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When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

hiringengineersbook.com

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Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#441

Post by qualsiasi »

austincheney wrote: post #177
tptacek wrote: post #3

A lot of this post seems pretty reasonable. But: In my experience, it’s fairly easy to judge technical skill. A friendly conversation about technical interests and recent projects can often be enough. Bullshit. Sounding credible in technical interviews is a skill, not the same skill as actually being a good programmer, and might even (statistically, in the large) be close to orthogonal to it. We found this out the ha…

I disagree. If you can’t tell the difference between a smooth talker and strong technical competence you are probably interested in the wrong qualities. I have interviewed enough now to see why some companies cannot figure it out. Ask yourself if you really actually want a senior or a strong junior. It comes down to interest. A good senior got that way because they like solving challenging problems. They are not inte…

I agree with your comments, but let me share my 2c on "trendy framework bs".

Most of interviews I've done to candidates ended up in discussing technology trends and googling around for cool open source projects, libraries and so. This, to me, is a good indicator - as long as you bring them up when discussing relevant problems, this means you thought about a problem and researched prior art to avoid re-inventing the wheel.

Also we tend to end up discussing pro and cons of any given technology and so on. This at the end is a key indicator you're talking to a passionate developer. And passion usually makes someone good at programming.

When it comes to soft skills, usually having such a kind of discussion you can figure out also someones behaviour in most work scenarios (to me, having a good "discussion" mode means you're likely to be fit for team work).

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#442

Post by jeffrallen »

cloogshicer wrote: post #45
jeffrallen wrote: post #28

Ssssh, don't let the secret out. The fewer great workplaces, the better for those of us who happen to have a great workplace and need to recruit!

Haha, author here, sorry about that. Can I quote you on that for the book? :P

Quote away. The great workplace in question is EPFL's DEDIS lab.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#443

Post by franciscop »

Vinnl wrote: post #430
franciscop wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have recently gone through interviews in few companies, and in almost all of them I've been skipped the first small technical test. I have a strong online profile [0][1][2] so I was very glad not to have to spend several hours doing some simple fizzbuzz. Don't get me wrong, you could say that I even enjoy doing these small puzzles, but with a fulltime job and trying to select several companies I just didn't want to…

> spend several hours doing some simple fizzbuzz When I see people mentioning fizzbuzz, it's always to filter out people who really can't program. If you just give me ten minutes to solve a fizzbuzz-like problem, that should be plenty of time for me to solve it given that I do know how to program, and just that single test would be enough to filter out those who don't. I don't see why it would have to take several ho…

Fizzbuzz is an example, I've never seen it on its own. A company doing a pre-screen test would normally put 2-3 small tests, the easiest one fizzbuzz-like, for a total of 1-1.5h.

Multiply that by the number of companies you are interviewing and that can easily be 8-15h in total. I'm glad I didn't have to do that.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#444

Post by bulditand »

lordnacho wrote: post #406
subwindow wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're asking questions related to "raw algorithmic skill" you're filtering for people who either: 1) Have had a computer science education and happen to remember the algorithm at hand. This is also a function of recency so senior engineers are less likely to remember any given algorithm. 2) Study algorithms so they can do well at job interviews. Neither one is something you want to be selecting for. Some of the b…

Agree. A lot of coding is simply banging your head against the wall, search SO over and over, changing things around, until it does what you want. Raw algo quizzing skill isn't necessarily the same thing, though you'd think it was somewhat related because when you're learning to code up "find longest continuous run" you also need to change things around for a bit. Difference is in real life there's never an end. The…

Coding is the easiest part. Understanding the actual problem and solving it is the hard part.

> A lot of coding is simply banging your head against the wall, search SO over and over, changing things around, until it does what you want.

It doesn't look like programming to me. Yes, sometimes we miss something, so our code doesn't do exactly what we want it to do, but when we realize it we just fix the code. This view of coding resembles an improved way to write Shakespeare with monkeys.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#445

Post by purple_ducks »

lordnacho wrote: post #434
kelukelugames wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've paid off my mortgage and am now more open to working on something more altruistic than selling ads for slightly less pay. The problem is I can't find any interesting without a large paycut.

Sounds like you're in the perfect position to do your own startup? More upside if it goes well and you're already not in need of money?

~= "A startup for startups sake"

The new art?

Shouldn't people usually have some kind of business idea before diving head first?

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#446

Post by C1sc0cat »

cududa wrote: post #436
C1sc0cat wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously haven't seen Mark Kermodes series on the BBC where he covers exactly this.

Why talk to someone so condescendingly? I mean, what percentage of people do you epxpect to HAVE seen this bit of obscure media you seem to hold as seminal?

If the parent makes the unjustified statement that all cinema reviewers no know nothing about how film is made why not.

And I was not being condescending BTW.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#447

Post by fnord123 »

foo101 wrote: post #304
drb91 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Algorithmic ability has no correlation to the ability to write maintainable code, though. Most time at work is not spent demonstrating ability to regurgitate algorithms.

> Algorithmic ability has no correlation to the ability to write maintainable code, though. This is not true in my experience. I usually see a strong correlation between algorithmic ability and writing maintainable code. At various organizations I have worked for, I have seen that the ones with strong algorithm skills also happen to be critical thinkers who put a lot of emphasis on simple, elegant, and robust design…

I don't have data but my impression is that there is an inverse correlation. My guess as to why is that people with ability to manage a lot of algorithmic complexity don't seem to suffer when code is complex so they see no need to simplify things.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#448

Post by floss_fulltimer »

Annatar wrote: post #375
tyre wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear what you're saying, but I think you're maybe creating a straw man argument here. A smooth talking engineer isn't one who sounds like a used car salesperson or is just hyped about the latest trendy framework. There are people who can talk through challenging problems at their former companies and how the problems were solved. They can tell you everything you'd want to hear because it's true. Except…they didn't…

"Principal engineer"? Do you actually have an engineering degree? Have you formal education in engineering? What is system engineering? It's not just you; the entire IT industry is suffering from systemic curriculum vitae bloat. That's why the working conditions are so bad in the professional sense.

> Have you formal education in engineering?

Good point. In many countries getting a degree in engineering takes way, way more effort than in computer science.

Then it takes 10-15 years of work to be called "senior engineer".

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#449

Post by trsfgbb »

Annatar wrote: post #375
tyre wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear what you're saying, but I think you're maybe creating a straw man argument here. A smooth talking engineer isn't one who sounds like a used car salesperson or is just hyped about the latest trendy framework. There are people who can talk through challenging problems at their former companies and how the problems were solved. They can tell you everything you'd want to hear because it's true. Except…they didn't…

"Principal engineer"? Do you actually have an engineering degree? Have you formal education in engineering? What is system engineering? It's not just you; the entire IT industry is suffering from systemic curriculum vitae bloat. That's why the working conditions are so bad in the professional sense.

> "Look at who you're replying to."

> "Principal engineer"

"Look at who you're replying to." meant "tptacek" or "tyre"? Or both - a general advice?

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#450

Post by honestoHeminway »

austincheney wrote: post #387
fipple wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The difference between talking (very intelligently) and doing is huge, and a sports analogy might be illustrative. If you ask detailed questions about football to hire a NFL quarterback, your most intelligent responses will probably be from a coach. “How should you change the position of your right shoulder if you see that a fast edge rusher is approaching you from the left side and you have two open receivers?”…

> The difference between talking (very intelligently) and doing is huge To be fair it is environment dependent more than anything else. Forget competence, charisma, intelligence, and everything else about the candidate that could bias their selection and instead look at processes and code already in place the new candidate is jumping into. Does the environment strongly favor original ideas/solutions or does it dictat…

>Does the environment accept ideas?

That is where i get started- how do they expect the ideas? Do you just got to have a nice solution - or do they expect solutionpaths, with all problems worked out and a polished result plus estimate at the end.

Ideas alone are worthless. Realizations - and the path through the labyrinth of failure is whats valuable.

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