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It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

simonwillison.net

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Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#271

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

z3t4 wrote: post #200
SlowAndCalm wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am similar (putting my WebGL games on my portfolio) and I've found it's actually a pretty good filter of employers for me. If they bring it up and are willing to have a discussion about it, it's always a good sign. There's a wide range of topics to talk about that can relate to the possibly more boring requirements of the job. If they are dismissive of them, it tends to be an early sign that they are unable to thin…

If you are over qualified, like having published several games on your own, it's not like they don't think you can do they job, they might think you will get bored and miserable.

Maybe the candidate just wants a nice quiet easy job so they can reduce their stress and put their focus on other parts of their life?

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#272

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

krageon wrote: post #260
vanviegen wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could perhaps discuss your concerns with the candidate... They may have a good reason for applying to this specific job.

"I want to work here because I need money to eat and you seemed like a safe choice"

Some day I'm actually going to try this in an interview.

Interviewer: "Why do you want to work for us?"

Me: "Honestly, I don't want to work for anybody because I have too much other stuff I'd much rather be doing with my time. But I need an income to sustain myself so, if I'm going to work, I want to work here because I think it'll be easy, provide decent benefits, and it's a 20 minute bike ride from my house."

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#273

Post by satyrnein »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #219
z3t4 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are over qualified, like having published several games on your own, it's not like they don't think you can do they job, they might think you will get bored and miserable.

I've personally come across this dilemma when hiring people. My own take is that's none of my goddamn business and if the person is the most qualified for the job then it's theirs for the taking.

I don't think is optimal, either. It's not worth investing in onboarding someone, getting them situated in a team, then having to tell everyone a few months in that the person quit. If that seems like a very likely outcome, it makes sense to avoid it.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#274

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #201
carnitine wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Binary search? I would never hire anyone who couldn’t implement it from scratch. There’s no complex idea or trick to remember, it’s the most basic algorithmic around.

I agree that it's not particularly challenging. As a counterpoint though, a linear search is more basic. It's also often faster than a binary search for small datasets, and it's easier to prove correct purely by inspection. Anecdotally, a coworker we hired a couple years ago (and has been doing an awesome job) dusted off her old coding challenge from when she applied, and ran it through a new test suite we've been wo…

> As a counterpoint though, a linear search is more basic. It's also often faster than a binary search for small datasets, and it's easier to prove correct purely by inspection.

Also for sorted datasets where the most frequently referenced data is at the top.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#275

Post by puppet-master »

sdevonoes wrote: post #222
puppet-master wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Folk post this on every thread as if denying the effect somehow makes it go away. As both a candidate and hiring manager, the effect is very real and it is folly to ignore it. As a candidate, I landed a FANG job early in my career almost exclusively on the basis of my (poor quality) tech blog attracting the attention of a recruiter. As a hiring manager, I've dumped all resumes for a position and practically begged an…

> while presenting the appearance of being passionate about what you do during work Why would anyone want this? It's fake. Let's try to keep the IT world free of as much BS as we can please. Don't follow this nonsense trends.

What's fake about showing initiative? I was under no illusion the young lad would be an ideal hire, but I'd have been even more impressed to discover post-hire that he'd hoodwinked me. You can't advertise for or buy that kind of intelligence

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#276

Post by eschneider »

cassonmars wrote: post #177
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if I forgot how to write binary search The binary search algorithm isn't something you can "forget". For a literate programmer it's like forgetting how to write the letter 'A' or forgetting which pedal is the gas and which is the brakes.

I think you’re overestimating most people’s ability to withstand the stress that quiz show style Leetcode interviews can put on people. I’ve literally blanked on an interview before when I was tasked with writing a simple parser and I’ve written entire compilers. The interview processes are broken in most companies. Pair programming sessions with debugging and incremental graduation of the problem scope are way bette…

Yeah, folks can definitely freeze up and I'm pretty sympathetic to that in interviews. I'll often spot folks most or all of the algorithm if it looks like they locked up. "Hey, you could dry implementing it like this..." and see where they go from there. I mean, we really want to see people succeed with these things.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#277

Post by wpietri »

giantg2 wrote: post #66
wpietri wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends a lot on the place and the role. I'm hiring for a relatively small cross-functional team that has to deal with a variety of work. One of the characteristics we need is people who are willing to step outside their technological comfort zone and just make something work. We have no mobile code and probably won't, but I was still happy to talk with somebody who'd built a couple of iOS apps for fun. It was a s…

"One of the characteristics we need is people who are willing to step outside their technological comfort zone and just make something work." Honestly (and no offense), this sounds just like every place. My current job expects me to be full stack on multiple stacks, be the application security champion, and provide rotating (1 week every 3 weeks) prod support for about 10 apps that we own. And it's a mix of legacy an…

It definitely depends on the place.

The last large company I worked at had specialized per-technology teams. The IOS devs would be on a team with other IOS devs. Android with Android, web with web, back end with back end. My boss was seen as unusual for just trying to get different kinds of engineer on one team, even though they'd still specialize.

I do think there's a difference between "this is a small team, so we all need to cross-train enough so that we don't have silos" and "we're a large company that never cleans up a mess, so you'll have to be able to work with the code from 7 different half-assed projects going each going back 1d20 years". There's no excuse for the latter, and I'm sorry you're in it.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#278

Post by satyrnein »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #271
z3t4 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are over qualified, like having published several games on your own, it's not like they don't think you can do they job, they might think you will get bored and miserable.

Maybe the candidate just wants a nice quiet easy job so they can reduce their stress and put their focus on other parts of their life?

That would be a perfectly fine reason! Ideally this comes out in the interview process, for example if the candidate is asked why they're leaving their previous role and says that work/life balance was an issue. As long as their needs match what you're offering, great.

The thorniest situation is the overqualified, currently unemployed candidate. That person is often not trying to make a lifestyle change, but instead looking to pick up a paycheck for a few months until something better comes along (for good reason!).

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#279

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #254
cableshaft wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I've had a portfolio of full video games I've coded and released on my own, as the sole programmer, that could be played on the web, had my name credited on the title screen, and you could even see the code on some of them, and I proudly included the link on my resume. Never brought up during the interview process, I was still expected to take the coding tests, and if I did a little poorly on one question I almo…

I've made lots (thousands? hundreds at least) of commits to the Linux kernel and have been working on it since pre (git) history, have developed a number of novel concurrent data structures / algorithms for it. I decided to talk with a FANG recruiter a couple of years ago who must have scraped my name from mailing list or commit histories. Despite first making it clear by email I wasn't interested in a job interview…

To play devil's advocate, having a standardized process for all candidates has some benefits. I've witnessed otherwise stellar candidates with amazing open source contributions absolutely bomb coding interviews. Real "write a function that does X" in whatever language you're comfortable with and whatever tools or resources you want. Simple stuff.

So yeah maybe the Big O stuff is lame, but sometimes it's also a filter for entitlement on the behalf of the candidate. Hiring isn't hard, but it's not easy.

Re: It doesn't take much public creativity to stand out as a job candidate

#280

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

kebman wrote: post #154
RandallBrown wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a pure engineering role things like credits at large companies, online talks, side projects, etc. are all really great ways to get an interview. I can't really remember the last time I was turned down for an interview. You're totally right about the other part though. I've lost a lot of jobs I think I could have been great at because I'm really bad at whiteboard coding interviews.

Does this mean that the whiteboard coding interviews are flawed, or that guys like us, who has made a ton of more or less great projects are flawed? Why would a company rather have a guy that can solve binary search in five seconds, than one that has showed continuous progress with several finished projects over the years? Do they think accomplished guys somehow are a liability? Or is it that they want a blank sheet…

One of the things these discussions rarely bring up is that companies want to have a similar process for evaluating everyone. This is especially important if a rejected candidate accuses the company of illegal discrimination. If you can show that you applied the same criteria to everyone, then you have a better defense. I think side projects are great, and can be useful in evaluating how well a candidate will "fit" a job or work environment, but there's no denying that it's a deviation from a standard evaluation process.

At one place I worked, one of the exercises we used simulated working in a team environment. HR was really worried that we were giving a "test" (this really sets of their alarm bells if they haven't vetted it!) and we had to prove up and down that it was an exercise to see how they performed in a group setting, and the actual code wasn't very important.

The whiteboard coding interviews are beyond stupid IMO, but at least they can prove that they're consistently applied.

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