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Convincing engineers to join your team

triplebyte.com

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Re: Convincing engineers to join your team

#161

Post by tormeh »

wolco wrote: post #151
tormeh wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Hiring is the single most important thing a company does. It makes sense to invest resources in it. Every company that doesn't is gambling that every candidate that can get through a short interview is about equal.

Not hiring is a huge gamble as well. Waiting an extra few months can force other employees to quit if the workload is being put on there plate. If you are asking too much of candidates many will dropout as they get hired somewhere elsewhere quickier. The longer you take the quality of the pool gets reduced. Hiring is important. Keep employees are probaby more immportant. Sales are in my opinion the most important. Ta…

I agree that keeping employees is important. Let's just expand the thesis to being "HR is the most important thing a company does".

> Sales are in my opinion the most important.

And how does a company get good salespeople? Hiring well.

Speed is a part of hiring well.

Re: Convincing engineers to join your team

#162

Post by gwbas1c »

tootie wrote: post #81

My phone screen technique is more old school but I think works well. I pick their top language or domain (web or mobile or whatever) and ask 10 trivia questions. Medium difficulty questions I'd expect a programmer with any experience to answer. I look for maybe 70% correct and I look for quick answers. You know it or you don't. And I set that expectation up front so they can give me a few "I don't know"s with no pena…

Oooh, Joel Splosky hates that!

But, I have to agree. Some trivia helps quickly identify the people who don't really understand a technology. It's also useful if you're trying to hire an expert in something you aren't.

What do I mean? For example, I'm not an expert in Objective C. I've written quite a bit, but sometimes I need to hire someone who clearly knows more than I do. So what do I do? I ask questions like, how does memory management work? What does autorelease mean? These are topics that someone who's been working with the language for years needs to know! But, someone who really hasn't done much Objective C might not know.

Re: Convincing engineers to join your team

#164

Post by ruang »

throwaway8610 wrote: post #110
throwawaymath wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I look for maybe 70% correct and I look for quick answers. You know it or you don't. And I set that expectation up front so they can give me a few "I don't know"s with no penalty. I like that system. I recently took the TripleByte technical quiz and I liked that "I Don't Know" was an acceptable answer for most of the questions. When paired with the timer (or in your case, looking for a fast answer) it seems like a…

I interviewed as an iOS Developer. Took the initial screening quiz and did "exceptionally well" and was scheduled for an online interview with one of their interviewers. Online interview consisted of making some rather straightforward additions to a very basic core application and getting the features up and running and manually tested. After that it was another series of questions. During the interview the interview…

I love how they mention small. I think small problems test for problem solving and understanding while large engineering questions test for knowledge of libraries that anyone can learn. I know I'm probably overinterpreting the use of the word "small" here.

Re: Convincing engineers to join your team

#165

Post by kartickv »

baumy wrote: post #77
jedberg wrote: post #62

> A complaint we hear from Triplebyte candidates is being asked how likely they would be to accept an offer before knowing the actual offer details. The reality is that compensation details are a large factor in where people decide to work and you can't expect someone to know if they want to work for you without giving them that data. The numerical salary shouldn't be the deciding factor. I want to know if you're int…

I exclusively work for whoever is willing to pay me the most, at the least inconvenience to my current living situation. I would feel pretty comfortable wagering that I'm in the large majority there. I may be off base here so apologies if so, but reading between the lines a bit I'm assuming that you are an early hire or possibly a founder of some startup. Very few people, probably nobody, will be as invested in your…

"I'll work for whoever is willing to pay me the most" is valid from your point of view. But I as a founder don't want people who're in it just for the money, so eliminating such people is exactly why I think I'll henceforth separate out the "Are you interested in this job?" part from the pay part.

Perhaps without realising it, you made an argument for the opposite side :)

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