3 ms·

Could you please elaborate on "Oh, uh, well, I uh, got some coffee for the dev team."? I'm really curious what are this kind of people saying at an interview.

bad_user 16y ago
I don't think anyone is saying it, but lots of people are adding projects on their resumes just because they were in the vicinity of team colleagues working on it. Try being part of the interview process sometimes; you'll have lots of fun :)
- tobtoh 16y ago
  I actually had someone say something close to that in an interview for a sysadmin position. The guy claimed he had experience configuring Cisco routers. For this particular job configuring routers was not a primary task, but because I had a passing knowledge of Cisco routers I asked a couple of questions since he had brought it up. After 2-3 questions which the candidate couldn't answer, he finally admitted that his experience in 'configuring' Cisco routers consisted of plugging the network cables into the port at the back.
  - laurasbadideas 16y ago
    I once interviewed someone whose resume said he had "modified the Unix kernel to support [some device]". I assumed that meant that he'd written a device driver, but when I asked him about it, he explained that he'd bought a third-party device driver and installed it on his local system.
azanar 16y ago
Usually, they are stumbling all over themselves, and completely failing every question they are asked. These become the sorts of interviews people write about on The Daily WTF and other blogs online. That is, unless they interview at an organization that is much more interested in finding compatible personality for their culture than they are in the person's ability. These organizations exist; I worked for one a year or two back. The candidate I was interviewing as part of a panel had not been asked a coding question to that point, and she was already quite far along in the interview process -- the next step after the panel interview was an offer. No one else really cared; they just wanted someone who would increase headcount while not disrupting the culture and structure of the organization. So, the people who answer this way, they're just playing a numbers game. They keep going on interviews until they hit an organization like I describe above; at that point, all they need to be hired is to just be agreeable.
- ciupicri 16y ago
  But what happens when they need to code something? How do they manage to cover their asses?
  - jrockway 16y ago
    Why do you think people love "refactoring editors" like Eclipse so much? With enough auto-inserts, everyone can pretend to be a programmer. Also, most people have figured out how to trial-and-error tweaking existing code. Blank editor window? Nothing. Modifying a bunch of existing code that renders a web page? Surprisingly able.

bad_user 16y ago

I don't think anyone is saying it, but lots of people are adding projects on their resumes just because they were in the vicinity of team colleagues working on it. Try being part of the interview process sometimes; you'll have lots of fun :)

tobtoh 16y ago
I actually had someone say something close to that in an interview for a sysadmin position. The guy claimed he had experience configuring Cisco routers. For this particular job configuring routers was not a primary task, but because I had a passing knowledge of Cisco routers I asked a couple of questions since he had brought it up. After 2-3 questions which the candidate couldn't answer, he finally admitted that his experience in 'configuring' Cisco routers consisted of plugging the network cables into the port at the back.
- laurasbadideas 16y ago
  I once interviewed someone whose resume said he had "modified the Unix kernel to support [some device]". I assumed that meant that he'd written a device driver, but when I asked him about it, he explained that he'd bought a third-party device driver and installed it on his local system.

azanar 16y ago

Usually, they are stumbling all over themselves, and completely failing every question they are asked. These become the sorts of interviews people write about on The Daily WTF and other blogs online. That is, unless they interview at an organization that is much more interested in finding compatible personality for their culture than they are in the person's ability. These organizations exist; I worked for one a year or two back. The candidate I was interviewing as part of a panel had not been asked a coding question to that point, and she was already quite far along in the interview process -- the next step after the panel interview was an offer. No one else really cared; they just wanted someone who would increase headcount while not disrupting the culture and structure of the organization. So, the people who answer this way, they're just playing a numbers game. They keep going on interviews until they hit an organization like I describe above; at that point, all they need to be hired is to just be agreeable.

ciupicri 16y ago
But what happens when they need to code something? How do they manage to cover their asses?
- jrockway 16y ago
  Why do you think people love "refactoring editors" like Eclipse so much? With enough auto-inserts, everyone can pretend to be a programmer. Also, most people have figured out how to trial-and-error tweaking existing code. Blank editor window? Nothing. Modifying a bunch of existing code that renders a web page? Surprisingly able.