Why the New Guy Can't Code 948
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."
Experienced only? (Score:5, Insightful)
This reminds me of the old expression "I can't get the job because I don't have any experience, but how can I get experience if they don't give me a job?"
Yes, on your own, but it is still saying "don't hire someone directly out of school" without considering that there are some advantages to this, such as being able to integrate someone into your system, before they have had the chance to develop "bad habits".
Even with a few projects... (Score:3, Insightful)
Even with a few Open-source projects under your belt for others to check out you might still be a crappy coder but at least they've got more chance to see what they're getting into.
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
No room for the new guy (Score:5, Insightful)
I usually say that it doesn't matter what you know, what matters is how fast you learn. Someone who you can teach and tell how to do things once, and they actually understand the message and do it right from then on is much more valuable in the long run then someone who has a (short and) static merit list in my opinion.
Evan, the best programmer evah (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
There is no excuse for self-proclaimed software authorities who don't know that software development covers much more than just Web-related or mobile apps. I've been developing software since before the Web was invented and I still don't have a website, I don't write apps for Android and there's no service on the Internet that I can point to and say "I did that all by myself!" I'm a systems programmer and I make a nice living writing code for embedded systems that make it possible for this Evan guy to post his ridiculous rants on the Internet.
Re:Experienced only? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was doing programming projects for years before I ever took any sort of computer class. If a potential programmer can't show any work they've done outside of the classroom, they're almost certainly not ready to code for a living.
If an interviewee really can't show any work, perhaps a good idea would be to give them a few simple Google Code Jam problems [google.com] and have them pick one to solve. Just watching them write down some pseudocode would show whether they have the ability to think for themselves, and if they can actually write a working solution in a common programming language, or better yet, the language they'll be using on the job, then of course they can program!
Fair enough, if you need an urgent job done (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone who's clever enough and can program is still a drag on productivity then it sounds like a problem of technical management in providing appropriate tasks, guidance and training. If you're in need of urgent productive programming (and / or you're a small start-up - *maybe*) then, yes, hire someone with substantial experience so you get returns quickly. Otherwise, it's your job to train them in stuff they might not know. Industry used to be responsible for training and educating workers appropriately beyond their academic career.
New guys do not get senior pay. (Score:5, Insightful)
New guys do not get senior pay. People with experience usually command higher wages.
You can get people out of school fairly priced to their abilities. That fair price can be significantly under what an accomplished senior engineer will make.
The best question is, "Who are you fishing for and why?"
Hopefully your company is willing to spend the coin for the experience implied by this article.
If not, your company may see the time slow down as worth it. From an investment side, management must consider timing of future cashflows and likelihood they will arrive (risk). Slow and steady can win the race, despite how frustrating it can be to 'bring someone else up to speed.'
code sample (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't this old hat? Doesn't everyone ask for a code sample?
I feel however that 'I did this, all by myself!' isn't the best metric.
I'd rather hire the kid who's code sample consists of fixing 5 memory leaks in 5 different open source libraries. He'll write solid code.
I'd rather not hire as a "coder" the kid who's website took him 40 hours in photoshop, several hours configuring Drupal, and another several hours writing a Drupal extension that should've taken him 20 min. He might be more artist than programmer.
In fact, that's a pretty good interview tactic : Ask them in advance to find & fix a memory leak in some open source C library so they can explain it at the interview. Hint : Find a crap library with many leaks.
Hungarian Notation (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, a footnote devoted to a dig about Hungarian Notation, with a link to Wikipedia, and a display of complete ignorance of the subject. The Wikipedia article that he went to the trouble of linking to, while deriding the inventor of the notation, tells you that there are two forms, Apps Hungarian and Systems Hungarian, and no doubt goes on to tell you that the person that he is deriding invented Apps Hungarian. The point of this notation is to include units in variable names. For example, you might prefix a length with m or ft to indicate the units, or an index with row or col. It's then completely obvious that an expression like mHeight -= ftDistance is wrong. This is a very sensible convention and eliminates some very expensive yet simple to fix bugs. The author of the article calls it 'probably the dumbest widely-promulgated idea in the history of the field', which makes me quite glad that I don't work with him.
He's probably thinking of Systems Hungarian, which is what happened when the systems group at Microsoft got ahold of the idea and started prefixing things with their types (language types, not semantic types), which is completely redundant information.
Talent is a difficult thing to measure (Score:5, Insightful)
There are definitely some people out there who are annoyingly incapable and inept. Cert chasers and the like don't even realize they are what they are -- they were sold on the belief that if they attend and complete classes, that they will somehow have ability and knowledge. (I think I will take a class on weghtlifting and compete in Mr. Universe. or something...) Worse, I have never seen one of these people "become" a skilled and seasoned professional later on.
Success invariably hinges on a person's ability to think, learn and understand in the ways needed for their profession to be effective. Those are things that are difficult, if not impossible to measure by someone who doesn't have an in-depth understanding of the materials themselves. And yet, all too often, the people who are in charge of hiring such people are the very people who are completely unqualified to make such assessments. (Of course, this idealism ignores that politics can get many people around the requirements of skills, knowledge and understanding.)
Lack of shame is another problem that these unqualified employees display... or is lack of shame OUR perception? I know I would feel shame if I inserted myself into a situation where I was not qualified. But maybe that's just me and a bunch of other like-minded geeks here on slashdot. (Then again, when I insert my opinions here and someone with greater knowledge calls me an idiot, I don't often feel much shame... though some form of hate or anger results at times.)
I guess what I am getting at is that no matter what level you or another are at, someone else will be better or worse. There's a great thing about humans, as it turns out, though -- we are good at teaching each other things -- from what I have learned recently, that seems to be the "one thing" that humans have that other animals don't -- and we have the capacity to build on knowledge from our predecessors. But this knowledge is important for growth -- people with academic backgrounds have their place. ("Relevance" of academic knowledge is another matter though.)
I definitely identify with the problem and the solution(s) depends on the individuals with the problems. Sometimes "giving them enough rope" is the best answer. Other times, coaching them over their deficiencies is the best way. It's always a tough call.
Re:Experienced only? (Score:5, Insightful)
We hire inexperiences developers regularly. They're called JUNIOR DEVELOPERS and they require extra time. That's why they make less money than a medior or senior developer.
Re:Experienced only? (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, most employers already follow this rule. As someone who's career started in 2004, the first 3 years of it were extremely difficult because almost everybody in the industry needed 3 years of full-time development experience on the resume before they'd even talk to me. And of course, these same employers have the audacity to say "We can't find any good young developers!" as if making it difficult-to-impossible for anyone to join the industry (oh, and if they're large enough for age discrimination laws to apply, acting on that sentiment is illegal) would have no effect. I've gotten over that hump, but that was by taking any job that came my way, being willing to work 70 hours a week for about $7 an hour, and I'm sure having recruiters lie a bit to get my foot in the door.
And the reason for all this isn't hard to figure out: This "don't hire anyone without experience" is a pretty smart rule if one employer does it, but a really really dumb rule if every employer does it. In addition, because it takes 3 years for the negative effects of this to really sink in, the system looks great for a while. Basically, everyone wants the experienced demonstrably-capable programmers, but wants the responsibility of giving them basic practical experience to fall on somebody else. To do otherwise would require the vision and the funding to think about a picture bigger than "my company this fiscal year".
Re:Experienced only? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody wants to train anybody any more. They want to be able to hire and fire at will and they know that they are not capable of fostering loyalty when they feel no responsibility to their employees. There's no point in spending money to train someone who is just going to go somewhere else, and that's what they will do.
Re:Experienced only? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with hiring someone straight out of school, just so long as you understand they're likely to be completely inexperienced and in need of training. If you're hiring someone completely inexperienced based on certificates and degrees and then expecting them to "get up to speed" quickly, then the problem is you: your expectations are ridiculous.
Don't try to save money by hiring inexperienced people and then complain that they're inexperienced. It can often be good to have people of varying levels of experience working on a project-- the company gets cheap labor that can take care of some grunt work, the new guy gets experience, the project gets a fresh perspective, and the senior employees get the experience of training someone new. The problem is that you need a good manager who can assign appropriate roles and set realistic expectations.
Trouble Is, Most Programmers' Work Can't Be Shown (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, unlike an artist or musician or copywriter, most programmers' finest work isn't intended to be publicly shown, since it may be regarded as a trade secret. Which puts both employers and coders in a bad position. And while a personal website may be useful to demonstrate certain talent, it won't help showcase work in proprietary languages for which one may be seeking employment.
Re:Experienced only? (Score:5, Insightful)
i do enjoy coding a lot, as in i cant think of anything i'd rather do for a living. But in my free time, i can think of thousands of things i'd rather spend my time on, so i hardly have any hobby-projects, certainly nothing that i would use to show off at a job interview.
Making your hobby into your job is a sure-fire way to lose it as a hobby by the way, all the managerial crap that comes with a work environment is not something you want to asociate with your hobby
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
This means they will have done some coding for open source or made a website for something. Be it the church or their baund or their local pub or whatever.
No it does not mean that. They may very well have a hundred or more pet projects in version control at home but have never once done anything for anyone else. I've known several developers who have had no interest in showing off what they've done other than as a sort of "hey, look at this!" among their peers (peers = other geeks, not mommy or the neighbors), they were perfectly good developers who had no "published" software or sites by the time they left college and most of what they had at home wasn't really the kind of stuff you'd show an interviewer (because to the interviewer it would be a bare-bones prototype of an app with only one or two pieces properly implemented which of course was the point to begin with, to attempt to write those parts and tacking on the rest of the app out of necessity, I know I've written a few of those in C/C++ back when I was in high school, little 2D "games" that were really just code I'd copied from other games I'd written so I could test something like my new map editor and map format, had I shown that one to a potential employer it is very likely that the interviewer would've been very unimpressed since it wasn't a complete program from his/her point of view).
Re:Experienced only? (Score:5, Insightful)
All good ideas...for people with tons of free time. When you get a job doing this stuff, you get 8-10 hours a day to do it. I'm hard pressed to think of any time outside of my work hours that I have 8-10 hour blocks of time to do stuff for fun.
HR? (Score:2, Insightful)
why the new guy can't code when his interviewers and HR swear that they only hire above-average/A-level/top-1% people.
Human Resources has nothing to do with filtering candidates, except possibly at the coarsest of levels. HR doesn't make decisions about hiring or firing. All they do is manage payroll and group benefits and stuff like that. What would they know about the skills and experience needed for being able to code well? Hiring and firing decisions are made by the head of the department. If he or she is winding up with people who can't code, then the blame belongs squarely with the interviewers and the interview process, not HR.
They brought it onto themselves (Score:2, Insightful)
Companies are consciously creating incompatible platforms (Android, iOS, WP7, Flash, Silverlight, ...) in order to make developer skills non-transferable. Nobody should be surprised to hear that it costs more time to train new developers.
Re:'Don't interview anyone who hasn't accomplished (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to get a job programming, but have never written any software that you've published, then you are probably not worth hiring
This is just plain crap, I've been programming for almost 30yrs, proffesionally for the last 20. I don't have any published code to show anyone at an interview, and never have. The stuff I write in my own time is mainly so I can learn something new, once I have the gist of it I usually throw the code away. I've also interviewed ~100 programmers over the years and if you can't tell if someone knows their stuff just by talking to them for 5-10min, then I suggest you don't know yours.
Re:Experienced only? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody wants to train anybody any more. They want to be able to hire and fire at will and they know that they are not capable of fostering loyalty when they feel no responsibility to their employees. There's no point in spending money to train someone who is just going to go somewhere else, and that's what they will do.
Very true.
Folks are treated as interchangeable parts. Hire somebody to fit some role, and you expect them to do their job on day 1. If they aren't working out, fire them and hire someone in to do the job they weren't.
Used to be that skilled labor was the backbone of our economy... Folks who didn't necessarily have college degrees or anything fancy like that, but who'd been doing their jobs long enough that they actually knew what they were doing and were worth more because of it. You could actually stay with a single company for a while, learning as you went, getting raises and promotions along the way.
These days you're lucky if you work in one place long enough to learn where the restroom is. And if you want a promotion or a raise, you've got to go get hired somewhere else.
The Real Problem: Degrees Without Side-Work (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a lot of comments are lashing out at the "Don't Hire Inexperienced Developers" concept without really thinking about what's being said in the rest of the article.
What the author is really saying is "Don't hire developers fresh out of school who have nothing to show for themselves except coursework."
Why is this so important? It's important because it shows two things:
1) The developer only has theoretical, academic knowledge of programming
2) The developer isn't passionate about developing.
The first is a huge problem for any company hiring said developer. I don't know a single instance where what I have encountered in the working world matched closely at all to how my textbooks or professors told me things "should be". The mental shift required between school and work is large and can be very difficult to overcome for many.
The second point is a critical thing to consider especially if you're a small company or a startup. A-level developers and other IT folks are passionate about what they do. They have side projects. They have little tools and such that they create to help solve whatever task they're focusing on at the moment. Coming out of school with absolutely nothing beyond class assignments is a strong indicator that the developer is only interested in the bare-minimum requirements to get by. That's not to say they're not talented, just that they're looking for a 9-5 job where they're in at 9:00 and out at 5:00 and aren't interested in going the extra mile. These guys are terrific coders for large companies where there's a lot of maintenance type work to be done. They're productivity vampires though for small companies that need every member of the team to be highly efficient and high producing.
The article points out how easy it is to have side projects. To turn out a little app on a website or on a mobile platform that you can point back to and say "I did this."
To those who argue that there's just no time in a 4 year degree to do side projects like that... Where the hell did you go to school? Did you have a full-time 40hr/wk job totally outside of CS/IT during the same period that left you with only enough time outside of class to sleep? If MIT students can get through in 4 years and manage massively complex pranks, contribute to OSS projects and still graduate with high grades, what's everyone elses excuse?
Why school projects don't count ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Applications you've made because of a school project will not count.
Why not? Because someone else provided the specifications? Isn't that what corporate software development is built around? Not to mention that school projects are done in teams, so your contribution to that team can show how well you will work in a dev team? Soloist codemonkeys do not good employees make.
Neither do people who went into programming because someone said it is a good career path. A certain curiosity and interest in the field is required. These personal projects don't need to be elaborate. Its just that a complete lack of anything written for personal amusement or curiosity also suggests a lack of interest in the field.
Also in team projects those with genuine interest tend to carry those on the career path. So all team projects and nothing personal can be worrisome.
Re:The Real Problem: Degrees Without Side-Work (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about success or failure of the app that's important really, it's the fact that it exists that tells people something.
Fact is, everyone fails. A lot. In fact, I am more leery of hiring someone who has never failed over someone who has. That first crash is the hardest, and the later it comes the more disastrous to the person it can be. You learn more from failing than from succeeding etc.
It's about saying "I did this!" It doesn't have to sell a single unit. The existence of the thing shows effort, initiative, and experience outside of the classroom.
Re:Experienced only? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Experienced only? (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying you can do surgery full time with only the experience and training you got in medical school is really misplaced. If you say you enjoy doing surgery and being a doctor, then surely you must do some of it simply as a "hobby".
Re:Experienced only? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's ridiculous.
Some of the best engineers I've worked with don't program in their spare time. Hell, one or two of them went for prolonged periods of time without even any home internet access, because they had their fill of technology during the week.
Zeal and out-of-hours interest in coding are good things, but if you make them your main criteria you'll miss out on some very good people.
Re:Good metric for junior developer (Score:4, Insightful)
Those who have written something for their own amusement or curiosity, something not part of work or a class assignment.
Are interviewees permitted to bring in their own laptop computers on which to demonstrate "something [written] for their own amusement or curiosity"?
For me, no. I don't want to see the code. I want to have a conversation about the code. How were things implemented, what problems came up, anything particularly cool about the implementation, what was fun, what was not fun? I think the conversation is more revealing, code can be someone else's. Or if written purely for your own amusement it might be crudely slapped together and not truly representative of a person's professional efforts.
Re:Experienced only? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been at my current job for 10 years, coding. I'm supposed to work from 8 to 4:30 but it usually turns into 8 to 5:30 as well as having to check emails in the evening. All of my apps are behind the company's firewall so I can't show them off to anyone.
Meanwhile I'm also a 2nd-level admin for our servers and web apps. Meaning at least a couple of times during the month I have to do something to the server over the weekend, get a support call at 3AM in the morning, test things after a server move, etc.
As much as I like coding, after 10 years of the above I'll be honest... I don't have any personal projects of my own to show.
The above takes too much of of day/week/etc as it stands. I really don't want to have to sit behind my computer and then do a personal project on top of everything else.
Re:What is your proudest accomplishment... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this is a good question, but I'm having a little bit of trouble answering it and I think this demonstrates a weakness of this particular question.
I'm a relatively new programmer, just out of college working at my first job. I have several past programming accomplishments that I could choose from, but I'm sort of ashamed of all of them. Why? I've been getting better and better as time goes on, so when I look back at my past work I'm extremely critical. My previous work sucked compared to my present work. That's not to say my past work wasn't valuable, as I had to work on these previous projects to learn what I know now. Also, my past work isn't objectively bad (or so I've heard from others). However, when asked this question I sit there and think about it for several minutes and eventually it becomes "what am I least ashamed of?" rather than "what am I proudest of?". I'm also tempted to answer with something like "getting through school" (which I am actually proud of due to all the hard work I put into it, and I see as programmer related)...but I bet this is one of the worst possible answers to give a recruiter.
I'm like an artist who has trouble putting together a portfolio because I want to sweep my entire learning process under the rug, but has little to no present work to stick in the portfolio. Even worse, anything I do now will probably end up being heavily criticized by my future self, putting me back in the same boat. I think it is likely that many skilled programmers that are just getting started have this issue, as programming is a creative endeavor and I see this all the time in other creative endeavors. It's sort of the inverse of the Dunning–Kruger effect...whereas the incompetent can't tell how awful their work is, the competent see all the itty-bitty problems in their work in gruesome detail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect [wikipedia.org]
The weakness of this question is that it is not orthogonal. It is testing for skill, self-confidence, and a lack of perfectionism all at once. Unfortunately, slightly low self-confidence and a high degree of perfectionism can be positive attributes in a worker (as long as these attributes aren't so extreme as to be crippling). Too high a degree of self-confidence can lead to interpersonal conflict...or can lead to the situation where the person wastes a ton of time trying to do something themselves when it could have been easily resolved by talking to someone else. A degree of perfectionism prevents sloppy work being passed off as sufficient and leads to a constant drive for improvement (though of course it can also lead to irrational decisions about putting effort into something long after the law of diminishing returns kicks in).
It's still a good question, but you need to make sure that you account for people who would deal with this problem poorly precisely because they are skilled, otherwise you might let a gem slip through your hands.
Delete "New Guy" (Score:4, Insightful)
Replace "New Guy" with "applicant" ("experienced" or otherwise) in the title and you will basically have something that tech company interviewers have been noticing for a while:
The article is good reading, and links to the even more controversial supposition: a large percentage of people *cannot* be taught to program [codinghorror.com]. Highly recommended reading; both of those links would make for good slashdot fodder, if they haven't been posted already.
Re:Experienced only? (Score:4, Insightful)
My problem is that, while I'm perfectly good at the technical side of building a website, art and design is not my forté, and I'm not confident that I could build a website that would make an interview panel sit up and take notice. In fact, I'd be worried that my perfectly functional website that nonetheless looks like ass might be detrimental to the outcome of my job application.
The problem as explained in the article seems to be that the HR department isn't in tune with the needs of the company or IT department, and sending them advice to check that the candidate has a website is going to result in a lot of candidates with pretty but kludgy websites getting jobs at the expense of candidates with well-designed but ugly sites.
Perhaps it would be better to make sure that somebody from the IT department is on the interview panel.