At 14-15 I could fluently program various flavours of Basic on various home computers, had also learnt Forth on the Jupiter Ace, had played with Lisp and understood the basics — and was totally fluent in 6502 assembly language. I could disassemble other folks code, and worked out how to hack games to give extra lives / disable collision / etc., had also learnt how to rip the music players from various games, and was messing about with- and making my own- demos/intros.

Sure, things are different today, but that doesn't mean a 14 y/o can't be bright, nor have any existing tech knowledge.

Inspecting browser stuff, and simple network utilities, are interesting and all that. But even for a 14 year old with minimal (or zero) tech knowledge, they're probably not going to hold their attention for more than a few hours, perhaps half a day if I'm being generous. And if the kid already has some tech chops, the things you outline can likely be covered in just an hour.

It's not that insane that a 14 year old comes into the workplace to learn / gain some work experience. In my late teens, as a professional games coder, we had someone about that age come to our company office for a week or so of work experience.

— Your later suggestions are much closer to the mark. Show the kid what happens normally, day to day, and talk it all through, whilst providing a reasonably sufficient amount of higher-level background knowledge, so they understand the context. The kid wants work experience, they want to learn about the actual job you have, that's what they've come for, not to be treated like you're trying to give them mere distractions.

Anyways, the part I'm considering insane is the parents, should have clarified. Career opportunities for a 14 year old, sheesh.

If the kid wants to learn programming, there are much better avenues then going to sit in an office. For example, they can make a game mod / Roblox game, etc.

Sure. But it's clearly not about learning programming... it's about work experience, and therefore, in part, about possible future career choices.

Nobody thinks sending their kid on a week of work experience is going to teach them much about programming. That's not the motivation here at all.

> For example, they can make a game mod / Roblox game, etc.

— How do you know the kid isn't already tinkering with that kind of thing already?

> Do you really think the average kid spends their time writing code?

No, not at all. I never said the 'average kid' writes code at 14. But some kids of that age certainly do. I did.

And who says this is an 'average kid' anyhow — they might not be at all, clearly they're somewhat of a nerd/geek kid, particularly if they're interested in spending their work experience week with a software development team / a software developer / tech company.

And even if they are the 'average kid', anyone can learn to code — arguably one has somewhat of an advantage if one starts at an early age.

> Career opportunities for a 14 year old, sheesh.

Here in the UK, it's pretty normal for school-age kids to do a week of work experience whilst at secondary school. It's usually organised by the school. Not everyone does it, but the option is there.

After all, kids leave school — and, if they don't choose to go to college, can go into work — at 16.

It's not about the kid going into work at 14. Far from it.

> the part I'm considering insane is the parents

With respect: I think our conversation here says more about your own beliefs, than it does about the parents, or the kid, or the purpose of work experience.

— You can read more about what work experience is actually about (it's not about learning programming) and how it works, at least in the UK (where I am — but it'll be similar in other countries too), here:

https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/work-experience-your-ch...

Besides that, the macos workspaces fit my needs. Knowing shortcuts is essential though

I really only see lack of empathy in your response. Stuttering is a handicap, plain and simple. Yes, some of us can live with it. It is debilitating and humiliating and if you do not suffer from it, I can't imagine how you can begin prescribing advice. You can have the universe, I just want to order some coffee (thank god for self-serve POS).

This is only a reflection of one's inability to play the damn game, instead adopting a victim mentality for pity points.

When I went abroad and didn't speak a single word of the local language, I still managed to order coffee just fine by pointing my finger at what I wanted, and smiling. There is nothing debilitating nor humiliating about any of it. Grow up and develop a personality.

My life isn't a game.

Thanks for trying, but you're obviously unsuited to the task of having this discussion.

> This probably won't happen for another billion years or so.

A billion years is a bit far off so let's worry about global warming first

Quick question, I was wondering if you all are still hiring new grads? Asking for a friend. Thanks!

A better approach would be to checkout the repo at a commit before the fix and try to replicate the solution in a short amount of time. You would then build context around what the contributor had to figure out and in the worst case you'll have a "gold standard" solution to fallback on (assuming the PR was successful).

For me it's best advice how to start with Open Source, and be sure that your PR will be accepted. And as side effect you will learn a lot, but this is with any practice like with your idea, but you will make project better. Your idea is as worthless as doing LettCode or similar.

I have to rely on that and absolutely do not expect them to have a green GitHub. I would hate for that to become the norm.

That is why we need to ascertain coding signal. And that is why we need some contrived problem to provide to ascertain within a reasonable amount of time whether a candidate is a yes/no.

You are a unique data point and hundreds and thousands of other developers just don't have that kind of clout (I didn't look through your resume thing).

Also, from a hiring perspective, it's not scalable going through a candidates repos and verifying their worthiness. However, it is fun to talk about them during interviews.

I'm a unique talent. I'm not God's gift to Programming, but I have a very different kind of backstory from most that you find. I had a hard road, and the uneven terrain that I traveled, has a lot to do with how I became as good as I am. When no one gives you breaks, you are forced to make your own, prove yourself, at every step, and accomplishment becomes habitual. You learn not to overpromise, figure out how to learn new stuff, and check your own homework.

Many of the team I led, had similar eclectic backgrounds. They were all senior-level C++ algorithm developers, with decades of experience. Most were smarter and better than I am.

We all would have been immediately rejected, in barbarous fashion, from today's hiring process.

As it turns out, they have all gone on to do very well, and that makes me happy. I am glad to have been a part of their career. Working with them was a signal honor. They are making their new employers quite happy, indeed, but it took each of them over two years (in a couple of cases, well over two years), to really land, which is quite telling.

In my first three jobs, I never worked with one single engineer that had actually had real software training. I worked with astrophysicists, mathematicians, MBAs, chemists, designers, economists, teachers, electrical engineers, and even other high school dropouts, like me. Even my last, long-term job, was mostly with EEs and physicists, but all the Japanese folks had serious sheepskins. It was a fairly marquée corporation.

The job of ‘programmer’ takes on many shapes and sizes. Businesses evolve and are different from one another.

You may be very successful in some clusters of business, but how representative is this, let alone your unique experience, to the rest of the industry?

If you’ve never worked with anyone with “real” software training, why would I hire you into a senior position when there are plenty of candidates who have?

I’ve worked at companies back in the day where experienced non traditional programmers have both kick started and ruined businesses within the same job. You may be successful enough to grow a business, but that’s different from scaling or pivoting one.

If you can’t grok a homework program from the first week of a data structures course, why should I trust you to self learn more advanced topics? Why would I spend a ton of time evaluating massive GitHub contributions vs. just watching you code a problem your team would work on for 1 hour?

I have to pay smug kids 100s of g’s because the labor market is so fucked, and there’s no way I’d either trust them to evaluate candidates via code review, nor would I spend their time on that vs. building and learning.

I’d love to not pay children small fortunes, but most very experienced journeymen I’ve interviewed over the years can’t string together dynamic api calls or tell me how things scale, and I get to hire for experience first every time.

If you were able to self teach, then the kid that just spent 4 years snorting adderall and interning and google sure as hell has a chance to, too, and he’s willing to solve my dumb riddles.

The other thing you won’t read: firing people for most managers is awful. A manager only takes so many risks before they learn how to mitigate having to experience this horrible experience. I’d rather reject you than fire you.

Edit: I was one of the impressionable young readers once upon a time, and I set myself back quite a bit taking advice from strangers on the internet. Genius programmers on GitHub don’t sign your paychecks.

I was merely recounting my own personal experience, and, a bit more cautiously, opinions. I say “cautiously,” because I know that opinion is a different thing from fact, and I need to be careful to avoid presenting my opinions in a manner that frames them as “facts.” In another thread, I needed to do a mea culpa, where I did just that, and was [rightly] called out for it[0].

No BS at all. It actually happened. Are you calling me a liar? Because that is what it appears to be, and I was under the impression that we don’t do that kind of thing, here. One of my personal postures, is that I stand behind my own words. Please note that I have links to my entire portfolio, and many, many ways to back up (or refute) what I say. I deleted my last anonymous posting account, years ago.

One of the issues that I have, with today’s Internets Tubes, is that people like to anonymously spew out opinion as fact, and take every opportunity they can, to insult and demean others. I make every effort to avoid that, in my own interactions. Feel free to go through my posting history, and show me otherwise. If I am wrong, I live a lifestyle, where I am required to promptly admit it, and make amends. I believe that I do this.

I have merely written my own experiences and personal story.

It makes me very, very glad to know that I never have to put myself into a position again, where certain types of folks have power over me. I am quite aware that my own story is different from the run of the mill, but being called a liar for telling it, is beyond the pale.

This new world seems dark and depressing, to me. A Lovecraftian “food chain” world, where everyone is constantly battling everyone else; including their own teammates. I used to look forward to a career of excitement, adventure, learning, and being a member of teams, where I was the dumbest member, and it was an honor to be included. I have never been interested in competing with others. I have always wanted to collaborate with others. I am rather saddened to learn how unique this approach is.

In a lot of ways, I got that, and I’m grateful, but I now see that I probably dodged a bullet.

If there were anything I would say to “impressionable young readers,” it would be:

    At one time, some of us looked forward to careers that were not gladiatorial arenas. We woke up, every day, anticipating learning new stuff, and felt honored to be part of a team, composed of people that humbled us, but never humiliated us. We made enough to have a comfortable living, never worried about putting food on the table, and didn’t have envy for our coworkers. We didn’t measure our own self-worth, by demeaning others, and we felt as if we were riding the crest of thrilling new discoveries and technologies. We stayed at companies for many years, because we believed in the aggregate mission, and liked the idea that we were making a positive difference in the world. We became lousy interviewees, because it was an unnecessary skill. We never “hazed” one another, and embraced our differences, as they brought new perspectives into our worlds, challenging us to constantly review our own opinions and worldviews.

    There was, once, a happier time, before The Great Old Ones burst through the portal, and made the world as it is, today. I lived in that time, and am reporting from *experience*.

If merely recounting my own experience and personal worldview is considered a threat, I have no words, other than I truly feel badly for others.

Now, I truly am done with this thread. Have a great day! I sincerely wish you and your family, health, success, happiness, and fulfillment, in all your affairs.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28442939

Not sure about US, but in EU, the contract from employers doesn't allow you to contribute code without permission (e.g. contributing to OSS, working on side projects, etc), it's very very rare to find an exception.

You can check this discussion few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27843198

> I have to rely on that ..

By doing this, you are not considering employees who are doing nothing wrong, but follow the rules and respect the contract terms.

I was fortunate, in that I didn't have a "shower clause" in my employment contract, so I was able to do a lot of extracurricular work.

In fact, it was a principal reason that I stayed at that company. They paid me...OK...for doing the work I hated (managing -but I was also a good manager), and let me have enough bandwidth to do my extracurricular work; which was my true passion.

Basically, the work I didn't get paid for, was what I really wanted to do. They were extremely happy with the work I did for them, which did not reflect my true, personal passion. I feel like I was "just going through the motions," as a manager.

But I also firmly believe that if I am given responsibility for a task, then I do it to the very best of my ability; whether or not I am passionate about it, and I'm actually a really decent manager (for the type of team I led).

After leaving that company, and learning (the hard way) that no one wants to work with a 55-year-old engineer, willing to work at half the wages of far less-qualified people (because I already had my retirement set), I was forced into early retirement, and actually achieved my dream, which is writing code to help out NPOs, for free.

If you are self employed, you might not get the same contract. In our contracts, what has been discussed in the thread was clearly stated by our employer (I asked my colleagues about their older contracts as well).

I was a hiring manager for 25 years. I would have killed for this kind of information.

The people I hired were no slouches. It was a big deal, and not to be taken lightly. I loved multi-page résumés.

As soon as I listed everything I started getting calls back.

That's what big companies are all about, there's really nothing new to see here. It seem to be working well for most of them though.

Most people have various interests and obligations. The number of people who after a day of work in software engineering go on to continue to do that in their free time instead of pursuing other interests is vanishingly small.

Additionally you have people who also just can’t do this, even if they wanted to, due to other obligations.

Obviously there are people who have a very narrow set of interests and leave their office to go to a hacker space but that is such an absurdly small group that it’s ridiculous to even consider them in hiring.

In fact you probably want to avoid having an entire team of people like this in favor of a more diverse group of people.

It is, however, an advantage that some folks have, and my suggestion is that we should not be required to deliberately hobble ourselves, just because everyone does not have the same advantage.

Of course, a hiring corporation has every right to ignore things like this, and they likely won’t go out of business, as a result. They, may, however, miss talent that could take their business to “the next level,” and risk hiring folks that have become expert at “gaming the system,” and presenting style, over substance.

It has to be a good CRUD kitchen recipe app if you want to show it off.

Bad - small coding project will show that candidate is a bad coder, even if the code works.

Bad - cover letter will show that candidate has bad grammar, even if person put in the effort.

Good - small coding project will show that candidate can get anything done.

Good - cover letter will show that candidate is willing to put extra effort to get the job.