Wanted - Excellent verification engineers. Must be 6' 4"

Most people will (hopefully) agree that selecting a verification engineer by height would be a bizzare thing to do.  In fact, if we saw an advert that said "Wanted - Excellent verification engineers.  Must be 6' 4"", then we'd probably think that the advertising company were pretty strange, and didn't really know what they were looking for. 

After all, what's height got to do with verification?  It's a physical thing that you have no control over, and you are the height you are whether or not you did anything useful while attaining that height.  In fact, I'd pass the advert by and move onto a more sensible prospective employer. Any team selected by height probably isn't going to be much good, and I can imaging daily life on a project would be pretty dire.

Years of experience (YoE) is not much more useful than height in telling us how suitable the candidate is for the job, so why then, do companies still use it as a major selection, or rate-setting, criteria?

Think about it. What does it really tell us about someone?

Does it tell us if someone's smart?
Nope.

Does it tell us if they are efficient and productive?
Nope.

Does it tell us if the person can inovate and solve complex problems?
Nope.

Perhaps it tells us that the candidate can communicate well, and explain complex ideas.
Errr, nope.

In fact, YoE only tells us two things about the candidate:

1. that they chose to work with the same technology, or on the same topic, for X years
2. that they were good enough to avoid being ejected from the entire industry in the last X years

Nothing more than that. Years of experience is a physical measure of something we don't have any control over. In 10 years from now, I'll have 10 years more experience of verification. So what? So will lots of other people. It doesn't say how I will spend those years. I might spend them productively, reading books, learning new things, solving big problems, or I might spend them making the same mistakes, and reinforcing bad practise.

Joel Spolsky defines 4 types of people:

• Smart and gets things done
• Smart and doesn't get things done
• Stupid and gets things done
• Stupid and doesn't get things done

With the exception of the last, all of these can rack up the same X years of experience. YoE can't help you select between any of these, so it really isn't a great deal of use. In fact, it's only useful in the following cases:

1. when you need someone to hit the ground running. However, any talented guy (the kind you want) will be an expert in 6 months, so you only need to look for 6 months experience
2. when you are comparing 2 talented guys. The one with more YoE will be better (because all other things are equal). However, guys like this are rare, so hire them both
3. when you want to filter out candidates who actually believe YoE is important. Any talented guy will know it's meaningless, so will apply to your advert anyway (assuming they don't pass you by). The majority of average guys will not apply.

Anyway, must dash - I've just realised that I have been driving a car longer than Lewis Hamilton has. I think I'll contact McLaren and ask for his job. I must be better that him, right? After all, I have more years of experience.

Comments

[JL Gray]

Good post, Davie. I especially enjoyed your final analogy!

JL