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> 9% above average There is no reasonable definition of average that would only allow for 9% above that (or 10% including the 1% you marked as brilliant). Aver

> 9% above average There is no reasonable definition of average that would only allow for 9% above that (or 10% including the 1% you marked as brilliant). Average is usually considered as either the 50th percentile (in which case you would have ~50% above this) or some middle range (e.g. 25th - 75th percentile). Since you said 60% are average we'll consider an appropriate range as average, the 20th - 80th percentile. That leaves you with 20% of applicants below average and 20% above. Your math falls apart real quick when we're dealing with distributions like 20%/60%/20% instead of 99.5%/0.5%. [As an aside, the toxics and brilliants are outliers, they should be fairly obvious to a competent interviewer (and as someone who previously spent a decade in an industry where nobody conducts interviews without adequate training I'll be the first to say most interviewers in our industry are not competent)].

fsk 12y ago
The problem is that programming skill is not normally distributed. There are some big outliers at the brilliant end, and some big outliers at the toxic end. So "average" is not really a meaningful term. I mean "average programmer" as "can be trusted with routine tasks". Behind every successful startup, there was one 10x or 100x outlier who did the hard work, even if he was not the person who got public credit for the startup's success. If you're at a large corporation and trying to minimize risk, hiring a large number of average people is the most stable path. You'll get something that sort of mostly works. If you're at a startup and trying to succeed, you need that 10x or 100x person.
tedunangst 12y ago
Consider the set ( -10, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 20, 50). It has 20 elements and an average of 10. 5% are toxic. 25% are below average. 60% are average. 10% are above average.
- frostmatthew 12y ago
  > Consider the set ( -10, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 20, 50). I didn't say it was impossible to construct a set that would yield only 10% as above average, I said there "is no reasonable definition of average" - if you feel the above set accurately represents the distribution of the caliber of developers then we clearly have very different opinions of what's "reasonable."
  - tedunangst 12y ago
    I don't think it's too far off the mark. What do you think the distribution looks like? Or one could replace the mathematical term average with the word ordinary. Is it possible for 60% of developers to be ordinary?
    - frostmatthew 12y ago
      > What do you think the distribution looks like? That would depend on what set of developers we're looking at: All developers - this will be very bottom-heavy, people [usually] get better with experience and there's obviously a lot less people that have been doing this for 20 years than having been doing it for two. Additionally people who are bad at a profession are more likely to change careers than those that are good (this is by no means an absolute, I wouldn't even go as far to say most bad engineers change professions, I'm just saying they're more likely to - further contributing to higher caliber corresponding well to years of experience). Developers with similar experience - this is much more useful as there's not much point comparing someone who's been doing something for decades with someone on their first job. I would expect this to be a fairly normal distribution. Developers interviewing for a particular position - applicants will largely self-select (and the initial screening process would further refine that) so this group will largely have similar experience (i.e. you're typically not interviewing someone with no experience and someone with 25 for the same job). But it won't match the previous distribution because, as someone else commented, the bad ones are looking for work more often (and for a longer period of time). Do the interviewees you wouldn't hire outnumber the ones you would? Yes, definitely. Do they outnumber them by a factor of a hundred to one? Definitely not. Ten to one? Probably not - if they do it probably represents a flawed screening process causing you to interview people you shouldn't (or not interview the people you should) rather than an indication that only one out of every ten developers are worth hiring.
SomeCallMeTim 12y ago
I'm not OP, but it feels like you're arguing semantics. YES, that's the technical definition of "average," no argument, but I don't think he/she meant mathematically average. If you substitute with these terms: - 5% toxic - 25% subtractors - 60% competent - 9% exceptional - 1% brilliant ...then there's no reason to apply (or defend!) the mathematical definition of "average." And I think those numbers actually seem somewhat reasonable, based on my own exposure to working developers in various industries. What this doesn't count is the the "FizzBuzz effect," where ~95% of the people who are interviewing at any one time (in a tight market) tend to be from the bottom end of the spectrum. Even within the broader pool of programmers, the line between subtractors and competent is very project-dependent, in my opinion. For some levels of project complexity, the line might actually invert to 60% subtractors and 25% competent, while for far less complex projects, it might be 5% subtractors to 80% competent. In the former case I'd want an exceptional developer, while in the latter the exceptional developer probably wouldn't even apply, or would quit out of boredom.

fsk 12y ago

The problem is that programming skill is not normally distributed. There are some big outliers at the brilliant end, and some big outliers at the toxic end. So "average" is not really a meaningful term. I mean "average programmer" as "can be trusted with routine tasks". Behind every successful startup, there was one 10x or 100x outlier who did the hard work, even if he was not the person who got public credit for the startup's success. If you're at a large corporation and trying to minimize risk, hiring a large number of average people is the most stable path. You'll get something that sort of mostly works. If you're at a startup and trying to succeed, you need that 10x or 100x person.

tedunangst 12y ago

Consider the set ( -10, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 20, 50). It has 20 elements and an average of 10. 5% are toxic. 25% are below average. 60% are average. 10% are above average.

frostmatthew 12y ago
> Consider the set ( -10, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 20, 50). I didn't say it was impossible to construct a set that would yield only 10% as above average, I said there "is no reasonable definition of average" - if you feel the above set accurately represents the distribution of the caliber of developers then we clearly have very different opinions of what's "reasonable."
- tedunangst 12y ago
  I don't think it's too far off the mark. What do you think the distribution looks like? Or one could replace the mathematical term average with the word ordinary. Is it possible for 60% of developers to be ordinary?
  - frostmatthew 12y ago
    > What do you think the distribution looks like? That would depend on what set of developers we're looking at: All developers - this will be very bottom-heavy, people [usually] get better with experience and there's obviously a lot less people that have been doing this for 20 years than having been doing it for two. Additionally people who are bad at a profession are more likely to change careers than those that are good (this is by no means an absolute, I wouldn't even go as far to say most bad engineers change professions, I'm just saying they're more likely to - further contributing to higher caliber corresponding well to years of experience). Developers with similar experience - this is much more useful as there's not much point comparing someone who's been doing something for decades with someone on their first job. I would expect this to be a fairly normal distribution. Developers interviewing for a particular position - applicants will largely self-select (and the initial screening process would further refine that) so this group will largely have similar experience (i.e. you're typically not interviewing someone with no experience and someone with 25 for the same job). But it won't match the previous distribution because, as someone else commented, the bad ones are looking for work more often (and for a longer period of time). Do the interviewees you wouldn't hire outnumber the ones you would? Yes, definitely. Do they outnumber them by a factor of a hundred to one? Definitely not. Ten to one? Probably not - if they do it probably represents a flawed screening process causing you to interview people you shouldn't (or not interview the people you should) rather than an indication that only one out of every ten developers are worth hiring.

SomeCallMeTim 12y ago

I'm not OP, but it feels like you're arguing semantics. YES, that's the technical definition of "average," no argument, but I don't think he/she meant mathematically average. If you substitute with these terms: - 5% toxic - 25% subtractors - 60% competent - 9% exceptional - 1% brilliant ...then there's no reason to apply (or defend!) the mathematical definition of "average." And I think those numbers actually seem somewhat reasonable, based on my own exposure to working developers in various industries. What this doesn't count is the the "FizzBuzz effect," where ~95% of the people who are interviewing at any one time (in a tight market) tend to be from the bottom end of the spectrum. Even within the broader pool of programmers, the line between subtractors and competent is very project-dependent, in my opinion. For some levels of project complexity, the line might actually invert to 60% subtractors and 25% competent, while for far less complex projects, it might be 5% subtractors to 80% competent. In the former case I'd want an exceptional developer, while in the latter the exceptional developer probably wouldn't even apply, or would quit out of boredom.