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When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

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Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#531

Post by icedchai »

jameshart wrote: post #522
lkrubner wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is to start with something open ended, so the candidate can talk as much as they want on the subject, broadly, and then, based on what they say and what they don't say, I narrow in on particulars: "Are you aware of any differences in dialect between the SQL of MySQL and the SQL of PostGres?" It's not like they lost points for the stuff they didn't know, I simply wanted to be sure I understood the limits of…

You might want to consider if there’s a way to discover that without triggering the candidate’s imposter syndrome. Your script above reads like Tom Cruise trying to get Colonel Jessup to admit he ordered the code red. All that’s missing is the candidate breaking at the end and screaming “YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DEBUG SQL”.

If they admit they don't know how to debug SQL in an interview, that is actually a positive thing. They know their current limitations and are honest about it. If they start looking for problems in irrelevant areas (like HTML) and making things up when they were specifically told the problem was elsewhere (backend), that is a bad sign.

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#532

Post by mc4ndr3 »

Shoot, just ask them bout their own FOSS changes.

"Why'd you design it that way?"

"Why'd you implement it that way?"

"What alternatives did you consider?"

Interviewers be so lazy in 2022 though. 'uh um do a fizzbuzz in ten seconds no your solution not match my first mental solution bye'

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#533

Post by whitesilhouette »

woldenron wrote: post #394
whitesilhouette wrote: post #360

I do almost the same but a bit differently. Like a lot of people have suggested here that they can't share their company's proprietary code (neither can I). So I have cooked up some sample questions asking people to code for a app involving REST and CRUD (because that's resturant what we do at office). It's not much work and can be done in 2-3 hours. Then I get down to discuss their answers and the 'why' questions ar…

> 2-3 hours You pay for that wasted time, yes?

Sure, I'll make sure you get your salary on time in case you get selected. You're worth getting selected, yes? Why don't you sit for the interview and we'll find out.

Or may be since your time is so precious, we can just skip this written-test-hogwash altogether. Let's just do the traditional telephonic round, shall we? Ohh and by the bye, so long as we are on this topic, you'd pay me for the time I had to waste on you in case you turn out to be a garbage of a candidate, fair?

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#534

Post by vsareto »

whitesilhouette wrote: post #529
vsareto wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if they made me stand in line for 2-3 hours, then decided not to give me the food that I paid for because I'm not a culture fit for the grocery store, then yeah probably.

And do you ask payment for the comp-off against the time-off that you had to take to visit for the interview. And do you ask payment for the gas spent while driving to come attend the interview. And do you ask compensation for your intelligent views presented during the interview when they asked you a technical problem related to their real life scenario and your answer ended up solving that saving them millions.

Pre-pandemic, you could get flown out for onsites for the higher positions, so they sort of already were doing that.

And if I save them millions within the time box of an interview, they'll probably hire me anyway.

But I can invoice my time even though I'm not invoicing every detail of it.

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#535

Post by formerkrogemp »

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #124
whatshisface wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad code + time allowed to clean it up = perfectly well-defined business requirements + a license to think about code craftsmanship. That's a lot of people's dream job.

Its a pretty common paradigm too. Build fast, poorly, more ducttape than boiler plate, and it works. Bring in a spit and polish crew and build towards an evergreen codebase.

Duct tape and spit keeps our infrastructure together.

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#536

Post by mbrodersen »

We ask candidates to review and criticise 2 pages of really buggy, badly written C++ code. It is a great way to find out how experienced a C++ developer is and how good they will be solving hard problems. Writing new code is easy. Fixing problem in code written by other developers is much more of a challenge.

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#537

Post by whitesilhouette »

vsareto wrote: post #534
whitesilhouette wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And do you ask payment for the comp-off against the time-off that you had to take to visit for the interview. And do you ask payment for the gas spent while driving to come attend the interview. And do you ask compensation for your intelligent views presented during the interview when they asked you a technical problem related to their real life scenario and your answer ended up solving that saving them millions.

Pre-pandemic, you could get flown out for onsites for the higher positions, so they sort of already were doing that. And if I save them millions within the time box of an interview, they'll probably hire me anyway. But I can invoice my time even though I'm not invoicing every detail of it.

Oh, you went way overboard just for the sake of your argument. Interviews at such positions have a different format. And different expectations. Heck, even the job contracts are customised at those levels. Nobody's gonna give those candidates a written technical round.

Not necessarily. If the HR is short-sighted, and that happens a lot for a lot of even famous companies, they'll say you have already saved the million and that your salary expectation is not worth it. Trust me, shit like this happens.

Theoretically yes (and they'll sure as hell contest that claim). But I've never seen anybody EVER do that except _very rarely_ for positions in Legal.

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#538

Post by flockonus »

joshgachnang wrote: post #52
andrewflnr wrote: post #37

My thesis is that the true measure of reading code is still the ability to fix and extend it. So my current ideal interview problem is still a tiny toy codebase, where the interviewee is tasked with adding some (relatively trivial) feature to it. Like ten lines of code, but where those lines require you to have grokked the other couple hundred or so. Any downsides?

Yup, this is what my current take home (2 hours) project is. Read about 200 lines of code, implement about 30 somewhat complex lines in a real working project. And then there's a code review by a "junior" candidate for them to read and review, filled with about 10 bugs in 50 lines. I much prefer it to giving out algorithms questions.

Would love to see what the assignment is like if the code happens to is available to share / public.

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#539

Post by adave »

I liked the article and kudos to reaching top of hacker news.Your article however does not consider real world problems like - What if this technique becomes popular and now there is LeetCode db for your question? In that case its really easy to just know the answer and get far. - Same for reading the code part. Most interviewers have a set of questions they go with to be fair or what not however once you know the code snippet in question you can talk about it.

The real issue is that one approach does not work for all and there need to be uniqueness to every team so an avg candidate cannot just hack the interview process. This is the problem with the current system as well since everyone uses it and its become its own nemesis.

Re: When hiring developers, have the candidate read existing code

#540

Post by itronitron »

swinglock wrote: post #320
wingerlang wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how locked your computer is but everywhere I've ever worked, it's been trivial. Email the source file, zip it and upload somewhere, pastebin temporary, airdrop it, usb sticks.

You would do that? Now I'm beginning to consider if I should be asking candidates to bring some intellectual property owned by their current/previous employer as a filter.

I could just print out and bring a patent.
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