4 ms·

Years ago I had a recruiter pull a list of questions from their technical guy to ask. The first question was something about constructors in C. I carefully expl

Years ago I had a recruiter pull a list of questions from their technical guy to ask. The first question was something about constructors in C. I carefully explained that the question made no sense for C but would for C++. They insisted the question was correct, so I told them what the answer would be in C++. They also asked me about if I had experience with the EMACS editor, but spelled out the letter E-M-A-C-S. Why that was an important skill I have no idea. Especially since this was for a contact that several companies were competing for and I was hired by the winning company to work on it. No special knowledge of EMACS was required. Any text editor would work.

sithadmin 9y ago
Regarding the Emacs question - could be a weedout/profiling question. I've asked recruiters in the past to screen candidates for familiarity with certain tools as a shortcut for identifying candidates with higher aptitude for what I'm hiring for. For instance, when I'm hiring a vSphere admin, and I ask my recruiters to put anybody that wasn't immediately familiar with RVTools (among other things) at the bottom of the resume pile. It's a dead simple and ubiquitous utility for vSphere admins, and is a pretty good shortcut for eliminating people with too little experience or too hands-off experience from contention. Sure, it might end up accidentally selecting against what would otherwise be good candidates, but in general I've found it helps accelerate forced ranking of candidates. That's probably a bit more directly applicable to the role than your Emacs question, but they might be trying to feel out what 'kind' of a developer you could be. Those that favor Emacs, Vim etc tend to be rather different than those that use Visual Studio, etc.
- tacotaco98 9y ago
  But a text editor? Sorry, but that's just ridiculous. There are plenty of good developers who have never heard of Emacs, and plenty of shit developers who have. Is this really what passes for interviewing in the software world? Useless trivia questions about text editors because you think that weeds people out? Have you been sued yet? Because you should probably get sued.
- tacotaco98 9y ago
  You sound like my racist grandfather: "Those that favor Emacs, Vim etc tend to be rather different than those that use Visual Studio, etc." Yeah? How are they different? O Great Arbiter of Skills, how did you come to this conclusion?
  - damnfine 9y ago
    Honestly, while I would not stake a hiring decision on the distinction, I see quite a difference in the two. Comparing a coders chosen habits to racism is a huge stretch.
    - LeoNatan25 9y ago
      That’s not what was compared. The comparison to racism was to the poster who said EMACS users are “different” from VS users.
  - david-cako 9y ago
    Awareness of them alone indicates a greater interest in the field imo. It obviously wouldn't be a critical factor, but it's easy to tell how enthusiastic someone is about computers in general based on whether their familiarity with them ends at the outlines of their personal experience or domain. There's tons of ways to assess this -- interest in upcoming technologies, familiarity with linux/unix history, awareness of other tools, regardless of whether they use them, etc To me this seems like the OPPOSITE of trivia/whiteboard interviewing. The goal is to probe someone, not mark them down for every random thing they don't know about. Software absolutely seems like one such field where it's both easy and important to find people whose enthusiasm goes home with them.
    - adjkant 9y ago
      I still think you'll end up selecting against a lot of great hires. Plenty of great programmers simply don't use vim/emacs, even if aware of them. The question didn't seem to be about awareness but rather about experience. I am aware of both and actively choose not to use either - I use nano if it's ever easiest to edit a file on the terminal, and otherwise, stick to IDE's and things like Sublime/Atom. It's really popular in the startup world to care deeply about enthusiasm about the subject at home, but a lot of these litmus tests won't consistently hit that. Even though you may generally get better programmers on average through these types of screens and companies are free to hire as they please when it comes to this, it seems rather unfair to a good programmer who simply likes to do other things in their spare time. Requiring programmers that live and breathe CS makes it feel much more exploitative.
flukus 9y ago
It's possible they have a bunch of tools written as emacs scripts to the point where it's become a key part of the role. There is enough of a learning curve (the editor itself, short cuts, elisp, plugins) and a significant chance that someone could quit in frustration that favoring people with experience makes sense. I like to use vim whenever possible, but my job requires Visual Studio for many day to day tasks and would not hire someone unfamiliar with Visual Studio.
golergka 9y ago
I once interviewed a guy who listed both EMACS and Vim in his "Skills" section. When I asked him how to quit Vim, he got visibly confused and said "you just close the window".

sithadmin 9y ago

Regarding the Emacs question - could be a weedout/profiling question. I've asked recruiters in the past to screen candidates for familiarity with certain tools as a shortcut for identifying candidates with higher aptitude for what I'm hiring for. For instance, when I'm hiring a vSphere admin, and I ask my recruiters to put anybody that wasn't immediately familiar with RVTools (among other things) at the bottom of the resume pile. It's a dead simple and ubiquitous utility for vSphere admins, and is a pretty good shortcut for eliminating people with too little experience or too hands-off experience from contention. Sure, it might end up accidentally selecting against what would otherwise be good candidates, but in general I've found it helps accelerate forced ranking of candidates. That's probably a bit more directly applicable to the role than your Emacs question, but they might be trying to feel out what 'kind' of a developer you could be. Those that favor Emacs, Vim etc tend to be rather different than those that use Visual Studio, etc.

tacotaco98 9y ago
But a text editor? Sorry, but that's just ridiculous. There are plenty of good developers who have never heard of Emacs, and plenty of shit developers who have. Is this really what passes for interviewing in the software world? Useless trivia questions about text editors because you think that weeds people out? Have you been sued yet? Because you should probably get sued.
tacotaco98 9y ago
You sound like my racist grandfather: "Those that favor Emacs, Vim etc tend to be rather different than those that use Visual Studio, etc." Yeah? How are they different? O Great Arbiter of Skills, how did you come to this conclusion?
- damnfine 9y ago
  Honestly, while I would not stake a hiring decision on the distinction, I see quite a difference in the two. Comparing a coders chosen habits to racism is a huge stretch.
  - LeoNatan25 9y ago
    That’s not what was compared. The comparison to racism was to the poster who said EMACS users are “different” from VS users.
- david-cako 9y ago
  Awareness of them alone indicates a greater interest in the field imo. It obviously wouldn't be a critical factor, but it's easy to tell how enthusiastic someone is about computers in general based on whether their familiarity with them ends at the outlines of their personal experience or domain. There's tons of ways to assess this -- interest in upcoming technologies, familiarity with linux/unix history, awareness of other tools, regardless of whether they use them, etc To me this seems like the OPPOSITE of trivia/whiteboard interviewing. The goal is to probe someone, not mark them down for every random thing they don't know about. Software absolutely seems like one such field where it's both easy and important to find people whose enthusiasm goes home with them.
  - adjkant 9y ago
    I still think you'll end up selecting against a lot of great hires. Plenty of great programmers simply don't use vim/emacs, even if aware of them. The question didn't seem to be about awareness but rather about experience. I am aware of both and actively choose not to use either - I use nano if it's ever easiest to edit a file on the terminal, and otherwise, stick to IDE's and things like Sublime/Atom. It's really popular in the startup world to care deeply about enthusiasm about the subject at home, but a lot of these litmus tests won't consistently hit that. Even though you may generally get better programmers on average through these types of screens and companies are free to hire as they please when it comes to this, it seems rather unfair to a good programmer who simply likes to do other things in their spare time. Requiring programmers that live and breathe CS makes it feel much more exploitative.

flukus 9y ago

It's possible they have a bunch of tools written as emacs scripts to the point where it's become a key part of the role. There is enough of a learning curve (the editor itself, short cuts, elisp, plugins) and a significant chance that someone could quit in frustration that favoring people with experience makes sense. I like to use vim whenever possible, but my job requires Visual Studio for many day to day tasks and would not hire someone unfamiliar with Visual Studio.

golergka 9y ago

I once interviewed a guy who listed both EMACS and Vim in his "Skills" section. When I asked him how to quit Vim, he got visibly confused and said "you just close the window".