January 22, 2013 at 9:54 am
Jeff Moden (1/18/2013)
lewandot (1/17/2013)
You can teach them SQL.I'm finding that to be less and less true. Some people will never actually get it.
I'm not sure that's true. I do think that there are limits to what you can teach people. Learning to do basic aggregates, joins, and queries I think is something most people get. Going beyond that to CTEs, partitions, APPLY, can be confusing.
January 22, 2013 at 12:03 pm
majorbloodnock (1/21/2013)[/b
If your company is happy with your hiring decisions, then keep doing it the way you do. However, unless you experience a far higher staff turnover than your competitors, I suspect your choices take attitude into account far more than either you're letting on or you realise.
No turn over rate to speak of..:-D
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
February 3, 2013 at 2:51 am
It is virtually impossible to pass a white boarding technical/dev interview if you dont have experience with the required skill set.
In my experience with interviewing for technical analyst positions it is vastly more important to be able to clearly communicate your prior experiences. The coding required is often basic and (select from where less then, etc) ... But it can be challenging to remember what lessons you learned on a 6 month gig 5 years ago and have it be part of a continuous story. This is what much of my night before cramming and rehearsals consist of.
February 3, 2013 at 10:21 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (1/22/2013)
Jeff Moden (1/18/2013)
lewandot (1/17/2013)
You can teach them SQL.I'm finding that to be less and less true. Some people will never actually get it.
I'm not sure that's true. I do think that there are limits to what you can teach people. Learning to do basic aggregates, joins, and queries I think is something most people get. Going beyond that to CTEs, partitions, APPLY, can be confusing.
I guess I'll have to agree to disagree. To me, learning just the basics isn't a form of "getting it". It's like saying that someone knows how to sew because they can thread a needle and manage to jab it through 2 pieces of cloth without drawing blood. 😉
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
February 3, 2013 at 10:36 am
Gary Varga (1/21/2013)
Jeff Moden (1/18/2013)
lewandot (1/17/2013)
You can teach them SQL.I'm finding that to be less and less true. Some people will never actually get it.
Unfortunately, it appears to be true to programming in general. Or rather you can get "them" to produce the lines of code that may work but it is far from professional systems development. It is harder do get people who can do things "right" (or just well).
SQL is just prevalent here because it is the contextual tip of the iceberg.
Sorry for the late reply but, yes, that's exactly the perception I have lately. The Dev group at work has been trying to hire a couple of front end Developers and that will also spend about 30% of their time writing stored procedures because we mostly don't allow embedded code (not to be confused with CRUD code usually generated by an ORM). The interviews always start with the front end Developer side and very few people are making it through what I think should be basic skills questioning. Most never even make it through to the SQL side of the questioning. The folks doing the GUI questioning aren't asking highly in-depth "trick" questions, either. They're just asking the basics and these people are all crashing and burning.
Cramming or not, the skill level and quality of Developer that has been showing up for interviews has been deplorable lately.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
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