281–290 of 552 posts
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Huh? You can't just take unpaid vacation because you feel like it.
Can't you? Your only obligation to the company is the time they pay you for. The time they don't pay you for is yours.
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Why is this not true in other professions? Why don't hospitals give preference to surgeons who like to dissect frogs in their spare time or build better scalpels on their garage workbench?
I know you are being rhetorical but to those that don't know it's because surgeons have a proper profession that protects surgeons from management/lobbyists/politicians etc bossing them around. Software developers don't have such protection and any mention of such a thing will get you blackballed within the industry by employers and ostracized by peers as most have bought in to the narrative that cooperating is bad f…
Regarding the OP's question: new hip languages and frameworks evolve way faster than human body, and "it works" is more important in medicine than "iterate and fail fast" (hopefully:)
My personal theory is also that partially the high expectations are due to open source / hacker ethos (there's generally no medical open source movement, or in any profession outside of IT AFAIK, at least on such scale). The cycle goes like this:
- some folks want to do something cool for fun and/or to get some fame for showing it to the public, or get famous for inventing a known lib/framework
- companies see they're smart and hire them
- other companies follow the trend, and require open source contributions or at least building space shuttle over the weekend
- a number of devs don't want to lag behind, so they join the bandwagon, and they create even more cool stuff and even more open source MVC frameworks
- now, the cycle reinforces itself, everyone is doing cool stuff and contributing to opensource, if you don't, you're excluded
edit: fixed typos
> "We’ve seen that most engineers only have the stomach for a limited number of interviews. Investing time in the wrong companies carries a high opportunity cost." I suspect in addition to not having the "stomach" for an unlimited number of interviews, they don't have the vacation days to burn for them. Let's say you are working already and have 10 days a year vacation (pretty standard). With these ridiculous all-day…
I'll use myself as an example -- I work as a programmer in the Defense industry. I've wanted out for years. So every so often I start sending out resumes and going on interviews. After wasting about half of my vacation time on (multiple) rounds of interviews with each prospective employer (that ultimately lead nowhere -- most often, a potential employer who inexplicably stops communicating with me), I give up. Then,…
Reply to below: Most companies have me do at least one non-technical system design and/or talk-about-a-project interview.
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I'll use myself as an example -- I work as a programmer in the Defense industry. I've wanted out for years. So every so often I start sending out resumes and going on interviews. After wasting about half of my vacation time on (multiple) rounds of interviews with each prospective employer (that ultimately lead nowhere -- most often, a potential employer who inexplicably stops communicating with me), I give up. Then,…
"Whiteboard hazing" Heh. I'm going to squirrel that one away for later. It beautifully captures what's currently thought of as a best practice in tech interviewing.
> "We’ve seen that most engineers only have the stomach for a limited number of interviews. Investing time in the wrong companies carries a high opportunity cost." I suspect in addition to not having the "stomach" for an unlimited number of interviews, they don't have the vacation days to burn for them. Let's say you are working already and have 10 days a year vacation (pretty standard). With these ridiculous all-day…
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The best programmers do apply. Whatever you think a work-hire test is, that wasn't it. A work-hire test attracts the best programmers. It doesn't repel them. It's a chance to demonstrate their skill. It's also far better: anything is better than the fake contests they're currently forced to endure. Which would you prefer? Spend a couple hours remotely fixing some bugs and adding a feature on a fake iOS app, or spend…
EDIT: I thought that sillysaurus3 was talking about a work trial period (days or a week), but it seems they are talking about asking question during that interview that are similar to actual work. I retract me objection :) If only it were that easy. I am not at all opposed to work-trial tests. They are almost certainly more accurate. But a high percentage of programmer will never apply to a company that requires one.…
But if your biggest objection is that it will take additional time, that depends entirely on the nature of the trial. I was given a work trial at my first job and it took about 40 minutes. It didn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped, but I would much much rather have done that than spent 40 minutes answering brain teasers in front of a white board.
If I'm already taking a day off, I don't care if the interview lasts three hours or five. I'd rather work on a collaborative task with my potential teammates to see if it's going to be worth radically altering my life to take a new job. I understand that there are many programmers who are opposed to work trials, and they can say "I'm opposed to work trials and would rather demonstrate my abilities in another way."
It seems like your research so far has been very comprehensive, why dismiss an effective technique because some people are opposed to it?
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The cost of a real work test is much higher, both to the company, and to the applicant. Some companies take that approach (weebly for one), but it means that some of the best programmer will not apply, and it only makes worse the problem of having to aggressively pre-filter (based on credentials, or something else). You are 100% correct that most research into interviewing has show it to be far less predictive than c…
The best programmers do apply. Whatever you think a work-hire test is, that wasn't it. A work-hire test attracts the best programmers. It doesn't repel them. It's a chance to demonstrate their skill. It's also far better: anything is better than the fake contests they're currently forced to endure. Which would you prefer? Spend a couple hours remotely fixing some bugs and adding a feature on a fake iOS app, or spend…
> "We’ve seen that most engineers only have the stomach for a limited number of interviews. Investing time in the wrong companies carries a high opportunity cost." I suspect in addition to not having the "stomach" for an unlimited number of interviews, they don't have the vacation days to burn for them. Let's say you are working already and have 10 days a year vacation (pretty standard). With these ridiculous all-day…
a. Pre-screens candidates on off-hours since they are likely already employed with a focus on keeping it brief out of respect for their time. b. Similarly match interviews at off-hours and perhaps moderate them to also not waste anybody's time.
I am sure there are many people that would not like this but if hiring is difficult and they want to make it rigorous I wonder if this could fit a niche. I personally am more than happy to go to an interview after work or on the weekend at a coffee shop so it doesn't cut into my job hours.
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It's not only the applicants who have limited time. The startup founders are also time constrained. You can't found a successful startup if you spend 10+ hours a week interviewing potential employees. I suspect much of the initial bias and "hard line" preferences are due to a startup's unwillingness to spend inordinate amounts of time interviewing candidates to find that one diamond in the rough. Imagine 4 of every 1…
Many successful people who've built and exited massive start-ups have suggested that it's worthwhile on the start-up side to spend 25% of your time on hiring when you're actually hiring as so you can easily get above 10 hrs a week given a full time role on this and have that be a good result. Optimizing to minimize the cost of hiring an early engineer is definitely solving the wrong problem, given the early engineers…