501–510 of 728 posts
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Can you offer some advice to people who are low-openness and don't see why that's a problem?
The reason why it's a problem is because when a coworker is always in his or her own little bubble and you know nothing about them it is harder to get along with them and thus harder to work with them. And by the same token, if you like and get along with the people in your environment, then you'll be happier and thus more productive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you offer some advice to people who are low-openness and don't see why that's a problem?
The reason why it's a problem is because when a coworker is always in his or her own little bubble and you know nothing about them it is harder to get along with them and thus harder to work with them. And by the same token, if you like and get along with the people in your environment, then you'll be happier and thus more productive.
> Mike has worked on systems that can handle multiple orders of magnitude more load, but his experience is, apparently, irrelevant.
Did Mike build/architect said system, or was instrumental in said system reaching massive performance? As an MSFT contractor, it seems doubtful. Our team had a "Principal Architect" that did that sort of heavy lifting.
> (3), combined with (1), gets at what TrendCo’s real complaint with Mike is. He’s not their type.
Generalizing isn't good, but in my experience as a former MSFT contractor, there is a lot of stigma on A- employees, deserved or otherwise. Part of it happens because FTE's that are let go for performance reasons, end up rehired as contractors by shops like VOLT. These folks know the ins-and-outs of MSFT, and the bar for hiring contractors is much lower.
It's super easy to apply for jobs--just click a button, and you're applied. My last open rec receieved over 100 submissions in less than a week. As a hiring manager, I need to quickly go through those submissions and get back to the candidates I want to speak with. For better or worse, I've come up with filters that I use to quickly sort candidates into reject or contact bucket.
I'll definitely contact non-ideal candidates, but your resume should give me an indication that you're worth considering if you don't fit the standard mold of:
"Worked for a solid tech company, familiar with recent tech stacks, has some sort of successful side project, has a 4-year CS degree."
If you don't fit that mold, but are awesome. Great. Prove it (on your resume plz).
I once had an internal recruiter tell me during a phone screen that my resume was weak since I went to a no-name school in the south called Georgia Tech. During my last interview round, another interviewer found it hard to believe that I did not use Twitter. I think these problems existing more in the "trendy" areas such as the Bay area. Once you leave that culture, ignorant recruiters are still around, but the exclu…
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There really isn't a way to avoid this other than only working in places were you already agree 100% with the way they do things. If you build your own company you will also have your way of doing things that you will impose on everyone working for you and you will not change it because of some new guy. Not significantly, anyways.
There is a way to avoid it but I think software development is unique in that we haven't been able, so far, to establish what the state of the art is. And so it seems like, as you say, every company is in its own cave and the only way to have the freedom to have your own ideas is to start your own cave. It's a little bit backwards in my opinion. Instead of it being commonly accepted that we should be checking mathema…
Can you elaborate on that?
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Were you paid for your time when doing that? Kind of curious (I guess 2 hours isn't a lot of time but there's the principle)
I have had a few of these the last year or two. Never been paid. More than half of them are a waste of time. I have refused quite a few of them. The last "shouldn't take you more than two hours" exercise that I was given involved jumping through hoops to get set up on Instagrams API, only to discover that I was in a sandboxed mode, and needed my account approved before i could get anything more than metadata out). I…
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Were you paid for your time when doing that? Kind of curious (I guess 2 hours isn't a lot of time but there's the principle)
No, there's no principle, there's a ~20 minutes old idea that we engineers are so obviously awesome that companies should actually be paying us for the privilege of interviewing us. There may exists engineers obviously awesome enough for that to be feasible, and great for them (but they are probably also obviously awesome enough to not have to go through coding tests, so it's a moot point) and even if I could perhaps…
Overall, I get the gist of the article, and it makes sense. Some counter-points: > Mike has worked on systems that can handle multiple orders of magnitude more load, but his experience is, apparently, irrelevant. Did Mike build/architect said system, or was instrumental in said system reaching massive performance? As an MSFT contractor, it seems doubtful. Our team had a "Principal Architect" that did that sort of hea…
FYI, contractors are v-.
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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.
An ability to state "I don't know that" without shame is a strong positive signal of intellectual maturity, but I'm not sure that I'd want to press it out of a candidate by asking an impossible question, if it had to get to that point. The process that you describe isn't one that I would feel comfortable using, but I like the objective.
One is, people want to demonstrate what they know about the topic, even if they can't answer the specific question. If you ask me to explain elliptic curve cryptography, I can tell you that it's useful because it uses smaller keys then prime based RSA crypto, and that's something I'd want to mention to indicate that, despite the fact that I'd need to look at a book or writeup to actually implement elliptic curve cryptography and I'm not sure I can verbally explain the math behind it, I at least know something about it.
The second is, at the limits of my domain knowledge, I may not know what I know and don't know. Limits are fuzzy, and I may feel like I have a pretty good understanding of a linux file system from a user perspective (permissions, inodes, etc) but I couldn't implement one off the top of my head and I'm probably missing some important components. As an interviewee, I may have incorrect or incomplete knowledge, but not know that. That doesn't mean I'm bullshitting intentionally, I'm just trying my best to answer the question I think you are asking.
Also I have to think that other developer cultures may have different values around these ideas then my own. Maybe the cultural expectation is to show confidence in my ability; I know that confident individuals are more likely to get hired or even apply for jobs, and that often job requirements are a screen for confidence.
Sure, I'd love if I knew every gap in my knowledge and every mistaken understanding I have, but I don't know how realistic it is to suggest a deliberate deception on the edge of a person's knowledge.
And that's setting aside whether the interview process is a good predictor of workplace behavior... I think we all know people who are excellent devs that can't write on a white board for shit, or who sit down for a good think for an hour and then come up with a perfect solution but aren't going to be able to write and simultaneously talk you through a solution to a 15 minute data algorithm question.
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…