There's been a lot of discussion lately around software engineering hiring practices: how to find qualified candidates, how to hire them, and how they can be sucessful once they start.
I find it fascinating how much people disagree on what a competent software engineer even is, let alone how to hire one.
And, as far as I can tell, there's been no comprehensive research done on this. So this is an attempt to fix that.
The first hypothesis is a simple one: there is no consensus because everyone's looking for something different. Do startups scraping by on ramen and overtime need a different kind of employee than a large enterprise company with free food and foosball? Does your career background set what skills you consider valuable?
Another hypothesis is people tend to see themselves as competetent, and therefore judge others through the same filter. If you don't have a computer science degree, do you value working knowledge over computer science fundamentals, since that's what worked for you? Or, if you do have a degree, has that theoretical knowlege been useful enough so you view it as essential?
Another interesting question: does the bar change over time? Do junior folk and students set the bar a lot higher than senior folk do? Or is it the other way around? Do people who hire engineers see things differently than the engineers themselves?
There should be a lot of interesting ways to slice this data, and I'm hoping for some interesting patterns to fall out.
Yes. I'll release the data with my results.
Please add yourself to the mailing list [link goes here] or follow this project for updates.
If you ask me to keep your data private, it will stay on computers and accounts (like Dropbox) that I personally control. When I decide I no longer need it, I will delete it.
For the public data set, I will never release email addresses, IP addresses or anything else I consider to be personally identifiable. If you have concerns about this, please let me know.
- Thank you to my friends on the We So Crafty slack channel for great suggestions, proofreading and feedback
- [more thank yous here]
- I took some ideas for traits from this Hacker News discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326940