Information Technology Reference
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programmers worked on tended to be larger, more highly structured
(while at the same time less well defi ned), less mathematical, and more
tightly coupled with other social and technological systems than were
their scientifi c counterparts. Were the programmers who worked on
heterogeneous business data processing systems technologists, managers,
or accountants? As Charles Gregg of the Air Force Materiel Command
jokingly suggested, the people who made the best programmers were
“electronics engineers with an advanced degree in business administra-
tion.” Such multitalented individuals were obviously in short supply. “If
anyone can energize an educational program to produce such people in
quantity,” he quickly added, “we would certainly like to be put on their
mailing list.” His fellow conference participants no doubt agreed with
this assessment: the needs of business demanded a whole new breed of
programmers, and plenty of them. 25
The 1954 Conference on Training Personnel for the Computing
Machine Field was to be the fi rst of many. The “persistent personnel
problem,” as it soon became known in the computing community, would
only get worse over the course of the next decade. 26 It was clear that
recruiting programmers a half dozen at the time with cute advertisements
in the New York Times was not a sustainable strategy. But what was
the alternative? If employers truly believed, as was argued in the previous
chapter, that computer programmers formed a unique category of techni-
cal specialists—more creative than scientifi c, artisanal rather than indus-
trial, born and not made—then how could they possibly hope to ensure
an adequate supply to meet a burgeoning demand? How did they rec-
oncile contemporary beliefs about the idiosyncratic nature of individual
programming ability with the rigid demands of corporate management
and control?
Aptitude Tests and Psychological Profi les
So how did companies deal with the need to train and recruit pro-
grammers on a large scale? Here the case of the System Development
Corporation (SDC) is particularly instructive.
SDC was the RAND Corporation spin-off responsible for developing
the software for the U.S. Air Force's Semi-Automated Ground Environ-
ment (SAGE) air-defense system. SAGE was perhaps the most ambitious
and expensive of early cold war technological boondoggles. Comprised
of a series of computerized tracking and communications centers, SAGE
cost approximately $8 billion to develop and operate, and required the
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