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Your question seems unexpected, and not necessarily in the charter of every programming gig. I happen to have a great answer to it, after making big improvemen

by johnrob 11y ago

Your question seems unexpected, and not necessarily in the charter of every programming gig. I happen to have a great answer to it, after making big improvements to build times, but that is pure chance. The comment at the top of this whole thread has the right idea: sometimes candidates randomly meet unknown expectations, and sometimes the opposite happens.

mason55 11y ago
I don't think his question is unexpected at all for any kind of candidate that is going to have a leadership component. There are a hundred different answers that you can give to his initial question (how did you increase velocity of your teammates). TDD, improved requirements process, improved deployment process, improved monitoring, improved mentoring process, whatever. I actually think this is a great way to figure out whether someone has actually done what they are talking about and done it successfully or if it's just something they have read about or halfheartedly/unsuccessfully tried to implement. It's easy to say "agile is good" or "continuous integration is good" or "TDD is good". If you're going to claim one of those things as a big accomplishment then you should be able to talk about the specifics of how you implemented it. I don't even care if I agree with all your decisions. What I do care about is why you made your decisions. If you made some decision that caused the company to go bankrupt but at the time it was the most sensible decision then lets talk about it. If all you can say is "testing is good because it prevents bugs" then I would be concerned that you either hadn't implemented a comprehensive testing program or you didn't understand why you were making the decisions you made.
braythwayt 11y ago
It's not a question I would ask every time, but it is one I ask sometimes. I just picked it to give an example of trying to get a specific answer but failing. I might ask this question of an engineer who is interviewing for a lead position. These days, an answer could be as simple as, "I paired with a colleague yesterday," or, "I gave thorough feedback on a pull request." I would then follow up with "Tell me more," and a candidate might talk about a recent PR where they pointed out a vulnerability, or an optimization opportunity, &c.

by johnrob 11y ago

mason55 11y ago

I don't think his question is unexpected at all for any kind of candidate that is going to have a leadership component. There are a hundred different answers that you can give to his initial question (how did you increase velocity of your teammates). TDD, improved requirements process, improved deployment process, improved monitoring, improved mentoring process, whatever. I actually think this is a great way to figure out whether someone has actually done what they are talking about and done it successfully or if it's just something they have read about or halfheartedly/unsuccessfully tried to implement. It's easy to say "agile is good" or "continuous integration is good" or "TDD is good". If you're going to claim one of those things as a big accomplishment then you should be able to talk about the specifics of how you implemented it. I don't even care if I agree with all your decisions. What I do care about is why you made your decisions. If you made some decision that caused the company to go bankrupt but at the time it was the most sensible decision then lets talk about it. If all you can say is "testing is good because it prevents bugs" then I would be concerned that you either hadn't implemented a comprehensive testing program or you didn't understand why you were making the decisions you made.

braythwayt 11y ago

It's not a question I would ask every time, but it is one I ask sometimes. I just picked it to give an example of trying to get a specific answer but failing. I might ask this question of an engineer who is interviewing for a lead position. These days, an answer could be as simple as, "I paired with a colleague yesterday," or, "I gave thorough feedback on a pull request." I would then follow up with "Tell me more," and a candidate might talk about a recent PR where they pointed out a vulnerability, or an optimization opportunity, &c.