The myth of the developer that can't code
neilwithdata.com
The myth of the developer that can't code
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Re: The myth of the developer that can't code
#2> But I suspect there are no more developers that cannot code than there are lawyers that don't know the law...
I suspect that's wrong. To get a job practicing law, someone generally needs to have passed their state's bar exam. Similarly for other licensed professions like doctors, CPAs, civil engineers, etc. But anyone can legally call themselves a software developer.
Re: The myth of the developer that can't code
#3What can I say? Only LOL.
This guy's nuts.
Re: The myth of the developer that can't code
#4> But I suspect there are no more developers that cannot code than there are lawyers that don't know the law... I suspect that's wrong. To get a job practicing law, someone generally needs to have passed their state's bar exam. Similarly for other licensed professions like doctors, CPAs, civil engineers, etc. But anyone can legally call themselves a software developer.
Exactly.
IT is the far west. There are few educational requirements, and hiring laws specific to our craft. It's a very young field, unlike medicine or architecture, and we just beginning to establish professional standards on the job.
The fact most people see it as magic and can't evaluate it at all doesn't help.
Anecdotally, I've seen many programmers that can't code.
Remember that 2 dev projects out of 3 fail, for a clusters of reasons. And when it doesn't, there is sometimes a few hard kernel of devs that are doing most of the important part of the job, fixing other's mess on the fly, or just plainly doing it for them.
So those bad programmers can go from failure to failure, and never be blamed for it.
But honestly, it it weren't that way, I couldn't have entered the field. I've been given my chance more than once, and I've screwed up many times, before even becoming a decent professional.
Re: The myth of the developer that can't code
#5This article is full of opinions, and brings no facts to the table. The author does not mention his experience interviewing or hiring people, and the whole piece reads more like a rant.
> When an accountant is in an interview, they're not asked to multiply on-the-spot in their head what 485 x 761 equals because "you have to be good at math to be an accountant"
This is an ignorant statement. Accountats don't have to multiply things in their head day to day. Yet developers do need to code, day to day.
I'm a hiring manager and the reason people code on interviews is - well, after joining a company, the first few months they _will_ spend a good chunk of their time coding. And the companies I worked at, who dropped the coding interview always regretted it, through mishires. People who could code, but were not very good at it. E.g. their code was sloppy, incorrect and they needed considerable mentoring and coaching to write code that worked. As senior developers.
The other reason is to even the odds. 70% of people I've seen hired did not have public Github profiles or code they could show. The people who complain about "why can't they just look at my portfolio" and (potentially rightfully) conclude that they're amazing developers don't realize that this approach would result in more bias for hiring this group of people. Good luck maintaining a fair hiring bar this way or hire diverse candidates.
This is why the coding test exists in most places. It's to test for something that you're expected to do from day one and to even the bar that people need to jump through, for everyone.
I'd love to hear what OP suggests to replace the coding tests with - a chat about past projects, then make an offer? And what do you do with the people who don't have these things to show?
Re: The myth of the developer that can't code
#6This article is full of opinions, and brings no facts to the table. The author does not mention his experience interviewing or hiring people, and the whole piece reads more like a rant. > When an accountant is in an interview, they're not asked to multiply on-the-spot in their head what 485 x 761 equals because "you have to be good at math to be an accountant" This is an ignorant statement. Accountats don't have to m…
Recruitment for accountants etc often includes a technical skills component, I don't know why he thinks it doesn't.
Re: The myth of the developer that can't code
#7This article is full of opinions, and brings no facts to the table. The author does not mention his experience interviewing or hiring people, and the whole piece reads more like a rant. > When an accountant is in an interview, they're not asked to multiply on-the-spot in their head what 485 x 761 equals because "you have to be good at math to be an accountant" This is an ignorant statement. Accountats don't have to m…
To be fair, a coding interview would address the "can he code at all" question, but not what you mentioned: sloppiness, incorrect coding and needing mentoring
Re: The myth of the developer that can't code
#8I know these feel-good anti-whiteboard blog posts are in vogue right now, but the harsh reality is we're entering a recession. If you refuse to do whiteboard interviews, or complain about employers who want you to work hard, or only looking for jobs that'll let you unnecessarily rewrite their stack in Rust on k8s, or feel that FizzBuzz is beneath you: you're gonna be in for a rough couple years.
Re: The myth of the developer that can't code
#9This article is full of opinions, and brings no facts to the table. The author does not mention his experience interviewing or hiring people, and the whole piece reads more like a rant. > When an accountant is in an interview, they're not asked to multiply on-the-spot in their head what 485 x 761 equals because "you have to be good at math to be an accountant" This is an ignorant statement. Accountats don't have to m…
The article is a follow-up to a previous post which I linked to in the leading sentence.
> The author does not mention his experience interviewing or hiring people
From the previous article: "I've been a software developer now for around 15 years. In that time, I've been a day-to-day developer, run my own successful software business, was co-founder at a VC funded startup, and I've had to hire and manage developers."
> I'd love to hear what OP suggests to replace the coding tests with - a chat about past projects, then make an offer?
From the article: "Why can't you look at a developer's portfolio, education, projects they've built, GitHub repo, talk with past employers, check references...and from that make an informed hiring decision?"
Re: The myth of the developer that can't code
#10This article is full of opinions, and brings no facts to the table. The author does not mention his experience interviewing or hiring people, and the whole piece reads more like a rant. > When an accountant is in an interview, they're not asked to multiply on-the-spot in their head what 485 x 761 equals because "you have to be good at math to be an accountant" This is an ignorant statement. Accountats don't have to m…
To be fair, a coding interview would address the "can he code at all" question, but not what you mentioned: sloppiness, incorrect coding and needing mentoring
I usually try to detect things like: "do you know lists and dictionaries?". Also very basic abstraction design and basic communication skills. This works well with juniors because we mostly code business logic.
It does not work at all when trying to recruit a senior. I am still clueless about that. I have at least two recent cases in mind of a senior hire that lead to catastrophic results. People that new how to present well at a superficial level but did really poorly once they had non trivial stuff to do.