8 ms·

How to hire me: 1. Tell me about the 3 biggest things you must accomplish. 2. Tell me why you must accomplish them. 3. Tell me when you must accomplis

• padolsey 14y ago
  Hmm, 6 & 7 are the same. And I think you meant Thai, not Chinese.
  • mgkimsal 14y ago
    They're almost the same, and it probably wasn't intentional, but they're worded differently enough that you might get some surprising answers from someone if you ask them a few questions apart.
    • lessnonymous 14y ago
      I think they've very different: 6. Architecture, TDD, code 7. 8 hour days, but available in emergencies at night.
    • joshrotenberg 14y ago
      Actually, I think they are pretty different. I've never seen Tom Yum Goong at a Chinese buffet.
• pasbesoin 14y ago
  A good Chinese buffet. If you can't tell, or don't want to pay for, the difference, well... P.S. (The secret is that good and cost are not in direct correspondence across the population of Chinese buffets.)
  • davidroberts 14y ago
    Sometimes you don't find out it's not good until several hours later when you are having a close encounter with a plumbing fixture.
• Mahn 14y ago
  > 10. Take me to a Chinese buffet. No need for the rest, this will do. Actually, in all seriousness there is at least one start up here in Germany which hiring process consist in going for a beer with the founders and members of the team you'll work with, and only follow up if you liked each other. It's probably not very scalable for the founders as the company grows, but still an interesting approach.
  • BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
    I wonder if being the fourth interviewee in a given day would help or harm your chances of a follow-up? :)
• lessnonymous 14y ago
  (The following is made up and CERTAINLY isn't for the job I currently have open for a senior PHP dev in Melbourne.AU) Here's why you don't see question one answered honestly: A. Our sales guys sold our product based on feature "Foo" a year ago. We haven't started coding but they need a demo next week. You have to grok our codebase and write it on your first day. B. The 'Bar' feature was written by a guy who should have failed finger painting, but we don't have time to rewrite it. You have to fix the many patches and modifications it's had since. C. The 'Zap' feature was written by our cowboy programmer. You have to do all his bug fixes and modifications because he thinks he's too important for anything but new code.
  • hack_edu 14y ago
    Tip: When hiring engineers (or speaking to any anyone ever again) NEVER use the word 'grok.'
    • pkteison 14y ago
      Why? It has a more clear meaning than just 'understand', and a 'huh' response should be a pretty good filter for an unsuitable candidate.
      • waterlesscloud 14y ago
        People who use grok properly in conversation move up a rung on my opinion-o-ladder.
        • sopooneo 14y ago
          "to drink"
        • philsnow 14y ago
          While the term is firmly established within the jargon (and with good reason, it's a good word to have in the jargon), I have enough distaste for much of Heinlein's work that I don't generally use the term. I'd have to find some other way to climb your opinion ladder ;)
• niggler 14y ago
  " 10. Take me to a Chinese buffet." I've had so many bad experiences with Chinese buffets that I steer clear of any place that would suggest that.
  • seanmcdirmid 14y ago
    I absolutely hate Chinese buffets, they all feel like feeding troughs to me. Of course, we take all our candidates out for Chinese food these days, but its kind of expected since we are in Beijing. Sometimes its difficult dealing with some foreigner's dietary restrictions (orthodox, vegetarian are hard; halal is quite easy).
  • philsnow 14y ago
    I mentally substituted "dim sum" for "a chinese buffet" because the latter just doesn't make any damn sense to me.
    • rdl 14y ago
      Maybe he lives in a deprived part of the country where "Chinese buffet" is the best Chinese food?
• mindcrime 14y ago
  That's some good stuff, but I'd add a couple: 1a. Show me the office I'll be working in. Any "open plan" or "2+ people per office" setup decreases your odds of hiring me by about 93%. Not to say I'll never take a job like that, but it really, really hurts your odds. 1b. Show me the rest of the building... are there common areas where people can hang out and collaborate away from their offices, preferably with natural sunlight to the area? Are there plenty of conference rooms, team rooms, or other areas for small group meetings? Do people have to fight to get a room for a meeting? Are rooms commonly "double booked" in whatever system tracks that? IS there a system for tracking room reservations? Is it Lotus Notes? If "yes" to the last question, I walk. 2. Show me the tools I'll have available to work with: Hardware, software, etc. If you're handing out ancient laptops with 1GB of RAM while expecting developers to use Springsource Tools Suite, I'm probably walking out on the spot. If you're using CVS for version control, I'm probably walking out. If you don't have a continuous integration server, I'm probably walking out. 3. Tell me about the training budget, if any. If there is no training budget, your odds just went way down. 4. Tell me about your software process. Here's where I am going to interview you. If you say "we are an Agile shop" you better be able to explain exactly what that means. Which Agile methodology do you use? Scrum? XP? Crystal? RUP? Your own made up psuedo-Agile process? Do you just use the "words" from Agile or Scrum without actually understanding them? If you use the terms "sprint" or "iteration", and "epic" and "story points" but clearly don't understand what they mean and how they should be used, I'm gone. Also, I'll want to know if the business side of the company understands and is onboard with the iterative approach with empirical feedback loops. Do execs prioritize stories for the backlog and then leave it be? Or are they randomly coming in, mid-iteration, and changing things around willy-nilly? 5. I'll want to know how many people I "report" to. If I have a "manager" telling me what to do, AND a "project manager" giving me conflicting instructions, AND random execs with an unclear relationship to the project coming along and tell me stuff, we aren't going to be together long, sorry. 6. Tell me more about the culture of the company... are people expected to be on-time for meetings? Do meetings always have agendas, and time limits? Does the company favor promoting from within? Do the execs have an "open door" policy? Are their performance reviews? How are they done? Do you make employees take any bogus "psychological profile tests"? Drug tests? Do managers go out to lunch with the "rank and file" and share a beer or two, or do managers go out in groups and pointedly avoid the riff-raff, and you'll get yelled at for having one drink with your lunch? Does the CEO interact with the "rank and file"? How? In short, convince me that this is a well run company, who respect their employees, value engagement and actually empower their people. 7. Is there any attempt to implement Kaizen or become a learning organization? Are there post-mortems for negative incidents? Do they use "Five Whys"? Are employees fired for one f%!# up, or is it more of a "support, coach and encourage" environment? 8. Are there bonuses? Profit sharing? Employee Stock Purchase programs? Stock options? What exists to align the goals of the employees with the goals of the firm as a whole, other than "I want to stay employed"? 9. Take me to eat Thai. A quality serving of Num Tok and a nice Mussuman Curry improve your odds considerably.
• rorrr 14y ago
  What about testing your skills? You completely skipped this somehow. When I was in charge of technical interviews at a large corp, we had complete morons come for interviews, that's after HR screening. Any one of them could breeze through your 10 steps, because they don't require any knowledge. Literally anybody can listen to your problems and have a free lunch at a Chinese buffet.
• IheartApplesDix 14y ago
  These are basically all the things they need to keep secret to keep leverage over you.
  • dmiladinov 14y ago
    Sometimes I think it might be even more benign than this. Some hiring managers are already so ingrained into their work culture that it's already become transparent to them. "Don't ask the fish about the water," and all that.
• alok-g 14y ago
  Much of this sounds like a joke [1] to me really as the most of the companies I have interviewed with won't tell all this even after signing an NDA. Even asking such questions elicits a strange look (don't you know we cannot disclose what we are working on). A second question then is why did they ask for an NDA then, and the answer is "company policy". I have refused to sign such NDAs, and they have refused to interview me then. Interestingly here is something that has worked: I have signed such NDAs with my annotation saying something like "It is mutually understood that this NDA is null and meaningless" right above my signatures, and they do not have any issue with that. Well, as far as I "signed" the NDA per the company policy! This has been the case with several big name companies I have interviewed with. [1] Not making fun of you here, rather of the companies and bureaucracy.
• FourthProtocol 14y ago
  Useful and insightful list. I'd add "what's the impact to [your org] if you do not fill this role (whether with me or someone else)?"