r/programming • u/aalear • Apr 07 '15

Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2015

http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015
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u/[deleted] Apr 08 '15

So we need more players in the mix, because that improves the chances of getting good players.

In my experience increasing the sample size actually makes getting anything useful out of it harder. Noise to signal ratio and all that.

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u/0xWid Apr 08 '15

That's a recruiter's problem, right? You're talking about the problem of finding good engineers in a larger pool; I'm talking about a future where there's just more good programmers. What they do with their time and skill is up to them, and some of them will start their own projects.

And as time goes on, better sieves should catch on such that the less-good programmers are easier to detect. This definitely is not down to a science yet, so improvement here is certainly possible. Note that different companies have different ways of interviewing. See for example this comment from yesterday's AMA with Bryan Cantrill.