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As a hiring manager: your coding skills are just one of many things I look at when I decide whether I'll make an offer or not. I need to think how you'll intera

As a hiring manager: your coding skills are just one of many things I look at when I decide whether I'll make an offer or not. I need to think how you'll interact with the team, whether our company culture is something that you'll enjoy or not, whether my team will become a better team when you join us. Maybe you're defensive about your code and do not like having it reviewed? In that case I feel you won't fit well a culture with a heavy emphasis on code review. Maybe you enjoy pair programming and working in a place where it's not a common practice won't let you do your best? I wish it was as simple as checking your code and references, but I think it is not.

mrfusion 8y ago
I’ve found people are very adaptable especially when starting a new job. And if people do well with pair programming, let them do it!
- arnvald 8y ago
  My point is when a new person joins the team, the team changes. It might become better, but it also might become worse. A brilliant programmer who treats others with disrespect might have overall negative impact on the whole team. An average programmer who helps the team bond, solves conflicts and keeps morale high, can have overall positive impact.
cyberpunk0 8y ago
It is that simple... Just like every damn other job. The only reason software interviews are so bad is because HR departments make them bad by blindly following bullshit trends like brain teaser puzzles that prove nothing in terms of competency as well as ridiculous multi-round interviews just to cancel after weeks of the process because your interview was really to make numbers look good while you were grooming the candidate you had in mind already. Business is fake bullshit, filled with fake people. So happy to not deal with it anymore
azangru 8y ago
Let's see the questions you listed: - how you'll interact with the team - whether our company culture is something that you'll enjoy - whether my team will become a better team when you join us - maybe you're defensive about your code and do not like having it reviewed - maybe you enjoy pair programming As a hiring manager, how do you find answers to these questions?
- arnvald 8y ago
  These were just example questions, for example pair programming might be irrelevant, if it's not a significant part of team culture. I admit some questions here are tricky. It's hard to predict how candidate will interact with the whole team: maybe they're very respectful to me, but they will look down on junior developers? Here are a few things I do that help me better predict whether candidate will fit the team: - ask candidate to do coding task at home and later discuss the solution during face-to-face interview. While discussing the solution and suggesting improvements I can see how candidate reacts to feedback, whether they can explain why they came up wit this particular implementation, what do they say when I suggest an idea for refactoring etc. - I like having another team member with me during interview. That person is an observer and they help me review candidate's performance (e.g. it happened that I had an impression that candidate did quite well, but my observer told me that I was often helping candidate with their task, which I had not noticed) - lunch with candidate might be helpful. I take 2 team members with me and 4 of us grab some food out of the office. This helps candidate meet potential teammates and talk in a more relaxing atmosphere, so both sides can see how they feel about each other. - one more thing I do is during initial phone call when I tell candidate about company, at first I give a very brief introduction, then before I say more, I ask whether candidate has any questions. This gives me a lot of insight: some candidates ask advanced questions, some ask very basic ("so what does your company do?" happened a few times!), some focus on product, some ask whether they'll be able to learn a particular skill. Some candidates don't have any questions, which is usually a red flag. These questions themselves are not enough to decide that candidate won't fit, but they're helpful. - I ask candidates what they would like in their new job to be different than in the previous one. One candidate tells me they want to focus on one particular JS framework. If in my company we chose libraries and languages on per-project basis, she might not like it. Counter example: candidate that wants to learn multiple new frameworks might not feel well in a place that is conservative when it comes to introducing new libraries
protonimitate 8y ago
I think there should be more emphasis placed on the non-techincal abilities of a candidate then is the current trend. We love to think that getting a job should be based on pure meritocracy, but being able to do the job is one small piece of the puzzle. It's the personality, cultural fit, and general interpersonal skills that really make or break a good team. If you have a team of the 5 best programmers in the world but they can't handle basic human interaction, nothing will get done.

mrfusion 8y ago

I’ve found people are very adaptable especially when starting a new job. And if people do well with pair programming, let them do it!

arnvald 8y ago
My point is when a new person joins the team, the team changes. It might become better, but it also might become worse. A brilliant programmer who treats others with disrespect might have overall negative impact on the whole team. An average programmer who helps the team bond, solves conflicts and keeps morale high, can have overall positive impact.

cyberpunk0 8y ago

It is that simple... Just like every damn other job. The only reason software interviews are so bad is because HR departments make them bad by blindly following bullshit trends like brain teaser puzzles that prove nothing in terms of competency as well as ridiculous multi-round interviews just to cancel after weeks of the process because your interview was really to make numbers look good while you were grooming the candidate you had in mind already. Business is fake bullshit, filled with fake people. So happy to not deal with it anymore

azangru 8y ago

Let's see the questions you listed: - how you'll interact with the team - whether our company culture is something that you'll enjoy - whether my team will become a better team when you join us - maybe you're defensive about your code and do not like having it reviewed - maybe you enjoy pair programming As a hiring manager, how do you find answers to these questions?

arnvald 8y ago
These were just example questions, for example pair programming might be irrelevant, if it's not a significant part of team culture. I admit some questions here are tricky. It's hard to predict how candidate will interact with the whole team: maybe they're very respectful to me, but they will look down on junior developers? Here are a few things I do that help me better predict whether candidate will fit the team: - ask candidate to do coding task at home and later discuss the solution during face-to-face interview. While discussing the solution and suggesting improvements I can see how candidate reacts to feedback, whether they can explain why they came up wit this particular implementation, what do they say when I suggest an idea for refactoring etc. - I like having another team member with me during interview. That person is an observer and they help me review candidate's performance (e.g. it happened that I had an impression that candidate did quite well, but my observer told me that I was often helping candidate with their task, which I had not noticed) - lunch with candidate might be helpful. I take 2 team members with me and 4 of us grab some food out of the office. This helps candidate meet potential teammates and talk in a more relaxing atmosphere, so both sides can see how they feel about each other. - one more thing I do is during initial phone call when I tell candidate about company, at first I give a very brief introduction, then before I say more, I ask whether candidate has any questions. This gives me a lot of insight: some candidates ask advanced questions, some ask very basic ("so what does your company do?" happened a few times!), some focus on product, some ask whether they'll be able to learn a particular skill. Some candidates don't have any questions, which is usually a red flag. These questions themselves are not enough to decide that candidate won't fit, but they're helpful. - I ask candidates what they would like in their new job to be different than in the previous one. One candidate tells me they want to focus on one particular JS framework. If in my company we chose libraries and languages on per-project basis, she might not like it. Counter example: candidate that wants to learn multiple new frameworks might not feel well in a place that is conservative when it comes to introducing new libraries

protonimitate 8y ago

I think there should be more emphasis placed on the non-techincal abilities of a candidate then is the current trend. We love to think that getting a job should be based on pure meritocracy, but being able to do the job is one small piece of the puzzle. It's the personality, cultural fit, and general interpersonal skills that really make or break a good team. If you have a team of the 5 best programmers in the world but they can't handle basic human interaction, nothing will get done.