I was surprised to hear that they ask candidates to spend a couple of days working on a project, and then present that project to the company. That's a substantial time investment to ask someone to make on top of interviewing. If I was looking for work and every potential employer asked this of me, searching for a job could take weeks or months.
Keeping Your Company Asshole-Free
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Re: Keeping Your Company Asshole-Free
#12Re slide 20: I recall reading that it's a myth that people who use the word "I" a lot are particularly self-absorbed. I recall it being suggested that the opposite might even be the case, perhaps because people were acknowledging the subjectivity of their opinions rather than presuming to present an indisputable statement of truth. I would look for a link, but the word "I" is hard to google.
Edit: I might be thinking of this, or something like it: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-does-your-use-of-the-wor...
Re: Keeping Your Company Asshole-Free
#13I was surprised to hear that they ask candidates to spend a couple of days working on a project, and then present that project to the company. That's a substantial time investment to ask someone to make on top of interviewing. If I was looking for work and every potential employer asked this of me, searching for a job could take weeks or months.
I have heard of companies paying a contract rate for 2 or 3 days to evaluate the candidate with the team. I wish they did that were I work now. The process here is just here's the new guy. ( now I bitching about my company, does that make me an ass-hole )
Re: Keeping Your Company Asshole-Free
#14I was surprised to hear that they ask candidates to spend a couple of days working on a project, and then present that project to the company. That's a substantial time investment to ask someone to make on top of interviewing. If I was looking for work and every potential employer asked this of me, searching for a job could take weeks or months.
I have heard of companies paying a contract rate for 2 or 3 days to evaluate the candidate with the team. I wish they did that were I work now. The process here is just here's the new guy. ( now I bitching about my company, does that make me an ass-hole )
That's easy if you're currently not working, but not so much if you are. So you're screening out the employed.
Re: Keeping Your Company Asshole-Free
#15For some reason I took an immediate dislike towards the speaker, perhaps because I had previously read the article about programmers having a negative outlook (i.e. they're prone to being assholes) and his silly attempts to please the audience by making jabs at marketing and PR staff. How do you separate assholes from people you dislike for mostly unfair reasons?
Re: Keeping Your Company Asshole-Free
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have heard of companies paying a contract rate for 2 or 3 days to evaluate the candidate with the team. I wish they did that were I work now. The process here is just here's the new guy. ( now I bitching about my company, does that make me an ass-hole )
That's easy if you're currently not working, but not so much if you are. So you're screening out the employed.
Yea I know what you mean. I guess the point I was trying to make is it would be nice to have some influence from the team as we are the ones that will be working with them
Re: Keeping Your Company Asshole-Free
#17Re slide 20: I recall reading that it's a myth that people who use the word "I" a lot are particularly self-absorbed. I recall it being suggested that the opposite might even be the case, perhaps because people were acknowledging the subjectivity of their opinions rather than presuming to present an indisputable statement of truth. I would look for a link, but the word "I" is hard to google. Edit: I might be thinking…
It especially doesn't make sense because the usage of the word "I" in English is mostly because English is quite verbose.
Specifically, in most cases it's expected that you specify the subject of a sentence, which happens to be yourself a lot of the time. There's no such expectation in Japanese for example.
Re: Keeping Your Company Asshole-Free
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have heard of companies paying a contract rate for 2 or 3 days to evaluate the candidate with the team. I wish they did that were I work now. The process here is just here's the new guy. ( now I bitching about my company, does that make me an ass-hole )
That's easy if you're currently not working, but not so much if you are. So you're screening out the employed.
Unless it's a take-home project in which case a person could do the work on the weekend. Which would also be a test of time management.
Re: Keeping Your Company Asshole-Free
#19I find it amazing how many people in a team don't share their insights, assets or experiences with the team. Why is that? Is it fear?
In my experience, which, granted is limited (3.5 years programming), one or two team members I work with very rarely share their insights. In the case of these team members I think one comes down to fear of maybe looking daft in front of the rest of the team by saying something that they think might be wrong. The other can just be a sanctimonious prick and will ask people questions that they simply wont know the answ…
As a sanctimonious prick who asks a lot of leading questions, I find it's very difficult to communicate technical insights with other members of my team by just giving them the answers to the hard questions.
What I'm guessing you'd like sanctimonious pricks like me to say:
"That particular (algorithm|technology decision|doohickey) is bad for the following three reasons, this alternative is better because it's !(those three reasons), is less work, easier to maintain and also offers us the following three affordances. I've used this in a number of other installations and can vouch for its reliability and ease-of-use."
This categorically does not work! Don't do it! It allows for zero shared credit, puts everyone on the defensive and leads to bickering and bike-shedding. In the best case, the person you're arguing with will disagree vehemently, go away for a few weeks, then come up with a new idea all by themselves that is exactly the same as what you were arguing for. This achieves the same result but isn't a very pleasant way to get there. Questions work marginally better.
In general my lines of questioning follow one of the following formats:
Re: Keeping Your Company Asshole-Free
#20It's always hard when you think "I was being an arsehole at that time". Hard, but good to realise. I think I had that moment just now!
In case you think I believe I'm always an arsehole, this isn't the case. But there have been times I believe I was. I'll have to work on it in future :(