6 ms·

When I post job ads now, I ask interns for their blog URL, websites they've done, URLs to open-source projects, and their Twitter account if any. I'm not lookin

by bphogan 16y ago

When I post job ads now, I ask interns for their blog URL, websites they've done, URLs to open-source projects, and their Twitter account if any. I'm not looking to find out personal stuff, but I want examples of what they do, how they learn, and if they'll be a fit for us. When I used to just ask for a cover letter and resume, 99% of the people who interviewed with me were just awful. Now I tend to get good dev interns who want to be here and have similar drive and ambitions. I'm not saying that a person who doesn't have any OSS experience, a blog, or a Twitter account wouldn't be a good developer, but then if they're not interested in OSS, teaching, doing things on their own (outside of work/schoolwork) or sharing, then they may not be a good cultural fit.

epoxyhockey 16y ago
I have long left the intern market, but I had a phone interview yesterday to scope out potential iphone app dev work. I sent a list of websites that I created and apps I have in the store, but the "interviewer" insisted that he quiz me on how I would detect a circular linked list and if I could describe the diamond problem. I took me a mere 20 seconds to recognize that the potential employer was just a programmer sweatshop. But, I was still struck by how out of touch with reality those kinds of technical tests have become in the past few years. edit: formatting fix
- draebek 16y ago
  Independent from whether or not this particular opportunity was a "sweatshop": you mention that you sent a list of web sites you've created and applications you have in Apple's App Store, but I didn't see anything in there about "code." Absent any actual code (not counting HTML, and assuming the web sites you mentioned weren't primarily JS) I'd certainly ask you coding questions as well. EDIT to add reasoning: I've seen people that can release applications and put up web sites, the code for which is unreadable, unmaintainable garbage. I'm really happy to see that you can ship, because that is important, but if we're going to be coding together I also need to see that your code is passable.
  - epoxyhockey 16y ago
    That is a good argument to ask candidates to complete a written code test or to share their github page. That's still a bit different from quizzing on textbook concepts, but I will yield in the argument that a well-rounded engineer would probably be able to spout out answers to random CS trivia questions as well.
    - xenophanes 16y ago
      I mostly agree with you however quizzes are fun IMO. I hear "detect circular linked list" and I'm like "OHHHHHH ME ME ME I KNOW THAT ONE" lol... Maybe some of the better places that ask these questions are hoping to see your attitude and if you genuinely like this stuff.
- HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
  I would welcome any candidate who could show me examples of past work, but I would still ask the normal tech questions in addition to reviewing and talking about that work. Why? I have to be fair, both morally and legally. If I decide that there's a set of questions that an applicant must answer correctly before I'll consider him suitable, then everyone has to answer them. If you get that right, and you have some impressive work to show me, you'd be way ahead of the pack.
  - epoxyhockey 16y ago
    That is a great point. I forgot about the Equal Employment Opportunity laws since I mostly work on a contract basis. The interviewer was certainly setting me up for a full-time position.
jgh- 16y ago
Are you seriously making people code for you for free?
- bphogan 16y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your question. I'll try to answer anyway. An internship doesn't mean free labor. Although I guess there are some people who do try to get people to code for free and call it an "internship" or "portfolio building experience", that's not what I do. Where I work, we hire college students as interns, where they learn how to do test-driven web development using Ruby and JavaScript. They get to work with student data and records and it's a really great program. The students land excellent paying jobs and have access to a network of former interns who from time to time offer advice and sometimes share code.
  - sliverstorm 16y ago
    So, are they there for you? Or for themselves. Did you bring them on for their benefit, or yours? Or, more importantly (as this is the legal razor): Do you derive profit/gains from the work they do? Honestly from the sound of it you're deluding yourself, and are in fact, just another internships-mean-free-labor guy trying to make yourself feel better with talk of 'connections' and all.
    - bphogan 16y ago
      Their benefit. I work at a public university and the interns are ineligible after their separation from the university. I'm not sure why any of this matters anyway, because they are getting paid to work for me and are gaining valuable experience working on things that are much larger than what they would be doing in class. Not quite sure what you're getting at here. This is no different than a paid internship at Microsoft or Google, or many other companies in the midwest, just on a smaller scale.
      - rhizome 16y ago
        What he may be getting at is that your description of intern duties implies a violation of the US Federal labor law prohibition against interns doing work that provides immediate benefit to the company/institution.
drivingmenuts 16y ago
What if they don't keep a blog? I'm pretty sure I have a decent amount of technical information in my head, I just don't bother to blog about it. As for Twitter ... seriously?
- bphogan 16y ago
  I believe I already addressed that in my post - you could be an awesome programmer. But would we be able to get along with eachother? Would you be able to get along with the rest of the people who do use Twitter and who do blog about what they learned? It's likely not, and now we can both look for other opportunities.
  - krschultz 16y ago
    That's so arbitrary. There are plenty of devs on Twitter that I could never ever get along with. Plenty not on twitter I could. There are plenty of people blogging about their profession that are good at it, and plenty that are good at it that are not blogging. At my startup of the 8 devs, we had 2 on twitter and 3 with their own blogs, so the bulk of us didn't do either. But we got along great. Why wouldn't we? What does Twitter and blogging have to do with interpersonal relationships?
    - bphogan 16y ago
      Well, I did say "and twitter account if any". Looking at someone's twitter stream who's poking at some new library or talking about some code they wrote tells me a lot more than "1 year of php development" on a resume. It may be arbitrary, but github+blog+twitter has worked well here.
      - Locke1689 16y ago
        Twitter is tricky. I very rarely if ever tweet about technical topics for a couple reasons: 1. I don't think anything technically interesting can be accurately explained in the 140 characters provided by Twitter. 2. Simply announcing what I'm working on is self-congratulatory back-patting. No one cares what I'm working on that hour. 3. I have many non-technical friends (e.g., no one else in my frat is CS). I would not alienate them from a conversation by only talking about tech all the time.
djb_hackernews 16y ago
So now going to school and getting good grades isn't good enough? You have to also learn how to develop software at a level where you can contribute to OSS projects and blog/tweet about it? Glad I graduated a few years ago, I would never have gotten an internship or a job.
- p_nathan 16y ago
  Back when I finished my undergrad in '06, the general perspective I ran into was, "oh, you didn't do open source. shame. don't call us back". I spent my time trying to do well in school, not contribute unpaid work to open source.
  - rue 16y ago
    Some people enjoy programming enough to do it unpaid (and get some valuable lessons in how software is actually made at the same time, if lucky).
  - wladimir 16y ago
    Most of what you learn in school is abstract and you'll never need in practice. What you learn in (collaborative) open source development, in the other hand, is mighty useful actual programming experience. Doing well in school helps, but having a portfolio of side-projects to show makes (in my experience, at least) more of an impression on employers.

by bphogan 16y ago

epoxyhockey 16y ago

I have long left the intern market, but I had a phone interview yesterday to scope out potential iphone app dev work. I sent a list of websites that I created and apps I have in the store, but the "interviewer" insisted that he quiz me on how I would detect a circular linked list and if I could describe the diamond problem. I took me a mere 20 seconds to recognize that the potential employer was just a programmer sweatshop. But, I was still struck by how out of touch with reality those kinds of technical tests have become in the past few years. edit: formatting fix

draebek 16y ago
Independent from whether or not this particular opportunity was a "sweatshop": you mention that you sent a list of web sites you've created and applications you have in Apple's App Store, but I didn't see anything in there about "code." Absent any actual code (not counting HTML, and assuming the web sites you mentioned weren't primarily JS) I'd certainly ask you coding questions as well. EDIT to add reasoning: I've seen people that can release applications and put up web sites, the code for which is unreadable, unmaintainable garbage. I'm really happy to see that you can ship, because that is important, but if we're going to be coding together I also need to see that your code is passable.
- epoxyhockey 16y ago
  That is a good argument to ask candidates to complete a written code test or to share their github page. That's still a bit different from quizzing on textbook concepts, but I will yield in the argument that a well-rounded engineer would probably be able to spout out answers to random CS trivia questions as well.
  - xenophanes 16y ago
    I mostly agree with you however quizzes are fun IMO. I hear "detect circular linked list" and I'm like "OHHHHHH ME ME ME I KNOW THAT ONE" lol... Maybe some of the better places that ask these questions are hoping to see your attitude and if you genuinely like this stuff.
HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
I would welcome any candidate who could show me examples of past work, but I would still ask the normal tech questions in addition to reviewing and talking about that work. Why? I have to be fair, both morally and legally. If I decide that there's a set of questions that an applicant must answer correctly before I'll consider him suitable, then everyone has to answer them. If you get that right, and you have some impressive work to show me, you'd be way ahead of the pack.
- epoxyhockey 16y ago
  That is a great point. I forgot about the Equal Employment Opportunity laws since I mostly work on a contract basis. The interviewer was certainly setting me up for a full-time position.

jgh- 16y ago

Are you seriously making people code for you for free?

bphogan 16y ago
I'm not sure I understand your question. I'll try to answer anyway. An internship doesn't mean free labor. Although I guess there are some people who do try to get people to code for free and call it an "internship" or "portfolio building experience", that's not what I do. Where I work, we hire college students as interns, where they learn how to do test-driven web development using Ruby and JavaScript. They get to work with student data and records and it's a really great program. The students land excellent paying jobs and have access to a network of former interns who from time to time offer advice and sometimes share code.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  So, are they there for you? Or for themselves. Did you bring them on for their benefit, or yours? Or, more importantly (as this is the legal razor): Do you derive profit/gains from the work they do? Honestly from the sound of it you're deluding yourself, and are in fact, just another internships-mean-free-labor guy trying to make yourself feel better with talk of 'connections' and all.
  - bphogan 16y ago
    Their benefit. I work at a public university and the interns are ineligible after their separation from the university. I'm not sure why any of this matters anyway, because they are getting paid to work for me and are gaining valuable experience working on things that are much larger than what they would be doing in class. Not quite sure what you're getting at here. This is no different than a paid internship at Microsoft or Google, or many other companies in the midwest, just on a smaller scale.
    - rhizome 16y ago
      What he may be getting at is that your description of intern duties implies a violation of the US Federal labor law prohibition against interns doing work that provides immediate benefit to the company/institution.

drivingmenuts 16y ago

What if they don't keep a blog? I'm pretty sure I have a decent amount of technical information in my head, I just don't bother to blog about it. As for Twitter ... seriously?

bphogan 16y ago
I believe I already addressed that in my post - you could be an awesome programmer. But would we be able to get along with eachother? Would you be able to get along with the rest of the people who do use Twitter and who do blog about what they learned? It's likely not, and now we can both look for other opportunities.
- krschultz 16y ago
  That's so arbitrary. There are plenty of devs on Twitter that I could never ever get along with. Plenty not on twitter I could. There are plenty of people blogging about their profession that are good at it, and plenty that are good at it that are not blogging. At my startup of the 8 devs, we had 2 on twitter and 3 with their own blogs, so the bulk of us didn't do either. But we got along great. Why wouldn't we? What does Twitter and blogging have to do with interpersonal relationships?
  - bphogan 16y ago
    Well, I did say "and twitter account if any". Looking at someone's twitter stream who's poking at some new library or talking about some code they wrote tells me a lot more than "1 year of php development" on a resume. It may be arbitrary, but github+blog+twitter has worked well here.
    - Locke1689 16y ago
      Twitter is tricky. I very rarely if ever tweet about technical topics for a couple reasons: 1. I don't think anything technically interesting can be accurately explained in the 140 characters provided by Twitter. 2. Simply announcing what I'm working on is self-congratulatory back-patting. No one cares what I'm working on that hour. 3. I have many non-technical friends (e.g., no one else in my frat is CS). I would not alienate them from a conversation by only talking about tech all the time.

djb_hackernews 16y ago

So now going to school and getting good grades isn't good enough? You have to also learn how to develop software at a level where you can contribute to OSS projects and blog/tweet about it? Glad I graduated a few years ago, I would never have gotten an internship or a job.

p_nathan 16y ago
Back when I finished my undergrad in '06, the general perspective I ran into was, "oh, you didn't do open source. shame. don't call us back". I spent my time trying to do well in school, not contribute unpaid work to open source.
- rue 16y ago
  Some people enjoy programming enough to do it unpaid (and get some valuable lessons in how software is actually made at the same time, if lucky).
- wladimir 16y ago
  Most of what you learn in school is abstract and you'll never need in practice. What you learn in (collaborative) open source development, in the other hand, is mighty useful actual programming experience. Doing well in school helps, but having a portfolio of side-projects to show makes (in my experience, at least) more of an impression on employers.