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Offering someone you don't know a senior position without some kind of insight into their level of competence is just a lottery. I've screened a number of very
by jgaa 4y ago
Offering someone you don't know a senior position without some kind of insight into their level of competence is just a lottery.
I've screened a number of very senior developers with impressive CV's applying for senior C++ positions. When I look at their code, usually it just sucks. More often than not it's just plain old C code with C++ dressing. For example, using pthreads in stead of C++11 std::thread, and mostly avoiding even the C++ standard library.
When I interview people, I usually ask them to write some code, for 4 to 6 hours, to solve whatever problem they find interesting, to show me; a) their level of understanding of the C++ language and libraries, b) how they solve problems (I prefer low complexity) and c) what they find interesting.
The interview + the code they show me, give me an idea about their qualifications in this specific area. It's still a lottery to hire someone, but the odds for a winning ticket is a little better ;)
- cycomanic 4y ago> Offering someone you don't know a senior position without some kind of insight into their level of competence is just a lottery. So what do you think the rest of the world does? Mechanical, civil, electrical engineering, lawyers, doctors, HR, managers? What makes software so special?
- azangru 4y agoThe rest of the world does different things, and software isn't that special. For many jobs, the world outsources candidate quality assessment to trusted academic institutions and certification boards. But the software industry has decided — perhaps rightly — that software engineers do not have to go the traditional route of getting a tertiary education attested to by diplomas and certificates. So rather than comparing with doctors and lawyers, you need to look at what the rest of the world is doing with professions that lack institutional gatekeeping. For example, it's pretty common for translators to do tests before they are offered a job. An agile consultancy described in a podcast how they are hiring scrum masters — and there is a combination of checking the certificates (PSM3's are fast-tracked to a final interview) and tests (seeing how a candidate scrum master can run a scrum event with a team). I am sure there will be lots of similar examples in other areas.
- jgaa 4y ago> So what do you think the rest of the world does? Mechanical, civil, electrical engineering, lawyers, doctors, HR, managers? I think they end up hiring the wrong person most of the time. > What makes software so special? It's not. We also end up hiring the wrong person most of the time ;) Finding the best possible person for any position is hard.
- relaxing 4y agoOr you could just ask them "What's your library of choice for threading?" Sidenote: Senior people have been burned by the years where the STL was inconsistently implemented and horribly bloated and inefficient. That doesn't mean they won't quickly learn to love modern C++, especially if they're joining a codebase with good examples to follow.