Hiring programmers (2005)

http://neil.fraser.name/news/2005/09/03/

29 42 17 years ago

neil.fraser.name

tptacek6• 17 years ago

This article contains no apparent information and is from 2005. I had a comment about it, but instead I'm flagging it, and urge you to do the same.

stuff4ben• 17 years ago

I dunno, I think this would be a great experiment to try out now and see what you get. It's a great way to weed out the pretenders from the real thing (provided you want programmers who know something about Linux). Plus you're almost guaranteed a larger sampling size due to the economic environment we're in. I'd love to see the statistics and demographics now versus then.

statictype• 17 years ago

Its interesting only because, when you look at the negative predictors and you see 'hotmail address', 'mcse' and you nod your head in agreement, then you see 'women' and you then you start to think twice about your stereotypes.

joshhart• 17 years ago

He only had 30 apply, of those maybe a couple were women. That's far too small a sample size to draw any real conclusions.

jlm382• 17 years ago

It's sad that women never managed to log in... but out of 30, there couldn't be too many women in the application pool to begin with.

radu_floricica• 17 years ago

Three candidates out of 30 who managed to finish the contest is worth raising an eyebrow.

RiderOfGiraffes3• 17 years ago

That doesn't surprise me at all. Out of 15 candidates for a position advertised as "C, C++ and Python Programmer", only 4 could actually write a "FizzBuzz" program in any of the given languages.

jrnkntl2• 17 years ago

That's funny, right now in 2009, when we are planning to start a company in Thailand we are hiring only:

programming females that are married (pref. with kids)

Since they're the only ones here that are not job hopping, capable from working at home and not all day on facebook instead of the majority of Thai students/fresh graduates.

marcusbooster• 17 years ago

Well you're wrong on one account, they are on Facebook all day.

jrnkntl2• 17 years ago

What? You got a bunch of Thai mothers as a friend? ;)

troels2• 17 years ago

They don't have anti-discrimination laws in Thailand?

fuzzythinker• 17 years ago

The question is pretty much the same as one used by justin.tv ..

dmhouse2• 17 years ago

Interesting way of hiring!

I don't think there was any point in listing the demographic observations he did, the sample is way too small for anyone to try to draw conclusions.

philwelch3• 17 years ago

It's a great first step to hiring. But I'm surprised that he didn't have any university graduates pass--the problem itself is a freshman-level bozo test used to apply the concept of a stack. The rest (log in to ssh and install a CGI script) is a set of useful skills that any competent programmer could (hopefully) teach themselves within the timespan of the problem.

If you only have 3 out of 30 candidates pass the bozo test, that limits your choices when it comes to testing them on having any real talent.

weaksauce• 17 years ago

Or a regex as the case was in the given solution from the author.

dmhouse2• 17 years ago

"used to apply the concept of a stack"

Do you really need something as complicated as a stack?

  n = 0
  for (char in string)
    if (char == '(') n++
    if (char == ')') n--
    if (n < 0) print "Unbalanced"
  if (n != 0) print "Unbalanced"

timwiseman• 17 years ago

This is definitely interesting. One thing to reemphasize (which the blog post says, but it cannot be overeemphasized) is that the sample size is so small as to make any results highly suspect.

The other thing I found interesting was this one: >MCSE or other Microsoft certification

This makes sense. Getting an MCSE is a major investment in time and money in Microsoft technologies. Those people rarely also invest a lot of time learning nix as well (definitely some exceptions). I would not be surprised if many of those candidates simply moved on to other opportunities after finding out how tied to nix technoligies this particular job was going to be. Even if they were that person that had *nix skills in addition to their MCSE they probably found out they could make more money somewhere else that put more value on the certification itself.

codesink• 17 years ago

It would be useful to know where he advertised for the job.

Zak4• 17 years ago

And the content of the advertisement. If it was clear that the job was web programming in a Linux environment, then it's more surprising that a significant number of applicants failed to show basic proficiency with the tools of the trade (SSH and the command line). If it said "Programmer wanted, high pay and stock options, no degree required", then one could expect replies from just about anybody.

khill• 17 years ago

I'm surprised no one tried to root the box.

Zak4• 17 years ago

The challenge description says candidates were encouraged to install other programming environments if they so desired. This leads me to suspect they were given root access.

russell• 17 years ago

In Silicon Valley a Craigslist ad often gets several hundred replies. Unless I get some kind of personalized reply, I dont bother with programming challenges that involve a significant amount of effort. However, I will reply to interesting design questions.

If your screening process is tilted towards screening out the untalented, it may also screen out senior qualified developers who done want to put up with it.

gruseom• 17 years ago

This guy's blog is pretty interesting. Interesting enough that it sucked my attention away for half an hour, damn it. He invented an algorithm for keeping multiple copies of a document in sync and when Google found out about it they immediately hired him:

http://neil.fraser.name/news/2006/11/01/

I printed out a couple of his papers on this stuff for leisure reading.

dexen• 17 years ago

In regard to the 5 point Neil makes under the original post, I have a sad observation:

- numerous people would, and often do, rally against gag orders handed down by various offices

- yet the wide society is pretty quick to gag or chicane a blogger for publishing politically-incorrect observations. Observations that were surrounded by disclaimers of small population sample and other factors that clouded them. And while it's not necessarily the same people as above, it's still the wide society.

chaqke• 17 years ago

i'm surprised that marriage was a factor - i'd suspect incomplete data on that dimension.

Hiring programmers (2005)

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