The last couple of days I've interviewed five candidates. We're trying to get a couple more developers in the next two weeks, before a hiring freeze (every time the company stock hits a new low there's a hiring freeze :-). I don't know why people keep saying there are enough programmers out there, none of the five made me want to hire them on the spot.

Two of them were more or less just out of school. (And we're looking for all types of skill levels, so that's ok). One had a degree in Actuarial Science and Statistic, what the heck is that? It's some sort of math degree. And what about the post-graduate diploma (notice it's not an MS)? It's some sort of technical school degree. Sorry, we can't use someone who has *no* CS fundamentals. The other youngster at least had a CS MS from San Jose State, not a bad school for a CSU. But she only has a BS in Civil Engineering. Still, it's a sign of the desperate times that we're going to offer her a position. (Strangely, out of six candidates I'm interviewing this week, 4 are women and all are Oriental or Indian).

There was also another woman with a CIS BS from UCSC. Eh, CIS is not a real CS major. MS in CS from USC though so at least that's real. But her last two jobs were each less than 6 months each and, although she has done quite a bit of what I would call the grunge part of being a tech lead, she hasn't done anything really advanced. And she's asking for more money than half of our developers make. When I talked to her she just didn't seem in it for the excitement. Frankly, she looked like someone who wanted a nice job she could die in.

There was also a guy with a CS MS from CSU Long Beach -- quality school there :-). At least he's willing to work hard and learn on the job. At this point I fully agree that a BS from Berkeley (or Stanford or MIT or maybe one or two other schools) is as good as an MS from any other school, at least in giving me an indication of how talented a person is. At least this guy works cheap.

The last woman has a fair amount of experience, although mostly doing contract work with a consulting company. MS from IIT in Bombay, India, which I think is supposed to be one of their better schools. (Sure, India has a lot of good programmers for a third world country, but they only have two or three top quality technical schools so it's easy to just filter out all the also-rans). I wasn't extremely impressed with her but once again we have few choices so we're going to hire her.

The last guy is from China, not a bad thing in itself though harder for me to judge his education. This guy was a lecturer in China for five years, worked in a couple of Japanese firms for three years, and has worked for a couple of dot-coms the last couple of years. Maybe he'll really impress me, I really hope so. Way too many people think that listing all their freaking skills on their resume is a good idea.

Maybe I've changed. But nowadays all I want to see are education and what skills you learned in each job. Not your accomplishments because it's just so much noise -- either it's something esoteric and not applicable to our line of work or it's so general that it applies to every job (*nobody* has telephony skills, sigh). I want to see how many projects you've led, how much responsi- bility you've been given, what you took the time to learn on your own. Really what I'm looking for is someone with drive. People with a good foundation of the kind of stuff that you can't teach once you graduate from school so you better learn it at school. Everything else you can learn, that's why you need drive and energy and enthusiasm.

Man, I've gotten demanding. No way I would have hired me three years ago. Well, maybe if I just forgot about my four years at WCBS and considered myself like any new graduate, which is what Dave did when he interviewed me. Goddess, if someone walked in with a BS in EECS from Berkeley, I'd hire them right now, not that I have hiring power. Or a CSE major, some kind of computer science, tempered by engineering discipline. All these people I've been interviewing are just fine for most computer companies, but not for the higher end companies that need people with skill who can think. Real developers. I'm sorry to say that there just aren't that many good CS people out there.