From a software engineer who has never lived in Silicon Valley, the whole idea is ridiculous to me. No team I've ever worked with would even consider working while drunk.
Maybe teams in California work differently, who knows. Personally, I know that any code I write while intoxicated beyond a certain point is complete shit. If you think yours does not, you're lying to yourself.
Not even going to start on how accurate the movie is to real software engineering (hint: it's not).
A is impossible because the caller can't direct dial an agent. I have never seen an IVR that allowed direct dialing through to a call center unless it was a special line to get a third level agent, and that line isn't given out publicly.
B is nearly always impossible, because the major metric the call center is judging you on is your Average Handle Time, or AHT, which mean how quickly you get the caller off the phone without hanging up on them.
The reason call center work is the most frustrating is because as the agent, your employer's profit depends on pushing you to your breaking point.
This is almost exactly the situation, minus the angry sales people, I experienced when I was doing tech support for a major outsourcer. All software tools were made by agents who were effectively silently promoted by their immediate supervisors because upper management wouldn't pay for any software development whatsoever. So as far as upper management was concerned, the agents doing the most helpful tool building were just taking calls. Of course, they had no access to any infrastructure (that costs money!) so everything was built in Javascript, and when they were lucky, PHP / MySQL on a homegrown server.
You mean make everyone responsible for everyone's downloading. You wouldn't be eliminating the lawsuits, you'd just enable them to sue everyone who was in the proxy pool, for much higher amounts than they can even now.
The plea bargain system works (for the government) because the government, as the first step of the indictment process, freezes all of the target's bank accounts, forcing them to either accept a plea or attempt to defend themselves against highly-paid, very resourceful federal prosecutors with a court-appointed, as-dumb-as-they-can-make-them public defender (who, by the way, is basically telling you that accepting a plea is the only option).
I think likely your work environment and a lot of the siblings' are quite different. A lot of us work in smaller companies that need things done quickly, and those companies often don't have the resources to outsource everything (at high levels, it gets quite expensive quickly). There's a balance to be struck, and to strike that balance, sometimes you can't hire the absolute best, world-class developer, you have to hire the good, perhaps a little new, but productive developer. This latter person's skills can be verified with a test.
Essentially I disagree with your assertion that tests are "completely irrelevant to the skills of a senior engineer"; the smaller tests validate that a candidate has the skills of a junior developer, and more in-depth tests validate higher skills. Trust is earned. By the way, I would have no problem paying for the candidate's time to do a higher-level test (I would probably do this if the test was going to take more than an hour or two).
Sounds like you weren't given clear expectations on your test. That's not your problem, that's your previous potential employer's problem. It doesn't say anything about the validity of tests when given with clear expectations.
A few days? Did you read the test they were advocating? For a qualified candidate, it would take half an hour, max (and for someone who already knows fizzbuzz, more like two minutes). Besides, credentials, as has been mentioned in this thread quite a bit already, don't always indicate quality. And as you mention, the people with "10 years of experience doing bleeding edge stuff" are often not the ones easily available on the job market. If you're a big company and have the resources, absolutely spend the time to try to attract those people if they're necessary. All too often, though, they're either not necessary, too expensive, or simply unavailable, and so companies have to deal with the job market as it exists right now, which means testing promising candidates that apply, whether they have a Masters in CS or simply a high school diploma with some interesting work on their resume.
There is always going to be grunt work, and you're not always going to be able to just pass it off to a "junior developer". Sometimes you have to do the grunt work to get to the more interesting work. If you consider this "below you", again, I consider you too much trouble.
Fizzbuzz is far from demeaning. If I was interviewing with a company and they said "here's a fizzbuzz test", I would consider it an indicator that the company's development side knows what they're doing, and type out the ten lines of code without hesitation.
When I had an RFID badge (in my dark days of doing phone desktop technical support), you had to essentially touch it to the reader to get it to register.
It says they're able to code. Once this is established, the rest can be checked in the next stage interview. Running this test saves time and money because it prevents the obviously incompetent from getting to the next stage. I don't see the problem here. Perhaps your company has unlimited time and money?
By the way, I also would filter you out as you seem to be difficult to work with.
Also, and I am not a lawyer so take this with a large grain of salt, but the Tucker Act could be used with the understanding that a patent is an implied (perhaps even explicit) contract with the Federal Government, which would enable a lawsuit.
If the US Federal Government argues sovereign immunity as a defense to enable ex post facto (i.e. retroactive) law changes, we've got serious problems.
In reality they'll have to phase them out; existing patents would need to continue to be enforceable during their lifetime. Otherwise, current patentholders will (rightfully) sue the federal government.
Slashdot Mirror
Make it so you can "gift" used copies of the game to other Steam accounts.
If they did this, EA would sue the everloving crap out of them.
From a software engineer who has never lived in Silicon Valley, the whole idea is ridiculous to me. No team I've ever worked with would even consider working while drunk.
Maybe teams in California work differently, who knows. Personally, I know that any code I write while intoxicated beyond a certain point is complete shit. If you think yours does not, you're lying to yourself.
Not even going to start on how accurate the movie is to real software engineering (hint: it's not).
To be fair, a national tax agency is in kind of a unique position with respect to call centers.
A is impossible because the caller can't direct dial an agent. I have never seen an IVR that allowed direct dialing through to a call center unless it was a special line to get a third level agent, and that line isn't given out publicly.
B is nearly always impossible, because the major metric the call center is judging you on is your Average Handle Time, or AHT, which mean how quickly you get the caller off the phone without hanging up on them.
The reason call center work is the most frustrating is because as the agent, your employer's profit depends on pushing you to your breaking point.
This is almost exactly the situation, minus the angry sales people, I experienced when I was doing tech support for a major outsourcer. All software tools were made by agents who were effectively silently promoted by their immediate supervisors because upper management wouldn't pay for any software development whatsoever. So as far as upper management was concerned, the agents doing the most helpful tool building were just taking calls. Of course, they had no access to any infrastructure (that costs money!) so everything was built in Javascript, and when they were lucky, PHP / MySQL on a homegrown server.
So glad I'm doing real software development now.
I totally cannot think of a better use of our money.
If they're working illegally, they're almost certainly not even making minimum wage.
You mean make everyone responsible for everyone's downloading. You wouldn't be eliminating the lawsuits, you'd just enable them to sue everyone who was in the proxy pool, for much higher amounts than they can even now.
If everybody had a gun, this guy would likely be dead by now.
The plea bargain system works (for the government) because the government, as the first step of the indictment process, freezes all of the target's bank accounts, forcing them to either accept a plea or attempt to defend themselves against highly-paid, very resourceful federal prosecutors with a court-appointed, as-dumb-as-they-can-make-them public defender (who, by the way, is basically telling you that accepting a plea is the only option).
How can I harden my computer against being used as a node in an ASIO botnet?
Against a nationstate with effectively unlimited resources where essentially all hacking has been declared legal? Nothing. You're screwed.
As someone who uses in-ear monitors on a daily basis, was it just the use of those headphones or a higher volume level that caused your tinnitus?
I think likely your work environment and a lot of the siblings' are quite different. A lot of us work in smaller companies that need things done quickly, and those companies often don't have the resources to outsource everything (at high levels, it gets quite expensive quickly). There's a balance to be struck, and to strike that balance, sometimes you can't hire the absolute best, world-class developer, you have to hire the good, perhaps a little new, but productive developer. This latter person's skills can be verified with a test.
Essentially I disagree with your assertion that tests are "completely irrelevant to the skills of a senior engineer"; the smaller tests validate that a candidate has the skills of a junior developer, and more in-depth tests validate higher skills. Trust is earned. By the way, I would have no problem paying for the candidate's time to do a higher-level test (I would probably do this if the test was going to take more than an hour or two).
Sounds like you weren't given clear expectations on your test. That's not your problem, that's your previous potential employer's problem. It doesn't say anything about the validity of tests when given with clear expectations.
A few days? Did you read the test they were advocating? For a qualified candidate, it would take half an hour, max (and for someone who already knows fizzbuzz, more like two minutes). Besides, credentials, as has been mentioned in this thread quite a bit already, don't always indicate quality. And as you mention, the people with "10 years of experience doing bleeding edge stuff" are often not the ones easily available on the job market. If you're a big company and have the resources, absolutely spend the time to try to attract those people if they're necessary. All too often, though, they're either not necessary, too expensive, or simply unavailable, and so companies have to deal with the job market as it exists right now, which means testing promising candidates that apply, whether they have a Masters in CS or simply a high school diploma with some interesting work on their resume.
There is always going to be grunt work, and you're not always going to be able to just pass it off to a "junior developer". Sometimes you have to do the grunt work to get to the more interesting work. If you consider this "below you", again, I consider you too much trouble.
Fizzbuzz is far from demeaning. If I was interviewing with a company and they said "here's a fizzbuzz test", I would consider it an indicator that the company's development side knows what they're doing, and type out the ten lines of code without hesitation.
This is true if your workplace is setup to require an RFID swipe to access the bathrooms. I think I would avoid such a workplace.
When I had an RFID badge (in my dark days of doing phone desktop technical support), you had to essentially touch it to the reader to get it to register.
It says they're able to code. Once this is established, the rest can be checked in the next stage interview. Running this test saves time and money because it prevents the obviously incompetent from getting to the next stage. I don't see the problem here. Perhaps your company has unlimited time and money?
By the way, I also would filter you out as you seem to be difficult to work with.
Lazy, in a programmer, is a virtue.
Also, and I am not a lawyer so take this with a large grain of salt, but the Tucker Act could be used with the understanding that a patent is an implied (perhaps even explicit) contract with the Federal Government, which would enable a lawsuit.
If the US Federal Government argues sovereign immunity as a defense to enable ex post facto (i.e. retroactive) law changes, we've got serious problems.
In reality they'll have to phase them out; existing patents would need to continue to be enforceable during their lifetime. Otherwise, current patentholders will (rightfully) sue the federal government.
Linus's example works when you're the Big Boss. My guess is that OP is (unfortunately) not.
Yelling at peers is a good way to get fired yourself.
At the NRA? You could skip the firecracker.
In an environment where such a coder is allowed to flourish, I sincerely doubt they have any form of code review.
...and Ford would be able to bill Warner for the use of their 'sculpture' in all the toys, films, TV shows that have used it over the years.
I doubt it.