What You Need To Know

Steve proposes a working definition of "the bar": it measures common sense, the knack of choosing a near-optimal solution when faced with an unusual problem, learned the way real people learn common sense — by spending years making mistakes. A software developer five years out of school is functionally a sensible ten-year-old. The diagnostic anecdotes come from a recent recruiting trip: the PM candidate who, told the choice is between half-assing two week-long projects both due in a week or doing one well, sticks with the half-assed option even after Steve offers her the alternative in those exact words; the Java candidate who claims multithreading expertise, then forgets the syntax of synchronized; the C# candidate who tries the same line and is escorted out. They're the operational definition of what fires the Fishy Detector.

Then comes the catalogue. Steve doesn't insist on a CS degree, but does insist on what one is supposed to have left you with: that 2³² isn't a 32-digit number, that array elements occupy contiguous RAM, that is-a and has-a are logical relationships not implementation choices, that a Person doesn't multiple-inherit from Head, Arm, Leg, Torso, that locks aren't guarded by other locks any more than the earth is held up by a turtle. The items are obvious — and an obvious thing a working professional gets wrong is a more reliable signal than any clever question. It's the theoretical companion to Five Essential Phone-Screen Questions from the year before: this is why those questions work.