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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)

#171

Post by derefr »

Swannie wrote: post #156
DavidWoof wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of interesting to me, because my questions are exactly like mindcrimes and I would never ask the kinds of questions you're interested in. I sometimes say in interviews that I'm actually not that interested in the big picture of the company, I'm much more concerned with the day-to-day issues of software construction. Also, you seem to have a specific kind of company in mind. Your questions fit a new web st…

"Lots of places are just looking for smart developers because there's lots of things to do rather than looking for somebody to fulfill a specific task." That. If you are that company, I don't want to work for you. You have to have a mission. The big hairy audacious goals guide your week to week work. If they don't then "You're doing it wrong". If you don't know what I should be working on, then I am unlikely to be ab…

But even the biggest, hairiest, most audacious (audacious-est?) goals a company has will eventually get 'solved' to a satisfactory extent; that feature of the product you were hired to get working will be essentially "done" and go into maintenance mode, etc. Then what will the company do with you? Are they even sure you're good for anything other than the one problem they hired you to solve?

Hiring for general problem-solving ability means being able to rely on the same already-meshed team of people for your next big hairy thing.

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

#172

Post by dimadima »

pkteison wrote: post #54
hack_edu wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tip: When hiring engineers (or speaking to any anyone ever again) NEVER use the word 'grok.'

Why? It has a more clear meaning than just 'understand', and a 'huh' response should be a pretty good filter for an unsuitable candidate.

People who use the word "grok" are total ass-clowns.

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

#173

Post by gavinflud »

This is an excellent post. I'm soon-to-be fresh out of university and the company I'm joining had a hiring process very similar to what you've described.

They were in constant contact throughout the process, sold themselves very well and - although they did carry out a cookie-cutter technical interview - it actually made for an interesting hour where I was able to solve their pretty simple sample problem and we ended up going off on a tangent talking about how to optimize the interview process.

What differentiated them from countless others was that personal touch. I always felt like they wanted me on board and they were able to sell themselves and their culture very well.

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

#174

Post by nitrogen »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #149
zanny wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem for intelligent developers trapped in a less favorable city: you can't make it to in-person interviews in a more active city, so you have to cross a higher threshold to be interesting to employers there; you don't have the funds to move to a better city, so you need to find a local job; local jobs are both low-end and scarce, so you can't save the funds you need to move.

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

#175

Post by teeja »

vinceguidry wrote: post #162
derefr wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. Mine are about them, yours are about you. Well, yes. As a non-equity employee, why should you care about "them", other than how you'll come out of working for them five years down the line? Will you have enjoyed your time there? Will you have grown as a developer? "Creating something meaningful" only only really affects the lives of employees inasmuch as they now have something out there in the world that they c…

> Well, yes. As a non-equity employee, why should you care about "them", other than how you'll come out of working for them five years down the line? Because when you work at a company you don't care for, you are contributing to a toxic environment, which can hurt your career prospects much more than a sub-par salary, by making you caustic and bitter. If you come out of a job in anything other than high spirits, that…

I'd like to add 3 !!! after that last part, and add ... especially if people warned you ahead of time that they just fired ("lost") half their employees last year, and you shrugged.

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

#177

Post by chetanahuja »

vinceguidry wrote: post #89
onemorepassword wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it's a Buyer's Market On what planet?

> You think it's hard to find programmers, at any given level of skill? If it were easy to find programmers, you wouldn't have all these shops using spam-tactic recruiters to drive volume. They wouldn't need to. It's most definitely a seller's market, if programmers can take their pick of corporate gig | freelancing | startup. My last job hunt took one hour. Their search went on for two months. If they fired me I cou…

"unqualified/foreign/unmotivated"

So "foreign" is in the same category as unqualified and/or unmotivated ? WTF ???

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

#178

Post by pnathan »

vinceguidry wrote: post #89
onemorepassword wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it's a Buyer's Market On what planet?

> You think it's hard to find programmers, at any given level of skill? If it were easy to find programmers, you wouldn't have all these shops using spam-tactic recruiters to drive volume. They wouldn't need to. It's most definitely a seller's market, if programmers can take their pick of corporate gig | freelancing | startup. My last job hunt took one hour. Their search went on for two months. If they fired me I cou…

Absolutely disagree. It's a buyers market unless you're physically located in a tech spot or know the right acronyms of tech.

I don't know where you live, but where I live, there is NO market for programmers.

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

#179

Post by pnathan »

nitrogen wrote: post #174
UncleOxidant wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem for intelligent developers trapped in a less favorable city: you can't make it to in-person interviews in a more active city, so you have to cross a higher threshold to be interesting to employers there; you don't have the funds to move to a better city, so you need to find a local job; local jobs are both low-end and scarce, so you can't save the funds you need to move.

This is very true. I advise everyone who is young and in the field to move to a tech hotspot. Otherwise you appear to be screwed.

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

#180

Post by dj_axl »

nollidge wrote: post #61

Also stop with: interviewing based on rote memorization. Yesterday I had a really crappy (third-party!) phone screen assessing my ASP.NET and some general web dev knowledge. Questions included asking me what the stages are in the ASP.NET page life cycle, how to create Web Control in ASP.NET, what elements are new in HTML5, and how to pop up a new window in Javascript. None of which I know off the top of my head (exce…

> Did you want a skilled programmer, or someone who memorized their Foobar Enterprise Framework cheat sheet? Because you're only interviewing for one of those.

People who ask common/simple insert language/framework here interview questions are sometimes looking to see if you at least minimum care enough to memorize the answers. Alternatively a sideways answer might work, like "I find that's no longer necessary since..." or "I'll be attending a 3-day dev conference that includes that topic..."

That said, it makes it look like they don't care enough about interviewees, when they put so little effort into the questions asked. To hire a skilled programmer, you need to present yourself as a skilled interviewer.

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