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I find this idea that there are lots of fake programmers kind of nuts. Presumably, when you do a resume sift, you look for people with either a qualification o

by shubb 11y ago

I find this idea that there are lots of fake programmers kind of nuts. Presumably, when you do a resume sift, you look for people with either a qualification or work experience. Either they somehow faked it through those, or your test is bad. Fizzbuzz actually tests if you know what % does. Is that critical knowledge for a webdev?

vonmoltke 11y ago
I don't think there are "lots", but I think there are enough to distort the view of the labor pool. Additionally, there is the issue of these fakers staying in the pool much longer and spraying their resumes out more often further distorting the view. As for how they get through the screen, I think they just blatantly lie on their resume hoping to get a company that doesn't do its due diligence in determining if the stated experience is real.
Kalium 11y ago
> I find this idea that there are lots of fake programmers kind of nuts. I don't know about "lots", but there are definitely people out there who claim to be programmers but lack the basic competencies they claim. I've encountered several. A couple of years ago, I was part of a battery of interviews for a candidate who claimed a Master's in CS. Their resume said they had done advanced work in parallelization of video compression. I asked them about it - I wanted to know how they had handled synchronization and locking. The candidate looked at me blankly for a couple of seconds. Then they began, haltingly, to talk about web sessions and logging. We didn't hire the person, but there was definitely some bullshit along the way...
- crucini 11y ago
  To be fair, they are kind of separate problems. In Clojure, for instance, you can write parallel code and the nuts and bolts are handled for you.
  - Kalium 11y ago
    With the tools this person claimed to have used, they very much would have handled all the nuts and bolts.
cheald 11y ago
I've interviewed people for programming positions with work experience who had trouble articulating solutions to very simple problems. I don't know that I'd call them "fake programmers", but "bad programmers who lack the ability to reason about code and instead rely on StackOverflow answers to provide solutions to the problems they're faced with" are all over the industry.
emodendroket 11y ago
I'm generating some HTML. I would like to create a new row on every third element. How might I do this?
DanBC 11y ago
> Fizzbuzz actually tests if you know what % does. Is that critical knowledge for a webdev? The point about fizzbuzz is that some people fail it even when you give them a list of functions and how to use them. Finding out whether this is relevant to how they do when actually working rather than in a high pressure interview situation is an open question.
dbenhur 11y ago
The world of actual programmers is NOT filled with fake programmers. The world of people actively applying for advertised programming positions IS dominated by fake programmers. That's why FizzBuzz is an effective screen. As to your last question, a "webdev" who doesn't understand integer modulus is a fake programmer. Is it critical? I suppose it's not if your grid is never wider than one column and you never want to alternatively style rows in a list or table.

by shubb 11y ago

vonmoltke 11y ago

I don't think there are "lots", but I think there are enough to distort the view of the labor pool. Additionally, there is the issue of these fakers staying in the pool much longer and spraying their resumes out more often further distorting the view. As for how they get through the screen, I think they just blatantly lie on their resume hoping to get a company that doesn't do its due diligence in determining if the stated experience is real.

Kalium 11y ago

> I find this idea that there are lots of fake programmers kind of nuts. I don't know about "lots", but there are definitely people out there who claim to be programmers but lack the basic competencies they claim. I've encountered several. A couple of years ago, I was part of a battery of interviews for a candidate who claimed a Master's in CS. Their resume said they had done advanced work in parallelization of video compression. I asked them about it - I wanted to know how they had handled synchronization and locking. The candidate looked at me blankly for a couple of seconds. Then they began, haltingly, to talk about web sessions and logging. We didn't hire the person, but there was definitely some bullshit along the way...

crucini 11y ago
To be fair, they are kind of separate problems. In Clojure, for instance, you can write parallel code and the nuts and bolts are handled for you.
- Kalium 11y ago
  With the tools this person claimed to have used, they very much would have handled all the nuts and bolts.

cheald 11y ago

I've interviewed people for programming positions with work experience who had trouble articulating solutions to very simple problems. I don't know that I'd call them "fake programmers", but "bad programmers who lack the ability to reason about code and instead rely on StackOverflow answers to provide solutions to the problems they're faced with" are all over the industry.

emodendroket 11y ago

I'm generating some HTML. I would like to create a new row on every third element. How might I do this?

DanBC 11y ago

> Fizzbuzz actually tests if you know what % does. Is that critical knowledge for a webdev? The point about fizzbuzz is that some people fail it even when you give them a list of functions and how to use them. Finding out whether this is relevant to how they do when actually working rather than in a high pressure interview situation is an open question.

dbenhur 11y ago

The world of actual programmers is NOT filled with fake programmers. The world of people actively applying for advertised programming positions IS dominated by fake programmers. That's why FizzBuzz is an effective screen. As to your last question, a "webdev" who doesn't understand integer modulus is a fake programmer. Is it critical? I suppose it's not if your grid is never wider than one column and you never want to alternatively style rows in a list or table.