A Limited Interest Article on Employer Value Prop and Hiring

The "False Negative" problem was one I made a dent in at a former employer. I was accidentally thrown into interviewing someone for a position on a development team that I wasn't a part of. After a spectacular interview, I was invited to participate in a few others and participate in selection.

The selection meeting was one of the most difficult arguments I've ever won. There were 5 of us; all had dismissed the only candidate I liked, most were in favor of a candidate that was seriously over-stating his skill set. The other candidates I had no opinion on[0].

They'd dismissed the first guy because he had not had a CS degree and were grumbling that HR had not filtered that candidate out[1]. They were sitting in the room with two people who didn't have degrees and reported to a Director who didn't have one!

I remember the "no-CS" guy really well as it had been the first interview I'd ever given. I was given no preparation, no notes, no resume, no "how to give an interview" pep talk -- I'd met the guy in the lobby where he was waiting to be let in the door ... I had taken apart the Kiosk used to do that, so I had to find the person he was looking for, which resulted in discovering that the main technical person he was to interview with was out sick and they needed to reschedule, "unless you want to do it." It sounded like fun. I'd read a lot on the topic and had been on the other side of the table several times, so I know what I liked, what I wished had been focused on and what I thought would be useful.

It turned out he had a Github repo with no less than 30 projects, a few with a handful of stars. In my head, I'm thinking "just for laughs", I asked for his "ugliest" but it turned out to be a perfect way to go. We used it as a source to brainstorm refactoring and he didn't have to claim that the code he was showing me was "his best work" and be judged for every little problem.

He was interviewing for conferencing, so mostly C/C++[2], and this guy -- on opening the first source file -- threw out tens of changes that were all appropriate. He could argue pros/cons for each approach, he even changed his mind a few times as his thinking evolved and then managed to explain how he'd redesign the entire thing if he had ever intended to "do it right." I don't even remember what it did.

At the end of our "selection meeting", I think I said something like "I don't care if you hire any of these other people but if you don't hire this guy, you're making a mistake -- he's a better developer than I am[3] (or any other developer we have on staff)."

They hired him. Within 3 months he was promoted and was the lead developer for most of the important things in conferencing[4].

[0] There was nothing particularly wrong with them or great with them and any would have been a good hire if we had that many positions open. The only problem I had was that they had no examples of anything they had written in the past to show me so I couldn't adequately judge their abilities.

[1] Never mind that the job ad said "4-year degree or equivalent experience" which this gentleman had more than enough of.

[2] I got really lucky. I hadn't touched the language in probably ten years prior to that year where I was put on a project that, unexpectedly, required me to deeply "brush up". It turned out the person who was interviewing him was a Java developer with no C/C++ background and was not looking forward to handling the technical interview for the position.

[3] I specifically called myself out because two of the people in that room had more respect for my abilities than anyone could ever deserve and thought most of the developers on "in the development org" were terrible. I avoid confrontation (more than I should) but it plays in my favor when I do complain/advocate/go to bat for something -- people tend to listen.

[4] There were people considered "owners" of an app, usually at least two, who signed off on anything going in and generally fleshed out the major design elements for those apps -- sometimes they were the only developer, too, but that team was much larger/more disciplined. I think they promoted him to Director over that org but he left shortly thereafter due to a desire to remain on the tech side of things.

Resume Profile Interview First Date(s) Hire Get Married ?!?

We don't get married after a first date or even after X hours of dates. In your story above, you performed tasks that most closely resemble the daily work and that gave you insight.

I've been on interviews that ask me to implement red/black trees and their only data store is a RDBMS. We only want the best people but there is no investment put into it. Either it stays a crap shoot or we actually have to invest time into it (or outsource it to someone who does). I'd personally rather have a Bar type association that has a fairly standardized certification process and then we can interview for culture fit and personality instead of esoteric algorithm questions that are irrelevant.

The job of the Mensa logic brogrammer guess-what-I'm-thinking trivial pursuits gatekeeping is to rationalize rejecting candidates you don't like.

Successful sales people have the right mindset:

Impervious to rejection, convinced the next person will mosdef say "Yes!"

If you're applying for a sales job, you need to sound like that.