I know this is all very anecdotal, but I certainly have seen developers that I wonder for months how they could have ever been hired, and given time become quite capable. I first started to notice with out of college developers, but eventually saw beyond that too.
In my experience, the ones that were 'capable' from the get go either had a lot of experience programming on their own, or had some internship or other real world work experience. The ones less capable didn't.
Then I realized that my measure of 'capable' was probably unfair, because I expected people without having worked before to be aware of all the complex details that working with other developers entail. All the annoyances you have to deal with about writing real code that needs to evolve and change that only a stable work environment provides.
Then I took it one step further. What if the ones that weren't out of college were just never expected to really improve. They never had the chance to be exposes to a stable work environment that required growth. They just either were let go from previous jobs before being allowed to grow, or weren't put in an environment that neither required nor promoted growing? I think not all jobs do a good job of demanding and providing space to grow. And that's a problem. It's possible to 'get good' on your own, but it shouldn't be expected; and it's far from the only way.
So maybe we are being a bit unfair when we say a candidate is weak. Maybe they just haven't been in an environment that would require and allow them to improve.
In all walks of life, people with more experience are expected to be more formed, more of a known quantity, than people with less experience. The distinction between a junior candidate and a weak programmer is mostly down to the length of their CV. If someone has been programming for a few years, it's a bad sign if they're not very good at it.
You can spend ten thousand hours doing the first hour of the same work, at a bad job. There's a lot of bullshit positions with poor management that don't exactly lead to programmer development.
Yes. And if I'm expecting to hire a senior developer, I quite naturally don't want the person with that experience, because that's not an actual senior developer.
No, but if you had a crystal ball that could distinguish between those who had been given lots of opportunities but never improved, and those who just need a little bit of training to make them a world class engineer, then you'd have an amazing hiring advantage relative to your competitors.
I know some smart, thoughtful, enthusiastic developers who have only ever worked in one team, and that team had a bunch of dev practices that don't fit the industry's typical expectations (e.g. zero automated unit tests). Many companies would pass them over because they'd bomb that apart of the interview, but with a couple of months of on the job training, they'd fit right in.
When they go looking for a new job they're going to find it hard, but whoever can see through their inexperience an is willing to take a chance on them will be happy they did.
In my experience, the ones that were 'capable' from the get go either had a lot of experience programming on their own, or had some internship or other real world work experience. The ones less capable didn't.
Then I realized that my measure of 'capable' was probably unfair, because I expected people without having worked before to be aware of all the complex details that working with other developers entail. All the annoyances you have to deal with about writing real code that needs to evolve and change that only a stable work environment provides.
Then I took it one step further. What if the ones that weren't out of college were just never expected to really improve. They never had the chance to be exposes to a stable work environment that required growth. They just either were let go from previous jobs before being allowed to grow, or weren't put in an environment that neither required nor promoted growing? I think not all jobs do a good job of demanding and providing space to grow. And that's a problem. It's possible to 'get good' on your own, but it shouldn't be expected; and it's far from the only way.
So maybe we are being a bit unfair when we say a candidate is weak. Maybe they just haven't been in an environment that would require and allow them to improve.