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I'm glad the "rigorous testing process" was mentioned. The facade of "we only hire superninja-kickass-hyperexperts and we will verify that you are such a programmer before we hire you" attracts a certain type of person, and intimidates another. And it may be that it intimidates more women than men. But the article seems to glide past that and presents the idea that five years of experience might change someone's will…
I agree that lack of gender diversity in tech is an obvious problem, and I laud Fog Creek for trying to address this problem. However, I'd like to strongly emphasis the fact that one of the main problems Fog Creek identified as hindering the most talented female developers from applying to Fog Creek, is also a huge problem that prevents many of the most talented male developers from applying to Fog Creek. Ironically,…
Several people have already mentioned it here, but I'm also very pleased to read this line: "Hall asked a simple question: Why didn't Chipps, a brilliant engineer, ever apply to work at Fog Creek? Chipps said she didn't think she would make it through their rigorous testing process." I do think that the grueling and intimidating software interview process is a very serious problem in our field. This one sentence hint…
It's tough though, because when you are a small company that expects developers to jump in and be productive, you do need some kind of process. That process can be referral based, in which case testing isn't as necessary because you can rely on past shared experience, but that obviously limits your talent pool. When you are interacting with an unknown (or a less known) person, you have to have some kind of vetting pr…
Fog Creek has the same hypocrisy as any other company that demands X years of experience from applicants but consider it somebody else's problem how they get that.
Several people have already mentioned it here, but I'm also very pleased to read this line: "Hall asked a simple question: Why didn't Chipps, a brilliant engineer, ever apply to work at Fog Creek? Chipps said she didn't think she would make it through their rigorous testing process." I do think that the grueling and intimidating software interview process is a very serious problem in our field. This one sentence hint…
This diversity madness is putting SV at a major disadvantage.
Maybe Joel needs to add another point to his "test" 13. Do you foster Junior/Mentor relationships?
I've worked for a company that claimed they did and it was always talked about internally in their "look how great our culture is" corporate-speak. Some developers even had the title of "mentor," but there wasn't any actual time allocated for it and no one ever took it seriously. In my entire time there I never met with my "mentor."
Several people have already mentioned it here, but I'm also very pleased to read this line: "Hall asked a simple question: Why didn't Chipps, a brilliant engineer, ever apply to work at Fog Creek? Chipps said she didn't think she would make it through their rigorous testing process." I do think that the grueling and intimidating software interview process is a very serious problem in our field. This one sentence hint…
It's tough though, because when you are a small company that expects developers to jump in and be productive, you do need some kind of process. That process can be referral based, in which case testing isn't as necessary because you can rely on past shared experience, but that obviously limits your talent pool. When you are interacting with an unknown (or a less known) person, you have to have some kind of vetting pr…
Let's not forget, we're an industry where employers very consistently claim a serious and economically harmful shortage of talented developers. At the same time, we're an industry that accepts an interview process they open acknowledge will result in the rejection of good candidates because they feel that the damage of a false positive is so high.
Is there a chance that there is a strong "negativity bias" at work here?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias
In other words, is it possible that the bad memories of a false positive is masking the thousand paper cuts that are inflicted on the high tech workforce though grueling interviews? What overall harm does it do to an industry when a programmer who would have been successful gets rejected from a promising job due to a poor performance on a one hour data structures problem at a white board? I think there's the harm you see, and then the harm you don't.
This one line suggests the harm may be serious and extensive. I'm not making any particular prescription here, I'm just saying that when developers experience repeated rejections due to repeated false negatives, this may be vastly more harmful in a global sense than people currently realize.
EDIT: false positive/negative switch (vonmoltke mentioned below).
As a younger male about to finish his software engineering degree and start applying I agree with these points. I am intimidated at the rigorous testing some companies use. I don't have the confidence that others might have in there ability. I am ultimately looking for a mentoring workplace ( just to start) where I can build my confidence quickly and start producing for the company.
One place I worked at had a senior dev slash architect who really enjoyed mentoring green developers. This company did tend to hire people straight out of college, and this guy was really good at bringing them up to speed. It was really quiet nice to behold.
The problem was, the hires that were 'good' tended to leave after a year or two, leaving the less talented and motivated to muddle along. I think this is why you rarely see this nowadays.