Not the one or replying to, but I’ve encountered this too. Some pair programming takes the form of two people operating one computer. When I’ve done this style and I’m driving, certain people wouldn’t let me finish my thought on what I’m doing. They’ll grab their keyboard or mouse and change programs, or just start typing in stuff while I’m typing too.
I like pair programming with the right person. It is very rewarding. What you describe sounds awful. I would tell them to stop immediately. If it continues, I would stop the pair programming session. What a pain.
Yeah, I like it when it’s good. That experience happened at a company where it was full time mandatory, and with our clients’ engineers too. I had positive experiences from that, but also really frustrating ones.
Your first comment re: exclusionary is simply a filter for the flip side of your 2nd point. The damage of a bad hire is 10x as bad as the positive impact of a good hire. A network of competent, easy to get along with people allows one to avoid the truly bad hires that we've all experienced. Sure you may view it as exclusionary, but if you're hiring for seniors, and been in your niche a decade or more.. the likelihood…
Joel Spolsky has written extensively about avoiding bad hires. Average and above is the ultimate goal. I agree the impact of a bad hire far outweighs good hires because they consumer the time of managers. Good hires only need a quick steer now and again. Bad hires need a manager to spoon feed them until layoff season arrives.
> the impact of a bad hire far outweighs good hires because they consumer the time of managers
during one of the first interviews I ever had, the interviewer took me to a private room where I could do the coding part on my own on the desk was the laptop they wanted me to use, some pens and paper, and a stack of resumes from other people the interviewer made no mention of the stack as they were leaving or when they came back, and when I asked about it at the end of the interview, they chuckled and changed the s…
Pretty sure the test here is to see what you do when you discover them. I'd give them more benefit of doubt and guess that they wanted you to report it immediately, and letting any mention of it wait until the end of the interview was the wrong answer. If you're the sort of person that believes in these sort of tricks (I don't), you'd probably jump to the conclusion that the person ignoring the pile of resumes was ok…
> If you're the sort of person that believes in these sort of tricks (I don't), you'd probably jump to the conclusion that the person ignoring the pile of resumes was okay watching the place burn down around him as long as it wasn't his job to fix it.
Alternative theory: since the information on a resume is not exactly sensitive (it's not the same thing as a job application), then someone who doesn't take the opportunity to study them is labeled as incurious
Part of the distinction I was trying to make is that it's dangerous to have one's identity tied primarily to any singular thing. In western culture, it just seems like a job/profession is the easiest identifier. Will Storr writes about this much better than I can explain it here. But his point is essentially that the healthiest approach is to have your identity tied to many disparate parts of your life so that if one…
What I'm really talking about when I'm talking about the threat of extended unemployment is the threat of losing socioeconomic class. So much depends on class: where you live, what you eat, where you worship if anywhere, where your kids go to school, who your friends are. Almost everything. It's very difficult to diversify your social and professional network outside of your class. In most cases switching from one te…
I don't think we disagree on much here. When you say "socioeconomic class", that is largely valuable because of the status it confers. When your status changes to a lower rung, it hurts. Will Storr is saying having your entire status/esteem wrapped in a single measure like socioeconomic class is unhealthy. It is much healthier to have your status spread across multiple domains so that if you lose your position in socioeconomic class, your entire identity isn't shaken.
We probably do disagree on the buggy-whip/factory point. Being a craftsman carries more status than being a cog in a factory. The reason why Henry Ford made $5/day a thing was workers were leaving in droves because the work was miserable and monotonous. High pay compensated for miserable work and lower status. I've known people who go from being "somebody" in a particular field (like the military) to being a "nobody" in a different field (like a factory). Even though they got paid better in the latter, they yearned for the former because of the lost status.
What your replies seem to confirm is how much we as a society base our identities on work, sometimes to the exclusion of so much else.
So far it hasn’t been a problem. Junior candidates have shown code from a school project and others have submitted code from a personal project or from something they contributed to an open source project. I think the personal projects are the most interesting to talk about.
Expecting people to have personal projects outside work is very much selecting for a certain type of person. You're ruling out people who devote their time outside work to their families, or sport, or hobbies that don't involve programming.
I’m not ruling out anything. So far I have yet to find somebody who can’t come up with a code sample to bring to the interview. When that happens, I would probably give them a (paid) assignment. Maybe something like “fix issue #12345 on open source project X”. I’d have to think about it a little and discuss it with the candidate.
Yeah I'm also curious. When I was at Google there were a list of things you were never supposed to ask a candidate because that's Super Illegal(TM) and could expose the company to lawsuits. That included sexual orientation and marriage status. That was more than ten years ago, I'd expect most IT companies would do the same by now, at least in the US.
I've never been asked this sort of question at a large company. Mostly "startups" (scare quotes because they're not Silicon Valley startups; think Orlando or Chicago instead). They also tend to ask a lot about things that might sound innocuous, like hobbies. If I was being stupidly honest, I could talk about my involvement in the furry community. Most furries (~80%) are LGBTQ (versus ~3% to 5% of the base population)…
What I'm really talking about when I'm talking about the threat of extended unemployment is the threat of losing socioeconomic class. So much depends on class: where you live, what you eat, where you worship if anywhere, where your kids go to school, who your friends are. Almost everything. It's very difficult to diversify your social and professional network outside of your class. In most cases switching from one te…
I don't think we disagree on much here. When you say "socioeconomic class", that is largely valuable because of the status it confers. When your status changes to a lower rung, it hurts. Will Storr is saying having your entire status/esteem wrapped in a single measure like socioeconomic class is unhealthy. It is much healthier to have your status spread across multiple domains so that if you lose your position in soc…
I'm referring to class as a person's conception of themselves, and others' conception of them, as someone who can live the life they're living and can expect to continue living that life. Losing this doesn't just mean the loss of some sort of social authority, of having an impressive job title at parties, but also and more importantly it can mean almost everything in that person's life changing for the worse, indefinitely: worse neighborhood, worse housing, worse medical care, worse food, worse schools and college funds, worse retirement, worse jobs, worse hobbies, worse transportation, worse life expectancy. That would devastate anyone, and it's not so much about how a person self-identifies but about how much they can afford.
Companies lie to their prospective employees all the time. About how much runway they have, about the work that you'll be doing, about what it is like to work there.
It is not because it is morally wrong that you should not lie. It is because it is very bad for you. Lies beget lies and no one trusts a liar. It is morally wrong to lie. You should not do it The fact that they do it, when they face different incentives, is not a reason for you to
Part of it is, indeed, talking about unspoken rules. But part of it is that the hiring managers and CEOs are humans like everyone else - some may have ego issues, or buy a little too much into their company's branding.
Exactly this. The first rule of fight club is don't talk about fight club. What surprises me more: Many people don't think interviewing is a game. They think it is straightforward and "rules-based". I guess those same people also believe PR. :)
Or want the world to be fair and honest, and - per the well-known saying - they are themselves the change they want to see.
I don't think we disagree on much here. When you say "socioeconomic class", that is largely valuable because of the status it confers. When your status changes to a lower rung, it hurts. Will Storr is saying having your entire status/esteem wrapped in a single measure like socioeconomic class is unhealthy. It is much healthier to have your status spread across multiple domains so that if you lose your position in soc…
I'm referring to class as a person's conception of themselves, and others' conception of them, as someone who can live the life they're living and can expect to continue living that life. Losing this doesn't just mean the loss of some sort of social authority, of having an impressive job title at parties, but also and more importantly it can mean almost everything in that person's life changing for the worse, indefin…
By that same measure, anyone who lives in a lower socio-economic class would have a lower sense of well-being. This is true for people with extrinsic work orientation, but not to those with intrinsic orientation. Again, a lot of it comes down to one's relationship with work.