6 ms·

I follow the dame process. I explain beforehand what kind of questions will be asked, and emphasize there are no tricky questions, that we are just curious abou

by kinow 1y ago

I follow the dame process. I explain beforehand what kind of questions will be asked, and emphasize there are no tricky questions, that we are just curious about their experience, area of interest, preferences for designing ode, how they tackle ode quality and user support, etc. Haven't had any major issues hiring this way, but I did reject people that appeared to be full-of as your said, or didn't have anything public on github/company gitlab/dockerhub/researchgate/etc.. With exceptions for entry level positions and a few that worked in research or govt where work couldn't be made public (they still normally have some participation in research publications, conferences, technotes, etc.)

quibono 1y ago
> didn't have anything public on github/company gitlab/dockerhub/researchgate/ What if the company GitLab/DockerHub instance is restricted and you can't get code samples (I think this is very common)? Or a different example: I have a few public repositories on GitHub but most of them are private - it seems like that's something you'd perceive negatively?
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  I guess they just don't want to hire/interview workers who don't have public work. Maybe they pay very well and can be selective with their candidates, especially in this market. Or they live in some SV bubble where every workers has public work so it's the norm where they live. Where I live in Europe 90%+ of workers barring those currently in academia, have no public work because most companies don't publish their work, so you'd never hire anyone with that barrier.
  - quibono 1y ago
    > Where I live in Europe 90%+ of workers barring those currently in academia, have no public work because most companies don't publish their work, so you'd never hire anyone with that barrier. This mirrors my experience as well. I tend to do some side projects on the side but, seeing as I do them for fun, I don't take them as seriously. I'd hate to be judged based on work like this over something I'd do in a professional setting. That said I understand why this is an issue and seeing a (representative) code sample is invaluable.
    - kinow 1y ago
      > That said I understand why this is an issue and seeing a (representative) code sample is invaluable. Yeah, I'd also hate to be in that position where I may be the best candidate for a position but somebody else got it just because they have public projects. But at the end, the managers/HR/technical team/etc. are all trying to minimize risks to the company and projects.
  - kinow 1y ago
    No bubble here, I think. I'm also based in EU, Spain, where job market is super competitive right now, and it's quite hard to find candidates. As I said, it doesn't need to be only public repositories. If I interview for containers, then I ask if they have something public on DockerHub, GitLab/GitHub registries. If the answer is no (happened just a few days ago), then I ask what they used. I expect them to say something like Artifactory, Nexus, a directory on a server or HPC, or just explain why they didn't need a registry. For me there is really no wrong answer here. But if they reply they don't have anything public, and have no idea what's a container registry, then that's probably bad -- this is what I think OP of this thread meant by eliminating candidates that are full of---. > Where I live in Europe 90%+ of workers barring those currently in academia, have no public work because most companies don't publish their work, so you'd never hire anyone with that barrier. My wife also works here, and she's a recruiter in a EU company, in cancer/research. Most applicants won't have things public in that case, but they can still explain things. If there is a candidate with similar profile, that managers liked, and they have a lot of good work, public, then it's up to managers. I just explain what I saw in the repositories, whether I'd work with the candidates, and the managers hiring choose based on risk for companies. As you are based in EU, you probably have the same problem that the hiring process can be expensive for company, and risky if you eliminate candidates, and have to go back during the experience/trial period of candidates.
    - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
      > job market is super competitive right now, and it's quite hard to find candidates Sounds like a contradiction. If it's super competitive shouldn't it be easy to find candidates? > If I interview for containers, then I ask if they have something public on DockerHub, GitLab/GitHub registries. How many candidates coming from EU companies have the work they do at their company made public like that? I never worked anywhere where this was the case. So what do I do then? Only if you work in FOSS is your work public, but if you work from some bank or any other private company they don't expose their work on GitHub due to IP and legal concerns. So to me it sounds like you're only selecting those who worked at FOSS projects/enterprises
      - 1y ago
- kinow 1y ago
  As I replied in the other thread, then we will go through a discussion of what they had internally. Many cases I find the good engineers are able to explain that without too much trouble. Asking them about decisions in the project, issues, pros and cons of tools, etc., normally clarifies whether they understand things or not. And as I replied in the other comment too, unfortunately if there is another candidate with very similar profile & good answers, then I'll give my technical assessment to the manager of the position, and it'll be up to the manager and humans resources to choose based on risk to the company, what they can see from public papers/conferences/repositories/etc. In some cases, even if the work is not public, they can tell us what projects they worked. I work with climate models, so if they mention they don't have anything public, but they were using IFS, FESOM, ICON, SCHISM, or another model that I know/work with, then I'd direct questions on that model, to check what part of the model they worked on or used, who they worked with, etc. For me not having something public is not a blocker for hiring. Just something that simplifies the hiring process -- although, lately I've had a lot of candidates with many personal projects, no branches, no pull requests, not showing experience with Git, etc. (i.e. in some cases it seems some people try to create many repositories just to show that they have something... which can be a red flag too).
- stevepotter 1y ago
  Great question. I'm okay with someone who doesn't have public code, although they will have to work a little harder to verify their skills match their story. You have some public repos. That's plenty. Even some gists will work I tell people all the time, if you want to make it easier to get hired, put some work online. This is especially helpful for those without great credentials or history. Take advantage of this, as it's not possible in many other professions.
  - kinow 1y ago
    Agreed. Another thing that helps is writing. If you have a blog, it helps tremendously as it's possible to learn a lot from an engineer when the posts contain some thoughts about what that person learned or worked on, some opinions, techniques and tools used, etc. Even these Linkedin posts are fine, as long as it's not an ad to some tool, or just full of buzzwords. The kind of "behind the trenches" posts are great too, to explain something that happened in a project, a challenge you had, how you debugged a problem. This saves a lot of time in the interview as I would read it all and use that to discuss with the candidate.
- dekhn 1y ago
  What I've done is create one github project in my repo that is public, well-architected, implemented, tested, and commented. That's what I share if somebody wants a code example. I wrote the whole thing from scratch based on personal knowledge and some documentation (pyparsing and SMILES strings). I wrote it while working for a company, and went through their open-sourcing of personal work process.

by kinow 1y ago

quibono 1y ago

> didn't have anything public on github/company gitlab/dockerhub/researchgate/ What if the company GitLab/DockerHub instance is restricted and you can't get code samples (I think this is very common)? Or a different example: I have a few public repositories on GitHub but most of them are private - it seems like that's something you'd perceive negatively?

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
I guess they just don't want to hire/interview workers who don't have public work. Maybe they pay very well and can be selective with their candidates, especially in this market. Or they live in some SV bubble where every workers has public work so it's the norm where they live. Where I live in Europe 90%+ of workers barring those currently in academia, have no public work because most companies don't publish their work, so you'd never hire anyone with that barrier.
- quibono 1y ago
  > Where I live in Europe 90%+ of workers barring those currently in academia, have no public work because most companies don't publish their work, so you'd never hire anyone with that barrier. This mirrors my experience as well. I tend to do some side projects on the side but, seeing as I do them for fun, I don't take them as seriously. I'd hate to be judged based on work like this over something I'd do in a professional setting. That said I understand why this is an issue and seeing a (representative) code sample is invaluable.
  - kinow 1y ago
    > That said I understand why this is an issue and seeing a (representative) code sample is invaluable. Yeah, I'd also hate to be in that position where I may be the best candidate for a position but somebody else got it just because they have public projects. But at the end, the managers/HR/technical team/etc. are all trying to minimize risks to the company and projects.
- kinow 1y ago
  No bubble here, I think. I'm also based in EU, Spain, where job market is super competitive right now, and it's quite hard to find candidates. As I said, it doesn't need to be only public repositories. If I interview for containers, then I ask if they have something public on DockerHub, GitLab/GitHub registries. If the answer is no (happened just a few days ago), then I ask what they used. I expect them to say something like Artifactory, Nexus, a directory on a server or HPC, or just explain why they didn't need a registry. For me there is really no wrong answer here. But if they reply they don't have anything public, and have no idea what's a container registry, then that's probably bad -- this is what I think OP of this thread meant by eliminating candidates that are full of---. > Where I live in Europe 90%+ of workers barring those currently in academia, have no public work because most companies don't publish their work, so you'd never hire anyone with that barrier. My wife also works here, and she's a recruiter in a EU company, in cancer/research. Most applicants won't have things public in that case, but they can still explain things. If there is a candidate with similar profile, that managers liked, and they have a lot of good work, public, then it's up to managers. I just explain what I saw in the repositories, whether I'd work with the candidates, and the managers hiring choose based on risk for companies. As you are based in EU, you probably have the same problem that the hiring process can be expensive for company, and risky if you eliminate candidates, and have to go back during the experience/trial period of candidates.
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    > job market is super competitive right now, and it's quite hard to find candidates Sounds like a contradiction. If it's super competitive shouldn't it be easy to find candidates? > If I interview for containers, then I ask if they have something public on DockerHub, GitLab/GitHub registries. How many candidates coming from EU companies have the work they do at their company made public like that? I never worked anywhere where this was the case. So what do I do then? Only if you work in FOSS is your work public, but if you work from some bank or any other private company they don't expose their work on GitHub due to IP and legal concerns. So to me it sounds like you're only selecting those who worked at FOSS projects/enterprises
    - 1y ago
kinow 1y ago
As I replied in the other thread, then we will go through a discussion of what they had internally. Many cases I find the good engineers are able to explain that without too much trouble. Asking them about decisions in the project, issues, pros and cons of tools, etc., normally clarifies whether they understand things or not. And as I replied in the other comment too, unfortunately if there is another candidate with very similar profile & good answers, then I'll give my technical assessment to the manager of the position, and it'll be up to the manager and humans resources to choose based on risk to the company, what they can see from public papers/conferences/repositories/etc. In some cases, even if the work is not public, they can tell us what projects they worked. I work with climate models, so if they mention they don't have anything public, but they were using IFS, FESOM, ICON, SCHISM, or another model that I know/work with, then I'd direct questions on that model, to check what part of the model they worked on or used, who they worked with, etc. For me not having something public is not a blocker for hiring. Just something that simplifies the hiring process -- although, lately I've had a lot of candidates with many personal projects, no branches, no pull requests, not showing experience with Git, etc. (i.e. in some cases it seems some people try to create many repositories just to show that they have something... which can be a red flag too).
stevepotter 1y ago
Great question. I'm okay with someone who doesn't have public code, although they will have to work a little harder to verify their skills match their story. You have some public repos. That's plenty. Even some gists will work I tell people all the time, if you want to make it easier to get hired, put some work online. This is especially helpful for those without great credentials or history. Take advantage of this, as it's not possible in many other professions.
- kinow 1y ago
  Agreed. Another thing that helps is writing. If you have a blog, it helps tremendously as it's possible to learn a lot from an engineer when the posts contain some thoughts about what that person learned or worked on, some opinions, techniques and tools used, etc. Even these Linkedin posts are fine, as long as it's not an ad to some tool, or just full of buzzwords. The kind of "behind the trenches" posts are great too, to explain something that happened in a project, a challenge you had, how you debugged a problem. This saves a lot of time in the interview as I would read it all and use that to discuss with the candidate.
dekhn 1y ago
What I've done is create one github project in my repo that is public, well-architected, implemented, tested, and commented. That's what I share if somebody wants a code example. I wrote the whole thing from scratch based on personal knowledge and some documentation (pyparsing and SMILES strings). I wrote it while working for a company, and went through their open-sourcing of personal work process.