Comment by endominus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by endominus | Hacker News Reader

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In comparison to some other places I've been to, yes, absolutely. There is a much, much greater assumption in the US that the person you're talking to is actually being honest with you than there is in some other countries. As an example, take the "dishonest used car salesman" stock character - in many other places, that is the default expected behavior of anyone selling you anything. Like going to a bazaar; the price you get will be an absolute rip-off, and you are expected to know this and argue with the store owner. That lack of trust feeds into all levels of a society. Americans might have some high-level trust issues regarding political differences, but nothing like the bone-deep understanding that everyone outside of your family or tribe is actively and constantly trying to deceive, manipulate, and take advantage of you that people who grew up in real low-trust societies have ingrained in themselves. (exceptions might be people growing up in low-trust enclaves within the greater US society - as I understand it, this is part of the reason why some inner city communities struggle to cohere and advocate for themselves effectively, under the term "crabs in a bucket syndrome"). Stuff like the Theranos revelations or that a high percentage of programming jobs applicants can't actually program is shocking to most Americans; it's par for the course in some of the places I've lived.

I don't buy the thing about programmer applicants being unable to program. Easiest thing to screen out in the world. Fizzbuzz and that's it. I think it's mostly American companies pretending to be victims, particularly American companies that are run by people who can't program. Like tptacek saying it takes like two years to get someone out of a company who can't program, like he has to be managed into a weird office first, then like all this massaging and passive actions to like put a bubble around him, because you can't fire anybody ever.

In the government maybe, but in corporations you can get yourself fired in two seconds, not two years, two seconds. "Fuck you" "you're fired!!!" That's it. Two seconds. The whole thing is being on the knife's edge to being fired, they keep you there and move you with that knife's edge. That's the boss's point of contact with you, exactly like a mugger. They have no idea what happens if you're fired! No idea! No idea about the Turkish prison system, no idea about government assistance, no idea, they carefully protect themselves and tell people not to tell them.

Also keep in mind I was deliberately sabotaged in my curriculum, the whole standing up to torture thing I talk about if you read my comments, so if an interviewer asks where I worked in April 2009 I'm like, "There's no April 2009. Is that a reference to the Gregorian Calendar?"

So keep in mind, with my harsh words, I watched the shitshow from the cheapest seat.

What force do you think prevents unqualified people from applying for high-paying jobs?

I had a ten-year experienced candidate unable to write a function to sum an array of integers. Any language he wanted. Wasn’t that he didn’t consider overflow or something like that. Just couldn’t get started at all. I have no idea what he was doing for 10 years, but I gave him something easier than fizzbuzz and he blew it. If you’ve interviewed 100 applicants and never come across someone who couldn’t fizzbuzz, I think you’ve experienced well above the average.

Get applicants with emails like @google.com, @facebook.com, @harvard.edu, that's an easy filter. Surely you, Jim Sokoloff I believe your name is, are not trying to find a perfect deal, at the bottom of the barrel, and pay an insulting wage, right?

Can you do fizzbuzz yourself? Write that email filter yourself, there's a fizzbuzz for you right there.

You should really expand your hiring if your filter is solely someone else's.

Like fizzbuzz?

Mate, this sounds like a bit of a rant with some missing details. Do you want to make a blogpost or something?

"Stuff like the Theranos revelations or that a high percentage of programming jobs applicants can't actually program is shocking to most Americans; it's par for the course in some of the places I've lived."

I've only been in this industry six years at your average Java Spring SCRUM shop but I also find myself shocking at the claim 'a high percentage of programming jobs applicants can't actually program', like what do we mean when this gets said?

The applicant who can’t program often (hopefully/ideally) stays an applicant for a long time and many applications. The applicant who can is more likely to be hired.

It’s no surprise that the average applicant’s skills are relatively weak.

That is one explanation for the phenomenon, but I was actually referring to the sibling comment's note about many applicants being unable to code fizzbuzz during on-site interviews (if you haven't read it, then I encourage you to read through the blog post that first, I think, brought the issue to many people's attention; https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/).

They can’t do fizzbuzz in an interview.

This raises the question of what measure between Fizz Buzz and 'invert a binary tree' are more accurate of day-to-day work

That they legitimately have no idea how to write a computer program.

My first job was at a company which had a poor interview process. Hire fast fire fast right?

1. One programmer spent nine month trying to implement a simple Java app that read data from a message queue, called a library, then wrote data to a message queue. There was an example program available that did the same thing but reading/writing to files. When he was fired deleted his code, then I implemented the app in one week, I had only 6 months full time experience, he claimed to have 30 years.

2. Another programmer ignores all directions and spent 6 months implementing a library that did the EXACT opposite of what the customer asked for. When he was fired we had to rewrite his entire code base because it was so convoluted and poorly written. In the post-mortem we concluded it would have been better to have just deleted his code base as well when he left. He claimed to have over 10 years experience.

3. Several programmers were hired for C programming jobs and didn’t know how to use basic memory and string functions like malloc and free.

4. One programmer was so obsessed with functional programming that he verbally abused other staff members for writing C code (this was required by management and the customer). When he was forced to write C he wrote his code as if it were lisp through massive abuse of macros. When he was fired his code had to be deleted.

5. Many programmers required large amounts of help with simple tasks. Operating on a Linux servers, using make files, etc. this was not such a problem since they came it at a Junior level, but it took massive amounts of time.

6. A programmer who could not touch type, but typed keys one at a time with only his index fingers.

7. A programmer who came to design meetings asking the same questions every week, and talking about running into the same problem every stand up. We would work with him to unblock him, then he would come back and say he had the same problem again. It was maddening and when he was fired we had to delete his code.

Just some examples (in the US btw). I’m not a huge fan of fizz buzz either, but you need some sort of test or you will get a lot of people who have done some tutorials and think they can go be a programmer now.

> A programmer who could not touch type, but typed keys one at a time with only his index fingers.

This seems pretty arbitrary.

It is arbitrary. But he worked really slow. And it stood out to me that someone who claimed to have been doing this for years wouldn’t have muscle memory yet. It was one of the things that made me think he had lied on his resume, but I didn’t judge him for it until he had undeniably proved that he wasn’t going to be productive.

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