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But my rent is due the Friday after next and I need to know if I should send out another wave of resumes. It isn't but it strikes me we are looking very hard t

But my rent is due the Friday after next and I need to know if I should send out another wave of resumes. It isn't but it strikes me we are looking very hard to find a new way to do things, when the old way was pretty damn good. Sit me down and talk about technology for ~thirty minutes. If I don't have the social skills to successfully do this (minority issue) I likely would not be able to communicate well with a team and thus should not be a candidate anyways. You will then know immediately whether you want to hire me (or progress me to another round) or not. I then get a call two days later and can progress with my life. People pretend like all this hiring strategy is for the good of the candidate. It's not. As with everything else its for the good of the company and its investors. Here's a thought: Invest in a competent hiring manager who can see through applicant bull shit and identify talent within a reasonable range. Includes basic negotiation skills. And assume the rightful risk that is employing another human being.

lordnacho 11y ago
>Invest in a competent hiring manager who can see through applicant bull shit and identify talent within a reasonable range. Includes basic negotiation skills. And assume the rightful risk that is employing another human being. Problem with that is it's hard to find one. It's gotta be someone with pretty good coding skills. This person would then have to share their time between either coding head-down or managing coders, either of which are time-consuming and intolerant of disruption. One idea I had was you could have mutual feedback. A bunch of people would after a while have anonymous input on each other, giving you say 10 coder's impressions of a fellow coder. This wouldn't have to be quizzes, half hour coffees could do.
dpark 11y ago
> Sit me down and talk about technology for ~thirty minutes. This is an efficient way to hire a team of good bullshitters. I've interviewed people who did extremely well when we were "talking like professionals" but were unable to do even very simple coding problems. My bar for coding is really not that high. I don't expect perfect syntax. I don't pick the language. I don't expect "the one answer". I expect people to write code that could work after syntax and small bugs are fixed, and most critically, I expect people to be able to discuss their code meaningfully. Unfortunately, "ability to write basic code" and "ability to talk like professionals" are not tightly correlated. And I expect both of these things from dev candidates.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  I disagree. I have yet to meet anyone who is faking it and cannot be cracked in 5-10 minutes of carefully-directed prodding. In fact, I don't see how it is possible to do extremely well on the "talk like a professional" part and not be able to write basic programs, unless you and I have very different concepts of what "talk like a professional" means.
  - brianwawok 11y ago
    I worked with a team of these before. You can rule our certain types of people with tech questions (i.e. never coded before, only coded hacked, etc.). You cannot rule out * People who read a lot of blogs so know the lingo, but never code * People who get the theory but can't actually implement something that works without bugs * People that over-engineer simple things
    - dpark 11y ago
      Also: * People who have been on a team long enough to learn how things should work but lack the skills to really do the coding. I phone screened a guy fairly recent who had a very long background (~20 years) in a pretty security-conscious field. He did very well in open-ended design discussions and was able to explain his prior work very well. He couldn't code trivial binary tree operations, though. I can only assume that someone else on his team is carrying most of the coding burden. This guy might be great at a PM-type job (or not, I don't interview for those jobs), but not as a dev.
      - vonmoltke 11y ago
        I feel like there is some detail missing here. What constituted doing "very well" on the open-ended questions? How deep into the engineering did you get? Since you mentioned he "might be great at a PM-type job" it sounds like you didn't go very deep on int.
        dpark 11y ago
jacalata 11y ago
> I then get a call two days later and can progress with my life. Haha, exactly when was this 'old way' ever reality?
- totalrobe 11y ago
  Lol, these are 99% more likely in my experience: - never hear back - automated email 3 weeks later

lordnacho 11y ago

>Invest in a competent hiring manager who can see through applicant bull shit and identify talent within a reasonable range. Includes basic negotiation skills. And assume the rightful risk that is employing another human being. Problem with that is it's hard to find one. It's gotta be someone with pretty good coding skills. This person would then have to share their time between either coding head-down or managing coders, either of which are time-consuming and intolerant of disruption. One idea I had was you could have mutual feedback. A bunch of people would after a while have anonymous input on each other, giving you say 10 coder's impressions of a fellow coder. This wouldn't have to be quizzes, half hour coffees could do.

dpark 11y ago

> Sit me down and talk about technology for ~thirty minutes. This is an efficient way to hire a team of good bullshitters. I've interviewed people who did extremely well when we were "talking like professionals" but were unable to do even very simple coding problems. My bar for coding is really not that high. I don't expect perfect syntax. I don't pick the language. I don't expect "the one answer". I expect people to write code that could work after syntax and small bugs are fixed, and most critically, I expect people to be able to discuss their code meaningfully. Unfortunately, "ability to write basic code" and "ability to talk like professionals" are not tightly correlated. And I expect both of these things from dev candidates.

vonmoltke 11y ago
I disagree. I have yet to meet anyone who is faking it and cannot be cracked in 5-10 minutes of carefully-directed prodding. In fact, I don't see how it is possible to do extremely well on the "talk like a professional" part and not be able to write basic programs, unless you and I have very different concepts of what "talk like a professional" means.
- brianwawok 11y ago
  I worked with a team of these before. You can rule our certain types of people with tech questions (i.e. never coded before, only coded hacked, etc.). You cannot rule out * People who read a lot of blogs so know the lingo, but never code * People who get the theory but can't actually implement something that works without bugs * People that over-engineer simple things
  - dpark 11y ago
    Also: * People who have been on a team long enough to learn how things should work but lack the skills to really do the coding. I phone screened a guy fairly recent who had a very long background (~20 years) in a pretty security-conscious field. He did very well in open-ended design discussions and was able to explain his prior work very well. He couldn't code trivial binary tree operations, though. I can only assume that someone else on his team is carrying most of the coding burden. This guy might be great at a PM-type job (or not, I don't interview for those jobs), but not as a dev.
    - vonmoltke 11y ago
      I feel like there is some detail missing here. What constituted doing "very well" on the open-ended questions? How deep into the engineering did you get? Since you mentioned he "might be great at a PM-type job" it sounds like you didn't go very deep on int.
      - dpark 11y ago

jacalata 11y ago

> I then get a call two days later and can progress with my life. Haha, exactly when was this 'old way' ever reality?

totalrobe 11y ago
Lol, these are 99% more likely in my experience: - never hear back - automated email 3 weeks later