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The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

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Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#461

Post by sharken »

Spooky23 wrote: post #451
ygjb wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am willing to wager in a broad sense, that the best COBOL, Fortran, and RPG, that "Old people who manage legacy systems" is probably a fair estimate, and there is probably narrow overlap between developers for those languages and git experience. There are lots of younger folks who fall into supporting these platforms through experience, but I would also wager that the number of fresh, doe eyed engineers graduating…

I encountered such a person. Her parents were both mainframe nerds and she was a true believer. I think the shock of working as a 23 year old in a group of geezers that had been fighting each other since 1975 was traumatic. We stole her and she was a pretty awesome DBA last I knew.

Nearly all DBAs i have worked with have been great. Not sure why that is, but it's been very consistent.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#462

Post by simmanian »

austinjp wrote: post #423
simmanian wrote: post #5

Practices like this are hilariously common in the industry. Right out of college I accepted a job offer at a small consulting company on the east coast. They promised they would give me free housing at their luxury apartment for the first few months and give me all the training I need to excel in areas of my interest. I flew across the country and found out the whole thing is not as advertised. Their luxury apartment…

Have you written this full story in detail? Sounds genuinely fascinating. I hope you're doing okay now?

I was actually rather fascinated by it too, so once I figured out what was going on, I started meeting people in the company specifically to ask them about their experiences. I probably have my notes saved on some USB drive somewhere rotting away. There is one comment that I still remember pretty well: "The Chinese do it, the Indians do it, so why shouldn't I do it? The game is rigged."

To this day, that company was the most diverse environment I've been a part of. It had people of all races from all over the world, and I got the sense that these guys generally cared for each other.

I didn't bother writing about it in more detail because most of my friends didn't seem very interested and I wasn't sure where I could share the story. Maybe I will go ahead and do it though.

It's been many years since this happened and I'm doing rather well, thanks for asking.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#464

Post by kumarvvr »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #88

It's like the flip version of the guy that got let go and then re-recruited for his just vacated position. https://twitter.com/firr/status/1456324664628846599

"How did you know it was me [rips off fake mustache]"

Old Boss : Get out of here.

Comedy gold.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#465

Post by kumarvvr »

josefresco wrote: post #201
spaetzleesser wrote: post #115

We once had a contractor who interviewed pretty well. After a while I noticed that it was impossible to have a technical discussion with him. He only took notes and never said much. I also noticed that he never delivered anything the same day. He took notes and then next morning it was done. I once told him to fix a simple bug NOW and had him sit next to me. He starred at the screen for several hours and did nothing.…

If the "ghostwriter" was good, would you have cared?

As a manager of the guy, yes.

How reliable or accurate do you think those notes are?

How secure is having someone outside your company writing code that runs inside your servers?

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#466

Post by democracy »

nradov wrote: post #227
quickthrower2 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why we can't have nice things. Or in other words, why we must usually do a coding test per company we apply for, and not just 'point them at the Github'.

Quoted post unavailable.

>> The actual best developers mostly have little or nothing to point to on GitHub. You might find this shocking but many of them don't even know how to use Git at all.

It all goes in circles. As soon as Github (GIT in general) becomes adopted by the majority of enterprise (already happened probably) we are gonna see something else which is "cool". Something else, smaller, simpler, cooler gonna attract the next wave of programmers. I am sure there is a great space for innovation.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#467

Post by throwaway2037 »

com2kid wrote: post #449
eternityforest wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can believe they don't have an extensive GitHub... but if they can't use Git they must have either only had a few jobs that all used something else(That's fine, just uncommon), or be in a specialist industry that doesn't use Git(Also not common), or they don't know VCS at all.

Plenty of companies use source control other than git. AAA gaming studios are famous for not using git due to git's poor handling of large binary assets w/o workarounds. I've used other source control systems and they do have benefits over Git to be sure. Access control is a huge one, you can have a large repository and have fine grained access control over who can access what paths in the repository. Heck with some…

Regarding large binary assets, I literally Googled "git large binary assets" and had many hits with various solutions. GitHub started offering Git LFS (Large File Storage) in 2015 -- more than 6 years ago. That said, many places still use Perforce.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#469

Post by eternityforest »

com2kid wrote: post #449
eternityforest wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can believe they don't have an extensive GitHub... but if they can't use Git they must have either only had a few jobs that all used something else(That's fine, just uncommon), or be in a specialist industry that doesn't use Git(Also not common), or they don't know VCS at all.

Plenty of companies use source control other than git. AAA gaming studios are famous for not using git due to git's poor handling of large binary assets w/o workarounds. I've used other source control systems and they do have benefits over Git to be sure. Access control is a huge one, you can have a large repository and have fine grained access control over who can access what paths in the repository. Heck with some…

Game dev always seemed like a highly specialized thing to me. Performance critical, uses real math, lots of local instead of just server work, art assets...

I'm not saying everyone uses git, but it seems like there's probably not many people who have never had to learn it.

Especially when "knowing git" often means memorizing about 8 commands total if you're not on really big team.

When I pushed for a transition from no VCS at all to git, we couldn't use branches at first for fear that someone would need to access something and not be able to, if someone who actually knew git wasn't around.

Maybe their idea of "Can't use git" means "Can't use it well?"

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#470

Post by sharken »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #165
giantg2 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"eager to learn, sense of ownership" Well, that disqualifies me. The way most organizations tie your hands means one is given all the responsibility without real authority. I'm completely unmotivated because of that. Edit: Sucks that my feelings are being downvoted.

Downvoting on HN is fickle; sometimes it's the point that's being made, sometimes it's how it's being made. I think asking "have I meaningfully contributed to conversation" is part of it... but a lot of downvotes comes as emotional response or simple disagreement. You can choose whether to take it seriously and grow/change to satisfy it, or be yourself and take votes in passing. That being said - sad to hear you are…

That proverb holds a lot of truth.

I would add that treating the company's money as if it is your own also works quite well.

Never get too attached to a user story/task is another important lesson. Sometimes a task has to go, even though you disagree.

To OP I'd say that you should really try to rediscover the desire to learn.

That and being able to quickly locate related information for a task are two of my most important skills.

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