451–460 of 728 posts
“Experience is too random, with payments, mobile, data analytics, and UX.” This one made me chuckle. Same thing usually happens with my résumé: either one discards completely the part where I cite strong OCaml knowledge plus functional/logic programming interest and/or they discard completely the part where I mention experience with ARM PRU assembly and the fact that I ported an educational OS to MIPS during graduati…
I've found that the best predictors of a good hire are indications of the following characteristics during the interview/vetting process: - adaptability -- can this person deal with situations that are spontaneous and unplanned without losing his/her cool. - openness -- is this person instinctively scornful of new concepts/ideas or energized by the chance to be exposed to something potentially interesting. - resource…
A big long list of relevant but subjective traits is a perfect vector for bias to creep in. Take what you call "poker face", for example - how do you measure openness? By how well they make small talk? What if they're just nervous because of the interview; what if they experience social anxiety; or what if they're just an introvert, and don't tend to be open around new people? For a less trivial example, take "resour…
Resourcefulness is more of a mindset. New parent? OK, what have you discovered about childrearing that you didn't anticipate? What will you do differently next time? What is your ideal work/life balance? These are all relevant things, and sometimes the young parent is a superb hire and may read very interesting books in anticipation of having more time to hack in a couple of years.
It's not about trendiness. It's about valuing experience with a specific stack out of all proportion to what that's worth - perhaps because it's one of the few things that's easy to measure. I've looked at going in the other direction - onto .NET. There's a lot to like about the framework. But I can take a job on the JVM and be paid like the dev with 7 years' experience that I am, or I can take a job doing .NET and g…
I eventually turned them down in favour of another offer.
I'm 50 years old and my day job is teaching teams how to perform better. I still code - love coding. But several years back I decided I could do more good in the world by helping multiple teams at a time than simply coding. My "real" job is, of course, startups. I save for a while, then work on various startup projects. I'm learning a lot. So now that my latest startup project is coming to a close, I'm thinking of wh…
Didn't IBM and a few other big iron shops do this in the 50s/60s with secretaries? iirc, they could apply to be programmers and would get trained.
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Mouse use has a much higher risk of CTS and other work-related injuries. [1] I've worked at startups and enterprise environments, and what has always remained constant at every Microsoft/Enterprise company is the troves of obese, unhealthy, arthritic middle-managers that can barely use a computer anymore because they got lazy and succumbed to using GUIs to get their basic work done. Now, they are stuck on MS because…
> By surrendering to the mouse and the GUI, my older co-workers are low-quality producers, exceedingly lazy, and otherwise slowly dying. I could say the same for the co-workers from a very well known fortune 500 I worked for. They were all using HP-UX. > My console emulator has looked the same for the last ten years. Innovation hasn't slowed me down at all. Yep that says it all. Hardly the example of what innovation…
It appears you fundamentally misunderstood my point. Though innovation has occurred on my Linux system (and on my MS system) without fail for years, I haven't hard to learn bizarre new mouse movements and locations of menu items. Rather than slow me down, I can begin taking ADVANTAGE of innovations right away because they aren't implemented on CLI interfaces in a detestably-arbitrary manner.
Also, I don't get your first point. If people got unhealthy and unemployable due to something OTHER than the mouse and GUI usage, then so what? That doesn't negate my point at all. It simply shows that yes, more than one cause exists for obesity and brain rot.
It's been shown through years and years of clinical study that the injuries received at the modern office have to do with the movements associated with mouse usage. Keyboard use is easy to adapt safely to the modern healthy workplace (standing desks, padded surfaces for wrists and feet, etc.) Mouse use, on the other hand, barely works correctly for the seated and unhealthy worker, and works even less properly for the worker trying to make healthy changes.
Mouse use is a problem. Keyboard use is not.
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>> - poker face -- does this person seem to be playing it close to the vest in the interview or otherwise have very low levels of openness? By nature I am pretty open, and not especially competitive. While my credentials are not great, I have been praised by certain mentors for other desirable attributes in this list: open mindedness, humility, pragmatism, adaptability, willingness to collaborate, and “growth mindset…
Not everyone wants to be your friend, but everyone SHOULD want to work together towards a common goal. The trick is in getting the two parties involved to see that common goal and why it's in their own best interests. It sounds like the person you're talking about was using the conversation not as a way to acquire help, but rather to demonstrate that he didn't need it, probably in an effort to boost his own status in…
I've found that the best predictors of a good hire are indications of the following characteristics during the interview/vetting process: - adaptability -- can this person deal with situations that are spontaneous and unplanned without losing his/her cool. - openness -- is this person instinctively scornful of new concepts/ideas or energized by the chance to be exposed to something potentially interesting. - resource…
Regarding your last point... sometimes, it's a matter of being professional. You don't want to go on a diatribe about all that was wrong in a former position or company. It depends on context of course, but in the end, sometimes there are reasons not to be completely open. In my personal life, I try to live unfiltered. Not mean, and work more to filter on sensitive subjects, but I mean that let thoughts, even incompl…
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> - rationality -- can this person admit to being wrong and speak about it authentically... can I imagine this person admitting to being slightly wrong and even very wrong about something and handling it gracefully. I think this is a super important characteristic for a great employee to have, but I don't know how reasonable it is to expect to see much of it in an interview. In an interview setting, the candidate is…
At the company I work at when we interview we tend to ask tougher and tougher questions until the candidate either starts spouting BS or replies that they don't know. BS is a no-hire.
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Can you offer some advice to people who are low-openness and don't see why that's a problem?
I'll be more specific about openness. It's not bad to be socially introverted. Many of us are somewhat, especially in comparison to the average member of the population. But imagine you're at a restaurant with your team and someone orders a dish you've never tried. Do you simply decline to try a bite? Or do you try a small bite in case you might like it? I find that openness to new experience correlates highly with g…
I'm really NOT keen on trying chocolate-cover ants, thank you.
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these are all great traits, but how do you determine them in an interview? for example openness. Everyone will say they are open and interested to new ideas, maybe accept few odd cases. how do you test for rationality? do you wait to catch them on something and keep drilling until they admit defeat?
I've found that people who are open usually think of the interview as a way to learn new things and to determine whether it's a good fit. They will ask questions and seem to enjoy gathering knowledge. Rationality is more of a value than a litmus test. Those who value rationality will understand systems thinking and will tend not to focus highly on authority (either being authoritative or deferring to someone else's a…