> Whenever possible (and it’s almost always possible), have someone do a day or two of work with you before you hire her; you can do this at night or on the weekends.
Fuck off.
How to Hire
51–60 of 82 posts
Re: How to Hire
#52This maps extraordinarily closely with what we've seen at Thinkful (http://www.thinkful.com/) with both our hiring as a team and with the students we've helped get hired.
Our biggest breakthrough actually came last month when we started simply hiring our students. Three of our last five hires have come from people taking one of our classes.
It's a phenomenal way to get the voice of the user into our user experience, and each has proven a great cultural fit.
We're not sure it'll work for every position, but perhaps when Thinkful starts offering CTO-classes!
Re: How to Hire
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, but speaking as a software engineer who does have a bit of talent, I disagree with you in saying that this type of audition exercise is below me. We complain and complain and complain as an industry about how the interview process that The Big Boys still use (which is essentially just a pop quiz of vocabulary terms at its core) is broken. Why is this not a better alternative? You wouldn't pitch this as "hey, I…
If you are referring to Google by "Big Boys", some of their teams are doing trial period work. My friend got hired in Google after three trial days.
Damn, three trial days?
I have done some interviewing and such of candidates at my current place. I sincerely could not imagine asking a candidate with a job to spend three trial days (or a single day) coding with us. I think it's disrespectful. Not everyone who is looking for work is unhappy where they are. I don't want to put anyone in a position where they have to choose between respecting their current employer and seeing if they're a good fit with us.
Re: How to Hire
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
The co-working trial is a two way street. Wouldn't a good developer want to make sure the new co-workers are also good?
Hiring has always been a two way street, but in technology the scales are usually tipped against the hiring company. It's simply a numbers game -- there are far more mediocre and poor developers than good ones, and in the current environment, the good ones can basically get hired to work wherever they want. The co-working trial is an attempt to make the scale more favorable for the company. I can understand the desir…
> I can understand the desire for this, but in the current environment, it's almost guaranteed to backfire, as the best developers simply won't put up with it.
An awful lot of developers are willing to put up with inane algorithm tests.
If I was hiring, I'd be skeptical of any developer who would prefer five hours of whiteboarding to some sort of trial arrangement, or even a sufficiently complete take-home coding test that is similar in nature to the work they'd be performing as an employee.
Re: How to Hire
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ageism should scare you--and it should scare the author of this post. The inevitable forward progress of time means that literally every, single one of us will be on the wrong end of this equation at some point. The (possible) saving grace is that a lot of people who came up in the 2000s tech scene are now on the "other side of 30" and becoming quite "experienced" themselves. Hopefully, that group's attitude will cha…
On the flip side, as an old friend once said, "Do you have ten years of experience, or one year of experience ten times?" Highly experienced people can be priceless because they have dealt with similar situations before (and it's not the technology, it's the situations). But if they didn't learn from their experiences, it doesn't help. And imho a majority of the old hands are still doing things wrong - sometimes due…
I am right in the middle of this right now. In my 40s, looking for a job at the moment. My interviews have been decent to downright bizarre. The trend of the interview approach is very curious to me.
I've been looking at a variety of lead engineer/architect positions to development manager. Many of these positions come with some immediate needs, i.e. addressing large systems as part of a business expansion.
I find myself being interviewed by individual engineers asking heavy comp-sci questions, mostly in the academic sense. In several cases, during the interview, the individuals were focused on specific answers to questions that could hold several interpretations. Ambiguity is a great way to assess individuals and critical thinking, but when someone is looking for the answer...well, it doesn't necessarily pan out.
The kicker, after these meetings, is interviewing with the C-level folks who explain how their technical team can't get product out the door, and wonder how I'm going to help to that end. I've been shipping products for multiple years, in many cases longer than the individuals on the teams I'm interviewing with have been in the industry.
What's funny to me is that I'm a guy that prides myself on being current in technology. I'm not that old dude who is resistant to the latest thing -- I really enjoy seeing where the industry is going.
I'd love to get to depth on my experience -- why we built something the way we did, decisions we made, difficulties and how we addressed those -- it's like those questions are irrelevant. At the last interview, I was asked how much I enjoy playing "Dominion". I like Dominion, but really.
Re: How to Hire
#56Hi ! I agree on that investing time and just speaking with people is a right thing to do. And I cannot stress enough the need for real-life exercises during the interview and the need for just working with the people to be able to judge their abilities. I was so annoyed by 'traditional' recruitment that I wrote this post : http://blog.cyplo.net/2011/07/24/how-to-hire-people/ ;)
Re: How to Hire
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hiring has always been a two way street, but in technology the scales are usually tipped against the hiring company. It's simply a numbers game -- there are far more mediocre and poor developers than good ones, and in the current environment, the good ones can basically get hired to work wherever they want. The co-working trial is an attempt to make the scale more favorable for the company. I can understand the desir…
> I can understand the desire for this, but in the current environment, it's almost guaranteed to backfire, as the best developers simply won't put up with it. An awful lot of developers are willing to put up with inane algorithm tests. If I was hiring, I'd be skeptical of any developer who would prefer five hours of whiteboarding to some sort of trial arrangement, or even a sufficiently complete take-home coding tes…
I haven't personally done a trial arrangement, but it's definitely intriguing. I absolutely loathe the 5 hour whiteboarding tests whenever I have to do them, and usually I end up fretting about it the day before and show up having not slept an iota.
Different strokes, I suppose.
Re: How to Hire
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hiring has always been a two way street, but in technology the scales are usually tipped against the hiring company. It's simply a numbers game -- there are far more mediocre and poor developers than good ones, and in the current environment, the good ones can basically get hired to work wherever they want. The co-working trial is an attempt to make the scale more favorable for the company. I can understand the desir…
> I can understand the desire for this, but in the current environment, it's almost guaranteed to backfire, as the best developers simply won't put up with it. An awful lot of developers are willing to put up with inane algorithm tests. If I was hiring, I'd be skeptical of any developer who would prefer five hours of whiteboarding to some sort of trial arrangement, or even a sufficiently complete take-home coding tes…
>If I was hiring, I'd be skeptical of any developer who would prefer five hours of whiteboarding to some sort of trial arrangement,
In theory I would prefer the trial arrangement, but in practice, if I'm employed, it's not an option unless I'm totally and absolutely convinced that you run the perfect company for me.
Which you probably do not.
If I'm unemployed and searching for a job (which sometimes happens: I like to take 6 month long holidays between leaving an old job and starting a new one), then I think it's a fantastic idea. Provided it is paid.
Re: How to Hire
#59I disagree with some of it agree on some of it, but i strongly disagree with section on cultural values.
First of: "Spend a lot of time figuring out what you want your cultural values to be (there are some good examples on the Internet)." Do spend time figuring out what your cultural values are, but don't look for them on the Internet, or to put it another way: don't have cultural values for the sake of having cultural values.
"Treat your values as articles of faith" - also don't do this. Don't take anything as article of faith, you should have a reason for each value. If you can't put a reason on value, how much value does it really have?
Re: How to Hire
#60Using "she" when talking about developers to be politically correct is really getting old.