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Best way to hire programmers is to hire them without getting them to code. Before anyone burns me at the stake...It's not really the "best" but it can work. I

Best way to hire programmers is to hire them without getting them to code. Before anyone burns me at the stake...It's not really the "best" but it can work. I was a coding interview advocate for a long time. I changed it from solving puzzles, to solving real problems taken from the domain they were interviewing for. In the early years I was a bit surprised by who struggled with coding, but I noticed a trend after a while, I could mostly tell how well someone was going to do from the preliminary discussions about software / design / experience / tradeoffs / etc. So I actually learn a lot more about the developer from that discussion and have tried to get better at that to explore more things. I like to focus on the nitty gritty of real problems, hand ow to approach architecting a piece of software from all angles. I do still use coding where I think it might help, with grads, I mostly do coding as its a good icebreaker into general conversation, and intermediates where their experience is still limited, I like to set problems that test peoples ability to keep their code tidy and modular, to see if they have developed any coding discipline, but sometimes from the initial conversation I will already know. But most often I already have a good idea.

sokoloff 8y ago
While a lot of what you say is true, that hiring pattern leaves you exposed to the bullshit artists. I always want to see some kind of code from someone for whom coding ability matters at all. Doesn’t need to be extensive, tricky, or even written live in front of us, but when the job is more than talking, I want to see more than just talking to evaluate.
- keithnz 8y ago
  I've seen the bullshit artists. When I was early on in interviewing people ( I've been coding just less than 40 years and hiring people ~20 years ), they did surprise me when it came to coding, though I never came close to hiring one. But it turns out, I just wasn't asking the right kinds of questions to pickup on bullshit, or I would let things slide without question where they seem to have glossed over things. But like I say, code isn't out of the question, if I end up with doubts, usually because I can't get super concrete details out of someone, then code is a good way to go.
  - 0x445442 8y ago
    I've been responsible for hiring 10 or so engineers in my career and everyone of them turned out to be a good hire from the company's perspective. I was always able to smell the BS pretty quickly during interviews and it's always surprised me that this seems to be such a difficult thing for some interviewers to recognize. The BS is exposed when asking for more and more detail about prior work and projects. What was the last project you worked on? What was your role specifically? Were you responsible for selecting any portions of the tech stack? If so, how did you make those decisions? What were the determining factors? And on and on. As an interviewer, if I could not get a good read on one's abilities in this way I'd question my qualifications to be conducting the interview.
    - sokoloff 8y ago
      The BS artists might be 1 in 250 to 1 in 1000 candidates, so give it time and you'll run into a skilled one sooner or later. I have made several bad hires over 25 years and probably 100 direct hires and 500 total hires where I was on the panel. It happens. Most would have been difficult to ferret out in an interview, because an interview is an inherently spotty/lossy process. The worst hire I ever made had, in retrospect, been given the (business case) question ahead of time and had pre-written notes in his notepad. He theatrically took careful notes while I was stating the business case problem, asked if it was OK if he did some computations and composed his thoughts in his notebook before presenting the case at the whiteboard. He did just that and stood to deliver literally the most polished presentation on the case that I have ever experienced. 5/5 definitely hire. Shows up to the job and couldn't get water out of a boot if told the instructions were printed on the bottom. Flames out in a few months and moves on to his next gig. It was only after playing things back that I realized the only way he could have pulled that off was to have pre-seeded his notebook with the solution to the business case.

sokoloff 8y ago

While a lot of what you say is true, that hiring pattern leaves you exposed to the bullshit artists. I always want to see some kind of code from someone for whom coding ability matters at all. Doesn’t need to be extensive, tricky, or even written live in front of us, but when the job is more than talking, I want to see more than just talking to evaluate.

keithnz 8y ago
I've seen the bullshit artists. When I was early on in interviewing people ( I've been coding just less than 40 years and hiring people ~20 years ), they did surprise me when it came to coding, though I never came close to hiring one. But it turns out, I just wasn't asking the right kinds of questions to pickup on bullshit, or I would let things slide without question where they seem to have glossed over things. But like I say, code isn't out of the question, if I end up with doubts, usually because I can't get super concrete details out of someone, then code is a good way to go.
- 0x445442 8y ago
  I've been responsible for hiring 10 or so engineers in my career and everyone of them turned out to be a good hire from the company's perspective. I was always able to smell the BS pretty quickly during interviews and it's always surprised me that this seems to be such a difficult thing for some interviewers to recognize. The BS is exposed when asking for more and more detail about prior work and projects. What was the last project you worked on? What was your role specifically? Were you responsible for selecting any portions of the tech stack? If so, how did you make those decisions? What were the determining factors? And on and on. As an interviewer, if I could not get a good read on one's abilities in this way I'd question my qualifications to be conducting the interview.
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    The BS artists might be 1 in 250 to 1 in 1000 candidates, so give it time and you'll run into a skilled one sooner or later. I have made several bad hires over 25 years and probably 100 direct hires and 500 total hires where I was on the panel. It happens. Most would have been difficult to ferret out in an interview, because an interview is an inherently spotty/lossy process. The worst hire I ever made had, in retrospect, been given the (business case) question ahead of time and had pre-written notes in his notepad. He theatrically took careful notes while I was stating the business case problem, asked if it was OK if he did some computations and composed his thoughts in his notebook before presenting the case at the whiteboard. He did just that and stood to deliver literally the most polished presentation on the case that I have ever experienced. 5/5 definitely hire. Shows up to the job and couldn't get water out of a boot if told the instructions were printed on the bottom. Flames out in a few months and moves on to his next gig. It was only after playing things back that I realized the only way he could have pulled that off was to have pre-seeded his notebook with the solution to the business case.