Rather, people who suck at programming (and thus can’t get jobs) apply to way more positions than people who are good at programming.
I have interviewed a fair number of programmers, and I’ve definitely seen plenty of people who talked a good game but who couldn’t write FizzBuzz (or sum the numbers in an array). And this was stacking the deck in their favor: They could use a programming language of their choice, plus a real editor, and if they appeared unable to deal with coding in front of people, I’d go sit on the other side of the office and let them work for a bit.
I do not think these people were representative of the average working programmer, based on my experiences consulting at a variety of companies. The average engineer can write code.
I have interviewed a fair number of programmers, and I’ve definitely seen plenty of people who talked a good game but who couldn’t write FizzBuzz (or sum the numbers in an array). And this was stacking the deck in their favor: They could use a programming language of their choice, plus a real editor, and if they appeared unable to deal with coding in front of people, I’d go sit on the other side of the office and let them work for a bit.
I do not think these people were representative of the average working programmer, based on my experiences consulting at a variety of companies. The average engineer can write code.