LCD Part 2: The Nous Factor

As any seasoned semi-pro will tell you:

On the whole developers are mostly well-meaning, but mostly they are still monkeys.

Not that that's their fault, of course... there's a whole ream of obstacles out there awaiting the unwary traveller of the choppy waters of IT.

For instance, from my background of Konsultancy, it always seemed that anyone who aspired to be a Developer got to be one, with (literally) no questions asked as to their suitability (past passing the generalised multi-skill argy-bargy that made up the interview process). Just suit up and ship out - direct to join the hoards of (slightly) more experienced consultants already on client site - but as you're learning the job we'll only charge the client 50% of your rate until project numero deux. All important decisions will be made by the Technical Architekts from their underground lair, so relax and just go with the flow. All the business requirements will be documented, their clarity almost dazzling in a Word document prepared by an equally unskilled group of bored analyst consultants in 2003.

As for more traditional IT departments, I understand it's a bit more of a mish-mash. When the department was small, one of the outfit's entrepreneurs (now CTO) interviewed a couple of guys for some data-entry work. They wrote an Excel spreadsheet, converted it into Access-backed VBA application, got promoted to hire some monkeys to glue the bits back on that fell off... and so forth until it got spat out as the latest Enterprise-grade-language-du-jour abortion. You get the idea.

Whatever the case, just visualise a bunch of guys who are kind of semi-trained-as-they-read-it-on-a-blog-somewhere mentoring a bunch of other guys who are not-so-up-on-the-blogs-but-they-work-with-a-guy-who-is. At the end of the day, it's all about getting (a) job done. This is not to say that there's anything wrong with ambition though, after all - just take the self-taught bedroom coders of the 80's as a cue.

But.

Believe me when I say - I've seen the future and it's got no sodding clue. At my current workplace, we've got a pair coding test which is not very difficult. However, having failed approximately 95% of candidates who pass through our doors it seems very apt to categories them into the following groups:

1. Those that get it. Rarer than a blue giraffe and mostly quite humble.
2. Uninspired bog-standard dev. Having claimed to be an expert in a particular API, cannot explain what they would change about it given the chance.
3. Clueless central. An all round embarassing experience for everyone involved.

In a roundabout way, I suppose that it's the norm - as more and more people get involved with a particular (hot) industry such as ours, the demand for skilled staff increases at a faster rate than anyone could (or intends to) train them. There are a dire lack of formal qualifications available - those that are range from the "Only One Way To Skin A Cat" (JEE Certified Architect) to the "Certificate in a cereal box" (Certified SCRUMM master). In fact, one of the best quotes regarding certifications I've ever heard was that you should ignore the positive effects of any certification unless the bearer has a certificate for a diametrically-opposed subject.

No, where can I sign up for the Certified Waterfall Master course?!?.