WTE! Another programming question ?

[GuyThiebaut]

I find perhaps one of the most difficult traits to work with in a team is someone who is inflexible and overly strongly opinionated. The reality is that most things, including software development, are nuanced and an overly opinionated person, while they might get work done and be technically brilliant, can store up a whole load of technical debt problems for later as their strong opinions may make it difficult to discuss an issue. So I would consider asking a question that will show you how they deal with something when they have a disagreement - how willing are they to listen to and understand another person's point of view?

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”

― Christopher Hitchens

[megaadam]

Guaranteed to yield the cleverest bully :suss:

"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"

[megaadam]

Jon McKee wrote:

Tailor your questions to indirectly

Exactly that tailoring is what I meat to ask about.

"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"

[peterkmx]

By coincidence, I've seen recently an interesting opinion about a method of interviewing a candidate by letting him/her talk about the way how he did his favorite project and how he solved the issues which came along. The point of this method is to differentiate a smooth talker from a really useful person, as smooth talkers avoid explaining details out of fear of being caught on something, while valuable candidates do just opposite ... I'am not sure, but it seems that this method came from Elon Musk. I think that this also helps to evaluate the communication skills/style of a candidate, so there are 2 useful points in this, or perhaps more ...

[Jon McKee]

I would think about the ways they can answer your question and try to ensure answers will fall into a useful range. Try to answer the question yourself and if a lot of experiences come to mind that would be irrelevant to what you want to know about the candidate then rework the question - be more specific, change the scenario, or change the perspective (e.g. failed vs succeeded at a task).

[Greg Utas]

Or being a doormat. The term is sometimes a red flag.

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[megaadam]

:thumbsup:

"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"

[den2k88]

Extract some non critical page of code from one of your product and ask them what they understand of it and how do they find them, especially on trivial stuff like formatting. Primadonnas will invariably assert themselves as better than that.

GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++*      Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X

[Dan Neely]

Jon McKee wrote:

but very few places are willing to spend the resources needed to do it.

Not just that, but a large number of candidates won't be willing to do something like that. To be useful it'd either need to be done with everyone on and interacting at the same time, or really extended in time to generate a useful number of async interactions. The former is a scheduling nightmare if done outside of working hours, and will largely exclude the currently employed if done within them. The latter being an even bigger time suck will have more people noping out; and while you could try to counter that by offering to pay participants for their time, that would run into various moonlighting restrictions (either bans or mandatory disclosure/approvals to avoid conflict of interest risks) for people who are looking to change jobs.

Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius

[Slow Eddie]

Have you ever worked in a team before, and if so can you give us a reference to the team leader, so we can contact him/her?

ed

[User 13807368]

How about asking them about any obstacles they had to overcome when working in a team environment and how they were able to overcome them?

[Jon McKee]

True. I think it could be done near the end of the process assuming you're allowed to schedule outside of 8-5 and the candidate list either is all +-2 timezones or can be grouped into buckets like that. As far as willingness, a lot of engineers don't like the idea that our entire skillset is boiled down to whether we know the one trick for an optimal solution to a competitive programming question and yet we have to deal with that still. To be fair that's probably not everywhere but it does seem to be a growing trend.