How To Find Bad Programmers

AmberShah writes "The job post is your potential programmer's first impression of your company, so make it count with these offputting features. There are plenty of articles about recruiting great developers, but what if you are only interested in the crappy ones?" I think much of the industry is already following these guidelines.

Comments

Crappy programmers

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to India?

Re:Crappy programmers

[infinite9]

You got modded down for this, but it's true. You get what you pay for. Just low-ball the salary or billing rate. The people who are worth anything will be kept by the employers who know better. And you'll just end up bottom-feeding. There's a reason Indian programmers are cheap. I've worked with many. Some were awesome programmers. But by far, most were just cheap. And this is true regardless of whether they're Indian or not. Cheap people are cheap for a reason.

Re:Crappy programmers

[lgw]

I've never had a problem with Indian programmers. I've often had problems with programmers working in India. Partly it's the time zone difference that makes every little thing a pain in the ass, but there is also a tendency for companies to bring the best to America. While this is finally starting to change, it's still quite rare for a senior guy still working from India to be better than average.

So, yeah, the market does tend to sort out the whole price v quality thing in the long haul, but race doesn't really enter into it.

Start a MU*

[Wyatt Earp]

You want bad programmers? Start a MUD/MUX/MUSH and advertise for coders, you'll get the damned scum of the earth, a Mos Eisley cantina of crap coders

Step 1

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Step 1: Create an Ask Slashdot looking for (ironically) *good* programmers
Step 2: Identify all self-identified good programmers

Done!

Re:Step 1

[ClosedSource]

There's definitely some truth in that. It seems like 80% of Slashdotters think that 80% of programmers suck but they're not part of that 80%.

Re:Step 1

[forsey]

Most crappy programmers I know don't read Slashdot, nor do they read anything else that could be considered "industry material". Hard to stay crappy if you keep learning.

Recruitment Agencies

[hattig]

Use a recruitment agency.

Most of them just do buzzword matching on CVs rather than actual filtering by skill, so you'll get some really rubbish dregs turn up with inflated CVs.

Also, try to get one going through a relationship break-up (especially an expensive divorce), or one with criminal/drug addict children / wife. These will increase their productivity as they will want to stay in work.

Agism rears its ugly head again

[Anonymous Coward]

Young programmers always say things like "proficiency with the technology is more important than years of experience" and "Old programmers probably can't make use of new technologies" and "I don't have much working experience but I guarantee I am a better choice that someone who does, just because I am that smart!"

Once they work for a while, get bitten a few times by their own crappy code, learn a few things, and realize just how worthless they actually were right after they graduated...they change their tune. It never fails.

Re:Agism rears its ugly head again

[Nutria]

Not cocky enough to be Good.

Re:Agism rears its ugly head again

[chaboud]

Proficiency matters more than years of experience, eventually. I haven't met a single fresh-from-the-mill coder with the architectural chops to lead a project or design major systems (though I know they exist), but I've also worked with plenty of 30-or-40-something senior devs who couldn't find their ass with a flashlight and two hours with Design Patterns (and, no, I don't think that the whole world lives in Design Patterns).

There isn't just one type of good programmer, just as there isn't just one type of bad one. When I was 19 and starting my first job, sure, I wrote terrible code. When I was 22, I architected major systems that were fairly well thought out and are still in use today (I'm 30). My improvement came from having my ass kicked by some truly talented older coders.

Of course, a good dev will look at what they wrote 2-3 years ago and say "who wrote this crap?!" Someone who thinks that any more than a few tiny gems of their prior code would be up to snuff today is a crappy coder.

Re:I see lousy coders.... everywhere

[oldspewey]

You want a good coder? ... Have them write you something small for free.

Most of the good coders I know would walk right on out the door if the first thing you asked them to do was write something for free.

for a real class act

[rubycodez]

The really classy HR and Recruiter turds put down requirements for years of experience greater than the time the technology has been in existence. For developers, 16 years J2EE required! 10 years .NET a must! 8+ years Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployment!

Bonus points for confounding distribution release numbers and internal software version numbers, or assuming only RedHat distributes GNU/Linux.

Re:for a real class act

[kgo]

I'm hunting right now. The best case of this by far is:

Visual Studio .NET 2008 - 5 years experience

(1) DO THE MATH! (At least when people were asking for ten years of web development experience in 1995, the web wasn't called WWW-90)

(2) WHAT THE HELL IS VISUAL STUDIO EXPERIENCE?

You want bad programmers?

[damn_registrars]

You have definitely come to the right place!

Wanted!

[Quiet_Desperation]

Immediate need for programmer with 10 years experience developing Objective C 2.0 for the iPad. Experience with developing for Intel i9 based Mac Pros is a major plus!

Re:I see lousy coders.... everywhere

[s73v3r]

There's a difference between example or interview code ("Write a function to reverse a string"), and asking them to do part of the work, up front, for free. Anyone worth their salt will correctly balk when asked to do the latter.

Re:Resumes in Word not hard for Java/Unix people..

[oatworm]

The problem isn't about whether it's hard or not for those that don't wish to use proprietary software to open Word docs. The problem is that Word docs are not platform neutral - the font that you used on your resume' might not line up with the fonts that I have installed on my system and vice-versa. Plus, the version you're using might not be the same as the version I'm using and might get rendered differently if you use any sort of fancy-ish formatting (tables, columns, sections, etc.). This would be an issue whether the person on the other end wanted a Word doc, an ODF file, or any other non-trivial word processing document. Realistically, if you want to submit your resume' and have it look as good as possible, you want to know that the person on the other end will be able to see the same thing that you see when you created it; if they're making that functionally impossible by requiring it in a non-print safe non-vendor neutral format, it shows they don't understand such issues, which hints strongly at how well they pay attention to such issues with the rest of their work.

Put another way, imagine working for an employer whose corporate culture can be summed up as "Works for me", then imagine how much fun it would be to fix the consequences of such an ethos when a major customer or the CEO finds something is broken.

Re:I see lousy coders.... everywhere

[Slashdot Parent]

You want a good coder? Look at their code. Make them take some written tests and an oral exam. Have them write you something small for free.

Maybe that is specific to rent-a-coder. I do a lot of interviewing for technical positions, and I don't give code challenges. Anything beyond CS101 fodder is too time-consuming, and asking CS101 questions doesn't really tell me anything.

I'm a big fan of "what's the difference?" questions. I'll take two similar technologies from their resume and ask what's the difference between them. It tests both the candidate's level of experience, as well as the candidate's ability to think and articulate an answer.

I have to say, I've gotten some pretty (ahem) creative responses, too. And for all you job hunters out there, if you put "C/C++" on your resume, I guarantee my first technical question is going to be, "What's the difference between C and C++?" All the while knowing that there is a >50% chance I'm about to get a "creative" answer.

Re:looking for C/C+/C++ programmers

[TheSpoom]

Well, you'll certainly get bad programmers if you choose the ones with 'C+' on their resume.

Easy...

[warGod3]

Let HR write the job requirements, conduct the interviews and hire, all without the input of ANYONE that knows how to do more with a computer, than just turn it on.

Re:I see lousy coders.... everywhere

[gestalt_n_pepper]

And as someone who codes, and has hired coders, I would reply "Please don't let the door hit you on the way out, and by the way, there are 199 other people waiting to interview for that position. Please try and stay out of their way as you go down the stairs."

And by the way, the fact that you didn't get that "write something for free" means, a small, noncommercial piece of sample code that demonstrates that you know how to create class foo with a member function that loops from 1 to 10, exits appropriately and returns a string that says "I'm finished." is indication number two that you are a f***ing lamebrain with neither perspective nor common sense.

In short, you just lost the job due to stupidity, an overblown sense of entitlement and childish arrogance. I have time for none of these.

Re:I see lousy coders.... everywhere

[aclarke]

Early on in my career, I showed up for an interview. I drove 30 minutes to get there, was in my suit, and ready to rock. I got there, and the front desk person handed me a 10 page document, and told me to sit down and fill it in. I hadn't even met anybody else yet. It was a programming test. I filled in a page or two, decided I didn't want to work at a place like that, and walked out.

I later interviewed at a large corporation as a Perl programmer. I passed all the interviews, and then they wanted me to write a Perl programme to show them I actually did know what I was talking about. I took their specs, which they said should take maybe an hour to finish. It took me 7 hours. I handed it in, along with my notes on where their specs were vague and why I'd taken the route I had. I got the job and they rewrote the test after that.

Maybe I'm a good programmer or maybe I'm not, but I'm with you that programmers will be more likely to take a test when the risk/reward balance is topped to the correct side.