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How not to hire a software engineer

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Re: How not to hire a software engineer

#71

Post by rightbyte »

jahrule wrote: post #64
geomark wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly this. I was a hiring manager at a big company where HR made it very clear we cannot give specific feedback to applicants. We also could not give references for the same reason; fear of being sued. But after a while you learn to speak in code for those cases where you really feel you need to provide meaningful information. The last time I was asked for a reference I was contacted by a hiring manager who said th…

wtf. what you are describing is something that i would say is suable. and should be. you basically said dont hire that person to someone. because of your bad experience with that ex-colleague ?. you are denying that person a chance. how come ? what are you going to do next time someone calls for reference ? the same ? immature, questionable, discriminating practices...

Strange. Where I live it's common practice to ask former employers about a persons performance. I you have no prior work experience they would want to call your math theacher or army drill instructor.

In the US it's illegal? It's discrimation yes but isn't that the whole point of a recruitment process?

Re: How not to hire a software engineer

#72

Post by bryanrasmussen »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #52
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #20

#1 thing for me - don't ask me to be a salesperson. In relation to this post - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19534772 I was recently at an interview and the interviewer was a technical guy who had recently been promoted and he had a checklist of 10-15 things he wanted to achieve in the next half year, all really good reasonable things and then he said 'Now I just want you to tell me why you are the best person…

I actively say things similar to what you said. For example, if I’m ever asked why I want the job or why I’d be a good match at the company, I will always say I don’t know. I’ll always say I’m not trying to be facetious or dodge the question, but with limited information from a job listing, maybe a few phone calls, and a day of small 1-hour interviews (that are mostly made up of coding questions with no time for me t…

It is very difficult for me not to say I want the job because I sell my skills for money, if you are willing to pay the price I want then I am willing to provide the product you need.

Re: How not to hire a software engineer

#73

Post by keithnz »

sokoloff wrote: post #63
keithnz wrote: post #62

Best way to hire programmers is to hire them without getting them to code. Before anyone burns me at the stake...It's not really the "best" but it can work. I was a coding interview advocate for a long time. I changed it from solving puzzles, to solving real problems taken from the domain they were interviewing for. In the early years I was a bit surprised by who struggled with coding, but I noticed a trend after a w…

While a lot of what you say is true, that hiring pattern leaves you exposed to the bullshit artists. I always want to see some kind of code from someone for whom coding ability matters at all. Doesn’t need to be extensive, tricky, or even written live in front of us, but when the job is more than talking, I want to see more than just talking to evaluate.

I've seen the bullshit artists. When I was early on in interviewing people ( I've been coding just less than 40 years and hiring people ~20 years ), they did surprise me when it came to coding, though I never came close to hiring one. But it turns out, I just wasn't asking the right kinds of questions to pickup on bullshit, or I would let things slide without question where they seem to have glossed over things. But like I say, code isn't out of the question, if I end up with doubts, usually because I can't get super concrete details out of someone, then code is a good way to go.

Re: How not to hire a software engineer

#74

Post by sethammons »

tzs wrote: post #53

If I had to interview someone for a programming job, I think I'd try using LeetCode problems, but NOT as coding challenges. I'd pick a few problems that the candidate and I both find somewhat interesting, and then for each do three things. First, we'd both read the problem, and talk about our understanding of what it is asking for. Second, we'd talk about algorithms to solve it, probably at a whiteboard. No need for…

I have seen my fair share of candidates who can talk just like you suggested, but literally cannot put even simple solutions into code. Like, can't write a for loop or an if-condition but could walk through a problem like you describe and can even talk about tech trends.

Re: How not to hire a software engineer

#75

Post by sethammons »

jahrule wrote: post #64
geomark wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly this. I was a hiring manager at a big company where HR made it very clear we cannot give specific feedback to applicants. We also could not give references for the same reason; fear of being sued. But after a while you learn to speak in code for those cases where you really feel you need to provide meaningful information. The last time I was asked for a reference I was contacted by a hiring manager who said th…

wtf. what you are describing is something that i would say is suable. and should be. you basically said dont hire that person to someone. because of your bad experience with that ex-colleague ?. you are denying that person a chance. how come ? what are you going to do next time someone calls for reference ? the same ? immature, questionable, discriminating practices...

It is almost like the impressions you leave with former colleagues and managers matters. Who would have thought that is what a reference call is attempting to uncover.

Re: How not to hire a software engineer

#76

Post by geezerjay »

jahrule wrote: post #64
geomark wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly this. I was a hiring manager at a big company where HR made it very clear we cannot give specific feedback to applicants. We also could not give references for the same reason; fear of being sued. But after a while you learn to speak in code for those cases where you really feel you need to provide meaningful information. The last time I was asked for a reference I was contacted by a hiring manager who said th…

wtf. what you are describing is something that i would say is suable. and should be. you basically said dont hire that person to someone. because of your bad experience with that ex-colleague ?. you are denying that person a chance. how come ? what are you going to do next time someone calls for reference ? the same ? immature, questionable, discriminating practices...

> you basically said dont hire that person to someone. because of your bad experience with that ex-colleague ?. you are denying that person a chance. how come ?

I disagree. If you had a bad experience with an employee and you're asked to validate the quality of that candidate why should you lie or omit that info?

When you're looking for a job do you also feel that it's wrong to ask current and former employees for references?

Furthermore, it seems you're oblivious to how many candidates outright lie about their CV and working experience.

You need info to make good informed decisions. Otherwise you have no alternative other than to fell for con jobs.

Re: How not to hire a software engineer

#77

Post by pickle-wizard »

reallydontask wrote: post #14
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been asked these kind of questions before....for a compiler job. I mean, you can clearly see on my CV that I don’t do backend, cloud, or database, the hiring manager is not interested in me for those things, yet their interview process is so inflexible that these are the only questions that can be asked during the interview (....and not one compiler question either).

The key is flexibility. As you say, there is little point in asking somebody who is going to be working with compilers the best way of doing something with React or Angular. A guy I used to work with would walk through the technical skills section on candidate's CV asking for knowledge level out of 10 and then ask questions accordingly but that is trickier to do on an online platform (at least as far as I'm aware)

I recently had a job interview where I was asked about skills on my resume. Except on every question the scale would change.

For example. On a scale on 1 to 7 how do you rate your self on Linux Then, On a scale of 1 to 9 how do you rate your self on AWS.

It was maddening and I could couldn't give an honest answer as I kept getting confused. That is one of the many reasons I declined a second interview with that company.

Re: How not to hire a software engineer

#78

Post by externalreality »

kristopolous wrote: post #10

I look to see if I can trust them to not do dumb things. That's really it. What's the ego, arrogance, competence, willingness to ask questions, interrogate things, redefine problems to be less work (or none at all). Do you see what's not there? Programming language competency. Database knowledge. Things like that. I've been hired as a Ruby programmer, I didn't know Ruby. I was hired for mainframes in the 90s - I had…

I wish everyone thought that way but they don't. In today's rapid paced world if you don't know Rails (not even Ruby) but Rails, for example, and we're using it - then you ain't in... and here write this 8 hour code test so we can subjectively judge it because grading code tests to see if you don't put logic in your controllers make our egos hum.

Re: How not to hire a software engineer

#79

Post by lucideer »

meijer wrote: post #46
kristopolous wrote: post #10

I look to see if I can trust them to not do dumb things. That's really it. What's the ego, arrogance, competence, willingness to ask questions, interrogate things, redefine problems to be less work (or none at all). Do you see what's not there? Programming language competency. Database knowledge. Things like that. I've been hired as a Ruby programmer, I didn't know Ruby. I was hired for mainframes in the 90s - I had…

> Do you see what's not there? Programming language competency. Database knowledge. Things like that. I hear this a lot, but I'm not sure I agree 100%. I want to work with people who can write idiomatic code and are able to use a database efficiently (or who are at least willing to learn these things).

Some small counterpoints on idiomatic code:

1. I've worked with people with years of experience in a language who can't (well, really, "won't") write idiomatic code in that language. This has—in my experience—typically come down to overconfidence/arrogance built on top of their experience whereby they've spent enough time with the language to develop their own "better" style.

2. Learning quickly on-the-job typically involved picking up idiomatic style first, before you really gain a deep understanding of the underlying workings. Ideally a good engineer should gain both, but at least initially, I haven't found the former to be a problem for "good" engineers starting out on something new.

3. For some language ecosystems, what's idiomatic changes over time. Flexibility and adaptibility is key to being a good engineer, but if someone has a lot of experience but isn't so adaptible (and/or hasn't brushed up on modern techniques in their ecosystem), this can also lead to non-idiomatic style.

I get that some of the things above should be red flags "in an of themselves" when hiring, but I'm just pointing out that a focus on past familiarity with tech can cloud things somewhat, and shouldn't be implicitly prioritised.

Re: How not to hire a software engineer

#80

Post by jahrule »

sk0g wrote: post #70
jahrule wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wtf. what you are describing is something that i would say is suable. and should be. you basically said dont hire that person to someone. because of your bad experience with that ex-colleague ?. you are denying that person a chance. how come ? what are you going to do next time someone calls for reference ? the same ? immature, questionable, discriminating practices...

When asked for an assessment of a co-worker, providing said assessment is immature and somehow discriminatory? What do you even think is the point of references? Not everyone's great to work with, I'm sure you have had a few co-workers you would rather not work with again, right?

yes, doing what the previous poster did - giving vague "bad signals" even against company's policies - is what i consider immature and discriminatory.

references in form of background check - worked years a, b, c, on projects x, y,z - yes, sure.

references about performance, likability, etc - why ? how are you going to judge that ? are the references legit ? are you going to get references on the reference giving people ? are you gonna research the excompanies culture to judge tbe referential credibility ?

you're just fooling yourself giving any meaning to this, you could be as well tossing a coin.

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