

Why Net Negative Producing Programmers are Here to Stay-- Despite the Cost - nsoonhui
http://itscommonsensestupid.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-net-negative-producing-programmers.html

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nihilocrat
_Finally, the hiring process, as employed by most IT companies, are not
exactly encouraging programmers to self-improve._

Probably the best insight from the article. It's saying what we already know,
but it's comforting to see another person think that most programming job ads
are completely bogus. A given language can be picked up fairly quickly
compared to the amount of time required to get really good at programming
itself. I am actually more intimidated by the ads that don't enumerate a bunch
of techonologies; this means that they are probably going to be asking for a
lot of sheer badassery on your part.

~~~
dcminter
This is an argument that I often hear and which I think is pretty much
completely bogus.

Learning the _syntax_ of a language can be achieved fairly quickly for most
languages.

Learning the implications of that syntax takes a lot longer (C++ is a good
example here, otherwise "Effective C++" and "More Effective C++" would have
been unnecessary).

Learning the libraries and tools associated with a language can be an
effectively unlimited task.

So I don't agree. It's better to hire a good programmer than a mediocre one,
sure, but given two programmers of somewhat comparable _quality_ the one with
more _experience_ often proves to be considerably more valuable than the
other. This is doubly true if one of them has experience in the specific tools
that you will be using on the project.

The closer fitting user will have been through a lot of the
debugging/learning/understanding processes that the other has still to
encounter. Even the finest programmer has to learn to work with the occasional
WTFs of libraries.

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sh1mmer
Vaguely interesting article to me. It's basically a reality check for this:
[http://blog.jayfields.com/2009/01/cost-of-net-negative-
produ...](http://blog.jayfields.com/2009/01/cost-of-net-negative-
producing.html)

In short the reasons why you a good programmer can't remove all the "bad
programmers"

1\. Working out who is good and bad is hard 2\. It would involve too much
politics that you may not be good at 3\. You look like a jerk if you besmirch
your co-workers 4\. It's easiest for companies to hire based on "years of
experience"

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MaysonL
Of course, this totally ignores the problem (a larger one, IMHO) of negative
producing management.

It is also possible to teach many net negative programmeres to become net
positive, through code review, mentoring, and pair programming.

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KevBurnsJr
Funny, the last 3 jobs I've had have mostly revolved around cleaning up
monstrous piles of poorly structured code.

Don't forget to throw away your prototype.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
My current job involves papering over poorly structured code.

I call it "design by accretion."

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LogicHoleFlaw
_Yes, of course you can target those companies that are geeky and cool, but I
am sure those companies won't have enough space for all the good developers._

Duh, if there aren't enough companies for good programmers, there are surely
enough programmers to start more companies. There's not a fixed limit to the
number of corporate charters available...

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mattmcknight
We've actually had some success getting managers to get rid of bad
programmers. It's a matter of building their trust in you first, and then
letting a programmer call the shots and do real interviews, etc.

