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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

#81

Post by hinkley »

rubidium wrote: post #58
hinkley wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The very best engineers have a checklist they apply depending on the type of bug. This is misleading at best. Masters do less work than beginners. They have years of intuition built up that let them apply heuristics extremely cheaply and save their energy for solving the novel parts of the problem. There is no 'list'. There is only the verbal part of the brain trying to introspect on what just happened. Sometimes a…

Most problems aren’t special. They occur because some good general guidance wasn’t formed or applied. Having a checklist does help masters. It helps make sure they don’t miss the obvious issue in front of their face. Checklist manifesto is good reading on this.

Hmmm. I think the checklist exists, for sure, but tends to be more Plan B. If your initial strategy is exhausted with no progress, fall back on the checklist.

As a programmer I have an opportunity not everyone else has. I can codify parts of my checklist in a way where I don't really have to think about them at all save for a few times a year with the big outlier problems, teaching someone to do basic troubleshooting themselves, or starting a new project.

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

#82

Post by j45 »

lonelappde wrote: post #65
j45 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yup. Lots of non tech companies (pretty much most) which are still doing tech hiring

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

#83

Post by thaumasiotes »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #56
runawaybottle wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if you’re the real deal, you’re the real deal :p I guess only celebrities/insta influencers have to keep up the image. Casually hides Cracking the Coding Interview book

> Casually hides Cracking the Coding Interview book Ironically, I'm pretty sure that owning that book is part of the image :)

No, the image is that you own CLRS. Cracking the Coding Interview is to the programmer image as Cliffs Notes are to the Shakespeare nerd image.

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

#84

Post by justanotherc »

yoz-y wrote: post #33
runawaybottle wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also should not propagate the caricature of the developer. You know, the all I need is gallons of coffee and I’m off grokking code all day in a hoodie. I’m off to my Kubernetes meetup! Whoops, just dropped my giant math is fun textbook.

/me looks at a pile of empty coffee capsules, /me looks at the hoodie, /me looks at the (unread) giant math is fun book, I hide in shame. I do agree though, especially in hiring I find it weird to expect people to have their hobby being the same as their job. I'm quite curions if there is another profession where this is the case. Photographers maybe?

Pilots to some extent (the senior airline pilots who can afford to fly privately), but that is often to get back to the joy and freedom of roaming the skies at will in light aircraft vs the demanding and rigid world of commercial flying, so arguably not the same thing.

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

#85

Post by plasticchris »

jerzyt wrote: post #79

I really like problem solving and estimation questions during interviews, and I favor them over coding skills, etc. A question that I frequently use is how long would it take to evacuate a city like Phoenix, if there was a 24 hour warning that some dictator du jour is going to drop a nuke. It boils down to assessing a throughput of various modes of transportation: cars, buses, trains, airplanes, and yes walking. One…

Google used to do this kind of question but found it wasn't predictive of future perfomance.

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

#86

Post by ggambetta »

marcinzm wrote: post #67
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.

I worked in a handful of teams at Google and none used Agile (I believe some do, but they're a minority), and very little formality besides a weekly team meeting. From what I hear, FB and other big companies are in a similar situation. Sure, you can stretch the definition and say they're dysfunctional ("omg lol google kills projects") but you can't deny they're successful.

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

#87

Post by greghausheer »

jrumbut wrote: post #38
ape4 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

That's funny, I came to the almost opposite conclusion that the obvious answer was that everything is tradeoffs and compromises. I suppose very easy things like consistent indentation width might be done perfectly in a codebase, but any non-trivial thing always could be "more X" or "less Y".

"I came to the almost opposite conclusion that the obvious answer was that everything is tradeoffs and compromises."

Probably the smartest answer there is.

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

#88

Post by invalidOrTaken »

marcinzm wrote: post #70
invalidOrTaken wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I feel like the caveats prove my point.

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

#89

Post by marcinzm »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #88
marcinzm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I feel like the caveats prove my point.

It's more that you can't lump all developers into one category and make blanked statement like you did. Some developers in some markets aren't in demand. Some developers in some markets are absurdly in demand.

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

#90

Post by eindiran »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #83
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Casually hides Cracking the Coding Interview book Ironically, I'm pretty sure that owning that book is part of the image :)

No, the image is that you own CLRS. Cracking the Coding Interview is to the programmer image as Cliffs Notes are to the Shakespeare nerd image.

I feel like owning a print copy of CLRS just implies that you studied Computer Science at a university, not necessarily that you're some super gifted hacker. But then again, most people who own print copies of Shakespeare are probably not uber-Shakespeare nerds, but took some English Lit courses.
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