141–150 of 156 posts
Sometimes I think we would be better off hiring people on the spot at random. In France we have a legal maximal 4 months trial period for employees so... This gives enough time I think. https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F1643
Maybe making the 'extended interview' process more formal would be a good thing. Formally have an internal 'contract' worker process where anyone they might want can be hired in to a trial pool, and projects can bring in the trial worker for small things quickly (maybe writing unit tests, or a fresh set of eyes, etc). Every month review performance, make a decision to offer job as X, keep on for another month, or let…
I could talk to someone for hours and still misjudge whether I would enjoy coding on the same project with them.
Show me reams of code that they wrote, and I will know immediately.
It's too bad that usually isn't possible.
You can judge programmer's ability in 60 minutes. Can someone program? 60 minutes is way more than enough. How great of a programmer are they? You're going to need more than 60 minutes, unless already had a chance to look at their prior code base. What's difficult to judge is, are they organized? are they hard working? how do they handle stress? how's their communication and attitude? do they write great documentatio…
The thing that gets me about coding challenges restricted to such a short time frame is that what might seem like a simple problem can actually be pretty nuanced. This gets even more tricky when the interviewers encourage you to be "creative", which can be interpreted as meaning that one should try to be less conventional with how they code, which may mean they address an issue in a less than pragmatic way. Last year…
Then you need to spend more time for the remaining ones to find the right people.
Post author here: My new company helps companies fill contract software positions. We're a lot like a recruiting or staffing agency, but trying to do it in a new, less spammy way. It's been REALLY frustrating working with hiring managers. I used to be one of these frustrating hiring managers so I guess I had it coming. I had a hiring manager tell me that he can tell in the first 15 min of an interview if someone is a…
I have written in what I hope will come across a humorous, but this is extremely reminiscent of the early days of the 5 Eyes where the US was trying to sell this to its close western allies as a way to replace investment in human resources going forward by buying into technology. And surely the technology side is tremendous these days, but it hasn't eliminated the need for human resources. We are dealing with human through those systems (technological or organisational).
I am both a recruiter and a highly experienced developer and software designer. I once sent one of the very best programmers I know for a job interview. I have met a small handful of outstanding programmers in my > 30 years in IT and this guy was in the top five, near the top. I had personally worked directly with him for 5 years and he was unquestionably one of the most talented programmers there is, and a nice guy,…
As long as you are thinking in absolute truths, you are missing the point imo. There is a set of good candidates for a given moment, and context, and the idea is to increase the percentage picked from that pool. The cost of missing someone from the good pool is also far smaller than picking a bad candidate.
Anecdotes of rock stars, and 10x programmers just further muddy the waters. Because those guys are the 0.1% and will be fine either way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because if you can't FizzBuzz, you definitely aren't going to be able to pick up the codebase in a satisfactorily short amount of time. If you come in in gross clothes and swear, you're not going to fit the company culture. If you're rude to your interviewer, you're not likely to be less rude to your other coworkers. etc.
I cannot recall the last time I interviewed someone for a position other than intern who could not at least muddle through a FizzBuzz problem. I'm talking hundreds of candidates. The likelihood of a "lucky streak" as long as that if "can't FizzBuzz" is common (i.e. not an outlier) is small. Usually when I dig into a person claiming "can't FizzBuzz is common" the result is I find what they're calling "FizzBuzz" is not…
Sometimes I think we would be better off hiring people on the spot at random. In France we have a legal maximal 4 months trial period for employees so... This gives enough time I think. https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F1643
In the United States we basically only have trial employees. There's nothing at all like French job protections.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve seen this so many times as well where candidates under sell themselves or key accomplishments never get brought up. Even Elon Musk in the most recent Autonomy day had to say to Karparthy “introduce yourself and don’t be bashful.” Even then, I’ve noticed, I’ve noticed that people don’t “hear” things until a second or third conversation. The idea that you can absolutely hear everything a candidate has to say in 60…
You assume that the reason the guy did not get the job is that candidate undersold themselves. It is mostly the responsibility of the technical interviewers to determine if the candidate is suitable.