Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Finally, in addition to its practical economic advantages, large-scale
aptitude testing programs represented for many corporate employers a
small but important step toward the eventual goal of mass-producing
programmer trainees. Such tests were obviously not intended to evaluate
the skills and abilities of experienced programmers; they were clearly
tools for identifying the lowest common denominator among program-
mer talent. The explicit goal of testing programs at large employers like
SDC was to reduce the overall level of skill among the programming
workforce. By identifying the minimum level of aptitude required to be
a competent programmer, SDC could reduce its dependence on individ-
ual programmers. It could construct a software factory out of the inter-
changeable parts produced by the impersonal and industrial processes of
its aptitude test regimes.
It is this last consequence of aptitude testing that is the most interest-
ing and perplexing. Like all of the proposed solutions to the labor short-
age in programming, aptitude testing also embodied certain assumptions
about the nature of the underlying problem. At fi rst glance, the continued
emphasis that aptitude tests and personality profi les placed on innate
ability and creativity appeared to have served the interests of program-
ming professionals. By reinforcing the contemporary belief that good
programmers were born, not made, they provided individual program-
mers with substantial leverage in the job market. Experienced program-
mers made good money, had numerous opportunities for horizontal
mobility within the industry, and were relatively immune from manage-
rial imperatives. On the other hand, aptitude tests and personality
profi les also emphasized the negative perception of programmers as
idiosyncratic, antisocial, and potentially unreliable. Many computer spe-
cialists were keenly aware of the crisis of labor and the tension it was
producing in their industry and profession as well as in their own indi-
vidual careers. Although many appreciated the short-term benefi ts of the
ongoing programmer shortage, many believed that the continued crisis
threatened the long-term stability and reputation of their industry and
profession.
As aptitude tests were increasingly used in a haphazard and irrespon-
sible fashion, their value to both employers and computer specialists
degraded considerably. Over the course of the late 1960s, new approaches
to solving the personnel crisis emerged, each of which embodied different
attitudes toward the nature of programming expertise. Beginning in the
early 1960s aspiring professional societies, such as the Data Processing
