? We never get an idea why he was slow in the first place. Was he lazy? incompetent? concentrating on his studies instead? not motivated by the incentive structure? risk averse because breaking the system carried harsher personal consequences than developing it excruciatingly slowly? The author doesn't even figure out the roots of the problem in the one case he's familiar with, and purports to give advice to everyone else based on it...

davidwoof1 14y ago
> So I would venture that, for any pair of moderately experienced developers, it's almost always possible to find a pair of tasks such that one of them is twice (or even ten times) as fast as the other. I completely disagree. The FizzBuzz syndrome is very real: when I do developer screenings, the majority of candidates simply can't program even tiny problems. There's no way they're faster than anybody on my team at any development-related task. And yet, they all have long resumes and a lot of experience. All those people are working someplace. And I've watched these 1/10 developers at work: they copy/paste lots of code, program through trial and error, and spend most of their time in the debugger. Eventually, stuff gets done, but excruciatingly slowly. Once you reach a certain level of competence, then I think what you're saying is true. But there's a huge number of developers who don't reach that level. On the other hand, I agree with you about this article. Some sort of insight on where this dev spent his time might have been interesting. Whenever I read things this vague, articles based on vague impressions rather than any hard metrics, I'm left wondering which side was actually incompetent here. Maybe this was one of the 1/10 CTOs, completely incapable of effectively communicating with people who don't fit his favored personality type. And if the feature the dev was working on was replaced with something else that only took 30 minutes to implement, maybe the original design was simply unworkable.
- benaston 14y ago
  The fizzbuzz syndrome is real alright. But someone failing fizzbuzz is not an indicator that they will always be incapable of development. It just means they are very junior and require training. Frighteningly for the West, Indian and Chinese companies appear to grok this and actually develop their employees. US and UK companies throw their hands up in empty self-satisfaction that their work is so intellectually difficult that people up to the challenge are impossible to find. The reality is probably that the corporate business model is flawed meaning they cannot afford the seniority of guy they need.
  - sgift 14y ago
    The problem is that these people are supposed to be programmers, i.e. people who have been trained already. Yes, it is real that companies do not want to train people - and that is a problem in itself. But if someone tells me "I am a professional programmer" and I give him FizzBuzz and he cannot solve it it is no training problem. It is a problem with hiring: How could such a person ever hold a position as a programmer (without "trainee"/"apprentice" behind their job title)?
  - usea 14y ago
    I worked with a developer for a year and a half, who has 11 years of experience, who cannot code fizz buzz and cannot accomplish basic tasks. I have to hold his hand through even the smallest changes or bug fixes. These people exist. He just got a new job at a large company with a significant pay-raise. The industry is filled with people who are, to put it bluntly, incompetent. edit: that last line is a little harsh. I don't mean "filled" as in entirely or even mostly. I am just trying to say they aren't uncommon.
  - geon 14y ago
    How senior would you need to be to write fizz-buzz? Will someone ever gork that if they didn't after Teach Yourself Xlang in 24 Hours?
    - heelhook 14y ago
      I doubt is a matter of seniority, its a matter of criteria, the way I see it is, FizzBuzz is useful only to weed out perhaps the lower 5% of the developers population and perhaps the lower 20% of the general literate population? As an anecdote, I asked my wife, who's not a developer, she is an executive at a large beverage company, to solve FizzBuzz and to explain to me how she would do it and she did it successfully. She didn't use the word "for" or "while", but she explained that she figured there must be something that allows you to iterate over the same algorithm several times (paraphrasing). Personally, I think FizzBuzz are useless unless you use them as part of a submission form before candidates send in their resumes, sort of like a slightly harder captcha. There is no place for a FizzBuzz once the company is already engaging with the company, if they are not able to solve it they will be earlier signs that they lack common sense and criteria.

by zeteo 14y ago

davidwoof1 14y ago

> So I would venture that, for any pair of moderately experienced developers, it's almost always possible to find a pair of tasks such that one of them is twice (or even ten times) as fast as the other. I completely disagree. The FizzBuzz syndrome is very real: when I do developer screenings, the majority of candidates simply can't program even tiny problems. There's no way they're faster than anybody on my team at any development-related task. And yet, they all have long resumes and a lot of experience. All those people are working someplace. And I've watched these 1/10 developers at work: they copy/paste lots of code, program through trial and error, and spend most of their time in the debugger. Eventually, stuff gets done, but excruciatingly slowly. Once you reach a certain level of competence, then I think what you're saying is true. But there's a huge number of developers who don't reach that level. On the other hand, I agree with you about this article. Some sort of insight on where this dev spent his time might have been interesting. Whenever I read things this vague, articles based on vague impressions rather than any hard metrics, I'm left wondering which side was actually incompetent here. Maybe this was one of the 1/10 CTOs, completely incapable of effectively communicating with people who don't fit his favored personality type. And if the feature the dev was working on was replaced with something else that only took 30 minutes to implement, maybe the original design was simply unworkable.

benaston 14y ago
The fizzbuzz syndrome is real alright. But someone failing fizzbuzz is not an indicator that they will always be incapable of development. It just means they are very junior and require training. Frighteningly for the West, Indian and Chinese companies appear to grok this and actually develop their employees. US and UK companies throw their hands up in empty self-satisfaction that their work is so intellectually difficult that people up to the challenge are impossible to find. The reality is probably that the corporate business model is flawed meaning they cannot afford the seniority of guy they need.
- sgift 14y ago
  The problem is that these people are supposed to be programmers, i.e. people who have been trained already. Yes, it is real that companies do not want to train people - and that is a problem in itself. But if someone tells me "I am a professional programmer" and I give him FizzBuzz and he cannot solve it it is no training problem. It is a problem with hiring: How could such a person ever hold a position as a programmer (without "trainee"/"apprentice" behind their job title)?
- usea 14y ago
  I worked with a developer for a year and a half, who has 11 years of experience, who cannot code fizz buzz and cannot accomplish basic tasks. I have to hold his hand through even the smallest changes or bug fixes. These people exist. He just got a new job at a large company with a significant pay-raise. The industry is filled with people who are, to put it bluntly, incompetent. edit: that last line is a little harsh. I don't mean "filled" as in entirely or even mostly. I am just trying to say they aren't uncommon.
- geon 14y ago
  How senior would you need to be to write fizz-buzz? Will someone ever gork that if they didn't after Teach Yourself Xlang in 24 Hours?
  - heelhook 14y ago
    I doubt is a matter of seniority, its a matter of criteria, the way I see it is, FizzBuzz is useful only to weed out perhaps the lower 5% of the developers population and perhaps the lower 20% of the general literate population? As an anecdote, I asked my wife, who's not a developer, she is an executive at a large beverage company, to solve FizzBuzz and to explain to me how she would do it and she did it successfully. She didn't use the word "for" or "while", but she explained that she figured there must be something that allows you to iterate over the same algorithm several times (paraphrasing). Personally, I think FizzBuzz are useless unless you use them as part of a submission form before candidates send in their resumes, sort of like a slightly harder captcha. There is no place for a FizzBuzz once the company is already engaging with the company, if they are not able to solve it they will be earlier signs that they lack common sense and criteria.