3 ms·
At the Minneapolis Star Tribune, we hire almost entirely based on "cultural fit." And that culture has only two requirements - you must be really excited by dev
by bovermyer 12y ago
At the Minneapolis Star Tribune, we hire almost entirely based on "cultural fit." And that culture has only two requirements - you must be really excited by development, and you must really like to learn. There are no technical questions in the interview process, and beyond a cursory glance to see if the candidate's got an active Github account, not much in the way of code review. We'll ask about hobbies, but it's totally OK if they're not the same things everyone else is into - it's mostly because we're curious.
This has resulted in one of the most diverse and fun developer groups I've ever worked with. We all love code, and we're a mix of ethnicities, genders, and ages.
I imagine that Silicon Valley is missing out by not following a similar path.
- geebee 12y agoThat's interesting. I'm not a huge fan of the technical interview either. I'd really like to see the industry find a way to assess technical ability without forcing developers to re-take their data structures and algorithms exam every time they interview for a new job. So if you've been successful without this ritual, you have my attention. But what (if anything) are you doing to see if someone is good at writing software. Do you know the candidates you interview already, by reputation?
- bovermyer 12y agoThe first couple months tell us whether they can write good code or not. We're not going to get a good sense of their coding skill from how well they can spout off buzzwords, or even from a code test. Only by giving them tasks we'd expect one of our devs to do and seeing how they interact with other devs, use information-gathering tools (Google, books, coworkers, etc.), and solve complex problems in a social scenario (no dev is an island) do we really get a sense for whether they can write good software.