Finding good staff....
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Sounds like a perfect work environment! Lucky devil... Nobody wants to read a diary by someone who has not seen the shadow of Bubba on the prison shower wall in front of them!
Paul Watson, on BLOGS and privacy - 1/16/2003The only drawback is having to work.... :) Seriously though, I was around when the company started and the intention was always to have what we call a 'Californian' attitute to software (+ free 'soda' and good coffee). Its very relaxed and good fun but extremely challenging work. A couple of people have joined us and then decided that they couldn't keep up with the pace. James.
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There is a Job Advertisement section on Code Project. The link for it is near the bottom of the left menubar under the "Other Stuff" heading.
Code Project Job Advertisements[^]
Nick Parker
The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything. - Theodore Roosevelt
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Fair enough. Well in that case I would start the interview with the line: Hi [candidate name] my name is James and I am really not in the mood for this right now so give me any BS and you'll be out that door quicker than you can fark the chorus to "hey mr taliban give me your banana". (See the SoapBox for my definition of "to fark". The taliban song was included on an excellent flash movie that I can't seem to find again, with bush and Powel banging bongo drums.)
David Wulff http://www.davidwulff.co.uk
Thats the kind of interviewer who would make me want the job ! :-D Elaine The tigress is here :-D
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I've just had to sit through another interview and listen to the candidate ignore me and answer what he he wanted instead of what I asked for. I don't know anything more about him than when he walked in... Where are all the good developers? I see lots of good articles and discussion on this site so they must exist. I don't suppose there is a forum for advertising positions? We are about to get funding and will be expanding a lot. I can't even tempt the good guys out of the woodwork by telling them about the cool C++ and .NET development we do. If there is a forum for this then can someone point me to it. If not, you live in the UK (we are in Hampshire) and are a little curious, then get in touch. James.
James, modify your original post to give us a link to your website with the job details etc... Surprised it isn't there already ! Elaine The tigress is here :-D
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I've just had to sit through another interview and listen to the candidate ignore me and answer what he he wanted instead of what I asked for. I don't know anything more about him than when he walked in... Where are all the good developers? I see lots of good articles and discussion on this site so they must exist. I don't suppose there is a forum for advertising positions? We are about to get funding and will be expanding a lot. I can't even tempt the good guys out of the woodwork by telling them about the cool C++ and .NET development we do. If there is a forum for this then can someone point me to it. If not, you live in the UK (we are in Hampshire) and are a little curious, then get in touch. James.
Maybe you're just asking the wrong questions. As an experienced programmer, I often find the "final exam" style of interview questions to be extremely uncomfortable. That is an interview where someone who does not have all that much experience themselves, just starts asking you basic questions off a sheet of paper. There are any number of basic concepts which I might no longer have the ability to immediately articulate a textbook answer for. Does that mean that I do not know the concept? No. It just means that I have conceptualized it to the point that it is no longer something I think about in a verbal way, hence have difficulty articualting coherently on the spur of the moment. When interviewing an experienced programmer,you probably should not ask basic questions from your last final exam in college. You should not have a sheet of paper containing questions which you yourself do not know the answers for. What you should do is find out the nature of the kind of work they have done. Find out what problems they confronted and how they solved them. Give them an example of a problem they might confront while working for you, and ask them how they would solve it. Talk about programming philosophies to get a feel for their depth of interest in thier proclaimed area of expertise. For example, rather than asking someone direct questions about COM, just strike up a conversation about COM. If they can have a lengthy conversation about it, you will find out far more about their knowledge, their experience, and thier interest in it than if you asked them to regurgitate all the IDispatch methods. Anyone who has actually bothered to memorize all that crap is probably more of a memorizer than a programmer anyway. "Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art." Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle
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Maybe you're just asking the wrong questions. As an experienced programmer, I often find the "final exam" style of interview questions to be extremely uncomfortable. That is an interview where someone who does not have all that much experience themselves, just starts asking you basic questions off a sheet of paper. There are any number of basic concepts which I might no longer have the ability to immediately articulate a textbook answer for. Does that mean that I do not know the concept? No. It just means that I have conceptualized it to the point that it is no longer something I think about in a verbal way, hence have difficulty articualting coherently on the spur of the moment. When interviewing an experienced programmer,you probably should not ask basic questions from your last final exam in college. You should not have a sheet of paper containing questions which you yourself do not know the answers for. What you should do is find out the nature of the kind of work they have done. Find out what problems they confronted and how they solved them. Give them an example of a problem they might confront while working for you, and ask them how they would solve it. Talk about programming philosophies to get a feel for their depth of interest in thier proclaimed area of expertise. For example, rather than asking someone direct questions about COM, just strike up a conversation about COM. If they can have a lengthy conversation about it, you will find out far more about their knowledge, their experience, and thier interest in it than if you asked them to regurgitate all the IDispatch methods. Anyone who has actually bothered to memorize all that crap is probably more of a memorizer than a programmer anyway. "Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art." Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle
I try to never ask questions that require book knowledge. I care more about communication, planning, innovation and initiative so try and get the candidate to tell me about specific situations when they have shown these skills. Note: not hypothetical questions like 'What would you do in this situation?'. We also do a coding question e.g. reverse a string in place. This allows me to see how they approach a problem. Finally, there is a design question where I role play a client with a set of requirements. When they have asked enough questions to understand the problem I leave them on their own with a cup of coffee and a whiteboard for 30 mins to try and take the pressure off. Then I go back in and chat about the architecture and design they selected. The only time I ask book questions is when I recon they have stretched the truth on their resume. Something like what does keyword 'virtual' do/mean if they claim to have C++ knowledge... James.
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I've just had to sit through another interview and listen to the candidate ignore me and answer what he he wanted instead of what I asked for. I don't know anything more about him than when he walked in... Where are all the good developers? I see lots of good articles and discussion on this site so they must exist. I don't suppose there is a forum for advertising positions? We are about to get funding and will be expanding a lot. I can't even tempt the good guys out of the woodwork by telling them about the cool C++ and .NET development we do. If there is a forum for this then can someone point me to it. If not, you live in the UK (we are in Hampshire) and are a little curious, then get in touch. James.
wayward wrote: I've just had to sit through another interview and listen to the candidate ignore me and answer what he he wanted instead of what I asked for. I don't know anything more about him than when he walked in... These are the worst candidates, most of the time they're trying to hide their lack of competency. I’ve hired most candidates that knew only what they’ve put on their resume, even if that was not enough for the position, and gave some training after hiring them. wayward wrote: We are about to get funding and will be expanding a lot. I can't even tempt the good guys out of the woodwork by telling them about the cool C++ and .NET development we do. An advice, don't try to expand faster than you can. Hire a maximum of 3 programmers at a time, and evaluate them after two or three months. Wait at least two weeks before you hire more people. Keep close contact with them. This will be good both for you evaluating them and for their morale. Don’t bother evaluating someone in the first or second month of work. When you hire someone, most programmers usually do a lot more work in the first few months than they can sustain in the long term. Other programmers are a bit slow for mixing with the environment and they take one or two months for a good performance. It takes about two or three months for a programmer show his real level of work. Then, you can precisely assess his work and how effort he put on work. I see dumb people
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James, modify your original post to give us a link to your website with the job details etc... Surprised it isn't there already ! Elaine The tigress is here :-D
I wasn't sure whether or not it was akin to asking programming questions... Certainly you can check out the web site: http://www.exony.com[^]. We have moved on a bit since the website was created and its due for an upgrade... You can add things like C#, .NET to the mix of technologies. It'll take me a while to describe the type of work as we don't have job specs. When I get the chance I'll post something in the jobs area. James.
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I try to never ask questions that require book knowledge. I care more about communication, planning, innovation and initiative so try and get the candidate to tell me about specific situations when they have shown these skills. Note: not hypothetical questions like 'What would you do in this situation?'. We also do a coding question e.g. reverse a string in place. This allows me to see how they approach a problem. Finally, there is a design question where I role play a client with a set of requirements. When they have asked enough questions to understand the problem I leave them on their own with a cup of coffee and a whiteboard for 30 mins to try and take the pressure off. Then I go back in and chat about the architecture and design they selected. The only time I ask book questions is when I recon they have stretched the truth on their resume. Something like what does keyword 'virtual' do/mean if they claim to have C++ knowledge... James.
It seems your candidates find themselves in a fair and preferable interview situation. That's exactly what I would hoping for when going in an interview.
heinz r. vahlbruch
If IntelliSense doesn't have it, it ain't worth calling - Anonymous
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Maybe you're just asking the wrong questions. As an experienced programmer, I often find the "final exam" style of interview questions to be extremely uncomfortable. That is an interview where someone who does not have all that much experience themselves, just starts asking you basic questions off a sheet of paper. There are any number of basic concepts which I might no longer have the ability to immediately articulate a textbook answer for. Does that mean that I do not know the concept? No. It just means that I have conceptualized it to the point that it is no longer something I think about in a verbal way, hence have difficulty articualting coherently on the spur of the moment. When interviewing an experienced programmer,you probably should not ask basic questions from your last final exam in college. You should not have a sheet of paper containing questions which you yourself do not know the answers for. What you should do is find out the nature of the kind of work they have done. Find out what problems they confronted and how they solved them. Give them an example of a problem they might confront while working for you, and ask them how they would solve it. Talk about programming philosophies to get a feel for their depth of interest in thier proclaimed area of expertise. For example, rather than asking someone direct questions about COM, just strike up a conversation about COM. If they can have a lengthy conversation about it, you will find out far more about their knowledge, their experience, and thier interest in it than if you asked them to regurgitate all the IDispatch methods. Anyone who has actually bothered to memorize all that crap is probably more of a memorizer than a programmer anyway. "Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art." Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle
This is a very good strategy for a conversational interview, where you can indeed find out an awful lot about someone, by responding to what they say, probing different areas, and sometimes challenging their knowledge. The added wrinkle we have is that we are supposed to ask exactly the same questions to every candidate, so that they can be evaluated "fairly" against the same criteria. That sounds great in principle, but it is highly impractical, especially in situations like you describe. Therefore, I don't provide the interview function anymore. Dave "You can say that again." -- Dept. of Redundancy Dept.
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This is a very good strategy for a conversational interview, where you can indeed find out an awful lot about someone, by responding to what they say, probing different areas, and sometimes challenging their knowledge. The added wrinkle we have is that we are supposed to ask exactly the same questions to every candidate, so that they can be evaluated "fairly" against the same criteria. That sounds great in principle, but it is highly impractical, especially in situations like you describe. Therefore, I don't provide the interview function anymore. Dave "You can say that again." -- Dept. of Redundancy Dept.
We always to interviews in pairs and rarely have second interviews. At the end the candidate is either good enough and offered a position or not... (Although we don't tell them before they leave). We try not to compare candidates against each other - just against the job they will need to do. I will say one thing though. The bar is high: "Maybe's" are "No's" and "Yes's" are only if they can prove the two qualities I mentioned earlier (Clever + History of getting things done). We would rather have an empty position than fill it with the wrong person. James.
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Maybe you're just asking the wrong questions. As an experienced programmer, I often find the "final exam" style of interview questions to be extremely uncomfortable. That is an interview where someone who does not have all that much experience themselves, just starts asking you basic questions off a sheet of paper. There are any number of basic concepts which I might no longer have the ability to immediately articulate a textbook answer for. Does that mean that I do not know the concept? No. It just means that I have conceptualized it to the point that it is no longer something I think about in a verbal way, hence have difficulty articualting coherently on the spur of the moment. When interviewing an experienced programmer,you probably should not ask basic questions from your last final exam in college. You should not have a sheet of paper containing questions which you yourself do not know the answers for. What you should do is find out the nature of the kind of work they have done. Find out what problems they confronted and how they solved them. Give them an example of a problem they might confront while working for you, and ask them how they would solve it. Talk about programming philosophies to get a feel for their depth of interest in thier proclaimed area of expertise. For example, rather than asking someone direct questions about COM, just strike up a conversation about COM. If they can have a lengthy conversation about it, you will find out far more about their knowledge, their experience, and thier interest in it than if you asked them to regurgitate all the IDispatch methods. Anyone who has actually bothered to memorize all that crap is probably more of a memorizer than a programmer anyway. "Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art." Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle
Stan Shannon wrote: For example, rather than asking someone direct questions about COM, just strike up a conversation about COM Thats is so true. I would end up wittling on about performance between IDispatch or Dual/Custom interfaces and how I like making VB developers lives miserable, then going on about how much fun it is to write a COM object in pure C++ and seeing my interfaces as plain abstract classes. Then maybe onto the apartment model(though I find this dull, but its important to know), or the MTS and the evloution into COM+ with a more fine grained secutity control....and the 2 different kinds of transaction state. :breath: :-D
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I try to never ask questions that require book knowledge. I care more about communication, planning, innovation and initiative so try and get the candidate to tell me about specific situations when they have shown these skills. Note: not hypothetical questions like 'What would you do in this situation?'. We also do a coding question e.g. reverse a string in place. This allows me to see how they approach a problem. Finally, there is a design question where I role play a client with a set of requirements. When they have asked enough questions to understand the problem I leave them on their own with a cup of coffee and a whiteboard for 30 mins to try and take the pressure off. Then I go back in and chat about the architecture and design they selected. The only time I ask book questions is when I recon they have stretched the truth on their resume. Something like what does keyword 'virtual' do/mean if they claim to have C++ knowledge... James.
You probably wouldn't hire me. :(( I couldn't tell you off the top of my head how to reverse a string in place. Of course, during my 30 years in technology, I have reversed a string or two. I just don't bother to keep stuff like available without a FAR call.
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You probably wouldn't hire me. :(( I couldn't tell you off the top of my head how to reverse a string in place. Of course, during my 30 years in technology, I have reversed a string or two. I just don't bother to keep stuff like available without a FAR call.
The issue is not about whether you know the answer or not but how you approach the problem. Do you validate your code on paper with an example or two? Do you check your algorithm for boundary conditions? At what point do you optimise (if needed)? What were your reasons for choosing a particular algorithm? Did you consider the memory needs and in particular what might happen in low memory conditions... We have plenty of developers around the office who can help if you don't know the solution to something. The main problem I want to avoid is when people 'think' they know how to do something and the resulting code it makes it into the build. James.
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Trollslayer wrote: Now move north and its much more of an employers market Indeed! Why is it that employers prefer to locate in places no one in his right mind would want to live? I've heard a number of excuses, but none that make any sense. I can understand that companies with hardware to ship need good infrastructure, but software companies don't have that excuse. They locate in large, crowded, expensive urban centers, then whine about the costs of doing business and the inability to hire good people! As much as I joke about this place's awful climate, some 500K to 1M people choose to come here every year to vacation, so my tastes are obviously not universal. An employer could build an 80,000 sf building here and own it, for what it would cost to rent one for a month in Los Angeles. And employess making $50K a year here would live like kings, rather than as paupers in CA. It makes no sense at all... Nobody wants to read a diary by someone who has not seen the shadow of Bubba on the prison shower wall in front of them!
Paul Watson, on BLOGS and privacy - 1/16/2003What we really need is the invention of a Star Trek transporter. One could earn top wages in Silicon Valley while living in low cost Crawdad, Mississippi.
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What we really need is the invention of a Star Trek transporter. One could earn top wages in Silicon Valley while living in low cost Crawdad, Mississippi.
Oh yes, that would be great ... :-D
heinz r. vahlbruch
If IntelliSense doesn't have it, it ain't worth calling - Anonymous
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There are plenty of jobs further south but to be honest, I don't want to go there. To get a good location costs rise drastically so disposable income drops. Now move north and its much more of an employers market :-D Elaine (fluffy tigress emoticon) The tigress is here :-D
Yeah, most employers are idiots for doing this. They seem to think the prestige value of being in an expensive urban environment is worth something, and next they find they can't get decent staff. :-) Regardz Colin J Davies
Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin
I'm guessing the concept of a 2 hour movie showing two guys eating a meal and talking struck them as 'foreign' Rob Manderson wrote:
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I've just had to sit through another interview and listen to the candidate ignore me and answer what he he wanted instead of what I asked for. I don't know anything more about him than when he walked in... Where are all the good developers? I see lots of good articles and discussion on this site so they must exist. I don't suppose there is a forum for advertising positions? We are about to get funding and will be expanding a lot. I can't even tempt the good guys out of the woodwork by telling them about the cool C++ and .NET development we do. If there is a forum for this then can someone point me to it. If not, you live in the UK (we are in Hampshire) and are a little curious, then get in touch. James.
I'm in the US and looking for work here, so unless you're willing to relo me and make up for the silly double taxation, but I am curious what salary range you are offering (make sure you specify the currency, though I wouldn't mind 90k in pounds)?