[rayiner]

I don't know anything about graphic design, but the marketing and legal fields approach recruiting differently, at least at the entry level. Companies hire people that they think can be trained, and train them using the extensive institutional knowledge companies hold and pass on internally. There's no belief that say the best marketing folks were the ones doing neighborhood projects as teenagers. Marketing folks usually are subject to very intensive internships or entry level jobs that teach them everything they need to know. The prevailing model in law or banking or consulting or accounting is to take people with aptitude and train them to do things "the firm's way."

There's a lot more similarity at the level of experienced hiring obviously. And this model of hiring is expensive. But it also has benefits. Firms create new professionals from raw materials. They don't have to wait for trained professionals to walk in the door.

[harryh]

Your comment really had two separate points one around training practices and another around hiring standards and occasional cargo culting. It was only the latter that I was objecting to.

It's interesting to think about the first point though. Why are training practices different in software? I can think of a couple of hypotheses:

A) Programming is one of few fields where it's possible to self train. B) Programming is a relatively young field that hasn't matured enough to develop rigorous training practices. C) Software companies aren't profitable enough to support expensive training programs. D) Training of programmers is a relatively futile endeavor as most programming success will come from innate talent that is either present or not in any given individual.

Just off the top of my head I put the most weight on A and C (especially for startups) though I'm fairly uncertain. There might also be other reasons I haven't thought of.