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How To Hire Me (or any other programmer)

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Re: How To Hire Me (or any other programmer)

#21

Post by eksith »

Thank you! That no recruiting recruiter email is such a buzzkill.

Even if the company itself looks interesting, just the fact that they sent some brocruiter to flood prospects with emails just makes me question the wisdom of the folks behind the company. I can appreciate a lax attitude at work up to a point, but beyond that, there's no real productivity. It's like the days before the dot com bubble when VCs were dumping cash on a potential product sold on hype.

Even if I were to get hired, what's the point if the company folds in a year?

Re: How To Hire Me (or any other programmer)

#22

Post by Glyptodon »

cliftonmckinney wrote: post #10

We've been working to solve this problem for a long time at https://workforpie.com/ . I completely agree with everything OP says, but I'll tell you what the real problem is: time. This is especially true in early stage startups and consultancies, where oftentimes the founders are still building stuff 95% of the time. Recruiters are easy (as are, by the way, the new wave of non-recruiting recruiters like Developer Auc…

I wonder if it's possible to move from employer to employer getting paid more and more by spending all your time answering questions on Stack Overflow instead of working...

Re: How To Hire Me (or any other programmer)

#23

Post by edw519 »

How to hire me:

   1. Tell me about the 3 biggest things you must accomplish.
   2. Tell me why you must accomplish them.
   3. Tell me when you must accomplish them by.
   4. Tell me how you intend to accomplish them.
   5. Tell me what you're already doing to accomplish them.
   6. Tell me the role you envision me playing in accomplishing them.
   7. Tell me what you expect from me.
   8. Put me with some of the key people already working on them.
   9. Tell me what you'll do when things change or go wrong.
  10. Take me to a Chinese buffet.

Re: How To Hire Me (or any other programmer)

#24

Post by xyzzyz »

niggler wrote: post #5
RandallBrown wrote: post #4

I can't even begin to describe how worthless I think most coding interviews are. Here's a contrived problem, that will never come up in our work. Now solve it by writing your code by hand without a compiler or any other tools that you would use in real life. I understand that these questions are often about seeing how you think and how you solve problems. Throwing annoyances like writing code on a whiteboard into a h…

Writing code by hand reveals far more than you give it credit for. Someone omits a semicolon? Bam, conversation about semicolons or ASI. It's not about the fanciest solution. And anyone who does it that way is foolish. It's the purest test of Language facility, and a really good springboard for all kinds of questions. Downvoters: have you actually tried to hire someone?

Conversation about semicolons? During a job interview? I'm sorry, but this is a waste of time. Why don't you talk about, you know, algorithms? Concurrency? Databases? Testing? Or anything that is more than remotely relevant to the job?

Re: How To Hire Me (or any other programmer)

#26

Post by lessnonymous »

gambler wrote: post #19
niggler wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing code by hand reveals far more than you give it credit for. Someone omits a semicolon? Bam, conversation about semicolons or ASI. It's not about the fanciest solution. And anyone who does it that way is foolish. It's the purest test of Language facility, and a really good springboard for all kinds of questions. Downvoters: have you actually tried to hire someone?

I didn't downvote, but I disagree and I did try to hire someone. Whiteboard questions are next to useless because they are, essentially, a guessing game. The candidates need to guess what behavior the interviewer wants them to exert. Some interviewers simply use it as an idiot filter, while others want the person to explain their reasoning, wile yet another group is stupid enough to think it's representative of real…

That's bad interviewing, not bad practice. Get rid of the guessing. Make sure you explain to the candidate exactly what you're looking for.

I use whiteboard coding .. and it's not to catch you out on semi colons. I even tell my candidates that they can use any language they want or even mix them together or make up their own.

What I want to see on the whiteboard is a logical, working solution to a simple problem. And if your brain freezes up because it's an "interview", I'm going to push you in the right direction.

Once you have an initial working solution, we're going to chat about how it works. If there are cases where it would fail. What assumptions we've made about input. Maybe we'll (both) even jump over to another whiteboard and write a new version based on our discussion. (Do your eyes light up when we've found a cool optimization??)

The only language caveat I use: you can't have a call a function called doitforme()

(If you or anyone you know is looking for a senior PHP job in Melbourne.AU, I'm hiring. Hit me up and I'll send you to the ad on Seek)

Re: How To Hire Me (or any other programmer)

#27

Post by csmatt »

Excellent! Very well written and expressed.

There was an interviewee here today and I heard my boss tell someone to quiz him on big-o notation. I rolled my eyes.

Yesterday I had an interview that started off with "Tell me a bit about yourself." No direction as to what the interviewer wanted and, the worst part, as soon as I said I was done, he went right into asking me what the difference between "overloading" and "overriding" is.

How many years of experience do I need to have for them to stop asking me things like this? Most of my work lately is in JavaScript and Python. I had trouble answering "What's the difference between an abstract class and an interface?" That doesn't necessarily come up in those languages in a distinct way, so I'm out of practice in my vocabulary.

I have neat personal projects with source code on github. Do you really need to screen me with a phone interview?

Re: How To Hire Me (or any other programmer)

#28

Post by niggler »

gambler wrote: post #19
niggler wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing code by hand reveals far more than you give it credit for. Someone omits a semicolon? Bam, conversation about semicolons or ASI. It's not about the fanciest solution. And anyone who does it that way is foolish. It's the purest test of Language facility, and a really good springboard for all kinds of questions. Downvoters: have you actually tried to hire someone?

I didn't downvote, but I disagree and I did try to hire someone. Whiteboard questions are next to useless because they are, essentially, a guessing game. The candidates need to guess what behavior the interviewer wants them to exert. Some interviewers simply use it as an idiot filter, while others want the person to explain their reasoning, wile yet another group is stupid enough to think it's representative of real…

"others want the person to explain their reasoning,"

I think far more people use whiteboard questions in that context than the article's author thinks.

" If the candidates guess incorrectly, they will fail the question, regardless of who they are or how good they know their trade."

I don't know about your experience, but in my experience candidates actually ask questions if you properly set up the problem and present an inviting atmosphere. And in my experience the best programmers are those that aren't afraid to ask good questions.

Re: How To Hire Me (or any other programmer)

#29

Post by bcoates »

What am I supposed to do instead of the cookie-cutter technical interview? Right now I do "Ask any question that starts with the phrase “tell me about a time when”." for most of the interview.

I'm trying to give them an opportunity to describe technical things they've done so I can drill into details and suss out if they're exaggerating their skill-set and/or incapable of communication.

For perspective, I'm a schlub at my company they grab out of the hallway to give technical interviews, not the founder or a full-time HR guy.

Re: How To Hire Me (or any other programmer)

#30

Post by padolsey »

edw519 wrote: post #23

How to hire me: 1. Tell me about the 3 biggest things you must accomplish. 2. Tell me why you must accomplish them. 3. Tell me when you must accomplish them by. 4. Tell me how you intend to accomplish them. 5. Tell me what you're already doing to accomplish them. 6. Tell me the role you envision me playing in accomplishing them. 7. Tell me what you expect from me. 8. Put me with some of the key people already working…

Hmm, 6 & 7 are the same. And I think you meant Thai, not Chinese.
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