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How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

greghausheer.com

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Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#61

Post by bdamm »

rhombocombus wrote: post #11

As a professional programmer I spend almost all of my free time NOT programming, but I do spend it taking care of my family and social obligations instead. While I love what I do I would love it less if I did too much of it.

Exactly. When I was a junior I had plenty of side projects that I rotated through. Then that got old, I developed deep passions for other non-computer things, have a family, enjoy knowing people, and what do you know? Not many side projects that involve programming. I haven't updated my blog in 15 years. I'd rather go fishing with my kid, rock climbing with my bud, or banging together a garden with my wife.

Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#62

Post by greghausheer »

mcfunk wrote: post #19
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please read the article further down. The author explicitly says: > It's OK too if an engineer doesn't have any side projects. I always ask about side projects to give candidates an opportunity to highlight their side projects, not because we require candidates to have side projects. I'm sure some hiring managers out there have side projects listed under their "must have" criteria, but in my experience the good hirin…

fair point, I did miss that further down in the section. It's still unfortunate to lead with a generalization that plays into a common trope/assumption about developers that does play out in the hiring process, but it's good to see it called out explicitly below that it shouldn't be required. I certainly don't disagree that side projects are a good data point especially for junior developers who don't have the direct…

Fair criticism, point taken. Thanks for the feedback here. Def did not mean to breed a culture of always being "on" and "crushing it" which might also be part of the trope.

Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#63

Post by lonelappde »

slg wrote: post #37
dominotw wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yea ofcourse, if someone is better at skills you are looking for then by all means coding hobby is irrelvant. But what if all else being equal, why would you not choose coding hobby candidate.

If we are going the "all else being equal" route, one could argue the hobbyist is a worse candidate because they have spent more time working and thinking about programming but still haven't been able to demonstrate their skills are superior to someone who has spent much less time refining them. Give me the person who is able to get the same thing accomplished with less effort and time.

There's no way to compare that "time" of course.

Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#65

Post by lonelappde »

j45 wrote: post #50
pdonis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you're non technical when interviewing, how would you know the right answers to technical questions? My reaction to the article was similar. My answer to the title question would be: "Find a technical cofounder you can trust."

Absolutely. Don’t take advice from someone who doesn’t have relevant experience. I find a much better success rate in not hiring he traditional HR ways. Tech folks are not linear workers with floors and ceilings, they are growing much faster and on multiple layers at the same time. It’s humorous when non technical ppl try to manage things they don’t understand. That table seems to be currently being turning in societ…

The biggest tech companies you know are founded and run by techies.

Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#66

Post by esmi »

mcfunk wrote: post #3

Some good questions in here, with one exception: > Programmers are unique. They're one of the few professions where outside the boundaries of their working hours they choose to do the same exact thing they do at work: programming. Hiring managers should definitely not be assuming that all programmers do apps in their spare time. It's one thing to expect them to have a code sample (anyone should), but many strong prog…

Not only that I’m sure programmers are not unique in that regard. Surely musicians do music in their off time. Artist do art. Carpenters build. Mechanics have beaters, etc. etc.

Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#67

Post by marcinzm »

ggambetta wrote: post #12

> [From the preceding article] how were teams split, tasks delegated, and projects managed throughout Sprints? > Did they use Agile, Kanban, or Scrum? How long was their Sprint? How about asking whether they used sprints, or formal agile methodologies, at all? Why assume that every engineering org has drunk the kool aid?

The context is companies with 30+ engineers. At that point you're going to want some form of formal project methodology that allows everyone to co-exist somewhat peacefully. Generally, the results otherwise are varying level of dysfunctional.

Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#68

Post by marcinzm »

ape4 wrote: post #20
crimsonalucard wrote: post #7

I consider myself good at programming in general. But let's say the interviewer was hiring me for a technology stack that I'm pretty much clueless about... let's say assembly language or cobol... Even then I can bullshit my way past all of those questions, and I'm sure most people who can't program can also do the same too.

"What's the one thing you would not compromise on as you write code?" Its not hard to figure out the right answer to that one: "I never compromise. Must be perfect." But of course that's not true. There are always pathological conditions that can reasonably ignored especially in the first release.

I mean based on that answer I'd say you're obsessive and likely hard to work with in an environment that requires compromise (ie: a startup like in this context). So I'd consider that a rather bad answer personally.

edit: Given it's a non-technical interviewer I'd say something like "I never compromise on making sure the business objective is met. I value code quality and documentation but sometimes trade offs need to be made especially in a company this size."

Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#69

Post by Viliam1234 »

bdamm wrote: post #61
rhombocombus wrote: post #11

As a professional programmer I spend almost all of my free time NOT programming, but I do spend it taking care of my family and social obligations instead. While I love what I do I would love it less if I did too much of it.

Exactly. When I was a junior I had plenty of side projects that I rotated through. Then that got old, I developed deep passions for other non-computer things, have a family, enjoy knowing people, and what do you know? Not many side projects that involve programming. I haven't updated my blog in 15 years. I'd rather go fishing with my kid, rock climbing with my bud, or banging together a garden with my wife.

Seems to me it still makes sense to only hire people who program in their free time... if your real goal is to hire people willing to do a lot of overtime work. (I am not saying this is a good thing to do.) Things that prevent you from programming in your free time are more or less the things that would prevent you from working overtime.

Or it could simply be thinly disguised ageism. "Hey, I am not saying we shouldn't hire people who have kids... I am just saying I don't trust people who are not passionate enough to write code in their free time!"

Re: How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical – Part II

#70

Post by marcinzm »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #57
j45 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another angle of this question is often to elicit what kinds of problems you have solved in your personal time, ideally technical, but not necessarily so. I have had great conversations with someone who has built an automatic pet feeder that lead to the work. It shows a different facet of one's personality. This, in turn may come in to play when creative problem solving is involved. Quite often even non-technical pro…

This is presumptuous of a level of trust that is not there. There is no talent shortage, and if there is, it's of management, not the ability to write code. The difference between a good developer and a code monkey is that the first is self-managing. They have to be, to do their job. But even they can't do it without clear communication about the project---and cash, of course. That the shortage is of management, not…

Pre-pandemic I've found that in many markets there is a shortage of good senior developers. Good defined by those who can interview well in whatever the current in-vogue interview style is. Or more specifically those that could get jobs at Google, Facebook, etc.
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