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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

#81

Post by chucky_z »

I had written a large chunk but removed it after reading most of the article. I will go out on a limb and simply comment that I felt the interview where I'm currently at was done correctly, and addressed most of the issues that this article raises. As a note, I was hired as a sysadmin/dba/devops for a smallish startup.

They brought me in for a total of ~20 hours of interview, and in that time I discussed work-related topics with every single C-level. I went through a standard interview with questions, and then a longer skill test that included every current engineer at the company.

For the last few hours they paired me up with a current engineer to work on some database issues they'd been having.

I've been very happily employed here now for around 7 months, and after adding this company to my resume I've had quite a lot of offers on LinkedIn. I feel nothing other than "Oh, this company has offered me an interview, that's really cool!" towards these offers.

I think it's one of the best things in the world to have that feeling, and I wish everyone who was hired in an engineer position felt the same way.

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

#82

Post by pc86 »

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…

Others have replied and given you the legal and logistical reasons why non-employers will not tell you why you were rejected, but there's another one: it's not their job.

If I run a web development studio, it is not my job to assist in the personal development of people I've decided (for whatever reason) are not a good fit. Yes, logistically that's a pain in the ass if I send 1 offer letter and 12 explanations about various issues ranging from employment history to experience to skill set to education to interview skills to "I got the distinct impression you would rob us blind the first time you were in the office alone." But most importantly (for me as someone who assists but does not make final determination on new hires), my job is to find the best candidate for a given position and it's only a hindrance to spend time with those who are not.

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

#83

Post by noarchy »

lhnz wrote: post #20
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 a good idea, but in the UK at least, the contract rates are significantly higher than permanent salaries so unless you offer them a salary that is way above the market rates for permanent staff and perhaps a role and responsibility level that'd truly stretch them it's quite likely they're going to decline your offer.

This has been true for me in Canada. I've declined multiple full-time offers because my contract rate was far more attractive than the benefits that came with the full-time alternative.

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

#84

Post by agentultra »

vonmoltke wrote: post #77
agentultra wrote: post #75

The golden nugget for me was the suggestion to ask the candidate to teach you something. I'm terrible at operating under pressure and generally need to take my time with any problem I'm given. Unless you actually work in an environment where it's critical find the optimal solution to a large constraint search problem in 30 minutes or the tower blows up I don't see what the difference is to taking a couple of hours to…

> Unless you actually work in an environment where it's critical find the optimal solution to a large constraint search problem in 30 minutes or the tower blows up I don't see what the difference is to taking a couple of hours to find the solution. Not to mention, if this scenario is frequent enough that you really need to screen for it in interviews there is probably something fundamentally wrong with the way you ar…

And yet it's bewilderingly common to use it as a low-pass filter.

The reason I like the suggestion is that it asks the candidate to show you how something works which seems like it would demonstrate their ability to understand a topic, how they approach it, and importantly whether they can communicate what they know in a way that other people can understand.

I'm more interested in whether a candidate can write a decent bug report and form a coherent patch than how many puzzle solutions they've memorized to slip through my filters.

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

#85

Post by gkilmain »

rorykoehler wrote: post #78
gkilmain wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The reason I believe the community benefits from feedback is because, and I say this from the perspective of a Junior, it improves the overall quality of the entry level talent pool. Done on a consistent basis across all firms it will have a long lasting effect in speeding up the development of Juniors into competent and productive developers. This will benefit the community as a whole.

When you leave an interview do you have at least a rough idea of what parts didn't go well? Those are the areas you need to improve. Could be technical, could be something else.

I interviewed for a jr dev position and was not asked one technical question. I am sure that the reason why I didn't get an offer was because I did not wear socks. Seriously. I made sure I always wore socks after that.

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

#86

Post by throwaway859876 »

vonmoltke wrote: post #47
ctide wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you doubt your skills? Why are you interviewing if you're employed at a good company? I hear this position often when people talking about contract-to-perm, and I just don't see it. If you're good at what you do, and people enjoy working with you, why wouldn't you take a contract to perm position? The only reasons I can see are that you are afraid you don't get the job (well, then you wouldn't have been a good fit…

> you are afraid you don't get the job (well, then you wouldn't have been a good fit if they hired you) Or, you rubbed the wrong, politically-connected person the wrong way. Yes, this is always a danger, but a contract employee is more expendable and easier to get rid of. Or, they weren't really looking for a permanent hire and this was just a means of tricking someone into a contract who wouldn't otherwise take one.…

And ... you don't get stock. And ... when you go perm, your vesting schedule starts after your contract. And ... if you get hurt/sick while you're a contractor, you're fired. And ... you often don't have full facilities access as a contractor. And ... after you go perm, half your co-workers still think you're a contractor, and blow off your email requests.

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

#87

Post by switch007 »

kangman wrote: post #31
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

Isn't it probably also due to the fact that the UK offers unemployment and healthcare benefits that far surpass what is offered here in the States? So that there is a safety if at the end of the contract you are left with no offer.

That view is bit outdated, more applicable to the Labour era of 1997-2010. The UK is not the welfare state that it once was. The NHS is in pieces and you have to beg for scraps of welfare.

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

#88

Post by rasz_pl »

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…

Your mistake was doing them in the first place. Code challenges and whiteboards are for cattle and cubicle cannon fodder at big companies.

Show them your github, credits in some os software, side projects, dont be another no name code monkey.

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

#89

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

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…

This is an excellent point. I recently left a large corporation that spent a lot of money hiring very smart, very highly motivated people fresh out of college and gave them amazing benefits for the first year.

Then we put them, a bunch of mostly type-A software developers, to work doing the same boring crap everyone else was. Not surprising, after their one year commitment (for all the extra perks they received, like a housing allowance) was up, many of them jumped ship immediately.

Besides just hiring good people, companies need to put real effort into growing them as effective contributors. However, that process gets a lot of discussion but little real effort is put into it.

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

#90

Post by PaulHoule »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #89
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…

This is an excellent point. I recently left a large corporation that spent a lot of money hiring very smart, very highly motivated people fresh out of college and gave them amazing benefits for the first year. Then we put them, a bunch of mostly type-A software developers, to work doing the same boring crap everyone else was. Not surprising, after their one year commitment (for all the extra perks they received, like…

Yep and also the way people can work together as a team that is more than the sum of its part.
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