[deleted]
We only hire the trendiest
271–280 of 728 posts
Re: We only hire the trendiest
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is working for a month different that "work on programming problems related to the work"? I'd have thought that is even better as a filter.
I am fine with asking for candidates to work as a 1099 for a month if you pay them the standard 1099 contractor rate, which is almost invariably more than 2x their FTE rate. I am not fine with the industry norm of paying people their eventual FTE salary on a 1099 basis; that's a scam. I think it's pretty dumb to do that, though, because most software developers can't take a month off of work from their current job to…
Yeah last time I did it, it was just a week. And I got my full contract rate (which is about double as you suggest). It went well; got an offer.
Its not usually that hard for a contractor to take the time off; they're on their own time already.
Re: We only hire the trendiest
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny to read, because I have the reverse experience. I have for long been using Linux and classic open source tooling for my work and am now moving to use Windows and .NET. I have immense issues understanding the platform and how everything work. For example, scheduling jobs is something I still don't fully understand.
Welcome to DLL Hell ;) The thing I didn't get (and still don't fully appreciate) is the power of bash - you can write almost-serious code in this! And some of the standard CLI utilities (stand up awk) are like pocket universes of depth and complexity. Windows probably has a lot of the same stuff, I hear good things about PowerScript, but it's not so standard to use it as a code monkey. I miss Visual Studio sometimes.…
> The mess of terminal windows and text editors that I code in now is frustrating at times.
Just use emacs for everything! It runs in X, it runs in a TTY, it runs everywhere.
My own stack is st[1], tmux & emacs, with Firefox as my browser, within a tiling window manager. I have a single terminal open at any point in time, with tmux multiplexing the sessions. I use C-z as the tmux escape key, because it's easy to type and doesn't do any harm if I accidentally type it outside of tmux. I autostart emacs in server mode from a systemd unit[2] and run it under X.
Sometimes I use emacs's TTY or shell modes. This is something I'd like to explore more. If I did this, I might be able to have one window for both shells and text editing.
Regardless, I have one terminal window to rule them all and one editor window to rule them all. With Firefox tabs, I only need one web-browser window too (although I'm considering using emacs-w3m and/or eww more).
[1] http://st.suckless.org/ [2] https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsAsDaemon#toc8
Re: We only hire the trendiest
#274"There were even a couple of cases where I had really strong internal referrals and the recruiters still didn’t want to talk to me, which I found funny and my friends found frustrating."
This has to be a firing offense.
A recruiter's job is to find people the engineers want to work with and who the engineers believe could be a strong contributor. If the engineers have already found someone they want to interview, and the recruiters are saying no, the recruiters are just blocking the very process they were hired to facilitate.
Re: We only hire the trendiest
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you expand on how you ended up walking that line? Did you feel you wasted your time on under-qualified people? Did you end up hiring anyone who initially didn't seem like a textbook candidate? If so, how did they turn out? The reason I ask is that I've always been nervous about applying for jobs when I don't have every skill listed on the ad. The advice I've been given is usually something like "Apply anyway. T…
Hi. I definitely wasted time interviewing underqualified people. But I wasted time interviewing some overqualified people too (because of salary/location expectations that should have been communicated up front). Actually, all of interviewing feels like wasted time (you have this burning need, and you want to fill it yesterday, or better yet a month ago, and yet you have to go through this process and learn about all…
>But I wasted time interviewing some overqualified people too (because of salary/location expectations that should have been communicated up front).
Well that's your own fault as the job advertiser, and when I say "you", I mean almost all companies that advertise jobs. You almost never state the salaries to be paid, so tons of peoples' time gets wasted by pointless interviewing which gets followed up with insultingly low salary offers.
If you're a cheap-ass and want to pay a pathetic salary, you should state this in your job ad, so that non-deadwood people don't bother to apply to your job.
>This is a hard problem because some institutions write wish lists in their job reqs, and some write hard and fast requirements.
It's not that hard to tell the difference. When the word "required" is used, that sounds like a requirement to me. When a separate list is preceded by "nice to have", "plusses", etc., those are obviously skills that the company would like to have in a candidate, but are not hard-and-fast requirements. If the company is so stupid they can't write a simple job advertisement this way, and they use the word "requirements" or "required" when they really meant "nice to have", then they don't deserve any employees at all.
Re: We only hire the trendiest
#276I 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…
When I interview candidates, the make or break question for me is does the person possess critical thinking skills? Various things may point one way or another for this, but it is a mistake to assume [insert working at a particular company] is an indication that someone has to have the skills, as well as to assume someone not having [insert pet qualification] is an indication that someone does not have these skills.…
Any pointers on assessing critical thinking skills during an interview, e.g. with or without technically focused questions?
Re: We only hire the trendiest
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, for actors it does. If you go to a casting session, you should get payed for it. That's because they had a first chance to filter you out and they are not entitled to waste people's time. For the first filter, they use their CV and their reel (video of the actor showing itself). I think that the same rules should apply for programming jobs. Just look at my resume and my publicly available code (that is link…
If this is true of programmers as well (and I have no opinion on whether it should be), it should be even more true of standard on-site job interviews, which are more disruptive to your work schedule and more demanding of your time and attention. But, of course, people do not generally get paid to go on job interviews.
It's at least reasonable to cover travel costs for interviewers. I was given a $40/day stipend for food and reimbursed gas and hotel when I interviewed at my current job.
Re: We only hire the trendiest
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am fine with asking for candidates to work as a 1099 for a month if you pay them the standard 1099 contractor rate, which is almost invariably more than 2x their FTE rate. I am not fine with the industry norm of paying people their eventual FTE salary on a 1099 basis; that's a scam. I think it's pretty dumb to do that, though, because most software developers can't take a month off of work from their current job to…
Yeah last time I did it, it was just a week. And I got my full contract rate (which is about double as you suggest). It went well; got an offer. Its not usually that hard for a contractor to take the time off; they're on their own time already.
That strikes me as a very costly way to build a team. Independent contractors are expensive; they know, better than most other developers, what their time is worth.
Re: We only hire the trendiest
#279Grammatical and logical issues aside with, "we only hire the best," once you make it into TrendyCo or BigCo you're faced with the dilemma of Plato's cave. Here is a code base written by a group of average people with big egos whose reality is limited. Your perspective as an outsider to the cave are not going to be valued. Even in very open-minded teams I've found that once the way is established people will struggle…
There really isn't a way to avoid this other than only working in places were you already agree 100% with the way they do things. If you build your own company you will also have your way of doing things that you will impose on everyone working for you and you will not change it because of some new guy. Not significantly, anyways.
Re: We only hire the trendiest
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
If this is true of programmers as well (and I have no opinion on whether it should be), it should be even more true of standard on-site job interviews, which are more disruptive to your work schedule and more demanding of your time and attention. But, of course, people do not generally get paid to go on job interviews.
It's at least reasonable to cover travel costs for interviewers. I was given a $40/day stipend for food and reimbursed gas and hotel when I interviewed at my current job.
Yes, the norm is that the interviewer pays expenses.