[wccrawford]

Well, for programming, employees without experience generally slow down the existing employees and rarely turn into good workers.

Let's examine the typical job applicants to see why:

1) Has experience, resume and portfolio.

2) Has no professional experience, but has worked on open source projects and has a nice portfolio.

3) Has no professional experience and hasn't worked on open source. Has a personal portfolio that's pretty basic.

4) Has no experience at all. Has education.

5) Has no experience of eduction.

1 has shown ability to do the work in the past. Will hit the ground running and is generally a good hire.

2 and 3 have shown not only that they know how to program, but they are self-driven and don't need someone to tell them to what to work on. Will also hit the ground running and are often a good hire. 3's sometimes disappoint as they get in over their heads pretty quickly.

4 and 5 have shown no ability or drive. They haven't even attempted to program anything they were specifically told to. There is no chance they will hit the ground running, and it's unlikely that they will have any innate ability.

Why on earth WOULD people hire 4s and 5s?

In short, non-technical professions hire people and train them all the time. Nobody is born knowing how to flip burgers and fry fries at the same time. But technical professions rarely get anywhere hiring anyone that doesn't have experience of some kind.

[charlesju]

We've been on a hiring binge recently so I'll shed some light into my thought process:

1. Can be a mismatch because they are too "corporate" for a startup, ie. unwilling to work outside the 9-5.

2. Open Source people can be weird and only want to work on what they are passionate about. This isn't always the case at a company.

3-5 has their own downsides.

What we quickly find is that none of the above are true criterions for hiring, this is what we usually look for?

1. Do they have passion for what we're doing (Games)?

2. Are they technically sound (they do well on our little programming tests and in-person interviews)? This is pre-screened by either having previous experience or coming from a stellar school with good marks.

3. Are they going to fit in?

[kjuhyghjk]

>4 ... have shown no ability or drive.

So you wouldn't hire a new maths PhD for your trading software group if they didn't have C++ experience?

[mikeklaas]

I've had mixed experience hiring PhDs for jobs that require mixing research and coding. Often they don't accept how little they know about software development and are less willing to do more grunt-work type tasks which are essential to actually turning research into a real product.

Of course, there are PhDs who are great coders as well. They are gems.

[drivingmenuts]

I guess I'm the odd man out. I will happily be paid to code someone else's software for six months, but I lose interest in my own stuff after six hours.

[kthxbye]

I don't see how being self-driven, independent and generally more self-reliant makes you more suitable for employment. Why would such a person want to be an employee?

[wccrawford]

Being driven and capable of independence doesn't mean you don't want to work for someone else.

I have been programming pet projects for myself since 4th grade, but I'd much rather work for an employer than run my own business. I'm happy to have them do the things I don't care for, like collecting money and training. I get to do the coding and things that I like. Sure, I probably don't make as much money, but again... I do what I like and (for the most part) not what I don't.

[Kaizyn]

Because such people often have bills to pay and they like to earn money. Especially if they aren't in a situation where starting a company is financially viable at the time, being hired is not such a bad thing.

[bostonvaulter2]

What would a programmers portfolio look like?

[voberoi]

Any publicly accessible repository containing code you've written (e.g. your Github repos), products or websites you've built and exposed to users, technical papers you've published, and technical talks you've given.

[edanm]

Interestingly, these are things I suspect the majority of programmers don't have.

[mynameishere]

How does someone formulate such a question?

[mkramlich]

code