Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hiring Developers: You're Doing It Wrong

devinterviews.pen.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 230 posts

Re: Hiring Developers: You're Doing It Wrong

#31

Post by jacques_chester »

My previous employer (http://thefrontiergroup.com.au) had a process where candidates would come and spend a day onsite. You'd be paid for the day.

The process was to work together with a senior coder on problems of escalating difficulty. Starting with

    1.upto 10 do |i| { print i }
"What does this do?"

And ending with "Here's a legacy application we maintain. Add a new widget to the dashboard. Think aloud."

During the day you had lunch with the team.

Even so, that process didn't work perfectly for them. They hired me and about 6 months later they decided to fire me.

Subsequently they've focused on hiring people they already knew. For example, they've hired Darcy Laycock (http://sutto.net/), who they've known through the Rails community for years.

... and in all fairness I'd sack about 5 of me to get a Darcy on board.

Re: Hiring Developers: You're Doing It Wrong

#32

Post by six0six »

spamizbad wrote: post #29
staunch wrote: post #15

My current system is: 1) Simple programming challenge ( 2) Casual discussion-style interview to get to know how they think and behave. 3) Short term contract with a predefined project ( 4) Full time hire with salary + equity.

Wow, you actually encounter people willing to take you up on #3 these days? They're either in love with your company or desperate for work.

Someone who opts-in to #3 is not necessarily desperate. In fact, to the contrary, they likely also want an opportunity to feel the company out and be more confident in their choice to stay/leave at the end of 3mo.

Re: Hiring Developers: You're Doing It Wrong

#33

Post by MichaelGG »

Writing code is just another type of conversation. Sure, you're going to ask many questions. Having a candidate code a bit in front of you, going back and forth, provides a lot of info.

As far as "CS puzzles" - binary search, trees, linked lists, hashtables, etc: None of those should be puzzles. If you're giving interviews that people can "memorize" an answer to, then the problem is how you're doing the interview. A proper conversation, including code, will quickly sort out if the person just memorized a one-line Haskell quicksort, or actually knows what they're talking about.

Re: Hiring Developers: You're Doing It Wrong

#34

Post by lwat »

sp_ wrote: post #22

I worked for a German startup too and our main problem was not vetting interviewees but finding people who want to interview at all. In the five year history of the company I think only one single person was hired who was not already friends with someone at the company. Other people just never applied. I remember manning the booth at one of those college campus events and it was very lonely. I probably talked to thre…

Wow here in Australia we get HUNDREDS of people lining up to interview for every job we advertise.

Re: Hiring Developers: You're Doing It Wrong

#35

Post by limist »

michaelchisari wrote: post #27

Despite having written tens of thousands of lines of open source code, I have yet to have an interviewer who has looked at that code and asked me about it.

That speaks volumes about the interviewer(s) and their company. Did no one look at your resume before speaking with you?? If not, that's inexcusably inefficient.

Re: Hiring Developers: You're Doing It Wrong

#37

Post by btmorex »

six0six wrote: post #32
spamizbad wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, you actually encounter people willing to take you up on #3 these days? They're either in love with your company or desperate for work.

Someone who opts-in to #3 is not necessarily desperate. In fact, to the contrary, they likely also want an opportunity to feel the company out and be more confident in their choice to stay/leave at the end of 3mo.

There's nothing preventing them from quitting after 3 months with a normal offer.

Re: Hiring Developers: You're Doing It Wrong

#39

Post by yannk »

michaelchisari wrote: post #27

Despite having written tens of thousands of lines of open source code, I have yet to have an interviewer who has looked at that code and asked me about it.

Really? That's the most surprising thing I've read today.

As an interviewer, Open Source contribution is one of the first thing I look for about a candidate.

Re: Hiring Developers: You're Doing It Wrong

#40

Post by ams6110 »

tptacek wrote: post #26
staunch wrote: post #15

My current system is: 1) Simple programming challenge ( 2) Casual discussion-style interview to get to know how they think and behave. 3) Short term contract with a predefined project ( 4) Full time hire with salary + equity.

If (3) is working for you, great; however, bear in mind that it's a seller's market for talent right now. I'd neg an offer contingent on doing a 3 month contract first, and I'd advise my friends to do the same; why should I shoulder that risk, if there are 2-3 other good positions open that will take it on for me by offering FT right away?

I don't know if it's the same everywhere, but a 90-day "probationary" period is absolutely commonplace in the USA. Not sure I see much difference.
Post reply on HN