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How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

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Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#31

Post by PopeDotNinja »

kemiller2002 wrote: post #29
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please read the article further down. The author explicitly says: > It's OK too if an engineer doesn't have any side projects. I always ask about side projects to give candidates an opportunity to highlight their side projects, not because we require candidates to have side projects. I'm sure some hiring managers out there have side projects listed under their "must have" criteria, but in my experience the good hirin…

One thing that I've never disliked about hiring managers asking for side projects, is that when I work on one, I do what interests me. I like trying new things, experimenting on stuff that I don't know how it will turn out. When I get bored or I hit a dead end, I stop. A lot of it is unfinished and messy. It's for me, not anyone else. My time is valuable, especially outside of work.

Yeah. I'm building an http server for fun. Last year I wrote a JSON parser one weekend. A few years ago I wrote a YAML parser. I make things like this fun & learning, not because I'm trying to impress anyone. When someone asks why I'm reinventing the wheel, or is generally unimpressed that I didn't do something they view as more useful, it can be awkward.

Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#32

Post by lxe »

How do you calibrate yourself on these open-ended questions? How can you compare one good answer to another completely different good answer and figure out which one is better overall?

You can't rely on a "The very best engineers have a checklist they apply depending on the type of bug." type of framework here -- each "very best" engineer might have a completely different way of doing things.

You have to have at least some questions that are difficult to answer but have a countable range of responses, and watch for specific lapses that can show how well a candidate demonstrates specific experience required in your job description.

For example, if you require some experience in distributed systems or scaling things to many users, have them talk about "Could you talk about an or program you built to scale to n users, what performance or reliability issues did you see (or foresee), and how did you solve them?" Have a loose set of industry specific things to watch out for, like caches, load balancers, monitoring/observability, etc.... You don't have to have the specific knowledge yourself, but if the candidate can explain to you what they did, and how/why, in the framework of the specific experience you're looking for, that's good signal!

Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#33

Post by yoz-y »

runawaybottle wrote: post #8
mcfunk wrote: post #3

Some good questions in here, with one exception: > Programmers are unique. They're one of the few professions where outside the boundaries of their working hours they choose to do the same exact thing they do at work: programming. Hiring managers should definitely not be assuming that all programmers do apps in their spare time. It's one thing to expect them to have a code sample (anyone should), but many strong prog…

We also should not propagate the caricature of the developer. You know, the all I need is gallons of coffee and I’m off grokking code all day in a hoodie. I’m off to my Kubernetes meetup! Whoops, just dropped my giant math is fun textbook.

/me looks at a pile of empty coffee capsules, /me looks at the hoodie, /me looks at the (unread) giant math is fun book, I hide in shame.

I do agree though, especially in hiring I find it weird to expect people to have their hobby being the same as their job. I'm quite curions if there is another profession where this is the case. Photographers maybe?

Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#35

Post by pdonis »

j45 wrote: post #17

There are some good questions here. Still, if you're non technical when interviewing, how would you know the right answers to technical questions? Eliciting underlying thoughts about problem solving is important, but is more than just saying the right keywords. If interviewing is not much more than a game of keyword DDR, it makes successful outcomes even more challenging. Maybe hiring is broken because it is designed…

> if you're non technical when interviewing, how would you know the right answers to technical questions?

My reaction to the article was similar. My answer to the title question would be: "Find a technical cofounder you can trust."

Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#36

Post by steve76 »

I never interviewed people. Waste of time. I set my place up so it was impossible to fail, like shopping at a supermarket, and opened the flood gates. Place was awesome until the money got scared.

Today I ask for a quote, and often find myself just giving things away and moving away. I really really don't care about money.

Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#37

Post by slg »

dominotw wrote: post #27
FalconSensei wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point, and I partly disagree. First because, they are doing it for fun, to solve things they want to make it work. That doesn't say they are learning something, or following clean code guidelines. But let's assume they DO. They are better at coding. But are you sure coding is the only skill you want? I've seen my fair share of developers that lack "real world" experience, to the point they cannot see that…

yea ofcourse, if someone is better at skills you are looking for then by all means coding hobby is irrelvant. But what if all else being equal, why would you not choose coding hobby candidate.

If we are going the "all else being equal" route, one could argue the hobbyist is a worse candidate because they have spent more time working and thinking about programming but still haven't been able to demonstrate their skills are superior to someone who has spent much less time refining them. Give me the person who is able to get the same thing accomplished with less effort and time.

Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#38

Post by jrumbut »

ape4 wrote: post #20
crimsonalucard wrote: post #7

I consider myself good at programming in general. But let's say the interviewer was hiring me for a technology stack that I'm pretty much clueless about... let's say assembly language or cobol... Even then I can bullshit my way past all of those questions, and I'm sure most people who can't program can also do the same too.

"What's the one thing you would not compromise on as you write code?" Its not hard to figure out the right answer to that one: "I never compromise. Must be perfect." But of course that's not true. There are always pathological conditions that can reasonably ignored especially in the first release.

That's funny, I came to the almost opposite conclusion that the obvious answer was that everything is tradeoffs and compromises.

I suppose very easy things like consistent indentation width might be done perfectly in a codebase, but any non-trivial thing always could be "more X" or "less Y".

Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#39

Post by runawaybottle »

yoz-y wrote: post #33
runawaybottle wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also should not propagate the caricature of the developer. You know, the all I need is gallons of coffee and I’m off grokking code all day in a hoodie. I’m off to my Kubernetes meetup! Whoops, just dropped my giant math is fun textbook.

/me looks at a pile of empty coffee capsules, /me looks at the hoodie, /me looks at the (unread) giant math is fun book, I hide in shame. I do agree though, especially in hiring I find it weird to expect people to have their hobby being the same as their job. I'm quite curions if there is another profession where this is the case. Photographers maybe?

Well if you’re the real deal, you’re the real deal :p I guess only celebrities/insta influencers have to keep up the image.

Casually hides Cracking the Coding Interview book

Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#40

Post by [deleted] »

mcfunk wrote: post #3

Some good questions in here, with one exception: > Programmers are unique. They're one of the few professions where outside the boundaries of their working hours they choose to do the same exact thing they do at work: programming. Hiring managers should definitely not be assuming that all programmers do apps in their spare time. It's one thing to expect them to have a code sample (anyone should), but many strong prog…

[deleted]
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