Re: Midrange Knowledge test

["James H. H. Lampert" <jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jeff Bull wrote:

> The reason that employees usually leave soon after receiving training is
> that many employers fail to recognise/appreciate . . . .

Ladies and Gentlemen:

The real reason, the one that underlies both the tendency of employers
to fail to recognize the increased value, and the tendency of employees
to jump ship for a more attractive paycheck, is that the current social,
economic, and political environment encourages people to mistake base
greed for enlightened self-interest. Plain and simple. And as long as a
large segment of the population continues in a "greed is good" mode,
they will continue to play musical chairs with experienced people and
high-paying jobs, while a large number of talented, degreed, but
inexperienced journeyman programmers spend their days flipping burgers,
bagging groceries, and passing out rental skates.

All levels of Civil Service, from Federal down to the local school
districts, have been largely on a mandatory competitive exam basis for
permanent hires for decades now. It works extremely well. Most civil
servants I know are extremely well qualified, and dedicated enough to
stick with their jobs despite pay rates that are often much lower than
what they might find in the private sector.

I've felt, for some time, that an ideal hiring process would begin with
a written exam, to establish the applicant's base qualifications, also
include an oral board, and would be carefully structured to keep the
applicant slightly off-balance (but not unduly stressed) throughout the process.

To bring this back on-topic, I would say that much of what a
merit-system exam for AS/400 programmers should include ought to test
general principles of programming, a general knowledge of how things
work on an AS/400, and an understanding of the programming languages involved.

I would also suggest that one shouldn't bother to probe too deeply into
a person's knowledge of RPG (or COBOL, for that matter): anybody who
claims to be fluent in those languages would almost certainly  have to
be either honest, or a complete idiot. Face it: falsifying competence in
C, Java, Pascal, Modula-2, PL/I, or even Fortran or some assembler might
be to a person's advantage, but who in his right mind would brag about
knowing COBOL, much less RPG, even truthfully?

-- 
James H. H. Lampert
Professional Dilettante
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