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Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

voss.world

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Re: Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

#111

Post by munin »

heisnotanalien wrote: post #103
munin wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are some mega weirdos out there and sometimes it's best to just not ask. "hey, what'd you do this weekend?" "well, my friends and I run a historical re-enactment society where we all go to this remote retreat in the mountains, dress up as Nazis, and pretend that they won World War 2." and you know what, if it was possible to just hold your finger down on the "rewind time" button for 15 seconds to just never ask…

You just need to get use to the admittedly unfashionable idea that it is possible to like people for some reasons and dislike them for other reasons.

while true, now I need to put up with hearing about what's new in the world of Hitler re-enactment until I quit the company. if I hadn't tried to be friends with this person, that wouldn't be a problem because we'd just be talking about PHP.

Re: Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

#112

Post by wolfgke »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #101
wolfgke wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sounds like a cool idea, but I've seen where hiring for personality often leads towards hiring discrimination. You also discriminate against applicants who don't seem to be very capable in programming or seem to have really toxic personality traits (which is a good idea). How do you come to the idea that discrimination that "hiring for personality" is biased to leads to worse outcome?

Discrimination in employment law only refers to specific classes of people based on race, religion, gender, military service, etc. Passing up on someone who isn't qualified for a job isn't discrimination. "Hiring for personally" can result in "hiring potential drinking buddies" which means your hiring may skew towards people who share your race, gender, creed, and religion because humans usually pick people like ours…

> Discrimination in employment law only refers to specific classes of people based on race, religion, gender, military service, etc. Passing up on someone who isn't qualified for a job isn't discrimination.

A central idea of empirical science is Occam's razor. (Nearly) all religions violate this principle since they introduce assumptions that are not necessary. With this argumentation one can easily argue why a religious person could not be qualified for a job in empirical science.

Re: Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

#113

Post by cbd1984 »

cbd1984 wrote: post #11
heisnotanalien wrote: post #3

I sort of like the sentiment but this sort of interview, at least for me, would feel a bit too personal. Look I'm not your friend so let's not pretend that's what this or you just really want to get to know me. No. You just want to know if I can do the job so just get me to do a task which meaningfully reflects what I'd be doing day-to-day then ask me questions about it.

> You just want to know if I can do the job This holds two things constant: You and the job. On-the-job training is inevitable. The question is what you'll primarily be trained in: Office politics, or some other skillset which will actually go on your resume. Similarly, the job will inevitably change if you're around long enough, and that's the nub of the meat of this: It's an old adage that you should never marry so…

A few people in bad marriages around here...

Re: Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

#114

Post by badminton1 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #57
badminton1 wrote: post #23

The problem is how to determine how someone is smart. In my company we had this very eloquent, outgoing person who implemented many features very fast. To the eyes of management he was a champ, the king of "shipping". But a little bit later things started to seem weird. Noone was productive except for this person. Only he could understand the code organization because the system wasn't well structured. Then bug repor…

> So, I am going to say NO to this article. Skills are important. In your anecdote though, I'm reading that the er, rockstar developer had enough skills to get things done, but not the personality to do things The Right Way. That is a personality thing, I think, with personality traits like attention to detail and quality and such. Those are not linked to skill level or technology; maybe with experience (i.e. being o…

Not really a personality thing. The person wasn't an engineer. But was given a chance because of his passion. Very much like what the article encourages.

Re: Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

#115

Post by nucleardog »

badminton1 wrote: post #23

The problem is how to determine how someone is smart. In my company we had this very eloquent, outgoing person who implemented many features very fast. To the eyes of management he was a champ, the king of "shipping". But a little bit later things started to seem weird. Noone was productive except for this person. Only he could understand the code organization because the system wasn't well structured. Then bug repor…

I got hired on at a job to replace a guy like that. He "got so much done" and "worked so hard" (was at the office late) until he up and left.

Step 1 when I got hired on was to automate away half of what he was doing. I turned processes that were previously three hour projects into five minutes and a shell script. Not many late nights or 16 hour days for me.

Step 2 was to finish all the work he'd left behind. It wasn't unusual to get a bug report coming in "Oh, in screen X when you try and do Y it doesn't work right." only to find that while he'd built an interface, there was no code behind any of it.

Re: Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

#116

Post by badminton1 »

pessimizer wrote: post #64
badminton1 wrote: post #23

The problem is how to determine how someone is smart. In my company we had this very eloquent, outgoing person who implemented many features very fast. To the eyes of management he was a champ, the king of "shipping". But a little bit later things started to seem weird. Noone was productive except for this person. Only he could understand the code organization because the system wasn't well structured. Then bug repor…

So this guy was working by himself, with no help, no review, and no one to discuss the implications of anything with. Sounds like a hero for managing it as long as he did.

Except that, if you are not doing well, you need to raise your hand and ask for help in the form of scope negotiation or more resources.

Re: Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

#117

Post by circlefavshape »

arethuza wrote: post #70
circlefavshape wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have one of these on my team right now, and he has caused me more sleepless nights than anyone I have ever met. Finding it very difficult to get mgmt to understand that most of his code needs to be re-written

This may sound paranoid, but I have seen it happen: make sure the person you are having problems with isn't sucking up to your managers and also making you look bad to them. [99% of the people I have worked with have never played those kind of political games but I have seen the utter chaos that can happen if a politically savvy operator is let loose in a trusting and politically naive environment.]

Valuable advice, said individual has indeed already tried this approach with my immediate managers and my peers. Luckily I've been here long enough to have a reputation that can't easily be besmirched
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