How To Hire Me (or any other programmer)

Someone fresh out of school should expect to jump through hoops.

A company that's looking for senior developers who've Been There, Done That, should expect to have to empower, reward, and listen to them.

But senior developers really need to understand that there are Chameleons among them, who have floated from job to job, look like they have all the right skills, but can't perform.

Companies need to be able to distinguish those Chameleons from the real deal, and I have found that Cookie-Cutter Technical Interviews are a necessary step. I think I've kept out more Chameleons than I've lost good candidates. Or rather, I've determined that it's worth administering the Cookie-Cutter Technical Interview, because I've concluded that the cost of hiring a Chameleon is higher than the cost of making one of the many honestly good candidates walk away in distaste.

I also have to emphasize how empowered, rewarded, and listened-to the candidate will be, and that they'll be surrounded by other senior programmers with great skills that they'll have fun interacting with...

As a corollary to this, I would advise companies to be OK with not being interesting. Not every business is exotic and innovative. If you aren't actually interesting, don't try to portray the company so.

"Rockstars, etc...."

This has been hashed over so many times, especially here on HN, but I do want to point out that there is a YC company (that has been trying to hire for A LONG TIME, here and on SF Craigslist) who uses this kind of lingo. In fact, they were the YC company that implied to me that the YC partners don't actually try to control their companies too much. This company will be allowed to create their own business (or not) via their own philosophy, which is a point in YC's favor.

Unfortunately, the number of flat-out liars on resumes is extremely large. Heck, I've even seen resumes from people I worked alongside at Microsoft who now claim to have done things that I did while there.

Sussing that out is part of the interviewer's job, at least if you care about 1) whether you're hiring a liar 2) the skills that should have been gained if they actually spent two years working on X.

1a. Show me the office I'll be working in. Any "open plan" or "2+ people per office" setup decreases your odds of hiring me by about 93%. Not to say I'll never take a job like that, but it really, really hurts your odds.

1b. Show me the rest of the building... are there common areas where people can hang out and collaborate away from their offices, preferably with natural sunlight to the area? Are there plenty of conference rooms, team rooms, or other areas for small group meetings? Do people have to fight to get a room for a meeting? Are rooms commonly "double booked" in whatever system tracks that? IS there a system for tracking room reservations? Is it Lotus Notes? If "yes" to the last question, I walk.

2. Show me the tools I'll have available to work with: Hardware, software, etc. If you're handing out ancient laptops with 1GB of RAM while expecting developers to use Springsource Tools Suite, I'm probably walking out on the spot. If you're using CVS for version control, I'm probably walking out. If you don't have a continuous integration server, I'm probably walking out.

3. Tell me about the training budget, if any. If there is no training budget, your odds just went way down.

4. Tell me about your software process. Here's where I am going to interview you. If you say "we are an Agile shop" you better be able to explain exactly what that means. Which Agile methodology do you use? Scrum? XP? Crystal? RUP? Your own made up psuedo-Agile process? Do you just use the "words" from Agile or Scrum without actually understanding them? If you use the terms "sprint" or "iteration", and "epic" and "story points" but clearly don't understand what they mean and how they should be used, I'm gone. Also, I'll want to know if the business side of the company understands and is onboard with the iterative approach with empirical feedback loops. Do execs prioritize stories for the backlog and then leave it be? Or are they randomly coming in, mid-iteration, and changing things around willy-nilly?

5. I'll want to know how many people I "report" to. If I have a "manager" telling me what to do, AND a "project manager" giving me conflicting instructions, AND random execs with an unclear relationship to the project coming along and tell me stuff, we aren't going to be together long, sorry.

6. Tell me more about the culture of the company... are people expected to be on-time for meetings? Do meetings always have agendas, and time limits? Does the company favor promoting from within? Do the execs have an "open door" policy? Are their performance reviews? How are they done? Do you make employees take any bogus "psychological profile tests"? Drug tests? Do managers go out to lunch with the "rank and file" and share a beer or two, or do managers go out in groups and pointedly avoid the riff-raff, and you'll get yelled at for having one drink with your lunch? Does the CEO interact with the "rank and file"? How? In short, convince me that this is a well run company, who respect their employees, value engagement and actually empower their people.

7. Is there any attempt to implement Kaizen or become a learning organization? Are there post-mortems for negative incidents? Do they use "Five Whys"? Are employees fired for one f%!# up, or is it more of a "support, coach and encourage" environment?

8. Are there bonuses? Profit sharing? Employee Stock Purchase programs? Stock options? What exists to align the goals of the employees with the goals of the firm as a whole, other than "I want to stay employed"?

9. Take me to eat Thai. A quality serving of Num Tok and a nice Mussuman Curry improve your odds considerably.