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Jaded Burnout posted:Alternative to the homework; half/full day pairing session on a small ticket on your actual codebase, paid at a reasonable rate. Also good. As is paying or compensating ($100 amazon giftcard or w/e) for doing the homework.
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Jul 15, 2017 23:33
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VOTE YES ON 69 posted:1) be more selective as an applicant: 99% of jobs won't hire you, and you don't want to work at 99% of them anyway -- there's some easy fuckin' wins here just reading a job description carefully or doing a phone screen and saying 'no thanks'. How am I supposed to tell the difference between places I don't want to work at and places I do, without going in and interviewing them? I sure as gently caress can't tell the difference between good and bad places just by the job posting. Every single job posting is the same -- four paragraphs of "be a high-energy self-starter blah blah cutting-edge blah working on the forefront of the industry blah blah awesome culture blah" and 2-3 sentences of "oh by the way this is the domain we're working in". You can maybe identify some bad places based on their postings, but you aren't going to be able to separate the good places out. You have to go in and interview to do that. If I have to do a 4-hour assignment just to get to talk to someone at the company to find out whether their environment/culture/process is a total shitshow, I'm not going to bother.
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Jul 15, 2017 23:35
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Steve French posted:Alternatively, they have plenty of interesting and engaging things to do in their environment at work that they don't dedicate time to side projects that aren't somewhat work related. You can debate whether that's wise of the individual, but it happens. Where I work, we have a lot of interesting data to work with in an application domain that most employees are personally passionate about. As a result, most of the time people want to build something new and interesting for fun that isn't a direct job responsibility, it's still done within the bounds of work codebases, and often is not appropriate to share with others outside. How would those people fare in the system I'm proposing replacing? How would the system I'm proposing replacing be better at determining fit? - that's the context I'm coming from. What's a fair replacement for a code sample that would still serve the same purpose pretty well, and would avoid the pitfalls of the system I'm proposing replacing? I admit that my system would filter some people - so anyone got something better? Jaded Burnout posted:Alternative to the homework; half/full day pairing session on a small ticket on your actual codebase, paid at a reasonable rate. That isn't a bad idea - though there would still need to be enhanced screening of them before that point; maybe the ticket could actually be presented to them and discussed as work, looking at relevant code and figuring an approach, before they get to the paid part. I like it. Also like the part about the gift card or something for the homework. It points out that we respect their time. WRT filtering places as an applicant, that is a problem. I think that as part of the phone screen it's a good idea to ask some weedout questions of the person doing the screening - it's a screen for both sides of the equation; they're asking you to prove you're worthy of an in-person, I think it's fair that you ask them to prove they're worthy of having you take the time to come in. metztli fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Jul 15, 2017 |
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Jul 15, 2017 23:38
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I would probably turn down a company that wanted that much of my time as part of a screening process, if it was before I knew enough about the company to be heavily interested in it. Personal projects might just be the most efficient way of dealing with that inevitable screening proof.
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Jul 15, 2017 23:57
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:How am I supposed to tell the difference between places I don't want to work at and places I do, without going in and interviewing them? By knowing/asking someone who already works there. Not fair, but that's the way the current system is set up IMO. You hire who you know or get referred by someone you know.
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Jul 16, 2017 01:14
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I have an interview soon, and part of it is lunch with a manager. How do I use this time effectively? What do managers look for during this? How hard should I sell myself? I'm at my best when I'm in technical interviews, where if I accidentally downplay myself too much I'll be saved by doing well on the whiteboard. I tend to do badly when the interview is just talking, with no chance to prove my technical worth. I think part of the problem is that I'm bad at selling myself. Bragging is a definite skill, and doing it well is helpful for a career, and I don't think I have it. What do people recommend?
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Jul 16, 2017 02:19
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I recommend not thinking too hard about it. At least for my company's process, lunch interviews are for having a conversation, letting you ask questions freely, and selling you on the company, and are entirely excluded from the feedback mechanism of the hiring process. A manager may smell the desperation or trying-too-hardness, too, even if the hiring committee will never know.
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Jul 16, 2017 02:23
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Just relax and be enthusiastic about the company/position. Just don't be a nervous sweaty goon and you're ahead of 90% of the candidates
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Jul 16, 2017 02:59
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:I recommend not thinking too hard about it. At least for my company's process, lunch interviews are for having a conversation, letting you ask questions freely, and selling you on the company, and are entirely excluded from the feedback mechanism of the hiring process. Is this true in most places?
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Jul 16, 2017 04:25
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It's not always quite so explicit, but every time I've had an interview include lunch they've definitely switched out of interview mode while we were eating. It's usually just a chance to get to know the people you'd be working with and to get a feel for what the culture is like.
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Jul 16, 2017 05:11
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Everywhere I've been an interviewer the lunch round was explicitly part of the interview process, even if that wasn't spelled out for the candidates. Don't assume that what you do or say there doesn't matter.
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Jul 16, 2017 06:01
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I'm not sure where people are getting this "lunch during an interview is off the record" thing but it's absurd. People are always forming opinions about other people. Lunch may change the context slightly, but people are still going to be factoring that into their notions on whether or not you're someone they would want to work with. "Well boss, the guy was solid technically, but at lunch he started hurling his own feces, punched a baby, and screamed racial epithets at the waitress..." "Bob, that was off the record. That was at Chili's for God's sake!" Don't overthink it, be the you you are every day at work, and I'm sure you'll be fine. Unless that you is a racist, feces throwing, baby puncher, in which case, don't do that. VVVV TacoHavoc posted:We didn't hire anotherwise technically proficient guy because he was a dick to the waitress at lunch. So don't do that. Also applies to first dates. metztli fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Jul 16, 2017 |
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Jul 16, 2017 13:50
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We didn't hire anotherwise technically proficient guy because he was a dick to the waitress at lunch. So don't do that.
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Jul 16, 2017 14:00
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Just be yourself during lunch and if you don't get the job because of it the process is working as intended
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Jul 16, 2017 14:04
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Where I work the lunch portion of the on site is not considered when deciding whether to extend an offer. The exception is if they show any alarming concerns, like racism/sexism.
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Jul 16, 2017 15:20
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No one is gonna expect you answer complex situational questions at lunch, they just want to make sure you're not an uncouth awkward goony gently caress.
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Jul 16, 2017 15:23
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I had a lunchtime interview where the manager kept asking me questions, then noticing how much food I had on my plate because I wouldn't take bites while answering, then insisting that I feel free to eat, then continuing to ask questions as soon as I took a bite. Maybe it was a test!
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Jul 16, 2017 15:39
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It's certainly not consistent across companies, but for us, lunch is absolutely not part of the hiring decision: we have the candidate get a casual lunch with a broader group of people from other teams, and those people are not involved in the hiring decision.
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Jul 16, 2017 16:12
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metztli posted:That isn't a bad idea - though there would still need to be enhanced screening of them before that point; maybe the ticket could actually be presented to them and discussed as work, looking at relevant code and figuring an approach, before they get to the paid part. The key is actually respecting their time. Paying for any significant drain on their time helps keep your own process honest because you won't be tempted to ask them to put in a bunch of time if it's someone you're not serious about. How to determine that in a shorter period of time, well, that's not easy either, but I think you're on the right track.
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Jul 16, 2017 16:56
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At my company we do day long on-site interviews and literally every person you interact with will get asked for feedback. If you only chat with someone over lunch then of course they won't be giving a technical assessment but they will still get asked about you and all the feedback gets collected in the same place.
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Jul 16, 2017 17:23
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lifg posted:I have an interview soon, and part of it is lunch with a manager. How do I use this time effectively? What do managers look for during this? How hard should I sell myself? For christ's sake, chew with your mouth closed.
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Jul 16, 2017 17:25
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I think assigning a homework project isn't so great because that can take a significant amount of time and they could always just hire someone off the internet to do the project. One idea I'm toying with is rather than making people do a take home assignment, give them a functional toy project that has a relatively simple bug for someone with experience to fix, and maybe some structural problems that betray unfamiliarity with language features (maybe it's not using Using blocks for connections, maybe the front end js doesn't understand promises and just does everything in callbacks, maybe it uses pokemon exception handling) and ask them to fix the bug and identify refactoring ideas (you would obviously have to be up front and say that the project intentionally sucks and isn't representative of ordinary production code). I think that could be good because: a) You could do that onsite without time commitment of more than an hour or so. b) The interview task corresponds with the task you're hiring the person to do. c) The task would be resistant to the bad kind of googling (e.g. the kind where you just find the project/solution on the internet) d) It would be less stressful than the "make a problem from scratch" or the "quiz boy" style questioning, yet could immediately identify experience (e.g. does the candidate try to express the problem as a failing unit test, does the candidate know how to use the debugger adequately, does the candidate recognize the things that are obviously stupid about the project but still function)
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Jul 16, 2017 19:16
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I like that, Bruegels Fuckbooks.
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Jul 16, 2017 19:23
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Yeah, people could hire someone to do it, but it's really easy to tell if they cheated or did it themselves by digging into it with them and asking questions about the design choices etc. Also the idea of a toy project - that might just be much better than homework if they don't have something they can show. Good thinking!
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Jul 16, 2017 19:25
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So what I'm hearing is the lunch portion is more a casual talk than heavily judged interview. So I should be myself. Unless myself is a poop-flinging neckbeard, then I should be someone else.
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Jul 16, 2017 19:31
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If job candidates can find and hire a dev to do their homework assignments for them in the time allotted, hire them as your new hiring manager. Two birds, one stone.
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Jul 16, 2017 20:11
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lifg posted:So what I'm hearing is the lunch portion is more a casual talk than heavily judged interview. So I should be myself. Unless myself is a poop-flinging neckbeard, then I should be someone else. Pretty sure I told this story here already, but this one time I had a job lined up and two days before my starting date we went to dinner with the company and two other new hires. I drank two beers, proceeded to be myself (an rear end in a top hat) and got fired before I even started. Bullet dodged, for them I guess? It taught me never to be myself at work which actually helped my career. So yeah, a lunch meeting will show how much the candidate can restrain himself/herself.
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Jul 17, 2017 05:51
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Whereas once on my first outing as a new hire I was told "We made an executive decision about your G&T", oh they don't want me drinking alcohol on my first day, OK. "We made it a double".
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Jul 17, 2017 08:21
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Drinking contest the second day of a place i used to work at With vodka and araq Done with eastern Europeans Starting 4pm I managed 3 shots because i am a failure of a Korean, nobody else managed less than 13 Winner was 18 shots Don't forget about the other place that was literally above a bar, and half the dudes went down to it every Thursday and Friday and got sodded curufinor fucked around with this message at 09:40 on Jul 17, 2017 |
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Jul 17, 2017 09:33
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The fact that I was drinking a G&T in the first place should tell you a lot about my drinking or lack thereof. To be fair to them this was a company outing to celebrate a new funding round and not a common occurrence. Edit: now when we went to Krakow to train up a remote team, that was a different story. A Vodka Story.
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Jul 17, 2017 11:02
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Keetron posted:Pretty sure I told this story here already, but this one time I had a job lined up and two days before my starting date we went to dinner with the company and two other new hires. I drank two beers, proceeded to be myself (an rear end in a top hat) and got fired before I even started I am curious what exactly you did/said, tbh 
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Jul 17, 2017 13:11
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Protip: Try working on not being an insufferable rear end in a top hat at life in general. This drastically cuts your risk exposure to temporarily forgetting you're in a work situation.
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Jul 17, 2017 13:17
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Being myself helped during my original project at my current workplace, but then we had a reorg and half the original office left and now everything's hilariously corporate. In other news, my mom keeps pestering me to move to either fintech (i.e. HFT, lol) or cyber security which while important, seems like a fad in terms of people hearing about it and being like WOW THAT SOUNDS LIKE A GOOD CAREER. On the one hand I'd like to bat her away with some proof on why neither is a particularly compelling choice to me, but on the other, I just don't really care  My impression of fintech is that it's either maintaining old COBOL systems (or integrating with them ala literally what I do right now), or unstable HFT insanity. Cyber security could vary from industry leaders being contracted out to save said fintech, to installing antivirus on people's computers. I do SWEng, not IT, so nothx. Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Jul 17, 2017 |
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Jul 17, 2017 14:15
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My impression of the "cyber security" industry right now is a thin layer of cream floating on top of a enormous tank of snake oil. No I don't know how the physics of that metaphor works out shut up.
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Jul 17, 2017 14:47
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mrmcd posted:Protip: Try working on not being an insufferable rear end in a top hat at life in general. This drastically cuts your risk exposure to temporarily forgetting you're in a work situation. It was a formative and humbling experience over a decade ago, things got better from that point onwards. Slowly, but steady.
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Jul 17, 2017 14:55
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If you don't want to do IT sec, don't do IT sec. There's lots of other security stuff to do if it interests you.
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Jul 17, 2017 14:58
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Security is a great field to be in because you can literally sell trash that doesn't work and make a bazillion dollars.
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Jul 17, 2017 15:17
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Yeah, I don't have a good impression of cyber security as a field right now. Seems to be swarmed by BS at the moment, and it's not really a compelling option to me. The only reason I can get out of it being suggested to me is job security/constant need, and 1. that doesn't seem different from SWEng in general and 2. isn't very convincing anyway. I'm sure there's interesting security problems to be solved, but I'd rather tackle them as I come across them. The recent hubbub over fintech and cyber security seems like a fad. Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't say I'm interested.
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Jul 17, 2017 16:32
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Doesn't fintech have a worse sexist and aggressive rear end in a top hat streak than vanilla tech?
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Jul 17, 2017 16:49
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Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:Doesn't fintech have a worse sexist and aggressive rear end in a top hat streak than vanilla tech? Adtech is the worst, I started to go into detail but yeah it's just cringeworthy. Zero regard for anything. As a matter of fact, one of my coworkers got kicked out of our board room while trying to video call with our HQ office last week because HR called an emergency sexual harassment lecture for the sales team.
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Jul 17, 2017 17:06
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