How To Find Bad Programmers 359
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.
Crappy programmers (Score:4, Insightful)
Go to India?
Re:Crappy programmers (Score:5, Interesting)
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 - anecdote (Score:2, Informative)
A close acquaintance of mine hired an Indian web developer to build his site. Granted, it was a very simple site I could've done in a day, but the Indian guy did it way cheaper for the whole package - including domain name and hosting. A year later, the site spreads malware (blocked by FF) and the Indian guy is nowhere to be found. My acquaintance can't even get his password to login to the site and disable the malware.
You get what you paid for.
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nope, the people who are worth anything are thrown out the door first prior to or right after merger/acquisition, the cheap rate tards are left behind.
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And the REALLY good people aren't available, because they've gotten sick of the crap and found a new career doing something entirely different.
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My Mom drove a truck for about ten years (Various Companies)
You've been misinformed. They track you via GPS, prices everywhere *you* can stop are marked up, Dispatchers give you illegally short times to go distances, believe truckers are a dime a dozen, and happily lie to Highway inspectors when you're caught, and all this in exchange for a job where you get the joy of having your entire truck stolen at gun point.
Ah, the joy of crushing hopes and dreams - {G}..
Pug
Re:Crappy programmers (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Crappy programmers (Score:4, Interesting)
I've had a consistent problem with indian programmers.
Regardless of quality level, they say "yes" to the most insane requirements by executives.
We had a project which three groups had internally estimated at 2400 to 4000 hours (and a couple million in new hardware).
The VP said, "it's a 600 hour project without needing new hardware!"
They said yes.
They did about $600,000 work on it- and now everyone (including the executive) is quietly ignoring it. It will never see production. It's "complete".
The indians *never* stop the executives when this comes up.
And the executives are happy because
a) they were not told no.
b) the people who worked on the project are anonymous or gone/transferred elsewhere.
Meanwhile the company just dropped 2-3% of the annual budget down a hole.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is true, and it's a problem which needs addressing. Keep in mind that they didn't say "yes" because they're ignorant, stupid, or bad coders. They may in fact be some or all of those things (which is a different issue), but those things are most likely not why they said "yes"; they did it because they're Indian.
Note that I say this not as an Indian but as an expat who's been in India for a bit more than a year now. There are ridiculously complex reasons why this behavior exists (it's a multi-thousand ye
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Start a MU* (Score:4, Funny)
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
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One of the programmers on the Chrome team used to be a coder for a small-time MMORPG, so there's some evidence that it's possible that the occasional Jedi will wander in. But, yeah, that would have to be one heck of a filtering process.
Step 1 (Score:5, Funny)
Step 1: Create an Ask Slashdot looking for (ironically) *good* programmers
Step 2: Identify all self-identified good programmers
Done!
Re:Step 1 (Score:5, Insightful)
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%.
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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%.
It is called the Slashdot Paradox.
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Which just shows that Slashdotters are better at self-reflection than most. 90% of people think they're in the top 10% of drivers.
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That could work, I guess, if only 20% or so if coders read slashdot.
More likely, I think you are saying, is that some of those who think their code-don't-stink are fooling themselves.
Re:Step 1 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Welcome to Slashdot, where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the programmers are above average."
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-- Brian W. Kernighan
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Recruitment Agencies (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Recruiters are a great source of entertainment.
Week 1: "Technology XYZ is really hot right now. If you can put some of that on your resume I can get you all kinds of interviews."
Week 12: "Technology ABC is really hot right now. If you can put some of that on your resume I can get you all kinds of interviews."
Week 24: "Say, do you know anything about technology QRS? I was just talking to the program director at one of my biggest clients and ..."
Re:Recruitment Agencies (Score:4, Funny)
My favorite result from a recruiter - and this was an "in-house" recruiter, which are often the best - is this story. We were building a Windows appliance, so I was looking for a UI programmer with Windows experience and any kind of background with industrial automation or appliance UIs. Any experience with blade server management a plus.
I got resumes from guys who had done industrial automaiton for ... manufacturing window frames ... and turbine blades. There really is nothing going on in these guys' heads: it's just keyword matching, nothing more.
Resumes in Word not hard for Java/Unix people... (Score:2)
Just use Poi [apache.org].
Re:Resumes in Word not hard for Java/Unix people.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I always insist on Word format. I'm filtering out programmers who will refuse to follow simple, clear shop standards just because they personally disagree with them. You know, sometimes I don't care what your arguments are about whether we should drive on the right side of the road or the left - the important thing is that we all use the same standard!
Also, you'd be amazed how many places still OCR resumes and send the text around. Word's Times font is what all the OCR software (in this domain) expects,
Re:Resumes in Word not hard for Java/Unix people.. (Score:4, Insightful)
This being Slashdot and all, though, I will note that binary Word docs are neither simple, clear, nor standard, even among versions of Word, much less non-MS products. I'll also note that allowing Word docs as your only standard opens the door to a ton of undesirable and unintended flexibility, such as using complex sectioning, versioning, and incompatible fonts, which might freeze up your OCR systems. Given what you've stated thus far, a far more simple and clear test of shop standard adherence would be just requiring plain-text resumes, which I've seen many places do quite successfully.
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If you're smart enough to recognize the problems inherent in Word, you're smart enough to preview your doc with WordPad and use only the two Microsoft ur-fonts (Arial headers over Times New Roman body). You can produce a very professional resume with just those two fonts (miserable as they may be), good use of white space, and moderate use of bullet lists. Man I'm tired of sans-serif resumes with tiny margins that are nothing but bullet points (usually for 8 pages, not that I ever read past page 2).
for a real class act (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Ask me about my 500 mile commute (Score:2)
A SURE sign is when you get calls from recruiters about jobs that are 500-plus miles away:
1) The job is so shitty that we have asked every recruiter on the planet to try to fill it.
2) Or else there are 50 openings on a project that is so utterly f-ed up that no competent person would want to work on it, and it will take 50 incompetents to just keep it from imploding under its own mass.
3) Or recruiter is geographically clueless. My resume clearly states that I will not accept any jobs outside of bicycle comm
Re:for a real class act (Score:5, Funny)
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?
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Sometimes you get the reverse as well. A buddy of mine was one of the people behind Qualcomm's Brew and they put him in charge of co-op hiring. He was very entertained when -- 3 months after Brew was released -- he got a resumé submitted to him that indicated the student had "2 years experience with Brew". I remember he was very excited to meet that fellow, and was looking forward to quizzing him on his 'deep Brew experience'.
And, of course, sometimes there are other mistakes in the requirements. I got
Just demand pretty much everything in your job ad: (Score:3, Funny)
Careful! (Score:4, Funny)
Some people here could fill that job!
And....
Okay, I have to write this to get past the lameness filter. But listing too many languages is likely to get you a very experienced engineer, not a bad programmer.
Resume in Word (Score:3, Insightful)
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Personally I love it when they ask for this. Nothing pleases me more than writing a resume whose formatting seems to change based on what version of Office you're using...
I think you should probably change your default printer. Word files should not change formatting due to what versions. HOWEVER, the minimum margins are determined based on your default printer. If you are like me and have a wide range of printing devices, (or did) then you need to be careful that you have wider margins before you start typing.
Example:
1) I have the drivers for a Phaser 7500 printer which can print up to 12.6 by 47.25 inches. I can set my margins to 0" in Word. I create my document
Rename .txt to .doc (Score:2)
If your recruiter asks for a Word doc and you are actually interested, just rename a *.txt file to *.doc.
I actually just have a hard link on my web site, my resume.txt is the same file as my resume.doc.
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Is this joke from the 20th century? (Score:2)
Requiring resumes to be in the proprietary and platform-specific Word .doc format, instead of .pdf, .html, or .txt formats, is a nifty little test early on in the hiring process.
I can't remember when I last worried about .doc compatibility. It has been about five years since I had a real problem with converting basic .doc documents in OpenOffice, and when making them myself I can't recall a serious problem in even longer. I have never seen "must be in .docx format" (which can be a problem) and 99% of HR drones wouldn't be able to tell the difference anyway. HTML and (potentially) PDF* are just security risks.
This guy is either using a very dated joke or is a massive zealot.
* Not to
You want bad programmers? (Score:5, Funny)
Simple (Score:4, Funny)
Interviewer: "Do you code exclusively in PHP?"
Answer: "Yup! Been using it ever since I gave up VB6."
Interviewer: "You're hired!"
Wanted! (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
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Pre-iphone, putting words such as "Cocoa" and "Objective-C" on your resume caused HR to expedite it to a trash can. "Your last work experience was this 'Cocoa' thing? Where did you work, Starbucks?" It was really hard to be a career Objective-C developer.
I know your post was meant to be funny, but that HR departments acknowledge the existence of Objective-C is a sign of progress.
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Those are writings on the wall... (Score:3, Insightful)
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!
I've seen that sh*t too. Back in 1995 I was applying for a VB 3.0 job and got rejected because I didn't have 7 years of experience (VB 3.0 was less than two years old, and the whole VB line wasn't 7 years old at all.)
Move the clock forwards to 1998, same deal, got rejected at two applications: one for not having 7 years of experience in Java and another one for not having 8 years of experience with C++ STL. 1998 people!!!. And then in 2001, same again, but this time it was 10 years of Java experience. How
Ask Slashdot? (Score:2)
Ummm... post a programming question in the Ask Slashdot section?
(Ducks)
They are easy to find. (Score:2)
Easy... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Listen, buddy, I don't know how you did it, but my company's lawyers will be contacting you shortly.
There is no way in hell you should have gotten a copy of our hiring procedure through any legitimate means, but if you did you had to have signed the NDA that came with it.
Treat similar things differently (Score:4, Insightful)
For instance, requiring that prospective hires know how to use Linux, Unix, and Solaris. Or require knowledge of Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008. An alternative is to require just one such thing with the implication that you'll throw out all the others, so your job posting says Visual Studio 2005, leaving the guys who used 2008 wondering if their resumes are going to be thrown out.
Another is to be overly specific. We don't just want SQL, we want this brand of SQL from this company and this year. Yeah, they're not all exactly the same, but still. You can do this for non-language requirements too. "Experience with data driven applications involving medium-sized distributed computer systems which process customer orders in Swiss French in the used wristwatch industry. Swiss German not acceptable."
Also, I could never figure out why companies who want C++ and not C always say "C/C++".
Got a point, but he is to heavy handed (Score:4, Informative)
I know how to find one bad programmer at least. Hire the guy who wrote that article.
Yes he does have a point, but he goes overboard and on several point shows a complete lack of being able to work within the system. No job environment is perfect.
1. List a String of Acronyms for Technologies
This is indeed bad, but you also need to be clear about what you want and the clearest way to list what technologies are needed for the job is to make a list. The list ain't bad, a long unfocused list is bad. If a job doesn't have a short list of what is required then I know they don't have a fucking clue what they are looking for. Only apply if you wish to hold their hand on every decision making process, which will turn out to have a lot of similarity with a random number generator.
2. Put an Arbitrary Number Next to Each Skill
Yup can be pretty bad but how else do you attempt to make it clear you need someone with experience with HTML, not just someone who has seen the acronym once? Personally I would use the experience level you must have for the job rather then years. Because years don't mean anything. I have used databases for 20 years now, but am not a DBA'er (I once talked to a girl after all).
3. Say Nothing Positive About the Position
Yeah, I do notice that. The old "what we offer" seems to have gone missing in action. But on the other hand, am I the only one who hates the boiler-plate "fresh and young company with an informal attitude"? Only put things here if they are relevant and true.
4. Use Euphemisms for the Negative Aspects of the Job
Oh boy. Don't forget the "flexible" one. Means: We are going to screw you every which way but whine like a girl if you ask for a single thing back. Basically, jobs are like girls. Nobody who doesn't have a multiple personality could ever hope to succeed.
5. Require Resume to be in Word doc Format
I like this one, good way to avoid MS shops. ALWAYS look for the desktops being used. All MS? Then run. Fast.
I am actually working on a little site myself that will advise people on how to buy a website. How do you handle the process? How do you determine your true requirements so you don't get hussled? What can you do to avoid becoming the dreaded "scope creep" client and the huge costs that come with it?
What the article/site will mostly focus on is trying to educate customers about the product they are buying and a LOT of companies hiring programmers don't have a clue about programmers or the job they are supposed to do. And this is odd, because if you are going to buy a car, you bring that friend who knows everything about cars. But anything to do with IT and those Luddites from HR can surely handle it. Would you let the guy who doesn't drive handle purchasing the company cars?
So, here is my own list of how to find a GOOD programmer.
Agism rears its ugly head again (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:2, Insightful)
Opening line on the post referencing agism: "Young programmers always say things like..."
More: "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."
Hypocrite much? You sound just as bad as the young programmers you are condemning.
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Discrimination is not a bad word - hiring indiscriminately tends to end badly. Agism is inappropriate discrimination based on age, and it's very rare that young programmers are affected by it. Young == cheap, and managers seem to love that.
For many positions, years of experience is a very helpful indicator of the ability to get things done in engineering. If you have that many years of experience, you'll almost never be rejected for being unusually young (as long as you're at least 18, otherwise the local
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I see you play FF8, you must be a yungin'.
But seriously, you both have a point.
Youthful inexperience can be just as bad as old age in causing arrogance and close-mindedness.
That said, to call every fresh graduate worthless and that they always are claiming proficiency is better... that is off too. I'm quite the humble 21-year old, and I'm willing to learn from the old coots as much as I can.
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So what about those of us who DON'T say such nonsense and already respect the Wisdom of Our Elders?
Re:Agism rears its ugly head again (Score:5, Funny)
Not cocky enough to be Good.
Re:Agism rears its ugly head again (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Agism rears its ugly head again (Score:4, Informative)
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Microsoft full of bad programmers?
Linus Torvalds wouldn't say that.
Theo de Raadt wouldn't say that.
Larry Wall wouldn't say that.
RMS wouldn't say that.
Anybody on a major OSS project wouldn't say that.
The reason we will never win is because the OSS movement consists more of ignorant fanboys than competent programmers dedicated to the cause.
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Bill? Is that you?
Re:Call Bill (Score:4, Insightful)
You only ever hear the fanboys. The real supporters are too busy doing things that matter.
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Re:Call Bill (Score:4, Interesting)
...judging by the Microsoft engineers i've met (who were nearly all from the Mac Business Unit), they really don't have a shortage of coding talent over there. What they have is a mind-boggling surplus of bad management, starting with Ballmer.
That's something that MS doesn't have a patent on.
One of my favorite examples, that gets knowing looks from lots of good programmers: Some years back, I was hired to implement a specific standard (which one isn't important here, but you'd recognize the name). When I started, I was bemused to see written orders that explicitly included not implementing a critical part of the standard, because "it isn't needed in our system". So I did the sensible thing: I implemented the entire standard, but included a switch that disabled the part they didn't want. I was also a bit annoyed by the fact that they explicitly denied me the use of a downloadable compliance test package (which was even free).
After a while, the project was working well enough that they delivered the first release to several customers. Among the bug reports, every customer included the fact that my part didn't pass their compliance test (which was the one I'd been denied access to), and they explicitly noted the one part that didn't work at all, which was of course the part I'd been ordered not to implement. Every customer said they wouldn't accept the product until that part was working. I got a "top priority" request asking how quickly I could implement the missing feature. I flipped the switch in my test setup, thoroughly tested it, and reported a few days later that it was ready for delivery. My managers were duly impressed by how quickly I'd done it, and the customers all accepted it.
A few months later, they were setting up for the product's "2.0" project. I noted that my standard was included, and that they again explicitly required that I not implement that one part that they "didn't need".
I sent my resume around, and a few weeks later, told them that I wouldn't be working on release 2.0.
It's interesting how many of the good programmers that I know have stories very similar to this. And most of them don't work for Microsoft.
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Makes me wonder why I work here
Oh, you already know that. You don't want to be on the other side of the glass. Can't say I blame you.
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There's all sorts of relevant, pertinent information about people that can be found on Google. And, as long as you don't use anything from one of the legally protected classes of information to base your hiring on (such as race, religion, gender, etc), you'd be a fool not to use it.
I once had a candidate tell me they were the primary developer of a certain open source application. By looking them and the project up on Google, I was able to determine they were lying out of their ass. So, I was able to wee
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Good question...
I had one candidate who sold their self as an experienced Business Analyst. By googling them, I found a posting by somebody with the same name, location and contact number who listed their experience as Admin Assistant with relevant skills in typing, scheduling and filing. Hardly what they claimed on their resume.
In another case I flew a candidate out for an interview, only to find that they posted to their myspace how they 'jacked' a free trip out of some sucker and were heading to Mexico f
Re:I see lousy coders.... everywhere (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Thanks (Score:2)
You saved me the trouble of posting this response. Throw some mods at this fella folks!
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Add me to it.
Simple test: Ask me what 3 questions *I* would ask if I were looking to hire someone, and what my answers would be. Then see how many of them *you* would have gotten right. And wonder why not *one* of those 3 questions had anything directly to do with writing code ...
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I'm confused, what?
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So make sure it's pointless, and they know it's pointless. It's an exercise, not a product.
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All 10-15 minutes of said time?
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Re:I see lousy coders.... everywhere (Score:4, Interesting)
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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.
If it's something that is likely to have commercial value, then I'm with you on that. But if it's obviously some demo code with the express purpose of showing whether or not you have a clue what you're doing, then it's not a problem.
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Anyone applying for a programming job at any level should welcome being asked any programming problem the equivalent of FizzBuzz. The simple fact is, 99% of applicants for an entry-level coding position cannot program at all (regardles of degree or claimed experience), and (in my experience) 2/3s of people with 20+ years of experience at well-known companies still cannot program at all. You would be amazed.
Seriously, you want to work for a company that asks applicants to write at least some trivial code d
Re:I see lousy coders.... everywhere (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
Well put. Excellent comparison. And it's clear you are a good programmer. A one hour estimate taking seven hours to do correctly is par for our industry.
rd
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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.
Even if what they are asked to write is a function that calculates the GCD of two numbers, or a pseudocode showing one understands a classic algorithm or data structure (which btw are very legit coding questions for an interview)?
Re:I see lousy coders.... everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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brilliant but unmaintainable code
I've read most of your comments in this thread and largely agree with you. However, there is no such thing as brilliant but unmaintainable code. Brilliant code is typically something you would never have thought of doing, but what it does and how to change it is immediately obvious when you look at it.
I worked with a guy who was very smart and could solve problems that most of the rest of the staff would have trouble with... and I advocating firing him because it was less
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There is, but there's not much call for it nowadays. The kind of stuff Steve Wozniak could do in 256 bytes of 6502 assembler (e.g. stuff which behaved differently -- and usefully differently -- if you jumped into the middle of an instruction).
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You get what you pay for. 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.
Hell yeah. That's why, when deciding whether a job is worth taking, I always ask the prospective employers to give me a month of salary without working for it.
There does seem to be an awful lot of shitty jobs out there, though.
Re:I see lousy coders.... everywhere (Score:4, Insightful)
Have them write you something small for free.
I have seen exactly one instance of this happening. I walked right out. Four months later the company as charged with unethical buisness practices. They even got sued by a Church of all things.
Asking to look at existing samples (a portfolio) or testing is one thing. Asking for free work is bound to get only inferior employees, lawsuits and criminal charges.
Re: (Score:2)
Free useful work, sure. But write a short class? Esp during the interview process?
Of course, make sure it's totally outside the realm of being used.
Re:I see lousy coders.... everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:2)
But write a short class? Esp during the interview process?
I completely agree that this is both useful and acceptable. Actually this is probably what the OP meant but it didn't sound that way.
Re: (Score:2)
haha. I won't take a test any more. I'll happily have a conversation about the technology, but I no longer take tests.
I certainly don't write code for free. It's insulting.
Fortunately I have an excellent reputation, so even in crappy times I will get the occasional out of the blue job offer. Yes, offer.
Re:I see lousy coders.... everywhere (Score:5, Interesting)
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: (Score:3, Funny)
That's what the roll of carpet and shovel is for...
Re: (Score:2)
"The circular nature of such training guarantees a worker who's view is designed to be narrow."
Sure, because it's a well-known fact that once you pass a certification test you're not allowed to learn anything else.
Seriously, if you are looking for someone to be a Admin for your RedHat installations, you would prefer the candidate that doesn't have a RedHat certification?
Re: (Score:2)
To find a bad programmer (or bad anything actually) hire anyone whose resume/CV features "certified" or "certification" by a corporation that sells the product covered by the certificate (e.g.: "microsoft certified"). The circular nature of such training guarantees a worker who's view is designed to be narrow.
Woa, woa, woa, wait there. Are you saying that you can get any microsoft certification just by paying, without any type of evaluation at all?
Re: (Score:2)
Read closer. He means anything that is "$COMPANY certified" e.g. MCSE, CNA, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I don't know if he's a good VB developer (whatever that means), but I know a guy who has made a lot of money for himself and his company through his VB work, if that counts for anything.
Re: (Score:2)
With this subject line, you are sure to get a bad developer. I have never seen a good VB developer.
I have. He was good at a lot of other languages and platforms, too. I can pick any tech stack or language (be it application or systems programming), and I can assure you, most of its programmers suck.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If your friend has 20 years of experience they were probably just looking for a way to eliminate him. Hiring practices have never been objective, it's just that today the song-and-dance has better production values.
Re:looking for C/C+/C++ programmers (Score:5, Funny)
Well, you'll certainly get bad programmers if you choose the ones with 'C+' on their resume.