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

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%.

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

[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.

You want bad programmers?

[damn_registrars]

You have definitely come to the right place!

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?

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.