

Interview Heuristics - ericwaller
http://jackg.org/interview-heuristics

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jes5199
While this list does correlate highly with the list of good developers I've
worked with, it makes me a little uncomfortable to use any of these as a
filter - none of these are essential. There are probably other questions you
could ask that are just as quick and actually are skill-related (how do you
list the disk volumes on a unix machine? what's a good library to parse HTML?)
- maybe it will still have some of the same biases (e.g. I don't know how .NET
people parse HTML, their answer might not convince me), and maybe it will end
up selecting the very same set of people - but it's just easier to defend as
being about _technology_ rather than about _fashion_.

~~~
probably
I agree with you, but I'm assuming technical questions are asked too. But
given several candidates who seem to do well on that portion (which is more of
an academic exercise), you have to differentiate them on metrics which you
have not (or possibly would have a difficult time) capturing. Hence a set of
heuristics which rely on the observation that correlations between practical
developer quality (or possibly just the archetype the poster prefers) and
seemingly meaningless series of choices exist, you can (hopefully, favorably)
bias your decision based on the latter. Choices to speak a lot about the
person, especially when it deals with something you work with for such a large
fraction of your professional life (e.g., OS, go-to language, sources of
information). Sure, you could be selecting mostly mainstream developers and
denying potentially stellar candidates, but there is also risk in taking
chances with people who fall outside the norm (or what might be the norm for
"solid" developers) too. Having said that, I guess I just want to make the
statement that while the premise of the post sounds appalling, I'm not
entirely against it.

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singular
I'm not a huge fan of this .net hate. It smacks of fashion. Yes, .net is used
heavily in the enterprise and probably 90% of the time .net projects are
CRUDdy big balls of mud, but C# is actually a great language, visual studio is
an amazing environment and (from what I hear) ASP.NET MVC is pretty great too.
A good hacker who made the informed choice to use windows and .net would get
unfairly penalised here. Just because it isn't cool doesn't mean you should
throw the baby out with the bathwater.

(I speak as an OS X/emacs/go/prolog/javascript/... hacker, who was up until
recently using .net/C# a lot)

~~~
bkhl
This person (jackg) either does not know or realize that a great software
engineer can use any platform, language, and tool to do whatever she needs to
achieve. I'm also not a big fan of his own choices of "trendy" technologies.
This post almost seems like trolling IMO.

~~~
ericwaller
For some context, I work at SeatGeek, Jack's startup, and participate in the
later stages of the hiring process referred to in the post.

I think something that a lot of the recruiting/hiring discussions on HN miss
is that the hiring process is not only about finding people who are capable of
doing the job. It's also about finding people who will thoroughly enjoy doing
the job and get along well with the rest of the team.

For example, I spoke to a candidate (in other words he made it through this
set of heuristics) whose background was in security and whose primary platform
was windows. He was definitely very bright and very well accomplished, but by
the end of the interview, I genuinely thought he would have been bored out of
his mind at SeatGeek.

Similarly, if you don't use at least one of OSX, git, ruby or python, there's
a decent chance SeatGeek just isn't for you. An important caveat, that should
probably be in the post, is that if your answer to any of the specific-tech
related questions is "no, but I saw that you use X at SeatGeek, and I'm
interested in learning more about it", that's probably equivalent to a "yes".

------
tnash
I'm struggling to respond to this post.

I've been reading and participating in HN for a couple months now. It's become
clear, like in every social group, that HN has a "popular" crowd. It might not
necessarily be specific people, but that there's an aura of an HN mainstream
that bubbles to the surface on and off.

This post stinks of that popularity. For someone like me who is generally a
contrarian, it puts me off. I don't have anything personally against the OP. I
certainly don't want to insult him, and I'm not even sure that my feelings are
correct or warranted. I don't know him and have only casual familiarity with
his startup, but his list read like a list of "popular" topics on HN. PG! YC!
ShowHN! git! Python! Ruby! OS X!

I apologize for being off topic like that, this post just brought it out of
me.

------
SeanDav
I know these are your heuristics, but find it quite puzzling that you think
the average web designer using ASP or Windows is an immediate rejection. What
are you saying here?

~~~
jack7890
As you mention, it's a heuristic. If I had infinite time, I wouldn't use that
shortcut. But alas...

You mention web designers--out of the dozens of designers I respect, I don't
know a single one who uses Windows. Do you?

~~~
barista
There is a difference between a designer and a developer. If you are hiring
for designers why do you care if they can program at all. I know dozens of
designers who couldn't write a hello world in Python yet have a beautiful web
portfolio and yes some of them use windows.

------
netpenthe
lol "Windows is a deal breaker?"

I know quite a few RoR/Java/Linux/Unix sys admins who still use Windows on the
desktop (inc. me).

OS choice shouldn't be a deal breaker.

Is having a Windows Phone also a deal breaker?

As a side point, is there really that much difference between OSX/Windows now
a days? I've have Macbook Pro's, Imacs and Windows things as main machines and
nowadays I don't see that much difference between them (esp if you're working
on web dev). From Mac -> Windows or back seems like just a new novelty tech to
learn not a deal breaker any more. From your article it seems unlikely that
Mac OSX or Windows is running your servers anyway.

(Same with Android vs iPhone - both are so similar now)

~~~
nintax
What about command line skills? How many people that choose Windows are
proficient on the command line vs those who use *nix?

~~~
ap3
Exactly. I'm no command line whiz but access to linux/unix command line
programs makes me much more productive.

grep / sed / awk / tail / ps / cat - then you add being able to pipe output
between them

Then you have command line editors like vim for quick edits.

night & day vs the windows command prompt

------
AshFurrow
I love the implication that working in PSD's isn't challenging because it's
easy. Maybe not _interesting_ to programmers, but by no means is designing a
product a trivial task.

~~~
jack7890
Completely agree. I meant the raw PSD->HTML conversion, after all design is
done. The sort of thing these outfits do: <http://www.psd2html.com/>. I'll
update the post to make that more clear.

~~~
AshFurrow
Much better - thanks!

------
mike626
There are several hot-button issues that I can't help but think you drizzled
over your posting to increase the likelihood of visceral reaction by the
demographic this posting targets.

Either that, or I have to conclude that the Heuristics you mention are sullied
by personal bias, and if so should be reviewed.

It may also be that your blog is part of the svbtle network that has triggered
my personal biases.

------
psykotic
These heuristics, if they have any validity at all, are industry specific. In
AAA game development, everyone (with a few statistical outliers) is Windows
based for their development environment. For that reason, it's not surprising
that most of the good programmers I know personally use and prefer Windows.
I'm the only one of my coworkers who uses OS X at home.

~~~
jack7890
Agreed. This was only intended to be applicable to web development.

------
barryswenson
Lord knows I wish I were "overwhelemed" with resumes. Unfortunately I'm not
sure everyone experiences the flood he mentions...

~~~
asianexpress
Generic software development posts on craigslist can often net you a flood of
resumes -- there's quite a few unqualified people you have to filter through

------
BudVVeezer
Having "automatic dealbreakers" is a fantastic way to miss talent who don't
subscribe to your personal preferences...

~~~
ap3
Agree - but your going to miss talent anyway, right? He just reduces the pool
of candidates quickly since he doesn't have time/bandwith for an exhaustive
search.

I like his 'fail early' approach

