>The primary task of a programmer is writing code, which involves sitting at a desk and thinking and typing
This is most definitely is not the case for most development positions.
Oh yes, there's plenty of code to write if your a developer. But there's communicating with management/qa/business dev/other developers/support as to what to work on, progress on tasks, clarification of requirements, bugs discovered, issues raised, tests to run, ways to program, etc. Open spaces will encourage these conversations to happen more organically instead of scheduled strictly around meetings.
At the end of the day, companies wants developers to crank out code as much as possible, but what they need is development to communicate effectively - among themselves and across teams. Hence, open floor plans, even if it reduces the quality of code.
And here's the rub: Running an interview this way is hard to do RIGHT. The questions have to be tractable for the given time, not too oblivious that the candidate blows through them, not too domain-specific that the interviewer ends up giving a lecture to education the interviewee on the domain. Then there's the proctoring of the question.
Show of hands here: Who here has worked a companies where they used white boarding as part of their process? Did any of the following happen?
* Interviewers asked pet questions instead of using a vetted list of questions
* Interviewers never tried any of the questions in interview conditions
* Interviewers were never trained/practiced giving these sorts of interviews
* Random developers were pulled into interviews to proctor a white boarding.
Guess what? The development team is learning how to interview candidates by interviewing candidates! Not prepping a team on how to interview seems very common. Maybe candidates are expendable and ultimately are the ones that need to prove themselves.
I have to wonder how many times qualified candidates get bypassed because they didn't whiteboard just so to the interview's liking. More concerning, how many times have unqualified candidates buffalo inexperienced interviewers with hand-waves or by luck of having seen the problem before, and end up weighing down the team with incompetence.
Funny you're complaining about that comment: This whole piece is one big emotion appeal for class warfare and unionism
"If only Little Johnny's parent's union jobs didn't disappear, then he wouldn't have lived in a broken home, and would have buckled down and gone to college!"
"Why does this group of people, who I know little about as individuals, have it so well?!"
Typical bleeding-heart bull, which is, of course, what this movie is about (and how this author barkers for his friend's movie). "Come one, and all, see how unfair life is in America!"
It's too bad these families both work so hard and barely get by. Maybe they did get screwed over by circumstance. Maybe they shouldn't had assume union jobs were forever. Maybe the lure of a paying job today to help the family kept those kids out of college. Or maybe those kids were fuck ups and didn't take school seriously. I guess I should pay for a ticket to find out if I should feel superior to the family or to the CEOs.
Complaining about how life is unfair will get folks into the art movie theater, but it's not going to provide opportunities for these families to better their lot.
This is most definitely is not the case for most development positions.
Oh yes, there's plenty of code to write if your a developer. But there's communicating with management/qa/business dev/other developers/support as to what to work on, progress on tasks, clarification of requirements, bugs discovered, issues raised, tests to run, ways to program, etc. Open spaces will encourage these conversations to happen more organically instead of scheduled strictly around meetings.
At the end of the day, companies wants developers to crank out code as much as possible, but what they need is development to communicate effectively - among themselves and across teams. Hence, open floor plans, even if it reduces the quality of code.