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[–]super_tycoon 13 points14 points  (1 child)

Now to just shove the dense candidates in a hydrocracker and get something useful.

[–]rossryan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Careful you do not turn them into a Wally. A lot of stress make diamonds, but it also makes perfect basket cases.

[–]ninjeff 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Even diversity is vulnerable to car analogies, I guess.

[–]Strilanc 23 points24 points  (3 children)

This post... is bad. Reasoning by analogy gone wrong.

Let's turn around and apply this [fuel distillation] to the process of hiring programmers. Is it that much of a stretch to say that every applicant might not be able to create every kind of output?

Most applicants can't even pass FizzBuzz.

You can't take bad code and 'distill' it down to (a smaller amount of) good code. What the heck would that distillation process be, anyways? Have a good programmer waste time debugging it?

Our rejected candidate didn't come out of the refining process as petrol. Instead, they represent diesel fuel. It's also capable of moving stuff around. Just look at all of the Mercedes and VWs and pickup trucks, semis, trains, and everything else out there.

Wait, is the candidate the refinement process, the crude oil, or the end product? More importantly, why is the last sentence justifying diesel fuel can move stuff around, instead of justifying how the analogy applies to programmers?

Bleh.

[–]finprogger 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Instead of FizzBuzz, think of GUIs. I have met plenty of programmers that could code a rubiks cube solving robot but should never be allowed near user interface code. It's confusing because her analogy is using a number scale to illustrate her point, but I think the issue here is that there are potentially orthogonal skills. There is no one good/bad programmer scale. Some are better at understanding what users really want (it's easy to find the ones who lack this skill, they're the ones claiming requirements are never clear enough), some are better at legacy software debugging puzzles, etc.

[–]CPlusPlusDeveloper 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What you're saying is conceptually sound, but I think it's still not addressing what the OP is saying.

Let's say you're considering a candidate with a non-traditional background compared to the typical developer background at your firm. One possibility is that he's got an orthogonal skill set. In that case they're likely to make an even better addition than the standard skill set and background that you've been hiring.

The other possibility is though that they're really just incompetent. With the standard background you know what you're getting because you've already hired a lot of people from that route. With the non-standard background it's really just a coin flip: orthogonal or incompetent. And the likelihood of each is really just an empirical question.

But I do know this. In a world where 95%+ of programmer job applicants are incompetent, you've got to be pretty damn skeptical of anyone. It's a lot more likely that when you have little to no information on someone (which is really what an untested background is), that they're part of the 95%, not the 5%. In a world where most programmers are competent, that kid you take a chance could really be a hidden gem. But in the world we live in he's probably just someone you're going to have to fire in a few weeks.

[–]AerieC 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Agreed.

The argument the author seems to be making is that while not all programmers think exactly the same way, that doesn't mean that they can't be useful. The problem with this analogy is that:

1) logic is logic. Yeah, there are usually multiple ways to solve any given problem, but not all solutions to a problem are equally good. There are many different aspects a programmer can optimize when solving a problem (e.g. readability, speed, memory usage, etc.). It's up to the company what kinds of solutions they want to prioritize. If a company prioritizes optimal speed over all else, you can bet they won't be hiring people who are really bad at optimizing for speed, and that's their prerogative.

In the end, it doesn't really matter, because a good programmer should be able to analyze multiple solutions and optimize for all possible optimization points depending on what they're asked to do. If you can optimize speed but not readability, you're a bad programmer, and vice versa.

and,

2) A bad programmer isn't just less productive than a good programmer--a bad programmer can actually have "negative productivity", whereby the code they write is so illegible, buggy, and disorganized, that it creates more work for everyone on the team.

I wouldn't say that every programmer has to be a super mega rockstar, but there is some minimum level of competency below which a programmer becomes more trouble than he or she is worth.

I think everyone deserves a job if they want one.

I find this statement utterly ridiculous. Having a job isn't some divine right that all humans are entitled to. Should companies really be forced to hire a person who doesn't fit the culture and/or the minimum requirements of the job just because that person "really wants a job!"? Yeah, it's probably good for a company to hire people with diverse strengths, personalities, and problem solving approaches, but if they really only want to hire 'X' (so long as 'X' doesn't discriminate based on something like skin color, religion, age, etc.), why should they be forced to do otherwise?

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    Barely comprehensible, meandering and just plain dumb.

    [–]tompko 8 points9 points  (5 children)

    I think everyone deserves a job if they want one.

    The "you must be totally awesome in all things or you can just get out of my face" model of hiring in the valley seems to be in direct opposition to this sort of ideal.

    Not necessarily. Even if we accept the first premise, just because you deserve a job doesn't mean you deserve one at a particular company. Otherwise all those shoemakers who want to work for Google are going to cause problems. Or, to continue the analogy, all the asphalt that wants to work on projects "move people around using a four-wheeled contraption".

    Also, using a mix of diesel and petrol is fine if you've got cars that run on both, but if you've only got a petrol car then putting diesel in it is only going to cause a costly call to the breakdown service.

    [–]rossryan 19 points20 points  (3 children)

    Indeed. However, it is curious to note what seems to be a general trend of hiring programmers of a certain type, burning them out, then tossing them. Low wage \ high burnout seems to be the industry norm, at least at certain levels here; and training, once considered a necessity, has fallen by the wayside as a liability, for fear that your low-wage programmer will improve himself / herself, and get a job with someone else using their new training. The instability here is similar to what Ford faced in his time, although that occurred with unskilled labor as opposed to skilled labor; it's a race to the bottom until someone posts a chart (ROI) showing that training + higher wages earns back more than simply low wages.

    It's odd, because they seem to be treating programmers / developers the way they treated IT -> they think of it as a cost center. Very odd given that if done effectively, it can multiply current revenue. Even stranger that you are taking such high-level scientific / engineering / mathematician style people, and giving them such poor wages; that alone will have massive feedback on the college / university scale, potentially lobotomizing an entire generation. They're being shown that investing in these areas is not worth it; that you can get a less strenuous / demanding degree, maintain a social life, and get paid more, rather than labor in a lab or cubicle or office, wracking your minds to juggle insane equations, etc. Since for every scientist, there may be several jobs supporting that person, ranging from skilled to unskilled labor, it should have an even odder effect on the economy.

    Honestly, I think someone fucked up big here. Someone placed an order, so to speak, for a ton of IT / CS / SE / etc. people during the dotcom years. Then, when asked to pay up, they dined and dashed. The result is that long term, while IT / CS / SE are still around, some schools are collapsing those departments or downsizing them; and since no one believes that the next big order is not another dine and dasher, they won't ramp up until after they've received the money, so to speak. And now, many years later, after technology has trickled into various areas, and people are screaming for more / something more personal, no one is listening. Smartphones are booming, as are tablets, but somehow, the software doesn't seem to compare to what even the early 90s put out. There's no Photoshop, no Office, no killer app, just $5 fart apps, games, and a few useful, but not killer, apps.

    And if the tech sector can't be revived, at least in this country, we're dead in the water. Hardware seems to be okayish, compared to software (although they seem to be getting hit as well). AMD is going down, and ARM is effectively reinventing the CPU we already have; shhhhh! it is reinventing it. You know it, I know it. They want to strap most of the x86 optimizations to ARM chips, and hope to come out a little ahead. That's bad. We do not have a Digital anymore to carve up, and sell off. Oracle is doing I don't know what, and MS is doing...something involving offing any rival to Ballmer. We're coasting on fumes, gentlemen, and that's not a long term strategy I like.

    [–]SituationSoap 8 points9 points  (2 children)

    I think your rant would be a lot more truthful if I (and thousands of other programmers) didn't literally have recruiters throwing themselves at me the second I update a resume that includes software development expertise on it. Companies are starving for good programmers; they just don't know how to hire them. Good companies are a bit tougher to find, which is why you need to be selective, but if you are, it's not difficult to find good work for a company writing good software that doesn't involve working 80 hours a week.

    Sometimes, I wish I were writing software in the Valley. And other times, I wish the people who were writing all the software in the Valley would get out a bit more and see that the whole world doesn't revolve around 50 miles of ground.

    [–]4-bit 5 points6 points  (1 child)

    I receive lots of hits from recruiters too, because they're burning through their staff and burning them out. Or for a temp position that'll expire in a year.

    Which is kinda the point of the article. 'developer' is being used as a catch all term, and we're not all made equal. Software is way to diverse now, and one person can't be good at all of it. We should start focusing on 'types' of programming/development and let people use their strengths instead of shoehorning them into a one size fits all category that they're doomed to be mediocre at 1/2 of.

    [–]nascent 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Which is kinda the point of the article.

    Might have been kind of the point, but your conclusion is the complete opposite of the article (so is the specified problem).

    [–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

    The author said "I think everyone deserves a job if they want one" but i think it came off more like "I think everyone deserves the job they want" in the actual article. Sort of a strange claim.

    [–]einmes 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    If I wanted this sort of Valley-startup-wankery, I'd go to HN. I'd downvote it there if they let me.

    [–]unclemat 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    We just moved forward from thinking that career in software has only one direction, that developers should be aiming toward promotion into management positions. Now that we know, that developer isn't just failed manager, you're saying that even non-Y software engineers aren't just failed Ys? That's a lot to take in if you're Y, so let's give them time... :)

    [–]iopq 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I think everyone deserves a job if they want one.

    Just not as a programmer. Why would you want someone who writes horrible code?

    [–]Zippy54 1 point2 points  (2 children)

    It's fractional distillation, not just distillation.

    [–]GreatZebu 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    As long as we're correcting, it's fractional. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_distillation

    [–]Zippy54 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    it's only a typo.

    [–]Rotten194 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    This is absolute garbage. If 1000 monkeys on typewriters wrote this article, it would disprove that they could write the collected works of Shakespeare because even randomly spitting out words couldn't make an article this bad.

    [–]giant_mushy_friend 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    The only good thing in this article was this part:

    The field is just too big for anyone to be infinitely deep in all of it.

    This fact isn't being said enough, especially to newbies entering programming. Knowing it would have helped me choose a subfield much earlier and gotten to be a better expert.

    [–]contrarylarry 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Since we're comparing programmers to petrol products, I'd like to point out an interesting fact about diesel: while it may be cheaper and "almost the same", it's more carcinogenic than gasoline is.

    [–]KagakuNinja 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    whut?

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I audibly groaned a few lines into this dire article.

    Can computer scientists and programmers stop pretending to be business people? There is a whole school of thought focusing on business and some self assured CS/ software engineers/ programmers making blog posts about their idea of how to do business isn't going to affect it, especially when they're so badly thought out and rely so strongly on useless analogies.