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When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

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Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#31

Post by 0x20cowboy »

I think we should just jump to the end game and make interviewees do ultra man triathlons while solving differential equations. Then at the finish line, they knife fight each other to find the one we let go to the next stage in the interview. That way we can be sure who has stamina and the best competitive programming problem solving skills.

Something like squid game will truely find the A players. I mean, we wouldn’t want a bad hire after all, and everyone lies on their CV.

(Obviously /s)

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#34

Post by [deleted] »

johnqian wrote: post #18

I sometimes ask candidates "what kind of interview do you feel would best bring out your strengths?" and try to adapt the interview to their response if I can. It's helpful if they want to talk about side projects or war stories, but doesn't pressure them to. I still give my coding challenge after. Wonder why no one else does this.

[deleted]

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#36

Post by lucb1e »

eBombzor wrote: post #23
johnqian wrote: post #18

I sometimes ask candidates "what kind of interview do you feel would best bring out your strengths?" and try to adapt the interview to their response if I can. It's helpful if they want to talk about side projects or war stories, but doesn't pressure them to. I still give my coding challenge after. Wonder why no one else does this.

That sounds terrible. That just implies, "if he doesn't have an amazing interview now, he's definitely an idiot".

On the contrary: I like the idea, but for context, my most recent HN comment contained:

> [...] That said, I do find [it] hard in interviews [to talk] about past experience[s] and prefer to just be given a web application riddled with every type of bug and try to bingo them all in the time given to show that I understand them all. That one was my favorite interview.

Now I see johnqian suggesting to ask interviewees how to best see their skills, and it sounds great. If the interviewer doesn't have something like this on hand, we could still go into different types of bugs that they care about.

I've also had interviews that went terribly, particularly when no technical details were asked at all for a technical position (e.g. a manager just asking the standard questions where you need to give platitude answers, such as "why are you specifically excited to intern with Vodafone", methinks: "because I want that degree and you were the only option I could think of within 45 minutes commuting"... but one can't say that so I made something up.. he probed further on that... it went downhill from there), so being able to steer away from that sounds great.

But it might also be that I would feel unprepared for such a question and give a total non-answer, helping neither party.

Asking this in an email ahead of time might be better, though then the effect you're suggesting might be even stronger.

Edit: I'm not the downvoter, to be clear. I think you raise a good point even if I am not sure whether it would necessarily be that way.

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#37

Post by andrewflnr »

My thesis is that the true measure of reading code is still the ability to fix and extend it. So my current ideal interview problem is still a tiny toy codebase, where the interviewee is tasked with adding some (relatively trivial) feature to it. Like ten lines of code, but where those lines require you to have grokked the other couple hundred or so. Any downsides?

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#38

Post by andrewflnr »

0x20cowboy wrote: post #31

I think we should just jump to the end game and make interviewees do ultra man triathlons while solving differential equations. Then at the finish line, they knife fight each other to find the one we let go to the next stage in the interview. That way we can be sure who has stamina and the best competitive programming problem solving skills. Something like squid game will truely find the A players. I mean, we wouldn’…

Right, if you're a big company you can more easily afford to have false negatives than false positives, so why not add knife fighting to the list of qualifications, just in case?

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#40

Post by abalaji »

lkrubner wrote: post #26

My one big tip: One vice that I see among hiring managers is an unwillingness to ask tough follow-up questions. If you ask a question and there is any vagueness in the answer, you need to drill down deep until all vagueness is eliminated, so you understand exactly what the person knows. Follow up on what's said, but also follow up on what is not said. Here’s a real-life example. I asked a recent applicant (for a full…

The premise here is good, but instead of asking the same question again and again, I would rather supply more and more information until I get the answer I am looking for. (and jot down what prompting was required to get that answer) I agree with the sibling comment, otherwise this becomes a guess what I am thinking exercise.
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