5 ms·

Is this sarcasm? You just make your entire hiring call on talking to the person without looking at their career, academics and skills?

sjsjxhhc 9y ago
If you’re one person out of many in the hiring process, and your role is to evaluate some specific skills, then yes, it may well be the case that knowing more about the candidate’s background will hurt more than it helps.
- s17n 9y ago
  Exactly
psyc 9y ago
I doubt it's sarcasm. I've often lamented that as a 30-year 'veteran' I'm still often treated as though I'm probably incompetent, until proven otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt. Some people do ignore my CV. I know that some people believe this is right and necessary because you can't trust anyone. I believe it's a travesty in this industry, and if I am treated this way, I'm walking straight out the door and into my next opportunity.
- golergka 9y ago
  > I've often lamented that as a 30-year 'veteran' I'm still often treated as though I'm probably incompetent, until proven otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt. I have had a pleasure of interviewing a 'veteran' who listed both Emacs and vim on his resume, among dozens of other keywords and many, many years of professional experience. I asked him, how do you exit these text editors? "As any other program", he answered, perplexed - "you click on the cross in the upper-right corner". This was not an unique and ever especially outstanding event in my interviewing experience.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    Is that answer wrong? Does using GVIM or Aquamacs mean you don’t know vim and emacs?
    - golergka 9y ago
      When I asked if he was using a console version or some wrapper that supported window manager, he didn't understand the question. When I asked if there's some another way to close it, he, just as surprised, told about the main program menu, just below the window title. Any person who actually used either of these editors even once would have a pretty solid idea of what I was going for. It was a very simple, quick test to determine that he just assembled his CV from semi-relevant keywords at random.
      - itronitron 9y ago
        the right answer would be to google stackoverflow for how to kill vim after saving your work (pressing ctrl+s) :)
      - rayiner 9y ago
        I don't know if I believe that. Lots of people (in particular folks using Windows or Mac) use the GUI version of those editors because they're preinstalled on machines at school and work. They may not even know there is a console version of those programs. (Also "window manager" is pretty *nix-specific jargon.)
        SilasX 9y ago
        I get that someone might use the default text editor. But where would a vim/emacs variant be installed that way? And if it were, why would it last for a novice any longer than "um, this is weird and doesn't do anything". Vim and emacs are only tolerable if you put the effort to learn how they work. And if you did, how would you get to the end of a tutorial without learning how to quit? You're right, it's technically possible, but the parent is justified in being really suspicious that someone is citing familiarity with both emacs and vim and is confused that there's a non-mouse way to do something.
- GlennS 9y ago
  How do you interview someone more experienced than yourself? In the last set of interviews I had to do, I've ended up doing the role of talking to people about the technologies listed on their CV and asking them detailed questions to find out just how well they really know them. This just because I happened to be the person in our company who knew a little bit about most of the things that the people we were interviewing claimed to be good at. Sometimes you have a really nice technical conversation with them and discover that they're clever and knowledgable. Sometimes you uncover a blagger trying their luck. Sometimes a bit of both. So, it's a useful part of the interview I think. So very recently we interviewed someone with 30+ years of experience, more than any programmer at our company (only 3 developers), and much more than myself (8 years). So I went away and did a little bit of research about the technologies he'd talked about: COM and Corba and JBoss and other artefacts 80s and 90s, and tried to ask some questions in as respectful a way as I good, and I hope he wasn't too annoyed. In the end he was great (actually I found his enthusiasm and attention to detail pretty inspiring) and we hired him. I can definitely see how a person would be annoyed by that sort of probing though, especially when the interviewer doesn't know what they're talking about. But, what's the alternative?
  - mempko 9y ago
    The alternative is for our field to have a strong organization that vets it's members, like any other professional field such as lawyers and other engineering disciplines. That way, before you even meet the person, you can assume a level of competence and can get into much deeper questions faster.
    - ThePawnBreak 9y ago
      And then all the high-paying jobs will go to people who went to MIT and Stanford, and if you're great but couldn't afford more than community college, tough luck, because your credential is the same as other people who barely finished high school.
      - s17n 9y ago
        I think that would probably already happen if it weren't for the fact that there are more high paying jobs then there are MIT/Stanford/etc grads.
johannes1234321 9y ago
For an engineer who is doing an interview it is hard to judge those things written there. There are other stages (i.e. before an techbical interview is setup) where those are checked in depth. For the technical interviewer knowing a bit about the candidate can help to start in an area where the candidate should have experience and then move into the direction you are interviewing for, of you have a clear set of requirements for the job however can also directly start there.
s17n 9y ago
I'm not making a hiring decision, I'm just an interviewer.

sjsjxhhc 9y ago

If you’re one person out of many in the hiring process, and your role is to evaluate some specific skills, then yes, it may well be the case that knowing more about the candidate’s background will hurt more than it helps.

s17n 9y ago
Exactly

psyc 9y ago

I doubt it's sarcasm. I've often lamented that as a 30-year 'veteran' I'm still often treated as though I'm probably incompetent, until proven otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt. Some people do ignore my CV. I know that some people believe this is right and necessary because you can't trust anyone. I believe it's a travesty in this industry, and if I am treated this way, I'm walking straight out the door and into my next opportunity.

golergka 9y ago
> I've often lamented that as a 30-year 'veteran' I'm still often treated as though I'm probably incompetent, until proven otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt. I have had a pleasure of interviewing a 'veteran' who listed both Emacs and vim on his resume, among dozens of other keywords and many, many years of professional experience. I asked him, how do you exit these text editors? "As any other program", he answered, perplexed - "you click on the cross in the upper-right corner". This was not an unique and ever especially outstanding event in my interviewing experience.
- rayiner 9y ago
  Is that answer wrong? Does using GVIM or Aquamacs mean you don’t know vim and emacs?
  - golergka 9y ago
    When I asked if he was using a console version or some wrapper that supported window manager, he didn't understand the question. When I asked if there's some another way to close it, he, just as surprised, told about the main program menu, just below the window title. Any person who actually used either of these editors even once would have a pretty solid idea of what I was going for. It was a very simple, quick test to determine that he just assembled his CV from semi-relevant keywords at random.
    - itronitron 9y ago
      the right answer would be to google stackoverflow for how to kill vim after saving your work (pressing ctrl+s) :)
    - rayiner 9y ago
      I don't know if I believe that. Lots of people (in particular folks using Windows or Mac) use the GUI version of those editors because they're preinstalled on machines at school and work. They may not even know there is a console version of those programs. (Also "window manager" is pretty *nix-specific jargon.)
      - SilasX 9y ago
        I get that someone might use the default text editor. But where would a vim/emacs variant be installed that way? And if it were, why would it last for a novice any longer than "um, this is weird and doesn't do anything". Vim and emacs are only tolerable if you put the effort to learn how they work. And if you did, how would you get to the end of a tutorial without learning how to quit? You're right, it's technically possible, but the parent is justified in being really suspicious that someone is citing familiarity with both emacs and vim and is confused that there's a non-mouse way to do something.
GlennS 9y ago
How do you interview someone more experienced than yourself? In the last set of interviews I had to do, I've ended up doing the role of talking to people about the technologies listed on their CV and asking them detailed questions to find out just how well they really know them. This just because I happened to be the person in our company who knew a little bit about most of the things that the people we were interviewing claimed to be good at. Sometimes you have a really nice technical conversation with them and discover that they're clever and knowledgable. Sometimes you uncover a blagger trying their luck. Sometimes a bit of both. So, it's a useful part of the interview I think. So very recently we interviewed someone with 30+ years of experience, more than any programmer at our company (only 3 developers), and much more than myself (8 years). So I went away and did a little bit of research about the technologies he'd talked about: COM and Corba and JBoss and other artefacts 80s and 90s, and tried to ask some questions in as respectful a way as I good, and I hope he wasn't too annoyed. In the end he was great (actually I found his enthusiasm and attention to detail pretty inspiring) and we hired him. I can definitely see how a person would be annoyed by that sort of probing though, especially when the interviewer doesn't know what they're talking about. But, what's the alternative?
- mempko 9y ago
  The alternative is for our field to have a strong organization that vets it's members, like any other professional field such as lawyers and other engineering disciplines. That way, before you even meet the person, you can assume a level of competence and can get into much deeper questions faster.
  - ThePawnBreak 9y ago
    And then all the high-paying jobs will go to people who went to MIT and Stanford, and if you're great but couldn't afford more than community college, tough luck, because your credential is the same as other people who barely finished high school.
    - s17n 9y ago
      I think that would probably already happen if it weren't for the fact that there are more high paying jobs then there are MIT/Stanford/etc grads.

johannes1234321 9y ago

For an engineer who is doing an interview it is hard to judge those things written there. There are other stages (i.e. before an techbical interview is setup) where those are checked in depth. For the technical interviewer knowing a bit about the candidate can help to start in an area where the candidate should have experience and then move into the direction you are interviewing for, of you have a clear set of requirements for the job however can also directly start there.

s17n 9y ago

I'm not making a hiring decision, I'm just an interviewer.