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Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

joshcarter.com

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Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#41

Post by MayeulC »

npstr wrote: post #30
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s kind of weird to NOT know basic vi/vim if you get to a certain point in your career. If you can’t at least open the software, go into insert mode, and save/quit, have you ever had to ssh into a remote server and edit a config file before? Only excuse I could think of is if you literally did everything in windows for your entire career.

What's wrong with using nano for that?

> It's everywhere.

It almost litterally is. Even busybox contains a vi clone. While I have encountered more systems without nano nor Emacs than I can remember. Plus, there is no excuse for learning the basic set of commands: i,ESC,x,u, and maybe navigating with the letters (which I'm not proficient at).

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#42

Post by kissgyorgy »

Honestly, the guy has valid points, but he is probably an asshole I wouldn't want to work for. I appreciate getting valuable advice, but the tone doesn't have to be like this. Maybe he is mad because of the "bad candidates", but that is his job, so he should be able to handle it.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#43

Post by trickstra »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #14
iamaelephant wrote: post #9

"I'll spend hours brushing up on Scheme just to test you on something completely irrelevant to the role just because I like playing Resumé Gotcha". Yeah that's a thanks but no thanks from me. I wouldn't work for this guy in a thousand years.

You could also interpret as the interviewer making the effort to ask the candidate questions where they can shine. I always try to start with a technical question where the candidate can make a good impression and get confident.

You could, but sometimes the interviewer doesn't even know exactly why they are doing it.

First, it's a natural tendency. If you want to find if somebody "knows" a particular subject, an inexperienced person would start asking for factoids and interpret every incorrect answer as the proof that they don't really know the subject.

Second, many interviewers learn from other interviewers or just by trial and error, or from some courses, many of which have very dubious origins. There are many beliefs that are simply wrong, but still get circulated among interviewers, because nobody does 30 year careers in interviewing React programmers - wonder why...

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#45

Post by choppaface »

Oof, this is pretty antithetical to hiring. Author seems pretty frustrated. I hope this guy takes a long vacation. If I’m a candidate, I’d say this guy is clearly way overworked and I’d bail. Good points, but the volume of negative sadly speaks louder than the rationality of the points.

I see there being two parts to an SWE interview:

1) What experience does the candidate bring? Do they have compatible core competencies? If yes, then what’s novel about their experience—- will they help the team grok unknown unknowns? (And if the team’s burning issue is not unknown unknowns... then how does the candidate’s background add to the team’s creativity?)

2) How well does the candidate adapt on their feet? How effectively can they communicate? (If English is not a primary language, can they still get an idea across, perhaps using code instead of prose?). Can they code their way out of a paper bag?

The interview session is the interviewer’s responsibility to make the strongest case possible for the candidate. Let’s say that again: the interviewer needs to play doctor and adapt to the candidate. The interviewer is getting paid, not the candidate. Only once that sample has been taken properly can a hiring manager (who might very well be the interviewer..) begin to make an effective prediction as to how the candidate might do on the job.

Folks, demand for SWE jobs far outweighs supply. And it’s gonna be that way for at least another decade as universities catch up. It’s time to stop discriminating for the wrong reasons.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#46

Post by battletested »

So author, who are you? You start already with an authoritarian touch. What makes you believe you are not an incompetent interviewer? How can an applicant assess your skills, you could easily be the greatest fuck up in the company. Is your company really that cool that I should want to die to work there? Did you first weed out all the incompetent staff that is duck sitting there playing business politics?

IMAO most companies are not any better than the applicants applying. And no, you didn't hire only the best from all candidates, you just have a rich imagination that favours your ego.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#47

Post by trickstra »

sklivvz1971 wrote: post #20

A few more things: 1) Be humble. Don't expect people to take it easy on you because you got street cred (You are a ruby contributor? You still need to show them how good you are at coding Ruby). Many people with creds get offended when they realize they are not as good as their credentials would imply. 2) Know yourself. Most candidates I've seen, including myself, encounter a moment in the interview where they get hi…

ad 1.) yes, being a contributor doesn't automatically make you good programmer. But having 7 years of coding practice in several companies kinda does, because why else would those companies have you for so long? Yet these programming interviews are required even for them. Probation period is much much more telling about a programmer than the 15 minute coding task.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#48

Post by mrisoli »

iamaelephant wrote: post #9

"I'll spend hours brushing up on Scheme just to test you on something completely irrelevant to the role just because I like playing Resumé Gotcha". Yeah that's a thanks but no thanks from me. I wouldn't work for this guy in a thousand years.

It's a good investment for the company, if the interviewer can red flag a candidate who is blatantly lying on his resumé because the candidate would assume no one would know said technology, it would save a lot of money from cutting ties with an employee in a later stage.

As an anecdote, I used to work for a company and would require candidates to know some Ruby, for one guy with several years experience in Python we changed the requirements of the home assignment so he could write it using whatever he wanted. he hands over a nodeJS application claiming he took the opportunity to learn something new(why not Ruby?), seemed like it was well done, so we bring him in for an interview, unlucky for him, there was one member in our team with some nodeJS experience(me), having reviewed the code, I asked him to do a minor feature addition to his own code, he froze, couldn't do it because he didn't write the code(copying from some repo) and didn't know any nodeJS at all, asked him to do it in Python instead and he still couldn't do it, he had just spiced up his resumé with tech we didn't use to see if he could weasel his way in.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#49

Post by panpanna »

yoz-y wrote: post #32
emidln wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great reason to learn vi for basic editing tasks. It's everywhere. Even if you typically use a different editor/ide, vi is a common ground. Disclosure: I'm an emacs user

Knowing vi basics is useful, I agree. However, for interviews I really don't think that putting a candidate who is not familiar with it is a nice thing to do. Any modeless editor should not cause trouble but vi (especially) is quite pernicious and the candidate would be just losing time.

It's a very easy way to find the 0.5x engineer.

But I agree, it should not be a show stopper.

(Emacs and vscode user here)

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#50

Post by yani »

spyspy wrote: post #3

> So, your code isn’t working, what do you do? Stare blankly at the monitor? This always gets me. When the interviewer asks a question, the correct answer is literally never, “let me think about it quietly for a moment”. This is one of the disconnects between interview programming and real programming people get frustrated over.

I was interviewing a guy for IT position 6 years ago. After one of the questions, he went silent for a long period of time. It has not happened to me before. I did not think for a moment about interrupting him, it was obvious he is thinking how to approach the problem or his answer. Interviewing people requires patience, cut down on caffeine before an interview
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