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Why the New Guy Can't Code

Posted by Soulskill on from the hired-for-his-doughnut-fetching-skills dept.

theodp writes "'We've all lived the nightmare,' writes Jon Evans. 'A new developer shows up at work, and you try to be welcoming, but he can't seem to get up to speed; the questions he asks reveal basic ignorance; and his work, when it finally emerges, is so kludgey that it ultimately must be rewritten from scratch by more competent people.' Evans takes a stab at explaining why the new guy can't code when his interviewers and HR swear that they only hire above-average/A-level/top-1% people. Evans fingers the technical interview as the culprit, saying the skills required to pass today's industry-standard software interview are not those required to be a good software developer. Instead, Evans suggests: 'Don't interview anyone who hasn't accomplished anything. Ever. Certificates and degrees are not accomplishments; I mean real-world projects with real-world users. There is no excuse for software developers who don't have a site, app, or service they can point to and say, 'I did this, all by myself!' in a world where Google App Engine and Amazon Web Services have free service tiers, and it costs all of $25 to register as an Android developer and publish an app on the Android Market."

5 of 948 comments (clear)

  1. Why is this a nightmare? by hughperkins · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Firstly, why is this a nightmare? Who wants extra competition?

    Secondly, "technical interview" is a misnomer. They're actually "potential colleague" interviews. Who is going to pick someone who is smarter than them, or who is going to give them competition for promotion?

    Those who get through technical interviews are either smart enough to bluff to the interviewer that they're not quite as smart as the interviewer, but an ok guy to hang out with; or are genuinely not as smart or talented as the interviewer, but are an ok guy to hang out with.

    Quick tip: when you attend a technical interview, answering the questions correctly doesn't get you the job. Being amazed at how much the interviewer knows does.

    1. Re:Why is this a nightmare? by giorgist · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Who is going to pick someone who is smarter than them, or who is going to give them competition for promotion?



      As the rule goes ... A class managers, hire A class people.
      B class managers hire C class people.

      A class managers do not feel threatened, so they hire the best there is. The result is a great workplace.
      B class managers on the other hand want to make sure their staff is dumber than them selves, so they make sure they hire C class staff.

      So the rule is, if your boss is a moron ... you should be worried.
  2. Re:Experienced only? by mikael_j · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think the problem is that a lot of people, no matter how skilled and dedicated, may not have had any summer jobs or internships (at least around here those are very hard to come by) that led to them taking part in the creation of "real" applications as well as not really have any "finished" applications to show off (as in, they may have dozens or hundreds of little apps but you rarely want to show an interviewer that 900 line perl script you wrote that has half a dozen required and undocumented parameters and does something extremely specific to your home computing environment.

    I was actually in that sort of position after college, I ended up working tech support for over a year because I couldn't find a "real job", the reasons for why I either didn't get an interview or why they didn't find me interesting post-interview were split between no reason given, "You're not quite what we're looking for" and "Please try again when you have at least three years of experience, the ad might've said 'entry-level' but we really meant we were looking for someone with a few years of experience...".

    --
    Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
  3. What is your proudest accomplishment... by i_ate_god · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ..as a programmer?

    That question is one of the best filtering questions around.

    --
    I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
  4. Re:Experienced only? by Homr+Zodyssey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I agree with Vectormatic. Just because its my job which I enjoy and I'm good at, does not mean I'm going to sit around doing it for free. If I have extra time on nights/weekends to do some coding, I'm going to bill for it.

    I've been a developer for 13 years, at a half-dozen jobs. I've never been asked for a code sample, and I wouldn't have one to provide if I were.