Joel Spolsky on Stack Overflow, Inclusion, and How He Broke IT Recruiting (2018)

Nah, I don&#x27;t think Spolsky is responsible. What is really responsible is that computers themselves influence people to think algorithmically. I know that sounds weird, but I observed after doing a degree in math: after a lot of work in mathematics, I started to think much more analytically and algorithmically. I think the same thing happens at tech companies, and that&#x27;s why Spolsky was so inclined to make the process more efficient: tech companies are themselves reactors to grow the algorithmic way of thinking in people, and that in turn causes people to seek for algorithmic solutions such as the hiring system we have today.<p>Yes, Spolsky might have created some new hiring practice, but if it wasn&#x27;t for him, it would be someone else because it is a natural consequence of a large group of people thinking in an algorithmic way for years and years.<p>If cults can influence poeple to commit mass suicide, surely ten years of math and programming can influence people to become more like machines.

&quot;I think you need a better system, and I think it’s probably going to be more like an apprenticeship or an internship, where you bring people on with a much easier filter at the beginning. And you hire them kind of on an experimental basis or on a training basis, and then you have to sort of see what they can do in the first month or two.&quot;<p>How does he expect this to work? Developers quit their job to &quot;try out&quot; and some percentage just get fired immediately?

I’ve been blaming him for years, though as others said he’s certainly not the only one.<p>But the pieces that recommended live-coding during the interview and dire warnings to never hire a “B player” lest it destroy your company, were incredibly influential and destructive.<p>Of course the same followers who corrupted Agile (into a straightjacket) and now push leetcode, are even more to blame. But I&#x27;d argue he started the largest avalanche.<p>You may think this is hyperbole, but several years ago, after almost twenty years of experience as the most technical person in multiple industries I was laid off from a downsizing company. I couldn&#x27;t find work for a year and a half in a booming economy. Our family faced <i>homelessness</i> and my bank account went negative the month I finally found an offer from the (one out of hundreds) company that didn&#x27;t take the Spolsky Interview seriously.<p>That org literally saved our lives. How&#x27;s that for hyperbole?<p>(I&#x27;ve really enjoyed his work as a whole though.)

IT recruitment would be broken with or without Joel. If anything he made it a little better, &#x27;smart and get things done&#x27; is still an influential read.<p>My take on interviews is that the company must eventually spend as much time as the hired developer in the process. Eventually, due to the high number of applicants there must be some rough initial filter. We have currently 700 applicants on 20 positions, so all are getting the same online test at the same time (University admission exam style) and the ones with top scores will have an in-person interview, probably similar to the one I got. Again an online test consisting of a coding part then a multiple questions quiz, then the solution and responses are discussed afterwards.

Serious humility admitting that his guide for hiring developers probably changed the entire field for the worse.<p>I tend to agree, and I&#x27;ve moved to an internship model myself for hires.

Has anyone here worked outside of tech? Hiring isn&#x27;t any better. Engineers tend to be really hard on themselves and others if something isn&#x27;t perfect. But you can&#x27;t hire perfectly. You will hire good people and crap people. People will come and go. Training your forces and marshalling them to victory is much more important than hiring the best recruits. People in IT seem to think training is some kind of punishment, but it&#x27;s a force multiplier (along with morale), and absolutely necessary for the best work. Ask anyone who studies business efficiency, or warfare.<p>StackOverflow is a good idea, but in the few times I&#x27;ve tried to use it, I have <i>always</i> been slapped down by obscure rules and tyrannical mods. The rules (which can vary by tag, specialty, and are often subjective) are not clear at all to new or casual users. SO needs to refocus on user stories and pain points.

I wonder how is he doing lately. Not much update from his blog <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.joelonsoftware.com&#x2F;author&#x2F;joelonsoftware&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.joelonsoftware.com&#x2F;author&#x2F;joelonsoftware&#x2F;</a>

If the suggestion is a return to a guilded age where masters have more interns and apprentices perhaps we should not turn to Spolsky for things other than how to stop sucking at excel.

&gt; It’s a theme he returned to in his fireside chat, sharing a concern that the number of women participating in programming has decreased over the last 10 or 20 years. “There’s definitely something wrong there, and it’s definitely something that really can’t be explained just by personal preference or anything like that.”<p>Ugh, this is a really painfully uninformative platitude.<p>First, how do we actually know it&#x27;s not just personal preference? Obviously other factors are likely to contribute. But with no suggestions as to what those factors are or evidence demonstrating they are likely causes, this claim has no information content.<p>And then second, what are the concrete steps for change? Is it the internship process he describes? Maybe it&#x27;s clearer in the full talk than in the quotes pulled for this article.

Joel Spolski told us all to hire, and aspire to be hired, as he did for his bugtracker written in a secret language that transpiled to VBScript.

I have worked with a bunch of &quot;crabby experts&quot; and it was exhausting. It was also exhilarating as we were changing the world.<p>My business is run like Joel&#x27;s internship model - we nurture and grow people and it&#x27;s a lot of fun.<p>Both have merits. One is better for the soul, one is better for getting shit done.

How much of hiring practices are just about legal liability? If firing someone when they don&#x27;t work out is a massive potential liability that requires 6 months of extensive documentation to fend off lawsuits, you design processes with many false negatives to avoid that scenario.

&gt; But he’s even more proud of another statistic: that every month almost 100,000 people post an answer to a question on Stack Overflow.<p>Is that still current? Lately I only see answers from rep farmers that paste paragraphs from the docs...<p>The moderation encouraging this style of answer doesn&#x27;t help either.

The current recruiting process is terrible but still better than every other alternative out there. Otherwise all the companies that have collectively poured billions of dollars into the problem over the last couple decades wouldn&#x27;t still be stuck right where they started.

That was an interesting read.<p>I have always found stack overflow to be a very toxic environment<p>Read only for me now...

“A lot of times the people that are missing from the field of programmers are missing because they tried, and somebody was not nice or gave them the feeling that they were anything less than welcome,” he said.<p>Funny enough this about sums up my interview experience with SO

It&#x27;s annoying that we have to suffer because of Joel&#x27;s silly mistakes

Lets see how the next generation of Google,Meta is (going to) hire candidates.<p>Maybe AI can be the mentor&#x2F;judge for such an &quot;internship-style&quot; recruiting practice, thus make it scalable.