The only ones that somewhat depress me is a particular class of bad developer: Fresh out of college, these people have their curriculum nailed... and know absolutely nothing else.
One example that really struck me was an interviewee that I asked to write a simple pre-order traversal on a seven-node tree that we print out for our interviews. Instead I got a moderately lengthy and correct description of how to search for a value in a sorted binary tree. Correct, except for A: it wasn't the question I asked and B: immediate visual examination of the tree we were looking would reveal it was clearly not sorted. Other things in this interview led me to the conclusion that I got that answer because this person had studied that topic, but almost couldn't even hear, couldn't perceive a question that wasn't essentially right off an exam.
These are the ones who depress me a little, because they have clearly done everything everyone told them to do (study hard, do well on tests, etc) and must have some significant raw intelligence to be able to do this well on a challenging curriculum... yet, for all that, they have walked away with so very little useful knowledge or skills. I also feel some anger at the system that they have learned too well to navigate... but by the time they get to me, it's too late to change anything.
I comfort myself in the near-sure knowledge they will find a job somewhere. Some percentage of them will even adapt to the real world and perhaps they will become great programmers. I don't know. I can't know. That's life.
But I can't in good conscience give a thumbs up for them. We are willing to train solid developers and we have a track record of hiring people that don't even know the language they will be working in (since they have demonstrated the ability to learn languages in the past), but you can only take that so far.
On the other hand, those who sat in college for four+ years and know neither the curriculum, nor any other skills, just barely squeaking by with the necessary grades and forgetting everything as soon as the class is over, well, they had every chance to realize they were in trouble and didn't take it. I don't feel depressed about them at all. That such people exist is just a fact of life.
One example that really struck me was an interviewee that I asked to write a simple pre-order traversal on a seven-node tree that we print out for our interviews. Instead I got a moderately lengthy and correct description of how to search for a value in a sorted binary tree. Correct, except for A: it wasn't the question I asked and B: immediate visual examination of the tree we were looking would reveal it was clearly not sorted. Other things in this interview led me to the conclusion that I got that answer because this person had studied that topic, but almost couldn't even hear, couldn't perceive a question that wasn't essentially right off an exam.
These are the ones who depress me a little, because they have clearly done everything everyone told them to do (study hard, do well on tests, etc) and must have some significant raw intelligence to be able to do this well on a challenging curriculum... yet, for all that, they have walked away with so very little useful knowledge or skills. I also feel some anger at the system that they have learned too well to navigate... but by the time they get to me, it's too late to change anything.
I comfort myself in the near-sure knowledge they will find a job somewhere. Some percentage of them will even adapt to the real world and perhaps they will become great programmers. I don't know. I can't know. That's life.
But I can't in good conscience give a thumbs up for them. We are willing to train solid developers and we have a track record of hiring people that don't even know the language they will be working in (since they have demonstrated the ability to learn languages in the past), but you can only take that so far.
On the other hand, those who sat in college for four+ years and know neither the curriculum, nor any other skills, just barely squeaking by with the necessary grades and forgetting everything as soon as the class is over, well, they had every chance to realize they were in trouble and didn't take it. I don't feel depressed about them at all. That such people exist is just a fact of life.