5 ms·

That story could have been taken directly from my own brain. People like this get hired not infrequently and it's always frustrating to get one on your team.

japhyr 12y ago
Is this always nepotism, or does it have something to do with the reluctance some organizations have in firing someone?
- DeusExMachina 12y ago
  "Never attribute to malice what is sufficiently explained by incompetence". Nepotism is not necessary. In one company I worked for, the interviews were done by the self proclaimed CTO (which was one of the founders of the company) which was actually a dentist with no tech knowledge whatsoever. Of course in this case the interviews were just generic chats, with no technical question.
  - BSousa 12y ago
    I agree. I once was offered a job for director of engineering of a big financial firm in the UK based on a couple chats over the phone with the CEO and some tech guy (don't remember the title). With the CEO, I just chatted a bit in general about my past and my future, with the tech guy, mostly explained my past, talked maybe 5 minutes about tech (design patterns or something) and that was it. No code, no hard technical questions on what to use what or when, nothing. I know a lot of people that didn't have the skills for that job but their attitude and bullshitting techniques would probably have gotten them the job. And this was a very successful company handling millions in revenues and working with the major banks.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- hibikir 12y ago
  This also happens in places where people are hired 'in bulk', and where technical questions can be answered by rote. Even when your standards are higher, it's still easy to hire people that are just slightly more incompetent, just by not doing a coding assignment. This is why, at least around here in the Midwest, it's easy to stereotype other programmers by just looking at the last few companies they worked for. Came from XYZ? I won't even suggest an interview, because their architects would barely be junior devs here. Came from ABC? You don't need a screening, because you'd not have lasted two years there if you aren't at least decent. This is the real reason hiring through networking is so prevalent around here. If someone competent vouches for you enough to bring your resume forward, chances are they'll at least not embarrass themselves in a simple interview that asks for a little bit of coding. The reluctance of accepting a mistake in hiring is also an issue too, but I see more of that when we add both time and changing standards. For instance, I know of a big company that started with a really low talent level. They somehow managed to hire better people than they had, as time went by, but promotions have a lot to do with seniority. So you have a team of 'architects', that are supposedly in charge of things, but that, really, are worse at their job than the people that they are currently hiring. So what happens there? They have this nice cycle of hiring developers, having the good ones see that they will have to spend their time there arguing with architects that were never that talented, and whose skills are now outdated. But the architects have been there so long, they are part of the scenery. They'll never quit, as they'd never pass another interview for their experience level somewhere else, but they'll never leave their spot open unless they are fired. And management will not fire them, because they are old buddies. That's how organizations decline.
- zo1 12y ago
  I know in South Africa, where I live, you have a third reason. And fourth. 3. There are regulations in place that disallow you from firing employees easily. Even if they're incompetent, they can only be fired outright if they break their contract in some really big/obvious way. So they're forced to follow the motions, giving warning letters, eventually having a meeting to discuss it, etc, and only after that has all been done, can they dismiss the employee. 4. Affirmative action quotas. Theoretically sound and noble. But in practice just means that if there is a shortage of said "group", then you are invariable forced to hire sub-standard individuals, and keep them. Sad, but true. Funny aside from above. We once had a junior that was hired fresh from undergrad school, with the idea that they'd be trained up to speed. They were trained by the company (while getting a salary) for, I think, about a year before they were passed off as real junior developers in to the company. Said junior had the nerve to chuckle/mock me because I had an "IT" degree, instead of his fancy CS degree. In reality, he couldn't code a coherent piece of code to save his life. We spent countless wasted hours (this was after he finished the internal training) trying to at least get him to contribute something, anything even non-coding related. In the end, once he got his 9month/1year experience, he jumped ship. Probably to trick another company into paying him to sit around "learning".
baruch 12y ago
I've never seen such an incompetent person hired anywhere I worked for. I did see similarly qualified people turn up to interviews but they were all invariably rejected.
- engi_nerd 12y ago
  I want to work where you have worked, then. Rant from the aircraft industry follows, feel free to ignore. Engineering incompetence is widespread from my experience (flight test engineering). I wish, as a flight test instrumentation engineer, that I had not had engineers from various disciplines ask me how to interpret the contents of their test monitoring screens. I am responsible for providing the accelerometers, strain gages, data bus monitoring, and so forth that the various teams request and making sure that the data from those sensors is decision quality and properly telemetered and recorded. But it is NOT my responsibility to interpret that data. And yet, some of these other engineers, who are responsible for real-time monitoring of safety of test parameters during flights, clearly have no clue what they are looking at. One engineer even confused hydraulic pressures with engine temperatures during one test I was involved with and was about to raise a fault against my system because she thought the data was faulty. That's just one instance -- sadly, I have encountered many more during this career. Yes, these people are trained in their disciplines and on the content of their monitoring screens, but for some, it just doesn't seem to stick. How can they, in good conscience, respond with a "GO for test" when asked if they know they do not understand their monitoring screen?
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  I've never worked with anyone who flat out couldn't code. I've worked with some who needed more help than others, but I'm fine with that since I've been that person myself with some things. But never with someone who just couldn't do it at all. On the other hand, I've certainly had interviews with people who are just awful at it. So much so that I think the interview process is by far the greater obstacle to finding competent people than some huge mass of incompetent people out there. Think about it this way- Almost no one has ever had explicit training in interviewing. Everyone learns by trial and error and rumor and superstition. It's one of the most cargo cult aspects of any given business.
chubot 12y ago
Say what you want about Google (it seems to be common here), but you will never work with anybody like that at Google. Really never ever. You will work with managers, PMs, and lawyers who have much more coding skill than that. Not to say there isn't bad code. Actually the problem at Google is people write too much code... But there is a base level of competence you can expect.
- Swizec 12y ago
  I am currently working with Google. We had people who couldn't code on our team. I don't know if they were officially contractors like me or Google proper.
  - learc83 12y ago
    I knew a guy who could go to the board and draw a FSM, construct a context-free grammar, or construct a proof for anything the professor asked for. And in Algorithms, he could go to the board and walk through any algorithm we happened to be talking about. In essence he was perfectly suited to white board interviews. But when I worked with him in Software Engineering his code was unmaintainable, poorly commented, and he was very abrasive and unpleasant to work with.
    - ChanderG 12y ago
      This perfectly puts an handle on what is happening: http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/ http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/
    - Swizec 12y ago
      Yup. The difference between a computer scientist and a software engineer. It's a sad state of affairs that our industry is currently conflating the two. Or maybe the industry has only now reached a stage where the two need to become separate? I mean, you wouldn't expect a theoretical physicist to design an experiment or, worse, a bridge.
      - 12y ago

japhyr 12y ago

Is this always nepotism, or does it have something to do with the reluctance some organizations have in firing someone?

DeusExMachina 12y ago
"Never attribute to malice what is sufficiently explained by incompetence". Nepotism is not necessary. In one company I worked for, the interviews were done by the self proclaimed CTO (which was one of the founders of the company) which was actually a dentist with no tech knowledge whatsoever. Of course in this case the interviews were just generic chats, with no technical question.
- BSousa 12y ago
  I agree. I once was offered a job for director of engineering of a big financial firm in the UK based on a couple chats over the phone with the CEO and some tech guy (don't remember the title). With the CEO, I just chatted a bit in general about my past and my future, with the tech guy, mostly explained my past, talked maybe 5 minutes about tech (design patterns or something) and that was it. No code, no hard technical questions on what to use what or when, nothing. I know a lot of people that didn't have the skills for that job but their attitude and bullshitting techniques would probably have gotten them the job. And this was a very successful company handling millions in revenues and working with the major banks.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
hibikir 12y ago
This also happens in places where people are hired 'in bulk', and where technical questions can be answered by rote. Even when your standards are higher, it's still easy to hire people that are just slightly more incompetent, just by not doing a coding assignment. This is why, at least around here in the Midwest, it's easy to stereotype other programmers by just looking at the last few companies they worked for. Came from XYZ? I won't even suggest an interview, because their architects would barely be junior devs here. Came from ABC? You don't need a screening, because you'd not have lasted two years there if you aren't at least decent. This is the real reason hiring through networking is so prevalent around here. If someone competent vouches for you enough to bring your resume forward, chances are they'll at least not embarrass themselves in a simple interview that asks for a little bit of coding. The reluctance of accepting a mistake in hiring is also an issue too, but I see more of that when we add both time and changing standards. For instance, I know of a big company that started with a really low talent level. They somehow managed to hire better people than they had, as time went by, but promotions have a lot to do with seniority. So you have a team of 'architects', that are supposedly in charge of things, but that, really, are worse at their job than the people that they are currently hiring. So what happens there? They have this nice cycle of hiring developers, having the good ones see that they will have to spend their time there arguing with architects that were never that talented, and whose skills are now outdated. But the architects have been there so long, they are part of the scenery. They'll never quit, as they'd never pass another interview for their experience level somewhere else, but they'll never leave their spot open unless they are fired. And management will not fire them, because they are old buddies. That's how organizations decline.
zo1 12y ago
I know in South Africa, where I live, you have a third reason. And fourth. 3. There are regulations in place that disallow you from firing employees easily. Even if they're incompetent, they can only be fired outright if they break their contract in some really big/obvious way. So they're forced to follow the motions, giving warning letters, eventually having a meeting to discuss it, etc, and only after that has all been done, can they dismiss the employee. 4. Affirmative action quotas. Theoretically sound and noble. But in practice just means that if there is a shortage of said "group", then you are invariable forced to hire sub-standard individuals, and keep them. Sad, but true. Funny aside from above. We once had a junior that was hired fresh from undergrad school, with the idea that they'd be trained up to speed. They were trained by the company (while getting a salary) for, I think, about a year before they were passed off as real junior developers in to the company. Said junior had the nerve to chuckle/mock me because I had an "IT" degree, instead of his fancy CS degree. In reality, he couldn't code a coherent piece of code to save his life. We spent countless wasted hours (this was after he finished the internal training) trying to at least get him to contribute something, anything even non-coding related. In the end, once he got his 9month/1year experience, he jumped ship. Probably to trick another company into paying him to sit around "learning".

baruch 12y ago

I've never seen such an incompetent person hired anywhere I worked for. I did see similarly qualified people turn up to interviews but they were all invariably rejected.

engi_nerd 12y ago
I want to work where you have worked, then. Rant from the aircraft industry follows, feel free to ignore. Engineering incompetence is widespread from my experience (flight test engineering). I wish, as a flight test instrumentation engineer, that I had not had engineers from various disciplines ask me how to interpret the contents of their test monitoring screens. I am responsible for providing the accelerometers, strain gages, data bus monitoring, and so forth that the various teams request and making sure that the data from those sensors is decision quality and properly telemetered and recorded. But it is NOT my responsibility to interpret that data. And yet, some of these other engineers, who are responsible for real-time monitoring of safety of test parameters during flights, clearly have no clue what they are looking at. One engineer even confused hydraulic pressures with engine temperatures during one test I was involved with and was about to raise a fault against my system because she thought the data was faulty. That's just one instance -- sadly, I have encountered many more during this career. Yes, these people are trained in their disciplines and on the content of their monitoring screens, but for some, it just doesn't seem to stick. How can they, in good conscience, respond with a "GO for test" when asked if they know they do not understand their monitoring screen?
waterlesscloud 12y ago
I've never worked with anyone who flat out couldn't code. I've worked with some who needed more help than others, but I'm fine with that since I've been that person myself with some things. But never with someone who just couldn't do it at all. On the other hand, I've certainly had interviews with people who are just awful at it. So much so that I think the interview process is by far the greater obstacle to finding competent people than some huge mass of incompetent people out there. Think about it this way- Almost no one has ever had explicit training in interviewing. Everyone learns by trial and error and rumor and superstition. It's one of the most cargo cult aspects of any given business.

chubot 12y ago

Say what you want about Google (it seems to be common here), but you will never work with anybody like that at Google. Really never ever. You will work with managers, PMs, and lawyers who have much more coding skill than that. Not to say there isn't bad code. Actually the problem at Google is people write too much code... But there is a base level of competence you can expect.

Swizec 12y ago
I am currently working with Google. We had people who couldn't code on our team. I don't know if they were officially contractors like me or Google proper.
- learc83 12y ago
  I knew a guy who could go to the board and draw a FSM, construct a context-free grammar, or construct a proof for anything the professor asked for. And in Algorithms, he could go to the board and walk through any algorithm we happened to be talking about. In essence he was perfectly suited to white board interviews. But when I worked with him in Software Engineering his code was unmaintainable, poorly commented, and he was very abrasive and unpleasant to work with.
  - ChanderG 12y ago
    This perfectly puts an handle on what is happening: http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/ http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/
  - Swizec 12y ago
    Yup. The difference between a computer scientist and a software engineer. It's a sad state of affairs that our industry is currently conflating the two. Or maybe the industry has only now reached a stage where the two need to become separate? I mean, you wouldn't expect a theoretical physicist to design an experiment or, worse, a bridge.
    - 12y ago