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Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

joshcarter.com

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Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#161

Post by sys_64738 »

This interviewer seems to have a machoistic view of interviewing people. At all times you should be treating people with dignity and respect, not trying to nail them to the ground to see them flounder.

Interviewing people by waiting around while they plod away at a text editor isn't appropriate use of your or the candidates time. You should be interacting with the individual via talking to them. If they claim to be an expert in TCP/IP then you can peel back the layers back asking open-ended questions to see where the conversation goes. If they have the depth of expertise then it'll become pretty apparent when you discuss the intricacies of the topic.

Trying to trip somebody up with returning int V long is just redundant. That is an mistake to make and will be trapped by the compiler at compile time.

To interviewers I say stop wasting everybody's time and focus on discussion not exam style questions.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#162

Post by PascLeRasc »

toyg wrote: post #156
ericol wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I had your same problem for years (I use vi extremely sparingly) and the answer is “a” - which means “append”: it will go to the end of the line and leave you in insert mode after the last character. Found out when I was looking for something else, and improved my quality of life quite a bit. (I still hate distributions where arrow keys in insert mode don’t work like any reasonable human would expect, but they are th…

Thanks, I always thought hitting $+i+right arrow was wrong!

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#163

Post by prepend »

detaro wrote: post #82
walshemj wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not for realy good Engineer in my book.

Why is "unix server administration in an environment that doesn't have other options" such a critical skill for all engineers? Or why else is vim experience required? Sure, many are going to have it, but it doesn't mean anything in itself.

I don’t consider vi to be a system admin tool only.

While I don’t think vi is a showstopper, it would certainly be curious how a mid to senior engineer wouldn’t know how to use insert and quit in vi. This would make me think that a Windows only background never even meant connecting to a shell and having to view a file.

I’ve experienced lots of app developers who only use an IDE and don’t know how code is deployed or runs so they’ve never debugged a deployment, ever. They are in a big enough environment where that’s someone else’s job and they never have to talk with them.

That’s perfectly cool and folks will make a living and retiring in that world. But I don’t typically hire too many of those because I work in cross functional teams where the windows devs have to at least be able to understand and communicate with the Linux devs, and vice versa. That means having basic user level skills like two commands in vi, because it is almost always available on Unix systems. And frequently the only one allowed.

I think folks confuse this as meaning that people who don’t know vi are dumb, they aren’t. They could be geniuses who just don’t need to know vi. But for many types of interviews, it’s a super easy screening question that makes me follow up with more questions if they answer “I have to google.” It would be similar if a developer didn’t know cd or had never seen notepad or something.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#164

Post by sys_64738 »

nat wrote: post #144
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 mov…

This sounds like you're suffering from interview burn out to me. If you have a condescending voice towards interviewees outside interviews then it is usually a manifestation of how you perceive them in the interviews.

Do yourself and the candidates a favor and step back from it to allow yourself to lose such prejudices.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#165

Post by sys_64738 »

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

I think vi is the de-facto install of an editor on any non-Windows machine. You can't assume any other as vi in its simplest form is extremely lightweight and prevalent.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#166

Post by trickstra »

scarface74 wrote: post #145
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.

I once rejected a company because they had a big framed picture with 4 naked girls full frontal in the interviewing room. And because the manager pointed to it saying how "open minded" the company is.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#167

Post by sys_64738 »

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 didn't find this confusing. If scheme isn't the language used in the job them who cares? If I am hiring a C++ programmer then I don't really want to drill into your Algol'60 background to trip you up!

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#168

Post by sys_64738 »

sys_64738 wrote: post #167
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 didn't find this confusing. If scheme isn't the language used in the job them who cares? If I am hiring a C++ programmer then I don't really want to drill into your Algol'60 background to trip you up!

I 'did' find this confusing.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#169

Post by yoz-y »

panpanna wrote: post #85
yoz-y wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe todays programming field is vast enough that you can actually have a really good engineer that never needed to touch a command line editor. An iOS or android developer with 8 years of experience for example. Other front-end positions too. I love vi and set it as editing mode everywhere, nevertheless I accept that it might not be something people actively seek. If I was looking for a unix server admin then I…

The point is, a good engineer is always curious and as such has gathered a lot of knowledge about other fields. Maybe he is a unix server admin that writes iOS app on his own time just for fun? Maybe he is a data scientist that also enjoys UI design? A bad engineer is happy that he has learned framework X and doesn't feel he needs to learn anything else. Putting the Linux admin candidate in front of an xcode window i…

I agree, but my point is that today there are so many fields to be curious about that knowledge or not of vi is just one of them. There is no time to know about everything.

> Putting the Linux admin candidate in front of an xcode window is a quick and to find out where he stands. If he looks totally lost, he is definitely a 10x guy.

They are or they are not? Judging by the previous paragraph this sentence seems odd.

Re: Dear Programming Job Applicants (2010)

#170

Post by trickstra »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #160
trickstra wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> gave that person a chance and then gave up. Nobody "gives a chance" for a year. Either the problems were discovered during the probation period, or they were not as bad. Definitely not so bad that you'd have any chance discovering it during the interview. Besides, this high fluctuation is quite normal in IT.

You'd be surprised. A common scenario is that manager A hires a bad employee but doesn't want to admit their mistake. Then they move on to another position and the new manager B has to go through the lengthy PIP and termination process.

Yes, but say 4 times in a row? And 3 times without discovering how bad the person is during the interview? That says something about the prediction power of an interview...
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