[stegosaurus]

>> Also your flippant, dismissive attitude on quite important CS concepts wouldn't take you far.

Please try to avoid this. We can discuss without resorting to attacks.

>> "There's no point in testing for X or Y because ... e.g. we won't need X or Y to perform the job we are being tested for"

That's what most people are arguing for I think, so I agree with you there.

>> not being able to recognize what BFS even stands for in the first place is enough to raise a red flag anywhere.

By doing this you are throwing away developers that have made their respective companies millions in revenue. It's not hypothetical. One day, a non-CS trained developer will come across a tree and use it. And then they'll learn.

[drakenot]

You seem to be arguing that non-CS trained devs can learn these things when they come across them. I wouldn't disagree with that.

I think what I see as the real concern is a case of "not knowing what you don't know." If you aren't exposed to at least the fundamentals of this broad base of CS knowledge you aren't going to know that they are available to you when you need them. Learning about a tree when you first read about it is great. But that person will still have huge gaps in their CS knowledge compared to someone who systematically studied it.

I also don't think this is so much about having a CS degree, as it is simply having studied CS in some fashion. I've worked with plenty of talented self-taught developers who took the time to learn these things on their own.

[stegosaurus]

Sort of, but not really.

I think really what we're arguing about now is the distinction between hiring for a Google position (pushing the absolute state of the art) and hiring for a position creating accounting software or something.

I don't think that it's reasonable to expect to be hired into a top tier position as a kernel hacker at RedHat or a database expert at Google with an English degree and a few weeks of github commits.

I think that most software development jobs don't need the level of technical chops that are being asked for - and that many of the developers that actually have this level of ability just don't need the company (this post might be an example of that).

Some of the job requirements I've seen make me think along the lines of - 'hell, if I can do all of that, why would I work for you for peanuts?'.