4 ms·
> Imagine the tens of thousands of dollars saved if you had a 15 minute technical conversation and the other engineer is like, yeah this person's worth bringing
by tonyarkles 3y ago
> Imagine the tens of thousands of dollars saved if you had a 15 minute technical conversation and the other engineer is like, yeah this person's worth bringing onboard.
When I was interviewing for both junior and senior positions, my typical tack was to look through their resume and look for something interesting that I have some kind of background knowledge of. Or, alternatively, just ask them "what's the coolest project you've worked on?" From there I'd just let it be a pretty organic conversation where I'd just keep asking for more details until we've either gotten to the bottom of the tech implementation or have gotten to the point where they can say "I don't know, someone else worked on that".
So far I haven't been disappointed with any of the outcomes from that process; there was one where my conclusion was "no hire" and then down the road they were hired anyway... and it turned out pretty much how I figured it would. Good surface technical knowledge with a super scattered implementation.
- Clubber 3y ago>"what's the coolest project you've worked on?" This is the first question I ask followed by, "What's the worst project you've worked on?" The answers are pretty insightful.
- tonyarkles 3y ago100% yes. The reaction to that question will tell you a ton about a candidate.
- rgblambda 3y agoThat's a pretty good one. Tells you what their idea of a bad project is and how much professionalism they can maintain while describing it. "They made developers write unit tests!!!" vs "There were some personality clashes which unfortunately impacted on the team's ability to collaborate effectively".
- transitorykris 3y agoA huge amount of information can be uncover with “tell me about the highest performing team you’ve been on? Lowest performing?”
- tonyarkles 3y ago“Ok, so the schema control tool we were using generated XML that SVN had a hard time merging correctly. We ended up with so many broken commits that we invented the Lock Rock. It was a rock that I picked up in the parking lot and you were only allowed to commit schema changes if you were in possession of the rock.”
- thechao 3y agoI'm trying to install a webhook in TeamCity to send a notification to Slack whenever anyone across 16 time zones commits to specific paths in a Perforce depot. I'll happily trade for your rock.
- tonyarkles 3y agoMy new product idea: ~LockRock~ Mutex As A Service! Only $3/month/user subscription!