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Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

voss.world

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Re: Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

#51

Post by mingodad »

In my experience interviews are not the main place to evaluate technical skills, people get nervous and asking too specific technical questions is not good also, some people can be good at remembering then but can not do anything with then. I came to the idea that to interview/hire/select a software engineer he/she should show at least three bug fixes on any opensource project and if the fixes are way back the interview/job advert the better. So one can at least have a concrete idea of the candidate skills/interest when confronted with a third party code base and how she/he understood/solved the problem.

This way the interview can be used to access other important aspects of the candidate.

I interviewed several people that seem to have paid someone to write their C.V. very well but when in person was a lost of time.

Re: Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

#52

Post by circlefavshape »

arethuza wrote: post #34
badminton1 wrote: post #23

The problem is how to determine how someone is smart. In my company we had this very eloquent, outgoing person who implemented many features very fast. To the eyes of management he was a champ, the king of "shipping". But a little bit later things started to seem weird. Noone was productive except for this person. Only he could understand the code organization because the system wasn't well structured. Then bug repor…

"But a little bit later things started to seem weird." I've met a lot of people who change jobs before anyone realises this - to anyone who works on the same projects they are a nightmare, to everyone else they look like a hotshot.

I have one of these on my team right now, and he has caused me more sleepless nights than anyone I have ever met. Finding it very difficult to get mgmt to understand that most of his code needs to be re-written

Re: Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

#53

Post by PaulHoule »

humanrebar wrote: post #37
badminton1 wrote: post #23

The problem is how to determine how someone is smart. In my company we had this very eloquent, outgoing person who implemented many features very fast. To the eyes of management he was a champ, the king of "shipping". But a little bit later things started to seem weird. Noone was productive except for this person. Only he could understand the code organization because the system wasn't well structured. Then bug repor…

> To the eyes of management he was a champ, the king of "shipping". So management also was bad at their jobs. They probably didn't get canned, though they deserved it as much as the King of Shipping. But, congratulations, you know the "What's Bad About Working Here". Maybe there's a way to train management what their implicit job responsibilities are. I've never seen it happen in the wild, but maybe it's possible.

That's the problem, management is bad at their jobs. Management is so bad in the U.S. that everybody imagines they can hire their way out of situations rather than manage their way out of them.

For instance, when you tell people that you went to a Burger King and it took them 30 minutes to serve you a cup of coffee, the conventional answer is "it's hard to find good help these days."

That's a loser attitude on the part of management. Management hires employees, fires employees, trains employees, supervises employees, etc. If management does not take responsibility for your experience as a customer it is definitely the fault of management that you have a bad experience.

The problem has many facets but one of them is that few people are cut out to manage other people and our illusions about "meritocracy" contribute to an American culture that creates excellent foot soldiers but mediocre to terrible officers.

Re: Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

#54

Post by tgb »

ajuc wrote: post #19

> It surprised me that people define theirselves via their CV: “Who are you?” -> “Here is what I have done in my professional life!”. Anything weird about that? I wouldn't expect my potential employer to be interested in my family, hobbies or beliefs. So I would respond with job-related stuff as well.

Agree. If the question is answered 'wrong' by most candidates, then maybe the question isn't so good after all?

Re: Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

#55

Post by krisdol »

badminton1 wrote: post #23

The problem is how to determine how someone is smart. In my company we had this very eloquent, outgoing person who implemented many features very fast. To the eyes of management he was a champ, the king of "shipping". But a little bit later things started to seem weird. Noone was productive except for this person. Only he could understand the code organization because the system wasn't well structured. Then bug repor…

Badly organized code can also be the result of demanding deadlines coupled with an inexperienced tech lead to back up the engineer's estimates. Sometimes the whole culture of a place (engineers included) is in "just get this shit done" mode until they realize they essentially need to redo everything to fox minor bugs

Re: Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

#56

Post by heisnotanalien »

humanrebar wrote: post #50
quanticle wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowledge work is typically creative, the right model is an art studio, a movie set, or a band. Knowledge workers aren't cogs, they're part of a team. And if you look at how bands, movie studios, art studios or professional teams hire, it bears little to no resemblance to the hiring process described in the OP's article. All of the professions you describe hire through some kind of auditioning process. No sports mana…

> "Do I think this person is a cool person?" No movie director would hire an actor on that basis. Well, considering the amount of work Mel Gibson gets these days (more or less zero), this does factor in a bit. I also gather that studios hire actors for reasons beyond their acting skill quite often. Consider also how many actresses fall off the face of the earth when they hit a certain age. Where's Mira Sorvino? Halle…

Oh give me a break. Those actresses are just taking time off to have children. Nothing wrong with that. There are plenty of successful middle-age actresses.

Re: Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

#57

Post by Cthulhu_ »

badminton1 wrote: post #23

The problem is how to determine how someone is smart. In my company we had this very eloquent, outgoing person who implemented many features very fast. To the eyes of management he was a champ, the king of "shipping". But a little bit later things started to seem weird. Noone was productive except for this person. Only he could understand the code organization because the system wasn't well structured. Then bug repor…

> So, I am going to say NO to this article. Skills are important.

In your anecdote though, I'm reading that the er, rockstar developer had enough skills to get things done, but not the personality to do things The Right Way. That is a personality thing, I think, with personality traits like attention to detail and quality and such. Those are not linked to skill level or technology; maybe with experience (i.e. being on the receiving end of those bugs and issues), but even that is not necessary IMO, because there's plenty of smart people out there to tell people to do, for example, unit testing, and why.

The wrong personality scoffs at that stuff and goes cowboy coding like the person in your anecdote.

Re: Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

#58

Post by snowfield »

humanrebar wrote: post #37
badminton1 wrote: post #23

The problem is how to determine how someone is smart. In my company we had this very eloquent, outgoing person who implemented many features very fast. To the eyes of management he was a champ, the king of "shipping". But a little bit later things started to seem weird. Noone was productive except for this person. Only he could understand the code organization because the system wasn't well structured. Then bug repor…

> To the eyes of management he was a champ, the king of "shipping". So management also was bad at their jobs. They probably didn't get canned, though they deserved it as much as the King of Shipping. But, congratulations, you know the "What's Bad About Working Here". Maybe there's a way to train management what their implicit job responsibilities are. I've never seen it happen in the wild, but maybe it's possible.

Let's be honest. management probably pushed the guy to ship NOW

Re: Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

#59

Post by atom-morgan »

humanrebar wrote: post #39
reflexorozy wrote: post #4

This sounds like a cool idea, but I've seen where hiring for personality often leads towards hiring discrimination. I think it's more likely to reinforce the lack of diversity in tech than to combat it as people unlike the interviewer tend to be viewed less favorably and would be less likely to be viewed as a person who could pick up the specific knowledge he/she doesn't already know.

> I think it's more likely to reinforce the lack of diversity in tech than to combat it... I have mixed feelings about this. I have a hard time valuing diversity for its own sake, especially since there are so many qualities to have diversity in, and especially since the ones that actually affect the organization (like diversity of perspective) are so hard to measure and quantify. That being said, it's hard for me to…

> Treat everyone like a demographic? I'm not sure that's an improvement.

That's basically it. We've reduced everyone down to race and gender because diversity. This is the reason for criticizing "culture fit".

Re: Hire characters, not skill sets. My most important questions in interviews

#60

Post by Cthulhu_ »

humanrebar wrote: post #37
badminton1 wrote: post #23

The problem is how to determine how someone is smart. In my company we had this very eloquent, outgoing person who implemented many features very fast. To the eyes of management he was a champ, the king of "shipping". But a little bit later things started to seem weird. Noone was productive except for this person. Only he could understand the code organization because the system wasn't well structured. Then bug repor…

> To the eyes of management he was a champ, the king of "shipping". So management also was bad at their jobs. They probably didn't get canned, though they deserved it as much as the King of Shipping. But, congratulations, you know the "What's Bad About Working Here". Maybe there's a way to train management what their implicit job responsibilities are. I've never seen it happen in the wild, but maybe it's possible.

Management trusted the developer knew what he was doing, and didn't micromanage. I would go as far as say that management should be setting requirements in terms of security, maintainability, documentation etc, but I guess in this case (because apparently it was just one dev), they gave the developer full freedom. Misplaced trust, in this case. In a lot of cases though, I'd rather management ask me what should be done, instead of them telling me (or telling me something I'd disagree with).
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