[pastProlog]

> most people tend to be mediocre

As the article points out, most jobs are mediocre. Good work is not appreciated, a company can't form a team that works normal hours and uses tests and version control, autonomy and learning is low, the work is some dull obscure business problem, IT and the company is dysfunctional and pay for the skillset is below market average. Yet all these companies want great developers as well.

Also, as he mentions in the article, sometimes a great developer does roll in but they get filtered out for some reason. In my experience it is usually due to age - a great developer who is 52 comes in, but management almost openly says they want someone in their 20s who they can push around more when they nix the person.

So the mediocrity goes both ways. When Oculus got going they seemed to have little trouble getting some of the best graphics programmers (Abrash, Carmack) to join them. If you want a great programmer you need to be a great company with a great position.

[jghn]

"most jobs are mediocre"

Exactly. 95+% of all developer jobs are not particularly novel nor do they require the top 1% of developer talent. However it seems like 95+% of all developer jobs believe themselves to be novel and requiring the top developer talent.

[Terr_]

They think that if their developers were just a little better, they'd be able to make the next project very quickly, very cheaply, and very well :p

[AtheistOfFail]

Choose 2: Quick, Cheap, Good.

[user5994461]

Strangely. Companies read the blog post about hardcore hiring but not the blog post about that.

[AtheistOfFail]

There's no way that would apply to them. They're unique... and so is their product.

[35bge57dtjku]

People keep saying this, but I don't think it's as easy as you make it sound. What about the candidates that talk so much that it seems like they are stalling and therefore don't get a reasonable and reasonably complete solution on the whiteboard in the alloted time, despite repeated prompting? What about the guys who don't explain much and take way longer than expected on simple problems, and when asked about it reveal that they are just blowing all this time internally debating the perfect solution?

[jghn]

Sure, those people exist. My belief is that most of those people would perform adequately at the extreme majority of jobs.

[35bge57dtjku]

Then what criteria do you use during an interview?

[jghn]

I'm not in charge of setting our hiring bar so it doesn't really matter. Given my druthers I'd give a candidate a not particularly difficult multi-hour coding project just to show that they can build something and would like to have a conversation with them that shows both breadth and depth of knowledge.

[35bge57dtjku]

Ok, but none of what you said addresses my concerns. And sadly, this is what always happens when I press people for better interviewing techniques.

If they can't finish squat in 60 minutes are they likely to finish something in double that time? If they are, I could just ask them something that should take 30 minutes to finish and give them double that time to finish it, and just pretend like everything's fine...

> and would like to have a conversation with them that shows both breadth and depth of knowledge.

Conversation is nice and all, but there are people who can do that but fall flat with the coding. And that is a significant part of the job.

[collyw]

It would help having some above average developers (or maybe architects is a better word) on the past two projects I have inherited. They clearly knew a lot of stuff, but elegant database and application design wasn't one of those things.