in reply to Re^5: Some reflections on the Brainbench Perl Test
in thread Some reflections on the Brainbench Perl Test

... are not Herculean tasks only supermen can perform.

If you read down the other branch of the subtree from my initial post in this thread (the one you originally responded to) you'll find another of my posts (currently a couple of inches below this), where I say:

There is no substitute for competent (not gifted or clever) programmers, who work hard, to achieve the primary goal.

I wasn't suggesting that you were a superman. Just that you have "a well thought-through set of development procedures", and "the personality, drive and skills" to focus upon the goal, rather than theoretical perfection or academic argument.

Open source projects (in the absence of funding), are a peculiar beast as you are managing not budgets of money and commercial aspiration, but peoples (and your own) free time, interest and personal aspirations. You have nothing to leverage. No rewards to offer, nor livelyhoods to sanction. No pool of N x 40 hours with which to work. Your only means of inspiration and control are personal input (and sacrifice), effort and achievement.

The point is that if an incompetent or less driven person had taken over the project and attempted to institute XP/Agile development methods, they would have had far less success than you.

Equally, a competent and driven individual using a similarly well-thought through, but different set of development procedures, might well have succeeded.

To take this full circle. Pre-supposing a prospective employee as incompetent, because of their lack of exposure to XP and/or their inability to score highly on an "agility test", is capriciousness bordering on discrimination.

Equally, precluding a potential employee for a Perl position, because thay have little or no experience in Perl does the employer/project a dis-service. A competent programmer, with good experience, will usually get up to speed with a new language very quickly.

That "agility test" only scores people/teams on their adherance to the methodology--not whether they use it to produce a successful product. It is a self-serving, meaningless statistic. As with all these methodology cults, when the projects using it succeed, the advocates will attribute that success to the methodology. When they fail, they'll blame the team for using it wrongly.

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
"Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."
  • Comment on Re^6: Some reflections on the Brainbench Perl Test

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Re^7: Some reflections on the Brainbench Perl Test
by chromatic (Archbishop) on Dec 15, 2008 at 18:47 UTC
    Pre-supposing a prospective employee as incompetent, because of their lack of exposure to XP and/or their inability to score highly on an "agility test", is capriciousness bordering on discrimination.

    I generally prefer your responses when they have at least a tenuous connection to what I write, and especially when you don't put words in my mouth.

[reply]
      I disagree with a fair share of open-ended questions of browseruk's, but in this case, I like his point. Finding a set of favorable questions and making checkmarks beside them isn't difficult. A similar case can be made for SATs, IQ tests, and so on. If you were to judge parrot on a different exam, perhaps one on meeting development goals and deadlines, timely releases, and so on, would you pass? And if you didn't, does that mean your team is terrible or that I chose an unflattering metric?

      Point being, judging competence is a tricky beast, and subject to the whims of the test writer and the company or person(s) endorsing it.
[reply]

      And I prefer your responses when they consider the whole response, not dismiss by selective reading.

      I wasn't putting "words in your mouth", nor suggesting that you would base your judgement soley upon the statistic--but it does happen.

      I remember a situation a few years ago where I had submitted my CV for a post that was almost the exact twin of the role I was just finishing. I never heard anything. Then a month after I had taken another position, the company rang me asking about my availability. It turned out that the pre-vetting of CVs had been done by the human resources department--counting keyword matches. There were two of the 12 acronyms on the job description that failed to appear on my CV, and it was rejected at that stage.

      When the interviews had been conducted and no suitable candidates found, the department manager had asked to see any rejected CVs and was astounded to find mine had been rejected. (His words.) The two missing acronyms were internal-use-only systems that no one from outside the company could ever have had experience of. Essentially boiler plate requirements added to all job descriptions by the HR bods. Most of the accepted CVs had been submitted through agencies aware of this, and they had added them to their submitted CVs. Mine was sent direct. The department manager was very angry, as I was already committed to my new post.

      Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
      "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
      In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
[reply]

In Section Meditations