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We’re Bad at Interviewing Developers – Interview with Kerri Miller

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Re: We’re Bad at Interviewing Developers – Interview with Kerri Miller

#51

Post by vonmoltke »

RogerL wrote: post #45
adekok wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a related note, the best predictor of university physics scores is high school English scores. Why? Because physics is about making a conceptual model. i.e. telling a story about a problem. And then solving it. For interviewing, communications skills are a must. People will be working in a team, and must be able to explain themselves. And get along with others. Another thing rarely checked for is the flip side...…

I don't think so. The best predictor of university physics scores is...wait for it.... university physics scores. Likewise, the best predictor of on job performance is on job performance. If this isn't a recent grad, interviewing on the resume will tell you more any proxy for on job performance. Sure, people may be seeking to step up from a drudgery type job, but I think that usually comes out (citation needed, I adm…

> I admit it ain't perfect, people lie on resumes and take credit for other people's work

What frustrates me is that, as an interviewer, you can catch out all but the pathological liars if you know what you are doing. The problem is, very few interviewers in this industry know what they are doing. From the transcript intro: "We typically don’t get trained on interviewing". That is a glaring, fundamental problem.

Worse are those who treat interviewing like a distraction from their "real" job. Those people do not belong anywhere near an interview table.

Re: We’re Bad at Interviewing Developers – Interview with Kerri Miller

#52

Post by gaius »

robmcm wrote: post #16

Contract to perm is the best way by far. In the UK the contract rates are typically significantly higher, so even if the person isn't offered a job at the end they aren't bothered. Everyone wins

I struggle to understand the motivations of any of the parties involved here. Why would someone want to do the same job for less money and let's be honest these days, no more job security? Why would someone whose goal is a perm position, setup a company, just to do job searches with?

Re: We’re Bad at Interviewing Developers – Interview with Kerri Miller

#53

Post by vonmoltke »

morgante wrote: post #50
PaulHoule wrote: post #46

It tires me that there is so much talk about the problem of hiring developers and very little about the problem of "what do you do once you hire them?" That is, they may treat you like a rockstar when they sign you, but then if you complain because you got a crappy Dell laptop that was a hand-me-down from a salesman who couldn't sell, that your build process takes 40 minutes and that this could cut that to 20 minutes…

It sounds like your perspective is colored by one particularly bad experience. Every company I've interviewed at definitely seemed to make developer happiness a priority (especially the smallest ones). Even the smallest of startups (ie. one guy with a tiny seed round) understand that buying your developers great gear is an essential investment.

Try working for the defense industry. They tend to treat engineers like they should be lucky to have a job.

Re: We’re Bad at Interviewing Developers – Interview with Kerri Miller

#54

Post by edw519 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #48
edw519 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contract to perm is the best way by far. For whom? It's bad for the worker because you're going to work for a company that is admitting by its behavior that it has little confidence in its abiliity to assess talent. Where else is it weak? (My experience shows that those who can't assess talent usually can't do a whole lot of other important things, too.) It's bad for the company because it limits its pool of candidat…

> It's bad for the worker because you're going to work for a company that is admitting by its behavior that it has little confidence in its abiliity to assess talent. Where else is it weak? You seem to think that willingness to admit that assessing fit for a particular job is unreliable without actually experience of the candidate working in the real conditions is correlated with the relative degree to which the comp…

Assessing talent is a predictable scientific process. Good companies know how to do it. Other companies don't, so they use contract to perm to compensate.

I have hired hundreds of programmers and have never been disappointed. The recruitment process lasted as long as it had to to know that it was a good fit. Contract to perm was never needed.

Re: We’re Bad at Interviewing Developers – Interview with Kerri Miller

#56

Post by linkregister »

vonmoltke wrote: post #53
morgante wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like your perspective is colored by one particularly bad experience. Every company I've interviewed at definitely seemed to make developer happiness a priority (especially the smallest ones). Even the smallest of startups (ie. one guy with a tiny seed round) understand that buying your developers great gear is an essential investment.

Try working for the defense industry. They tend to treat engineers like they should be lucky to have a job.

Depends on the contract =)

Re: We’re Bad at Interviewing Developers – Interview with Kerri Miller

#57

Post by robohamburger »

rorykoehler wrote: post #24

As a non-CS graduate looking for my first full-time job as a Junior Developer I can only ask one thing of prospective employers. Please give clear feedback that will help give direction to the candidate if you reject them. I have done a number of code challenges and while I don't mind doing the challenges (I look at them as training) and I can always create a working solution there is nothing worse than receiving a s…

I do think that if a company is going to have an arduous interview process they should try to make it positive one if only for their own benefit because people talk.

Having reviewed code samples I can say that it can be exhausting trying to write constructive feedback to the person who wrote it. It is much easier to give a more dispassionate summary to the recruiter than one that would be appropriate to give to the person who wrote the code.

Re: We’re Bad at Interviewing Developers – Interview with Kerri Miller

#58

Post by PaulHoule »

morgante wrote: post #50
PaulHoule wrote: post #46

It tires me that there is so much talk about the problem of hiring developers and very little about the problem of "what do you do once you hire them?" That is, they may treat you like a rockstar when they sign you, but then if you complain because you got a crappy Dell laptop that was a hand-me-down from a salesman who couldn't sell, that your build process takes 40 minutes and that this could cut that to 20 minutes…

It sounds like your perspective is colored by one particularly bad experience. Every company I've interviewed at definitely seemed to make developer happiness a priority (especially the smallest ones). Even the smallest of startups (ie. one guy with a tiny seed round) understand that buying your developers great gear is an essential investment.

More like 4 or 5.

Different problems happen in companies that are not "startups". For instance, a startup won't have a 40 minute build process because it hasn't accumulated enough code. A company that has been around 10 years however and hasn't deleted anything is a different story...

Re: We’re Bad at Interviewing Developers – Interview with Kerri Miller

#59

Post by jmngomes »

gkilmain wrote: post #40
rorykoehler wrote: post #24

As a non-CS graduate looking for my first full-time job as a Junior Developer I can only ask one thing of prospective employers. Please give clear feedback that will help give direction to the candidate if you reject them. I have done a number of code challenges and while I don't mind doing the challenges (I look at them as training) and I can always create a working solution there is nothing worse than receiving a s…

I do not think a company owes you anything with regards to feedback. Why do you think you or the community deserve feedback? If you get rejected you were simply not the right fit.

Neither party owes the other anything, but giving some sort of feedback, besides being polite, is a simple and useful positive contribution the other part's life, namely because the candidate has invested time on the process.

Much for the same reason, competent HR professionals appreciate if you give them a reason for leaving a recruitment process or a job, it helps them identify areas of improvement.

Re: We’re Bad at Interviewing Developers – Interview with Kerri Miller

#60

Post by ownagefool »

edw519 wrote: post #44
robmcm wrote: post #16

Contract to perm is the best way by far. In the UK the contract rates are typically significantly higher, so even if the person isn't offered a job at the end they aren't bothered. Everyone wins

Contract to perm is the best way by far. For whom? It's bad for the worker because you're going to work for a company that is admitting by its behavior that it has little confidence in its abiliity to assess talent. Where else is it weak? (My experience shows that those who can't assess talent usually can't do a whole lot of other important things, too.) It's bad for the company because it limits its pool of candidat…

Honestly, no offense intended but his is bullshit. Everybody competent knows that hiring is crapshoot and all perms get clauses that allow them to be let go fairly quickly here in the UK.

I do agree with you, this doesn't work, but that's because once the candidate is of the quality that they can easily grab contracts, they have no incentive to come work for you as a permie.

That said, only high end contractors are really that more expensive. You need to remember, your employees are likely getting sick days, holidays, and pensions. You need to pay employers NI and probably offer other benefits. In addition to this after a while getting rid of them becomes difficult.

When you think of it like that, a often contractor isn't a bad deal. It's a shame a lot of companies feel like they need ownership of their staff.

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