

There is no talent shortage - apaitch
http://www.apaitch.com/2012/06/25/there-is-no-talent-shortage/

======
xiaoma
It is a weird market. I've been job searching pretty hard for the past month
in SF and the response has been a bit frustrating. I get tons of people
reaching out to me after meeting me at tech meetups, etc, but I'd say over
half of those leads end up cutting me at an HR filter before I can even get an
interview!

From what I understand it's due to two things-- at 34, I'm older than others
going for junior positions. I spent a decade abroad after graduation and have
only a year of experience at a tech start-up in Asia. I can kind of understand
the pursuit of someone who already knows what they're doing, but on the other
hand everyone has to start learning somewhere. Sure my bohemian background and
experience starting and running a non-tech business and learning multiple
foreign languages doesn't translate directly into usable skills here, but I
would have thought that it would have been a strong signal I'm capable of
working hard and learning quickly.

Not to overstate things, I am getting a lot of interest and a few interviews
and even repeat interviews. It's just that things are moving very slowly, and
I'm not getting a great return on the time I put into it. Also, SF is a very
expensive city to live in off of savings earned in a developing country!

I think the shortage isn't so much general talent; it's a shortage of people
who already have X skill a given business wants _right now_.

~~~
juiceandjuice
You've been searching for a month, you've been getting interviews, even repeat
interviews, and you are complaining? Not to make little of your situation, but
I don't think you really have a whole lot to complain about, especially
because any place with a real HR department is going to take at least a month
to get you into a job.

Also, SF is expensive, and if you are staying somewhere expensive in the city
while trying to find a job, you're doing it wrong. Move out to
Oakland/Berkeley or even Hayward/Fremont, one of the other cheaper places and
stretch out your money til you find a job... Then be prepared to look for a
place to live, which is harder than finding a job in my experience...
Especially if you are out of money by the time you get a job and don't have
enough for the deposit of wherever you live.

Be prepared for things to take a long time, and with that in mind try to
stretch out your money.

~~~
xiaoma
I didn't mean to be complaining. It's just an unexpected outcome for me. I
can't remember ever having to look for this long before. About half the work
I've done has been under my own employ and 80% it has been in Taiwan or China.
Truth be told, I've never dealt with a "real HR" department before!

I've got a $500/month place in Chinatown, and really haven't found anything
near that price with English speaking landlords. It's not to the point of
missing rent or anything that dramatic yet, but I have taken on some $11/hr
writing and translation work via various freelancing sites as well as some
similarly priced work on a rails project. It's the surest way I see of
surviving long enough to beat the chicken and egg problem of getting relevant
experience.

~~~
zithtar
Just don't tell prospective employers about doing programming gigs for $11/hr,
that certainly doesn't speak very well to your judgment.

~~~
zithtar
I'd love to hear the arguments for doing $11/hr programming jobs instead of
just getting downvoted.

~~~
artmageddon
While I felt compelled to downvote you, I won't since you ask nicely. You
should explain how it doesn't speak well for his judgment. Doing translation
work isn't the same as programming on the pay scale, and any respectable
employer should realize that when it comes time to discuss compensation for a
programming position. In fact, I feel it speaks highly of his character in
that A) he's motivated enough to continue with some form of work while looking
for a programming job, and B) that he has the talent to do translation work in
the first place.

~~~
thedufer
You may have missed the "similarly priced rails work" part. I did on my first
read.

------
dspeyer
This article is playing word-games. When employers and economists talk about
talent, they mean capability, regardless of whether it's natural or comes from
hard work. Your dictionary may say "natural aptitude or skill", but that's
irrelevant to the job market.

~~~
tikhonj
Exactly. The "talent shortage" is a lack of employable programmers _period_ ,
not just a lack of _exceptional_ programmers. And this is easy to see:
everybody I know in my class (also Berkeley, coincidentally) has managed to
get an internship or full time job without much effort. This includes both
people with and without experience before college. I managed to get a couple
of interesting offers despite never sending my resume out, attending career
fairs or even answering recruiter emails. Clearly the market is in the
programmer's favor--every programmer's favor.

As far as I can tell, pretty much everybody graduating that wants a job gets a
job. Naturally, not everybody goes to work for Google or Facebook, but this
includes people even worse than the presumably hypothetical "John".

Also, people like "Norman" are just as likely to get snapped up by Google and
then still work in relative obscurity. Well-paid, enjoyable relative obscurity
with great benefits and a great culture, but relative obscurity nonetheless.

Really, the talent shortage works like this: you, as a company, would love a
"Norman". You'd be happy with a "John". You'd probably be content with anybody
who can program. Instead you get "Barry" who can't write a FizzBuzz program in
any language. All this puts upward pressure on programmer salaries and
benefits (good) and motivates recruiters to spam me about openings for senior
Java developers (bad).

Also, a lot of companies do claim to want very good engineers. But I've found
this to be empty rhetoric as often as not: for every company claiming that and
actually having a stringent interview process and difficult technical problems
there's a company willing to accept anybody to work on their CRUD app but
wants their ad to sound cool.

Anyhow: there is some shortage of programmers of any but minimal competence.
That is what "talent shortage" actually means, and, as far as I can tell, it's
actually accurate.

~~~
zanny
You went to Berkeley. You get a somewhat different response from PR than
someone like myself, who went to a crappy liberal arts school with no name in
PA. They recognize the school, and expect that to be a substitute for skill -
"oh he went to Ivy League / big state school, he must be a genius". Versus "I
have never heard of that place, must be dumb not to go to an Ivy League".

Anecdote: I like to think I can write fizzbuzz in a couple languages.

~~~
tikhonj
I'm actually still going to Berkeley :). The only reason I brought it up was
because the allegorical students in the blog post also go there.

I have actually avoided HR. I've been too lazy to send out resumes, and I only
really want to work at small startups (at least for now). All of the
interesting offers I got had some concrete spark independent of my education:
for example, I got one after doing well at a hackathon and another from an HN
post (but largely thanks to my knowing Haskell and having some interesting
projects on GitHub).

I think that if you don't mind not working for an established company, you
will have to worry much less about your education (but, probably, more about
your actual skills). Of course there are good startups and bad startups, but
I've found the good ones to be _very_ good not just from a technical
standpoint but also from an employment standpoint.

~~~
zanny
It also helps you are in CA. Like I said, I live in PA (specifically, rural
PA, and I went to a local school) getting any networking whatsoever with not
just the Bay area but any reasonable techy area is a pain. You don't know how
nice it is to be a few hours train ride from networking galore until your next
door neighbor is an Amish bishop :P

~~~
garysieling
How far are you from the Philadelphia area? If you're looking east shoot me an
email, the company I work for is always hiring engineers and we don't have any
HR filtering yet :)

------
Wilya
There is no talent shortage. There is a shortage of Berkeley/Stanford/MIT
grads.

Just look at the difference between grads of those school, who basically get
money thrown at them, and the rest of graduates, who have a hard time finding
a job at all.

~~~
vonmoltke
I know someone who just graduated cum laude with a BS from UIUC who is having
trouble.

~~~
jmj42
...and UIUC has one of the top CS programs in the country (on many lists it's
the #1 CS program at a public university). Around here (I live near uiuc) Bill
Gates is famous for declaring that MS hires more UIUC grads than any other
single University in the world.

Honestly, the idea that someone can make it through the CS program at UIUC,
and end up shunned because he/she didn't graduate form MIT, is a perfect
example of what's wrong with hiring practices these days.

------
JamesLeonis
Maybe it's just me, but this seems to be in response to an earlier HN post
about the entrepreneur prodigy [1] as well as a vague stab at the 10x
programmer myth.

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4140048>

Largely though "Norman" is more attractive than "John" to businesses because
he displays strong signals both in talent and work ethic. "John" might be a
hard worker and have talent himself, but because he has no obvious projects or
other public displays of talent his signal to employers is weak. What "John"
needs is something that sends a comparatively strong signal. In a way, this
sounds like a call to action to figure out how programmers can build a
sufficiently strong signal for employers to see. How do we separate the signal
from the noise?

Interestingly, this signalling problem arises with employers as well. Look how
many articles are posted here about "How to attract the best talent."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)>

~~~
vonmoltke
That Norman is more attractive than John is not in question. The contention is
that many companies want a Norman and so will pass over a John, even when a
Norman is not available (hence creating the perception of a shortage).
Furthermore, these companies usually do not _need_ a Norman; a John would work
out fine.

A number of posters in this thread assert that anyone who can write code
competently[0] can get a job in this economy. I personally, as with the OP,
don't see that. I see two broad groupings of companies[1]. The first group
only wants Normans or near-Normans, and complain that there are not enough of
them to fill their slots. The second group is happy with Johns, but drops a
laundry list of (sometimes conflicting) skills and experience requirements
that filter out almost all of the Johns, and then complains that there are not
enough of them to fill their slots. I have also encountered an overlapping
subgroup of companies willing to compromise somewhat for local candidates.

Unfortunately its difficult to move beyond anecdotes on this matter. I have
some that support the OP's point, many here have some that refute it. It would
be really interesting to see distrbutions of these anecdotes by geography,
experience level, and undergrad program, though.

[0] "Competently" goes beyond writing FizzBuzz in this case. [1] I am not
asserting that every company falls into one or the other; my current one does
not, though my previous one does. I'm asserting that most do.

------
hpatel
Talent at any company can be divided in to following categories: a. People who
make code* frameworks b. People who extend code frameworks c. People who
maintain code frameworks

* you can replace code with almost any other employable skill

"Talent shortage" usually refers to people who fall in a).

Every company claims to want to hire only a) but most companies need b) or c).
Very early stage startups ideally need a), but they don't always manage to
hire people in that category. They can temporarily bypass this requirement by
hiring people in b) and using frameworks like (Rails, Django, etc) built by
other people who fall in a) until they get to a point where a) types will be
willing to join.

When people talk about shortage of talent, they usually mean shortage of a)
people. This is mostly because two of the three things that people in b) and
c) need to become a) are hard to acquire and come with 'experience'(for those
who try).

3 things you need to become a):

1\. Acquiring a good base \- data structures, algorithms, design patterns etc
\- learning languages/specific skills \- interview skills

2\. Acquiring good mental models \- working with smart programmers \- reading
code by smart programmers \- learning to make tradeoffs \- actually building
stuff

3\. Acquiring reputation \- Building stuff \- Talking about stuff you build \-
Having other people talk about you \- Collecting badges that other people
recognize i.e. working at well known startups/companies, winning programming
competitions, going to Berkeley, etc.

Most people manage to succeed in 1) eventually. 1) is also where most
college/other training programs focus. But, 2) and 3) are much harder to
acquire.

If a company is big enough they will assign an a) to mentor someone who is a
b) or c), but this is often not viable for startups (and, imho, slightly
unreasonable to expect from a lot of startups).

If we figure out a way for b) and c) people to learn 2), we can solve a lot of
the talent shortage. But, this requires either a b) or c) person to spend time
on their own looking at work by a) people (not always possible and extremely
time consuming), or an a) person mentoring the b)/c) person outside companies
(100x faster, imho).

Until we build social systems that enable b) and c) to transition to a)
easily, the alarms for 'talent shortage' will continue to ring.

Caveats: 1\. A lot of jobs only need b) or c). Employers could adjust
expectations. 2\. Luck is a huge factor. You don't actually have to be a) to
be hired or considered a) because perception(3) plays a big role.

~~~
einhverfr
But if that's the case the problem is different than it is portrayed to HR and
that's the problem.

What you need is someone for a) is someone who is both a software engineer
(i.e. thinks hard about design) and is a coder/developer. The amount of
experience doesn't really matter though experience is an important guide. What
really matters is _attitude._ How does the programmer approach design
questions? Is the individual someone who just wants to code? Or is the
individual one who is always addressing his or her code for maintainability
and pursuing perfect in that regard?

I have seen projects built by people who coded for a dozen years and never got
to the point of actually thinking hard about design and maintainability. I
have even been stuck in the nightmarish position of maintaining such code (and
of course deciding to refactor with a chain saw!).

Again a lot of it is a question of priorities and, I hate to say it, ego. One
has to both have an ego enough to question prevailing wisdom but have a small
enough one to understand that one's coding style is never perfect. Such
individuals are rare, in my experience.

~~~
hpatel
Yup, you are right. Attitude is key to becoming a) (along with a basic level
of aptitude, obviously). And, few people have the necessary self awareness.

Attitude is exactly what companies look for when they hire people with less
experience. Even for more advanced programmers in a sense it is essential
because you never stop learning. This is why there is some bias towards
younger people as they are supposed to be more willing to learn.

But, as with any behavior, attitude becomes less necessary if a clearly
defined system for mentoring/acquiring the necessary mental models is in
place. Someone who graduates from a top school and ends up working at a
company where a) types mentor new hires has to try significantly less than
someone who graduates from a less well known school and has to figure out some
way to learn from a) types.

Btw, the way a lot of the best companies bypass the HR problem is they hire
based on employee recommendations. This is another contributing factor to
'talent shortage'. There is a hiring channel at any company that is much
better at recognizing potential - existing employees. The high effectiveness
and limited reach of this channel adds to perceived 'talent shortage'.

~~~
einhverfr
I would say it is at least as essential for advanced programmers.

I have worked with a lot of programmers and I find you can basically throw
advanced programmers into three groups:

1) Those who think about and figure out how to write maintainable code (these
are a small minority btw!)

2) Those who believe that writing maintainable code is a matter of following
coding conventions they are comfortable with, and

3) Those who just want to get stuff done.

I think that #3 will only make competent maintenance programmers. You do _not_
want to be stuck maintaining a major app one of them built. #2 will be fine at
extending existing frameworks once they become comfortable with them, but #1
are the ones who can create new framework code and make it work.

As for mentoring that's key (and was for my own development as a programmer
and software engineer) but many people just never "get it" even with all the
mentoring in the world. Either they are not listening or they are not drawing
the right messages from it. This is tough because in order to get to #1, you
have to be willing to question what your mentor says. If you mechanically
follow it, you end up in the second category.

~~~
hpatel
My experience has shown that there is one more category - #1(creates
frameworks) + #3(gets stuff done). In early stage startups, this is the kind
of person you want. In big companies, usually #1 types are ideal.

Regardless, it does suck to have to maintain/extend apps written by #3.

------
tejask
My programming experience was unexpressed before college as I was mostly
interested in basic sciences - mainly physics. It was only after high school
did I seriously get into CS type of stuff as I started developing an intesrest
in AI/algorithms. So for me, it is not hard to believe that there could be a
lot of people with a hidden aptitude for programming. After all, programming
is a means to an end. After high school, understanding the brain and
developing AI was my "end", which obviously requires strong programming skills
and thus subsequently triggered a stronger interest for programming.

~~~
jaekwon
I started programming late into highschool as well, and only a TI83 at that.
My first rendezvous with network/gui programming started in college (though I
was a CS major). Now, more than half a decade after graduation and working in
silicon valley, I'm hacking on more serious projects like writing operating
systems. I don't think starting late has affected me negatively too much. Just
keep at it, you'll reach your full potential before you know it.

------
jiggy2011
Ok, really how common are people who have started 2 companies and written an
OS by the time they start college? I did CS at a pretty good university (AAB A
level requirement) and there were plenty of uber-nerds in the class but nobody
had done anything like this.

I did a bit of casual freelance work building basic PHP/HTML websites and
fixing/building PCs before I started college, but never anything I would have
dreamed of incorporating a company for. In fact I'm not sure how many
jurisdictions would even let one start a company at that age?

~~~
sentinel
I think you might be missing the point of the article.

~~~
jiggy2011
Not really, no wonder companies have problems hiring if they are after some
mythical person who does not represent the top 1% of programmers, more like
the top 0.001% (even Linus Torvalds or Bill Gates don't tick all the boxes
here).

In fact I would be surprised if someone with that level of accomplishment so
young would even consider taking any job with any company, more likely they
are already putting together an MVP of the thing that will replace google.

~~~
sanxiyn
You may be surprised, but it is possible to be very talented in programming
without much entrepreneurial ambition. Well, the original article mentioned
"started two companies" so probably Norman is not looking for jobs.

But I do know a person who's been programming since ~12, wrote a 3D game in
C++ at ~16 (multiplayer one, thousands of players), and wrote his own OS, and
happily employed.

~~~
jiggy2011
Out of curiosity what were the game and OS?

~~~
sanxiyn
Try Lesia Online. (Most information is in Korean since he is Korean.)

~~~
jiggy2011
This One? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdgzKHOfUI8>

Shame all I can find is that youtube video and no download links etc, that
game looks utterly insane and quite fun.

Technically it's only really a 2D game though , still very impressive for a 16
year old.

------
amcintyre
_"John only started programming in college. He has 3 years of “experience” –
much of it spent working on school assignments, not projects – and Norman has
10. John’s not as experienced or capable, but he may well be just as talented
as Norman. Norman will get snapped up by a top company and snowball into a
“rockstar” developer, whereas John will start (and maybe spend) his
programming career in relative obscurity."_

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to gather from this John/Norman comparison. If
John has the same amount of natural talent as Norman, after a few years of
full-time professional development work he's likely to be just as valuable as
Norman. There's plenty of time to become really competent and valuable even if
you start very late (like in your 30's or 40's, which I assume classifies as
"freaking ancient" in many companies' eyes). I don't see how one person having
some imagined head start figures into whether there's a shortage or not; but
then, I don't live in the valley, so perhaps this is a cultural thing there.

I do agree, though, that there's a lot of companies out there that seem to
want the top 1% (all the while offering bottom 25% rates).

~~~
codeonfire
Building software is not like installing carpet. You don't just do it for a
couple years and become a skilled worker. Its obvious that many misinformed
people think that software development is a blue collar job that people go to
vo-tech school to learn to do while rebuilding car alternators. This way of
thinking comes about because most people's experience with development is
usually within a very, very small microcosm. There are people out there that
did some VB work fifteen years ago who think that once a developer has ramped
up on basic VB programming, they now meet the industry bar for software design
and engineering.

Is a physicist just as valuable after a few years of doing research as a full
tenured professor with 30 years of research? After a few years of full-time
professional development work John will be talented at working with a very,
very limited set of tools that his company uses and developed the ability to
solve a very small set of problems. This means he is perhaps as valuable as
Norman to one single company and almost not valuable at all to most other
companies.

~~~
debacle
> Building software is not like installing carpet. You don't just do it for a
> couple years and become a skilled worker.

I think you're wrong, there. Building software is, 99% of the time, like
installing carpet.

> Is a physicist just as valuable after a few years of doing research as a
> full tenured professor with 30 years of research?

Terrible analogy. There are grad students who are more valuable than
professors on the edge of the retirement. Comparing software development to
academia is a specious argument.

------
DividesByZero
This is my situation - I only really found out I loved code in University, and
only worked out what I really need to do to do that kind of work I want to do
since entering employment. I'm still relatively young (24) but even I feel
this experience gap in talking to potential employers.

That said I'm now actively building a portfolio by working nights on real
products and leveraging what experience I do have as heavily as I can. I also
try to present how quickly I picked up the skills I do have in things like
Ruby, coffee/node and all that 'sexy' stuff to show that I can pick up
anything anyone throws at me really quickly.

Hopefully by the end of the year I'll be where I want to be.

------
jonny_eh
If only everyone had enough talent to be in the top 1%, then everyone would
have a job!

~~~
ricardobeat
NaN

------
m3mnoch
no. there is absolutely a talent shortage.

as proven by 1) the fact that the percentage of of the general population who
have an aptitude for "brainy things" in general is pretty much the exact same
as it was 20 years ago and 2) the percentage of companies with a need for said
people is growing exponentially as software eats the world.

basically, all of the new-need companies from point 2 are bottom-feeding all
of the people from point 1 which applies upward pressure on the talent pool.

because a talented accountant-turned-programmer still leaves a hole that needs
to be filled.

feelin' me?

m3mnoch.

~~~
slurgfest
Even if the hole needs to be filled, there is shortage of brainy people
without jobs in this world.

~~~
slurgfest
I meant to write 'no shortage' but am now past the edit window, sorry

------
ngokevin
Norman has skill, Jon could've had skill, so there is no talent shortage. Is
the article saying because a lot of people COULD'VE had skill that there is no
talent shortage, and then pedantically renames it? It's clever, but talent
shortage or luck shortage or whatever you call it, companies need sufficient
programmers and there aren't enough to go around.

------
k_kelly
Then what does a talent shortage look like?

This article is arguing that the current situation is because companies wont
employ below a minimal technical competence.

New, brand new, out of college only done programming in college programmers
can expect massive starting salaries, the best equipment, and probably lunch
and accommodation with a strong chance that they'll get a higher salary the
year after.

Few companies require you to actually have used their technology or their
architecture, if you have you might have already priced your way in to a job
above the one been offered.

If the industry contracts as it surely will programmers are going to be
scratching their heads at articles like this.

~~~
zanny
I am a brand new, out of college, only done programming in College (graduated
in 2 years) and job hunting is a PITA because 99% of HR's don't even look at
me. The BS in CS is not everything, maybe from a top school, but I got mine
from a no-name liberal arts college. When the school name doesn't raise
eyebrows you do need a sizable experience portfolio to get interviews.

~~~
AUmrysh
Yep. Well, I went to a similar sort of small liberal arts school (actually
they have great business and nursing programs that are only recognized in the
local region). I got interviews from Amazon, Cerner, and a few other big
companies, but I was completely unprepared for job interviews (my fault, I
know). It's not so much that the talent doesn't exist, it's that businesses
only want to hire the very best, and they pass over people who show any sign
of weakness or being unsure.

I've got a great job now programming all sorts of things, but it's not purely
CS, there's a lot of other stuff there too. Perhaps more BS-CS degree earners
should look into industrial applications, they're not ashamed to hire people
from small colleges.

------
prodigal_erik
I didn't encounter programming by luck. I was mesmerized by the first computer
I saw, and soon sought out programming through library books and hobbyist
magazines. At that time, home computers were rare and expensive, so I was
lucky that my parents' indulgence made my obsession possible, but now? They're
so common that it's very likely John's family had a desktop on which he could
simply type "I want to program computers" and it would tell him how. I have
trouble believing strong aptitude could go completely unexpressed until
college.

~~~
graeme
You're assuming that someone knows what "I want to program computers" means.

I didn't. I loved playing around with computers. But no one in my family was
technical. None of my friends programmed. I literally had no idea what
programming was. Most people don't, even those who are otherwise very
effective with computers.

Now I've started, much later, and I love it.

This xkcd comic is relevant: <http://xkcd.com/519/>

I'm sure if someone had shown me what a programming language or a terminal
was, I would have started 10 years ago. Instead I learned about other things.

~~~
Styck
I had no idea either. I started programming in college but it wasn't until we
were taught assembly that I realized that what I had been doing as a kid with
softice had been assembly all along.

~~~
zanny
Count this as a "me too" comment. I played on the DOS terminal for years,
wired together old machines into LANs and did hex editing of WoW binaries when
I was 12 without realizing how close to hacking that was.

I heard about Python / C++ / etc, but didn't try "diving in" until college
with CS1. Basically, IT knowledge instead of CS knowledge.

I can't help but feel that anyone that is <22 right now is getting a radically
different introduction to hacking than those who are >=22. The <22 grew up on
GUI in the Windows monopoly, and probably never needed to dig in to computers
to get things "working" as much as the elders did, which would actually
introduce them to CS much earlier.

------
super_mario
If everyone wants the top 1% then there is a shortage by definition :D.

------
thedufer
The difference in these scenarios isn't really luck; sure, Norman has a bit of
a head start. But John shows almost no interest. He picked a major, but that's
about it. "Talent" may not mean exactly what people are talking about in this
context, since interest in coding and a desire to learn about computers are
just as important as natural ability.

You can't say that the person who just goes to class is going to do as good of
a job as the person who completes side projects, learns on their own, etc.

~~~
apaitch
What happens once a person encounters programming is a different story. I
tried, with seemingly mixed success, to portray Jon as someone who is indeed
interested in coding - enough to try stuff on his own, and certainly not on a
"just to get by" basis - but who did not discover this interest until he
picked his major (arbitrarily, perhaps) and actually tried it. Adjusted for
age difference, Jon is about as excited about programming as Norman was, but
encountered it much later. I think there are many reasons why one would or
would not encounter programming at a younger age AND in a manner that excites
him (parents, friend circle, alternative entertainment available,
neighbourhood, school/teachers, etc). In aggregate, they come down to luck.

~~~
thedufer
I'd disagree, mostly because I know a "Jon" who was actually interested in
programming, and he's gone pretty far already (we graduated a month ago).
Despite my 7-8 year head start, we're in pretty similar positions.

------
einhverfr
I guess one thing that irks me a bit about the article is that it is so
employment centric, and yet the logic one should draw from the comparison is
to break out of that way of thinking. After all the first guy with years of
experience didn't get them on the job.

The moral of the story I would take from it is that if you want to program
make a name for yourself, and do so without regard to your employment.

