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It has been mine. I have been interviewing and hiring developers for the past 6 years, this was my empirical observation. I am glad you had a different experi

• kasey_junk 12y ago
  I think the important thing to remember in any discussion about hiring qualification is that our empirical evidence largely fails us. Even those of us who have spent lots of time, effort and experience on the subject are largely dealing with small sample sizes. These small sample sizes inform our biases which is a negative feedback loop, especially in the case that the confirm our existing biases. So for instance, in my empirical observations, candidates from top tier engineering schools largely perform more poorly on fizzbuzz than candidates with no college experience what so ever. This observation was so largely opposed to my existing bias that it caused me question fizzbuzz as a qualification tool. My investigations into this found lots of things that made me think that fizzbuzz is a bad tool (even though I had very high biases towards it in the beginning). The lesson I took from that, was not "don't use fizzbuzz" even though I don't anymore, or "people with no college degree are better candidates than those from top tier universities". It was "small sample sizes make nearly all statements about hiring trends dubious." So "prove it". Is my default answer to that sort of statement.