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It's one of my interview questions when applying for a job. I say something along the lines: "I know this is a ridiculous question, but do you 1) use version co
by vlod 5y ago
It's one of my interview questions when applying for a job. I say something along the lines: "I know this is a ridiculous question, but do you 1) use version control and 2) what version control do you use" and then explain I have to ask these questions becz of obvious reasons.
- tonyg 5y agoNice. Sort of a reverse FizzBuzz.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoDo you have a monorepo? Test infrastructure?
- arthurjj 5y agoThere's a blog post from the early 00s called The Joel Test for judging a software team. Using source control is actually the first question. Sounds like you reinvented it :) https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-steps-to-better-code/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-s...
- icedchai 5y agoI had a job in the late 90's at a newly formed subsidiary of a multi-billion dollar corporation. The product was cobbled together from various third party software they licensed or acquired outright, and we were customizing. You would think they'd have set up version control to at least keep track of what came from where. Nope. Here I was, a 22 year old kid, teaching people about CVS. SVN wasn't quite out yet.
- layer8 5y agoSame for me in the early 2000’s. :)
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoI had a coworker hired in 2015 (with previous work experience) who had never used any revision control.
- icedchai 5y agoIf you've only worked in very small, mom-and-pop style companies, you might run into this. I knew small companies (under 30) that ran without version control for over a decade. These were PHP shops that did most of their development on a dedicated server, with people editing files remotely over FTP (or SFTP if you were lucky.)
- d4mi3n 5y agoDon't apologize for your questions! You're interviewing the company just as much as they're interviewing you and poor attitude in responding to such questions is a red flag IMO. That said, if you're worried about how your questions are perceived, a little rewording can suss this out and give you more context. I like to ask: What does your software development process look like? Tell me about how you manage, test, and deploy your product. You can rephrase a lot of questions in a similar manner to get what you want and leave room for the interviewer to expand (or justify!) their responses.
- vlod 5y agoI didn't mention what I was subtly after, which was the facial expression after asking that question. Usually it's sigh and a nod of the head (as if they are remembering THAT company). That's a good sign for me. There is a mutual recognition that we've both worked in some terrible companies and learnt how NOT to do some things. This generally means (and some good followup questions) that they have CI/CD,a PR review process, some ticket tracking, agile/kanban etc. I'm generally not worried about how my questions are perceived as that's a red flag for me. If they have a problem with that, then most likely not a good place (culturally) I want to work.
- jeffrallen 5y agoAlso: wear the nicest thing you'd wear for work to the interview, even if that's just a t-shirt (because you are a slob and proud of it). If you don't get the job as a result of your clothes, you didn't want that job.