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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)

#141

Post by IheartApplesDix »

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…

These are basically all the things they need to keep secret to keep leverage over you.

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

#142

Post by zanny »

dangrossman wrote: post #90
VikingCoder wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think it's hard to find programmers, at any given level of skill? Maybe I've been fortunate enough to work for companies that had enough gravitational pull that we attract good candidates without trying very hard.

> You think it's hard to find programmers, at any given level of skill? Outside of the tech hub cities, yes, it can be very hard. Even just an hour out of Philadelphia, helping a local company offering $95k salary and benefits (well above average in their area), there were very few applicants and fewer actually qualified to do any professional programming. It took almost a year to fill a single developer position. Pr…

Where outside Philly are you? I'm in Berks and while I'm shopping everywhere from NY to SF for an entry position out of college, there is nothing close to any demand for developers I can find in these parts. Philly itself can be ok for positions, but outside the city seems like a barren wasteland.

Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places. I'm absent a network, so I'm just using online job boards from Careers 2.0 to Dice to Linked In, and I just don't see anything.

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

#143

Post by Contero »

DavidWoof wrote: post #126
VikingCoder wrote: post #57

When I'm involved in interviewing someone, one of the interviews will be cookie-cutter. I've seen with my own eyes applicants who had stellar resumes, had great conversations with everyone they talked to... and could not pass a Cookie-Cutter Technical Interview. You may think that it's insulting to have to pass a Cookie-Cutter Technical Interview, but we are not (generally) a Professional group - we don't have a Bar…

> Do you know why this line of C++ code compiles with Visual Studio 6, but produces the wrong result? Are you actually serious? You ask about a quirk in a 15-year-old single-platform compiler? I always wonder what some interviewers think they're gaining from questions about minute historical trivia like this. It doesn't provide any real insight into ability at all.

I thought that was meant to be a joke. At least I hope it was. It would get a good laugh from me in an interview.

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

#144

Post by zanny »

VikingCoder wrote: post #105
dangrossman wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You think it's hard to find programmers, at any given level of skill? Outside of the tech hub cities, yes, it can be very hard. Even just an hour out of Philadelphia, helping a local company offering $95k salary and benefits (well above average in their area), there were very few applicants and fewer actually qualified to do any professional programming. It took almost a year to fill a single developer position. Pr…

> The entire country graduated less than 10k people from CS programs in 2010. I've gotten into a debate with some friends about this: a degree on a resume is really great, but it's not necessary for the vast majority of programming jobs. > helping a local company offering $95k salary and benefits I hear that driving a truck in the North Dakota oil boom can earn you $150k, to start. Even in a Buyer's Market, you have…

> You just told me that CS graduates can still be completely incompetent, but then you expressed surprise that apparently degrees don't matter that much any more. =)

In his defense, and as a recent grad with my CS degree this last year, the curriculum doesn't really sell itself at all for professional software development. Knowing algorithms / language theory / OS theory / theory in general doesn't mean you can throw together a Django app or use git. I had to learn those outside the classroom, because class projects were about convex hull and Monte Hall, not making useful software.

In 9 months since graduating I've gone from my favorite language being C, my experience being in Java and a smidgen of Swing (and still an incomplete knoweldge of the Java thread model, how to write for the JVM, and some others) I did know some CUDA / pthreads / openMP but from an elective on parallel systems, I had a touch of Python 2.7, and almost no sysadmin experience, to now my preferred language is Python3, I know and use qt for FOSS work, I learned html / javascript / C# / regular expressions / SQL / proper networking / the kde libs / pyside / simpy / numpy, I switched full time to Arch and learned Unix ground up, I learned about assembly, unicode, byte order marks, etc.

I never touched on any of that in school. Given, my school was a mediocre liberal arts place I went to just for the near-free scholarship, but I get the impression from other schools I encountered during ASM contests that the curriculum was similar.

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

#145

Post by softbuilder »

VikingCoder wrote: post #57

When I'm involved in interviewing someone, one of the interviews will be cookie-cutter. I've seen with my own eyes applicants who had stellar resumes, had great conversations with everyone they talked to... and could not pass a Cookie-Cutter Technical Interview. You may think that it's insulting to have to pass a Cookie-Cutter Technical Interview, but we are not (generally) a Professional group - we don't have a Bar…

I think "cookie-cutter technical interview" has been misunderstood. My fault, I didn't spend much time on it in the post.

A cookie-cutter interview will ask things that I've been asked by every other shop in town. For instance, I literally recite Fibonacci now. It's a completely useless test because it's over-used. This sort of thing makes a company look cold and - far worse - unimaginative. It's not insulting, it's just a red flag.

The other part of this is having people stand at a whiteboard or work on paper instead of sitting down with them at a computer. Every single thing you listed can be determined by sitting with the candidate at a computer, working with actual code.

None of this bars you from asking about historical quirks of compilers or anything else. If anything, it offers you the chance to have a more relaxed conversation about these things so you can get past the bullshit and see the person that you'll actually be working with.

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

#146

Post by Falling3 »

run4yourlives wrote: post #133
Falling3 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard various numbers like this thrown around, but I'm having a hard time seeing how it could possibly be that high. Is that figure coming from personal experience? I also struggle with that idea since I'm very capable of programming fizzbuzz and a lot more, but am still having a problem finding a new position.

Is that figure coming from personal experience? Actually, if I went purely on personal experience it would be closer to 90%. I tempered it because I can't believe it could be anywhere that bad. It's sad, but from what I've seen, applicants fall into two major groups, for the most part: 1. People who seem to know how to code (as in, actually use a keyboard) but who don't possess any type of critical thinking skills an…

Well I still want to know where all those fizzbuzz claims come from.

Otherwise, I think you're largely right. But there's a lot of variation especially within that third group. I'm going to cautiously put myself into that third group. The problem is I'm probably on the lower end of that category. I'm able to make design decisions and use the things I learnt in computer science classes while still being pragmatic and solving real world problems. But I don't have a ton of experience. I often don't have language X or framework Y under my belt. And I think that's made it really difficult for me.

You seem to have a good idea of what you should be looking for, but what about all of the other interviewers? Are they just incredibly short-sighted?

And if the fizz buzz failures are actually that prolific, then I'm really at a loss as to why I'm having such a hard time finding a position.

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

#147

Post by UncleOxidant »

VikingCoder wrote: post #57

When I'm involved in interviewing someone, one of the interviews will be cookie-cutter. I've seen with my own eyes applicants who had stellar resumes, had great conversations with everyone they talked to... and could not pass a Cookie-Cutter Technical Interview. You may think that it's insulting to have to pass a Cookie-Cutter Technical Interview, but we are not (generally) a Professional group - we don't have a Bar…

> If you code C++, do you know Boost?

Do I know it exists? Sure, of course. Have I used all of the 50+ libraries in Boost? nope. Maybe about 10% of them. What exactly do you mean by "know Boost"?

> "Let Me Code, Damnit" doesn't help me assess that as well as something that looks - at first blush - like a Cooke-Cutter Technical Interview does.

You can also have a look at my GitHub where you can read actual code I have written and see how I've handled pull requests, bug reports, etc.

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

#148

Post by Daniel_Newby »

VikingCoder wrote: post #105
dangrossman wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You think it's hard to find programmers, at any given level of skill? Outside of the tech hub cities, yes, it can be very hard. Even just an hour out of Philadelphia, helping a local company offering $95k salary and benefits (well above average in their area), there were very few applicants and fewer actually qualified to do any professional programming. It took almost a year to fill a single developer position. Pr…

> The entire country graduated less than 10k people from CS programs in 2010. I've gotten into a debate with some friends about this: a degree on a resume is really great, but it's not necessary for the vast majority of programming jobs. > helping a local company offering $95k salary and benefits I hear that driving a truck in the North Dakota oil boom can earn you $150k, to start. Even in a Buyer's Market, you have…

> ... we have overly-qualified applicants lined up for openings that don't exist.

This can happen in a seller's market if people with jobs are in such demand that they can try to create the position they want.

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

#149

Post by UncleOxidant »

zanny wrote: post #139
potatolicious wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be somewhat blunt - but this isn't meant as disrespect for you. The software industry is highly bimodal. There are two very, very clear camps - you fall into the other camp than most HNers. The market for mid-top end talent is a huge sellers market. There aren't enough people to go around, salaries inflate double-digit percentages every year, and crazily does not seem to be stopping. The market for low-end warm-…

I agree on the two camps ideology, and this is HN after all, so I'll ask - how to you get into the sellers market? I graduated with my CS degree with an ok 3.4 GPA recently, and I cast a wide net on jobs from Django to openCL, but everywhere I apply I either get cold shoulders, a 30 minute phone interview that never gets a response even with follow up, or rejection on a lack of project experience. I've been working F…

You may have to move out of "the middle of PA".

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

#150

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

Mahn wrote: post #38
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…

> 10. Take me to a Chinese buffet. No need for the rest, this will do. Actually, in all seriousness there is at least one start up here in Germany which hiring process consist in going for a beer with the founders and members of the team you'll work with, and only follow up if you liked each other. It's probably not very scalable for the founders as the company grows, but still an interesting approach.

I wonder if being the fourth interviewee in a given day would help or harm your chances of a follow-up? :)
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