In the early 70s, State Farm ramped up its Application Development to PL/1 and hired a massive number of new programmers (in excess of 1000, I think), and sent them thru a 9 week course, and those that learned well were hired.
The analysis of the chosen found that the key factors were that they had backgrounds or skills in musical instruments, or were competent in multiple spoken languages, or were strong in math, or had engineering skills, especially Electrical Engineering. Very few were computer science majors. Herbert W. Barry Merrill, PhD (in EE, of course!) President-Programmer Merrill Consultants MXG Software 10717 Cromwell Drive Dallas TX 75229 214 351 1966 tel 214 350 3695 fax www.mxg.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
