291–300 of 358 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This approaches biases against those whose residency status is dependent on employment (e.g. H1Bs). There’s no silver bullet when it comes to hiring.
Which is fine because H1Bs shouldn't be used for most positions. If something actually requires an H1B candidate then you use a different process.
Please don't. Better, I'll remove the please and go JUST DONT FUCKING DO IT. Hiring is broken because most people hiring aren't good at it and the people working in tech are pretty much idiots (I'm focusing more on SV-startup, 5hour discussion about aeropress, put people down because they chose vim or emacs - people kinds). From 'cultural' fit interviews (who the fuck cares if you are a sikh or an atheist, whiskey dr…
Honestly I was looking at this and thinking it's not too far off from introducing yourself as Tyler Durden and then testing him.
> A senior developer should be able to explore the UI and figure out a goal, then establish a plan for accomplishing that goal. I'm confounded on why the author thinks being a senior developer (say, in embedded systems) would make someone better at exploring a game UI compared to an intern-candidate who puts 20+ hours into gaming per week... I would probably walk out of the interview if someone suggested I play facto…
Factorio isn't a game about shooting things. It is a systems-design game. Your goal is to orchestrate the processing of several different resources (iron, copper, coal, oil, stone) into several different intermediate products (gears, circuit boards, sulfuric acid, radar systems, etc), in service of a final deliverable (a rocket launch, or if you're ambitious, a continuous series of rocket launches). To that end you m…
Please don't. Better, I'll remove the please and go JUST DONT FUCKING DO IT. Hiring is broken because most people hiring aren't good at it and the people working in tech are pretty much idiots (I'm focusing more on SV-startup, 5hour discussion about aeropress, put people down because they chose vim or emacs - people kinds). From 'cultural' fit interviews (who the fuck cares if you are a sikh or an atheist, whiskey dr…
These don't seem related. I happily base my identity around my work. I don't care about my coworkers personalities or inclinations at all, as long as they're not assholes and they're competent.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by identity? I don't hire people because I want them to be friends.
> A senior developer should be able to explore the UI and figure out a goal, then establish a plan for accomplishing that goal. I'm confounded on why the author thinks being a senior developer (say, in embedded systems) would make someone better at exploring a game UI compared to an intern-candidate who puts 20+ hours into gaming per week... I would probably walk out of the interview if someone suggested I play facto…
Factorio isn't a game about shooting things. It is a systems-design game. Your goal is to orchestrate the processing of several different resources (iron, copper, coal, oil, stone) into several different intermediate products (gears, circuit boards, sulfuric acid, radar systems, etc), in service of a final deliverable (a rocket launch, or if you're ambitious, a continuous series of rocket launches). To that end you m…
Repeatedly playing a game helps one internalize and "have a feel" of when the timing is right. I agree with you - it's a terrible way to hire people, for the reasons you state, and because it unfairly favors people who have played Factorio before.
The thing about game engines is that they can only represent a simplified approximation; for example driving the "same" car model in 2 different games feels very different. Therefore game resource management and complexity are nothing like real-life. Would you want to work with a Director/Project Manager on the strength of how good they were at StarCraft 2 in an interview? After all, it's about resource management, planning and timing, right?
How can this not have a huge bias in favor of gamers? Might work for them because that's the kind of culture fit they need, but I doesn't look all that generalizable for other companies.
You only have to understand how to move your character using WASD, the concept of Inventory and pointing at different places on the ground with a cursor. Failing to understand this simple set of rules would disqualify a person from most jobs ever invented.
Can you really not see how such an interview would bias towards Gamers?
We used this a couple times at Sandstorm back in the day. At the end of the interview the candidate would play Factorio cooperatively with the team for a while. I think it is remarkably effective at identifying the kinds of skills and personality traits that a software engineer actually needs to have in day-to-day work. You can find out if someone is self-directed, how fast they work, whether they produce clean desig…
I've honestly simplified my approach to interviewing over the last few years and I'm pretty happy with the results. I just have a conversation and ask them to tell me about a favorite code project they've worked on. Could be school project, previous job, whatever. And just let them talk about it. I'll prod for more detail if I need to give a little nudge. Ask about problems they solved when doing it, etc. The _only_…
My approach has just been to have a conversation, and try to move it along naturally. What do you think of concepts? What useful STL did they add? Why did you go with this design? Ask me something.
If the person doesn't really have the level of interest required, they will run out of things to say. Like a cave left unexplored. The good candidates will go down all the caves with you, even if they don't quite know what's there.
In particular, the times I've had dud hires it was not possible to know from the standard fare of coding questions and IQ questions. When I was doing that obviously the people I hired passed. But for instance one guy really didn't want to be a programmer, he just knew how to answer the questions. He ended up stalling on his first assignment, and eventually decided to change careers. Another dud also lacked motivation, perhaps because he was asked to do something not quite in his area to begin with. He ended up not doing anything at all.
Apart from those two, dozens of others have turned out ok. I never ran into that guy who couldn't do FizzBuzz, despite not asking. I also don't think it was all that bad to let go of the duds within a quarter, they never got so ingrained in the team that we depended on them, and they could plausibly move on to another job without mentioning us on their CV.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would reverse it. The nation is not conducive to business if it can't provide healthcare and safety nets for those without work or in between jobs. In the US we are held hostage with healthcare based on our employers - if you're even lucky enough to have a stable job with benefits.
"Hire quickly and fire quickly" has other issues than healthcare and safety nets though, moving across a country and spending weeks trying to find a place to live (possibly losing money on rent because you can't find anything to buy yet) only to have to do it again in a few weeks' time is difficult. Less of an issue if you're full remote, or you provide good accommodations, I guess.
It seems like Factorio itself doesn't matter here, and that any programming language can be used instead. So really, this article is saying "live, self-directed coding is the best technical interview", which isn't very original.
There may be an anxiety factor which negatively impacts live coding interviews which wouldn't manifest as often in demonstrating similar skillsets in a game. It would be interesting to see how much of a difference something like this makes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would reverse it. The nation is not conducive to business if it can't provide healthcare and safety nets for those without work or in between jobs. In the US we are held hostage with healthcare based on our employers - if you're even lucky enough to have a stable job with benefits.
Show me one coutry who pays unemployed benefit at the level of the job you need to leave because of that insane hire fast fire fast.