Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010) • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#141

Post by rdiddly » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:09 PM UTC

mrisoli wrote: post #48

iamaelephant wrote: post #9

"I'll spend hours brushing up on Scheme just to test you on something completely irrelevant to the role just because I like playing Resumé Gotcha". Yeah that's a thanks but no thanks from me. I wouldn't work for this guy in a thousand years.

It's a good investment for the company, if the interviewer can red flag a candidate who is blatantly lying on his resumé because the candidate would assume no one would know said technology, it would save a lot of money from cutting ties with an employee in a later stage. As an anecdote, I used to work for a company and would require candidates to know some Ruby, for one guy with several years experience in Python we…

Yeah, bottom line, if you don't know an answer, then "I don't know" is always the right answer and the (ironically) most impressive answer. Plus you can always do things to mitigate, like talk about related or adjacent concepts a bit, state how you're willing to learn, maybe even take a guess at it. But if you bullshit you're either going to get caught, or, almost worse, get the job and feel like a fraud for months.

Always be hired or not hired for who you actually are!

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#142

Post by scarface74 » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:11 PM UTC

AdrianB1 wrote: post #126

izacus wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? There's plenty of amazing engineers and systems architects who develop (gasp!) on Windows and don't even use command line. And many many of those have designed highly reliable systems driving your basic infrastructure, power plants, industrial systems and myriad of other systems. Why on earth is knowing an old editor connected to anything useful you need from a person in a job?

Honestly I don't know a single good Windows guy that don't even use command line, there are basic things like ping, tracert, curl and openssl that you run in a command prompt. This is assuming you can get around using powershell.

Ping and tracert sure. But curl? I’ll use Postman for quick sanity checking and I’ve never had a reason to use OpenSSL

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#143

Post by peterangular » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:12 PM UTC

hluska wrote: post #116

skrebbel wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. It'll go like this: Interviewer: here, a laptop with vi Applicant: I've never used vi Interviewer: just hit "i" to be dropped into insert mode, then just navigate with the arrows and use backspace like in any other editor. Ask me when you're ready to save and I'll teach you the magic incantation. Applicant: types away If you're not able to code in what's essentially just a test box then that's a useful thin…

Walking into an interview, being given vi and told to write code would be a horrible experience. Expecting someone to grasp a dramatically different editor with interview jitters is unfair. Frankly, that’s the kind of behaviour that would be a massive red flag for me - it would absolutely lead me to reject any position I was offered.

Agree. I'm perfectly capable at vi and I'd probably just walk because it shows total arrogance on the interviewer's part.

Anecdotal - I use zsh, with the bureau theme - pretty obvious it's not just a bash shell. During a more operations-focused interview I had someone ask me if he could use bash because he wasn't very familiar with zsh and would like to work with a known tool. Super competent guy.

I thought it was a perfectly reasonable request.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#144

Post by nat » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:13 PM UTC

larkeith wrote: post #12

Most of this is good, but one real WTF: "Editor Flailing It’s funny how many people can’t edit text on any machine but their own. I tend to interview people on a laptop running Ubuntu, and I open gedit for them to use, with the offer that they can use any other Unix editor they like. Most can barely navigate gedit, and it’s stupid simple. Don’t ever let yourself get hung up on the editor. If you can’t figure out the…

As someone spending a large amount of their week doing interviews these days, I really empathize with the spirit of this article. I've expressed an annoyance very similar to this one many times before - it's astounding how many nominally senior programmers are not adept at manipulating text.

If you've been writing a lot of software, I would expect you to be good at actually putting the characters into a file and moving them around therein. I would be very suspicious of someone who claimed to be a master carpenter but couldn't drive a nail cleanly. Muscle memory is a real thing, and the mechanics of a task matter. What is the point of all our fetishization of editors and keyboards and such if not to smooth the transition between brain and paper?

This isn't even always a matter of candidates operating in an unfamiliar environment. Even on their own personal computers, in the editor they presumably use for work, I see a lot of flailing.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#145

Post by scarface74 » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:14 PM UTC

battletested wrote: post #46

So author, who are you? You start already with an authoritarian touch. What makes you believe you are not an incompetent interviewer? How can an applicant assess your skills, you could easily be the greatest fuck up in the company. Is your company really that cool that I should want to die to work there? Did you first weed out all the incompetent staff that is duck sitting there playing business politics? IMAO most c…

And what makes him think that his company is so special that I would be willing to deal with his attitude at the interview let alone accept the job?

I’ve rejected plenty of offers because I didn’t like the interviewer.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#146

Post by verbify » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:15 PM UTC

emidln wrote: post #16

larkeith wrote: post #12

Most of this is good, but one real WTF: "Editor Flailing It’s funny how many people can’t edit text on any machine but their own. I tend to interview people on a laptop running Ubuntu, and I open gedit for them to use, with the offer that they can use any other Unix editor they like. Most can barely navigate gedit, and it’s stupid simple. Don’t ever let yourself get hung up on the editor. If you can’t figure out the…

This is a great reason to learn vi for basic editing tasks. It's everywhere. Even if you typically use a different editor/ide, vi is a common ground. Disclosure: I'm an emacs user

It's everywhere if you're on unix systems. Windows devs have little exposure to it.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#147

Post by ericol » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:17 PM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #96

twelve40 wrote: post #39

> He reasoned through the problem, wrote the code, it ran perfectly the first time. I hired him. I get the overall sentiment, but come on, "I hired him" sounds like self-absorbed anecdata - so this post is about how to quickly appeal to some manager dude on the interwebs? A more useful metric would be, did this hire survive the first two years, and what do the people around him have to say about his performance. > It…

Bullshit. It'll go like this: Interviewer: here, a laptop with vi Applicant: I've never used vi Interviewer: just hit "i" to be dropped into insert mode, then just navigate with the arrows and use backspace like in any other editor. Ask me when you're ready to save and I'll teach you the magic incantation. Applicant: types away If you're not able to code in what's essentially just a test box then that's a useful thin…

> just hit "i" to be dropped into insert mode, then just navigate with the arrows and use backspace like in any other editor. Yeah, no. Let me call bullshit on you calling bullshit.

I've been working as a mediocre programmer at the same company for the last 10 years. when I landed this job, I had never ever even heard of vi. I was "gently" introduced to it by my boss, and eventually got to kind of get used to a basic usage of it.

But in the box where our server run it is configured to highlight syntax, maintain tabs and shit, delete deletes, you can move using arrow keys, and a slew of other non default niceties.

Over the years I more or less got acquainted with different tastes of Linux, and used and installed it in a few of my own boxes (Debian, mostly).

Even thought vi respects arrow keys by default now it seems (thanks god I don't have to use hjkl. It is hjkl, right?) there's this conf issue that I've never been able to fix _because I don't know how to formulated the question in order to google it_ and it's the fact that when you're in non edit mode, _the cursor never goes to the end of the line_, so if I have to let's say add a new line, and the last word is `return;` I have to convert that to `return;;` put the line jump between the 2 ;; and then remove the extra ;. Plus, arrow keys in non edit mode add lines with crap in it.

I can't even fathom how stressfull would be doing a job interview under this circumstances.

Force a person to use a different OS than they are used to? Well, may be. Even thought I don't like nano, it would be a better choice than vi because at least it beheaves as a "normal" editor.

force a person to use vi with default settings? thank you very much for your time.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#148

Post by scarface74 » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:19 PM UTC

mxcrossb wrote: post #74

iamaelephant wrote: post #9

"I'll spend hours brushing up on Scheme just to test you on something completely irrelevant to the role just because I like playing Resumé Gotcha". Yeah that's a thanks but no thanks from me. I wouldn't work for this guy in a thousand years.

I think the problem is that programmers have been taught to list every language and tech they have used on order to pass through HR. So, for example, when I was a student I wrote a ton of c# code. I’d be inclined to put that on a resume. But if they then asked me to code something in the language, it would certainly go poorly due to rust. Heck, I was a TA for a course where we taught lisp, but that doesn’t mean I can…

I did C afor over a decade, I was really good at it. I haven’t used it in a decade. But, I left it off of my resume after an experience I had 4 years ago. I was applying for a C#/JavaScript job that didn’t have one line of C in the codebase, but one of the interviewers started asking me trivia about C. I happened to remember it, I got the job, but I learned my lesson.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#149

Post by clarry » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:19 PM UTC

Pierre-ch wrote: post #40

The colleague who interviewed me later confided that i was the first he ever had who brought his own laptop for the interview. Apparently, it is not common!

Interesting, I brought my laptop to every interview for a software job I've had. Figured that's the best way for me to show and talk about some of my code, and maybe even code too if it comes to that.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#150

Post by GoToRO » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:21 PM UTC

Summary: if you don't know little thing X for sure you can't do Y! now and forever! because Y can no longer be learned!

"you can’t program anymore" and forever?

"can’t edit text on any machine" and forever?

"can’t figure out the magic command keys to indent code" and forever?

He sees the developer as having static knowledge that somehow, in the very moment of the interview, becomes frozen in time and nothing can be done about it.

I should copy/paste this article and change the name "How not to hire -the best-"