My 14 Year Old Son Can Do That!
© Copyright Frank D. Kanu 2000-2008
Some 15 years ago I had an interview with the CEO of a software company. They were in desperate need of a good software engineer. I thought the interview went well—after all I’d worked on big projects and had a proven record of successfully deploying commercial software.
Then he informed me that programming was something even his 14 year old son could do.
I told him to employ his son, stood up and left.
Technorati (All Links are external): 14 year old ceo commercial software desperate need good software leader software company software engineer business it leadership management
Some 15 years ago I had an interview with the CEO of a software company. They were in desperate need of a good software engineer. I thought the interview went well—after all I’d worked on big projects and had a proven record of successfully deploying commercial software.
Then he informed me that programming was something even his 14 year old son could do.
I told him to employ his son, stood up and left.
What would you do?
Do you think he was a good leader?
PS: His company went out of business a few months later.Tags:
14 year old ceo commercial software desperate need good software leader software company software engineerTechnorati (All Links are external): 14 year old ceo commercial software desperate need good software leader software company software engineer business it leadership management
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20:08 on Friday, September 15th, 2006
02:54 on Sunday, September 17th, 2006
But leaving that possibility aside, even if he can program he certainly doesn’t have the experience necessary to work in a commercial environment, deal with sales and marketing people, actually extract the requirements for a project (and by requirements I mean what they need, not what they say they want) or complete the coding on time (possibly involving managing other coding resources). Following that there’s the implementation, post-live support, training and documentation to be done.
But then us software engineers are just big geeky kids right - we don’t have “real” jobs
Cheers
Mike