Over
years, I’ve paid a lot of attention to how companies recruit computer programmers. During that time, I’ve noticed how managers frequently make hiring decisions that seem to make sense in short term, but which result in long-term chaos. I’ve seen kind of havoc that this can wreak, and how devastating it can be to company’s future.I’d like to say a few words about that today.
The companies that I’ve observed typically pay attention matters such as industry backgrounds, years of experience, and so forth. They want to know what types of projects applicants have worked on, which compilers and operating systems they’re familiar with, which communication protocols and software packages they’ve used, and so forth. Many also want to know about employee’s work ethic and personality, but in end, hiring decisions frequently boil down to employee’s work experience and how much training that person would require.
All of those are important, sensible considerations. As I observed these companies though, I noticed that most of them—about 80% or more—paid little or no attention to whether applicant had a clean, readable programming style. They were deeply concerned about whether applicant could get job done, and didn’t seem to care much about whether their software could be easily understood and modified by others, years down road.
To some extent, this is understandable. After all, immediate goal of most companies is to develop working products that they can sell. What many forget, however, is that they are supposed to be marathoners, not sprinters. They need to think more in terms of finishing entire race, and less in terms of achieving short-term victories.
It also betrays a certain naivete about immediate damage that can result from poor programming style. After all, even best software is rarely bug-free. A programmer who writes clean, legible software will be able to debug his own work more reliably than someone who writes patchwork code. The latter may arguably provide fixes more quickly (and even that’s debatable!), but results will be unreliable—and when time is short, that’s a luxury which companies cannot afford.
