The Dunning-Krueger Effect for "Rockstar" Developers

the trick is never taking anyone seriously

I’ve completely detached from it at this point, after that shitshow of an interview.

I’ve got another one tomorrow and I think I’ll just drink enough ‘fe so I can block it out of my mind.

all of the rockstar developers I know have imposter syndrome instead of dunning krueger

HR moved it right up against my lunch break, so I guess I’m taking a half hour for lunch then.

Fucking HR pricks.

Maybe this interview won’t be so bad - it’s someone fresh out of college with no prior work experience and they even wrote a formal cover letter.

grill them on zoomer memes

They graduated toward the top of their class from their university and rated themselves a four out of five in their Java experience (where one is “wrote a few programs in it” and five is “can give a big conference talk about it”), but couldn’t tell us the difference between an array, ArrayList, and a HashMap in Java.

They had heard of a HashMap but never used it before.

This is a graduate of a four year university computer science program and they don’t know what a HashMap is, or when you’d use it.

We asked them to do an exercise with key/value pairs and they implemented it in Java with a linear search through parallel arrays.

They rated themselves highly in Python as well. I wonder if they ever used a Python dict before.

They nailed the troubleshooting task though.

python my dict

are they not working summer jobs/internships?

They listed no professional programming experience - no internships, research experience, or summer jobs. They said they were looking for a job while they got their masters.

The only other job they listed on their resume was at a factory.

This is the most junior software engineer position we have that isn’t an internship, and it is entry level.

do kids even know what phreaking was anymore

Blue boxing but it’s the blue Among Us character throwing switches in Electrical

From: MasterOfMagic at 2022-03-10 03:14:12
Blue boxing but it’s the blue Among Us character throwing switches in Electrical

From: MasterOfMagic at 2022-03-10 00:31:07
They graduated toward the top of their class from their university and rated themselves a four out of five in their Java experience (where one is “wrote a few programs in it” and five is “can give a big conference talk about it”), but couldn’t tell us the difference between an array, ArrayList, and a HashMap in Java.

They had heard of a HashMap but never used it before.

man what the fuck

From: cosban at 2022-03-10 21:47:46

From: MasterOfMagic at 2022-03-10 00:31:07
They graduated toward the top of their class from their university and rated themselves a four out of five in their Java experience (where one is “wrote a few programs in it” and five is “can give a big conference talk about it”), but couldn’t tell us the difference between an array, ArrayList, and a HashMap in Java.

They had heard of a HashMap but never used it before.

man what the fuck

They were the first candidate I’ve interviewed for these positions to send me a personal thank you note to my public work email address. It didn’t help their evaluation, but it was nice.

From: cosban at 2022-03-10 21:47:46

From: MasterOfMagic at 2022-03-10 00:31:07
They graduated toward the top of their class from their university and rated themselves a four out of five in their Java experience (where one is “wrote a few programs in it” and five is “can give a big conference talk about it”), but couldn’t tell us the difference between an array, ArrayList, and a HashMap in Java.

They had heard of a HashMap but never used it before.

man what the fuck