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Hiring is hard. Hiring someone you've never met is a whole lot harder. Someone you know, have worked with before or from a personal recommendation? Sure. Some g
by casca 15y ago
Hiring is hard. Hiring someone you've never met is a whole lot harder. Someone you know, have worked with before or from a personal recommendation? Sure. Some guy who you've assessed can pass a coding test? Not so much. As I'm sure many here have experiences, a great way to destroy a team is to get the wrong person. Remote workers should certainly be an option. But identifying that hiring local people is hard as "whining" is just high wankery.
- sgdesign 15y agoThe big advantage of remote work is that you can easily try out someone as a freelancer first before bringing them on full-time.
- lrobb 15y agoI've asked this of recruiters before... Instead of flying me in to do a full day of white-board technical interviews, why not just give me a short project and see what I produce? It's mind-boggling how broken our hiring practices are, yet how easily it could all be fixed.
- mfringel 15y agoIf one works in complete isolation from other developers, then doing a "hand them a project, see what they produce" assignment would be a perfect way of measuring ability. There are certainly cases where that is true, but my experience leads me to believe that they are the marked exception, and not the rule.
- objclxt 15y agoI have done this before, with some success - however, I think you might be missing the point slightly of a white-board interview. Yes, one purpose is to assess your coding ability, which you're right to say a short project could achieve. Another is to assess your ability to brainstorm and talk people through your ideas. If it was about coding ability alone you wouldn't need the whiteboard - you could just be sat in front of a computer. I can think of several people I've interviewed who have produced very good code, but have lacked the social skills required to integrate with a large team - even working remotely. So I don't think the solution is quite as easy as you think.
- jebblue 15y agoI do really badly when placed in front of a white board and am asked to code. This is a ridiculous concept, imaging taking Anthony Bourdain into a room and telling them to use the whiteboard to describe a tough cooking challenge.
- lrobb 15y agoYour take on the whiteboard is interesting, and I can definitely see value in that. Of all the interviews I've been on however, it wasn't about brainstorming at all. It was a test to see how well you knew your data structures / algorithms. Examples: Solve a variation of the 8 queens problem; Determine if a graph is acyclic; etc...
- devs1010 15y agosome companies just want an ass in a seat and giving you a remote project doesn't accomplish this.
- dhh 15y agoWe generally never hire anyone we haven't seen before, unless there's overwhelming evidence that they'll kick ass. For example, we hired Pratik Naik from London and it took more than a year before he met anyone else in the office (couldn't get a visa). For everyone else, we fly them into the office to determine if they'll be a good social fit. If so, they're hired and fly back home to get work done. Works great!