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Ah, and here we have the crux of the problem with the software engineering hiring mindset today. Over the years I've hired many software engineers and I've nev
by petesalty 17y ago
Ah, and here we have the crux of the problem with the software engineering hiring mindset today.
Over the years I've hired many software engineers and I've never hired anyone based on their ability to write code, in fact I never even ask about it. It's completely irrelevant. Why? Because I've never hired code monkeys. Those I outsource. I hire engineers. Engineers need to be problem solvers, and based on the proper interview techniques we can ascertain if they're problem solvers or not. These people can learn just about any language quickly so familiarity is not an issue.
Want to know if someone understands recursion, ask them about recursion. Ask them about the theory of recursion, how to use it, where it's appropriate and possible downsides. Ask how they've successfully used it in the past, when they've used it and it's been a problem and how they solved that problem. Ask them when might be a good time in a project life cycle to reactor non-recursive code. But for gods sake, please, please, don't ask them to write a Fibonachi generator. This either proves that they just finished college, or have one memorized for just such an occasion.
Hire engineers, not code monkeys.
P.S. If you want to see some of the worst examples of this kind of abuse apply for any Ruby on Rails job at the moment - the stories I've heard boggle the mind.
- adrianwaj 17y agothanks - do you mean that many of the RoR contractors are monkeys or that their hirers do not know what to look for? edit: but when it comes time to code-monkeys, how do you hire?
- petesalty 17y agoNo, I don't mean RoR contractors are code monkeys. I mean that if you're an engineer that specializes in RoR then you're expected to have such an phenomenal breadth and depth of understanding that few, other the DHH or Katz, could fill the requirements. The important thing to understand in your hiring process is not only who you're hiring, but why. If you're just looking to hire a bunch of code monkeys that can crank out fair to mindling code, then look no further than odesk.com. For about $8 an hour you'll find some not bad coders. If you want real engineers to solve problems, well, you'll need to do more work.
- adrianwaj 17y agoI see: sounds like you've got some different roles someone can fill, from the code robot, to seasoned programmer, to software engineer, to CTO, to hacker. In the end it's about someone's point of view and their responsibility to it. I've come across someone who claims to be a jack(or rather master)-of-all trades: has a degree in CS and an MBA and has worked in Sales, CTO, R & D. Says he's not an ordinary freelancer and builds end-to-end systems and uses PHP for the client and also Python on the server (has good reasons for it), whilst also promotes his own version of cloud computing. I have a background in Information System so am not quite the gung-ho programmer or engineer, but am still able. I sort of want to put something out as sexy as possible that works really well. I'd happily micromanage some monkeys to get it right, or give an engineer more free reign. I'm still undecided. But yes, long term, if it's successful, the system needs to be engineered really well, eg Craigslist. Twitter might have been a quickly cobbled together RoR app initially. edit: don't know anything about DHH or Katz.
- hc 17y agoi'm going to assume this post is one of those "irony"/"joke" thingamagigs that have been showing up recently according to some people
- petesalty 17y agoNope, it's not a joke, not even close. Perhaps if you've done some hiring over the last couple of years you'd like to contribute something more to the discussion than this random comment.