151–160 of 728 posts
That will teach me to not memorize algorithms I haven't used since college.
> Sometimes people don’t agree (e.g., it took months to get the non-version-control-using-team to use version control) There's an easy way to stop that sort of attitude. The next time that a bug occurs, you tell that team that they must restore the code back to what it was previously, and provide diffs that show what they did so that you can review their rollback. When they say they can't, you tell them that's their…
And that's why I investigate this first before getting an offer. Either they use it or you're building the team from the ground up (except if they use clearcase, in this case I'm not taking the job unless I'm literally starving)
I sometimes think there's a built in pomposity in the whole attitude of hiring, looking for someone "good enough to qualify." Instead, I like to think of it as, we are looking for someone to help us , someone who has different experience and knowledge, someone who could tell us how we can improve. Then instead of this adversarial situation of selecting a new ingroup member, it's a solicitation for assistance with a b…
> I sometimes think there's a built in pomposity in the whole attitude of hiring... Of course there is. At a basic level, that's what hiring is. With this now-popular attitude that "1 bad hire is worse then 100 good ones" or something like that, how could it be anything else? Imagine the pressure that puts on the hiring teams.
> "1 bad hire is worse then 100 good ones"
(Or at least, it's so obviously right that it can't possibly be the "now-popular attitude" you mean.)
I tend to agree with most of this (university, GPA, subject, blah blah blah). Bits of paper that are signals of arbitrary things (family standing, ability to take on debt, country of birth). Anti-Windows bias doesn't really feel like an example of 'pedigree' to me, though. I can't imagine programming on Windows. I can't even imagine using the OS. I moved away from Windows ~a decade ago and haven't looked back - it se…
You don't argue over which email server you use, you just setup Exchange.
You don't argue over nginx, apache, etc just use IIS.
It's also configured quite well out of the box, where as Linux you spend several days getting it all configured to perfection.
When you just want to focus on the business problem at hand, I find it brilliant. Where as in other stacks you get caught up in technology, for technologies sake.
I find you can go from 0 to release a lot faster.
"Contractors are generally not the strongest technically" Where does this come from? I actually see a contractor as someone who had experienced way more "war stories" than the guy who has been sitting in the same chair for 10/20 years. As a contractor, you are exposed to more technologies, more business sectors, different working cultures.
"Consulting" or "contracting" can refer to different kinds of work arrangements. One of these is what's called "staff augmentation." Large companies with huge teams of full-time employed software programmers will often hire contractors to fill gaps. These contractors are typically contractors-in-name-only: they work under exactly the same conditions as full-time employees but with a worse tax situation, without acces…
> Sometimes people don’t agree (e.g., it took months to get the non-version-control-using-team to use version control) There's an easy way to stop that sort of attitude. The next time that a bug occurs, you tell that team that they must restore the code back to what it was previously, and provide diffs that show what they did so that you can review their rollback. When they say they can't, you tell them that's their…
That's not actually going to achieve anything other than making an already stressed team more stressed with a side of hatred for you and your pointless request. In this day and age I'm not sure how you do persuade a team to use version control other than mandating it and sucking up the hostility while they settle in, but taking the opportunity to make a smug point while a team is firefighting isn't the way.
I'm living this right now. I'm unhirable right now due to my salary requirements (having 13 years of practical experience means that I won't take a job for $60k), and I was turned down for an internal transfer because "you have the skills and experience, but your answer to the interview question was too inefficient." That will teach me to not memorize algorithms I haven't used since college.
Where are you based? If you're in the US and you have as much experience as you say you do, even if you're in places that aren't major tech hubs, you should be able to find remote work that pays more than $60k/year.
> That will teach me to not memorize algorithms I haven't used since college.
The debate about the merits of algorithm-driven interviews aside, the fact is that most companies still do this for their interviews. This is starting to change, but slowly. When I was last looking for a job, every company but one[0] asked questions about complexity classes at some point during the interview stage. Unlike the last time I was on the interview circuit, though, more than half had at least one question that was explicitly focused on something else - so it's changing, but still slowly.
So, while it may be information you never access again while on the job, if it's the knowledge that will secure you that well-paying job in the first place, consider it a worthy ROI.
[0] incidentally, the one I ended up working for
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I sometimes think there's a built in pomposity in the whole attitude of hiring... Of course there is. At a basic level, that's what hiring is. With this now-popular attitude that "1 bad hire is worse then 100 good ones" or something like that, how could it be anything else? Imagine the pressure that puts on the hiring teams.
> "1 bad hire is worse then 100 good ones" I don't think that's quite right! (Or at least, it's so obviously right that it can't possibly be the "now-popular attitude" you mean.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bias towards Windows is an interesting one. As someone who programmed on Windows for 9 years, I got away with writing code in IDEs and since most apps had GUI and command line was less than worthless, I was never exposed to simple tools that could be chained together under a minute that one had to spend hours either writing, or looking for a software that did the same in Windows. It wasn't until I started college, wh…
If anything, using a non-windows OS teaches you about being able to even "navigate" a command-line, or understand basic concepts such as file-paths. Such as "../" or relative vs absolute paths, what "/" means, etc. I'm amazed at how often such things are missed and never understood, even by individuals who are in the "maintenance" side of IT and have bazillions of "certs" for everything from networking to administrat…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no magic to it at all. Have every candidate work on programming problems related to the work you do at your company. Have every candidate work on the same problems, and let them do it from home. Build and iterate on a rubric for grading those challenges. It is amazing to me that almost nobody does this, but: almost nobody does this. They have programmers write code on a whiteboard, or on some whiteboard-codin…
Its a crap waste of time. Take home exercises have little more in common with the job than a white board exercises. And not all devs are going to do half a days work for free.
Companies that don't hire using objective at-home tests hire instead with grueling on-site interviews that knock out an entire business day (most of them last a whole business day, some recent interviews peers have gone on have taken multiple business days, and all of them at the very least kill the day for anything else). The latter is obviously worse than the former; I don't even see how any other argument could be colorable.
What I'm beginning to think is that this kind of pushback comes mostly from developers who are well-connected, and so they never experience the grind that less well-connected but equally-capable developers do with interviews.
Yes: if you're at a point in your career where you can get a job in any of 6-7 different companies just by raising your hand, saying "I'm available", and having a 30 minute conversation with the VP/Engineering who you worked with 2 jobs ago, everything is a waste of time. I am not here to tell you that you should make things harder for yourself.