Re: Suddenly, all is clear
Despite our academy being excellent, it doesn't sort out all the chaff...
I had to mentor one guy who came out the other end. He'd been pushed from project to project, the PMs couldn't wait to get rid of him. Then I was assigned as his mentor and I actually called up a couple of the PMs and asked for a quick assessment.
It turned out, that after 6 months of training and 6 months of project work, he still didn't understand a for-loop or how an if statement worked! His testing was passable, but not good.
I called him in for a talk. It turned out he was a marketing graduate, but marketing graduates don't make enough money in the first couple of years, so he went into programming instead, because it was better paid!
I managed to get him seconded to the marketing department, where he actually excelled for about 6 months... Then he was shoved back into the programming pool, despite my recommendations and protests. :-(