

The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing (2006) - michael_fine
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html

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lsiebert
I think this article treats skill as something immutable.

I'll say this once... if people are hiring you only for what you currently
know how to do perfectly, both of you (employee and employeer) are going to be
unhappy at some point.

You should have a skill floor. Skill is a scaffold that you definitely need to
hang things on. But skill needs to be balanced against traits like grit/drive,
learning ability, assertiveness/ability self start, and culture fit, and (they
talk about this a little, but it's unclear if it's merely a way to talk about
assertiveness) leadership qualities.

This kind of article makes me itch to do research on the subject. It's good to
know that it works for the author, but it's not clear whether they have merely
found a local maximum, whether all the elements they suggest are helpful or
some are handicaps.

I'd also note that an interview as described here is a different animal than
actually working. I think there is something to be said for at the very least
remembering and considering those differences, since interview skills have
overlap with, but do not necessarily map to, the ability to do the job well.

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logn
I think he's arguing for what you want. Strong, general programming skills
paired with intelligence and productivity. If you're new to Joel's blog, he's
brilliant and worth reading (and by this point an old-hat at giving advice on
running companies better).

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lsiebert
I'll check more of his blog out, but his suggestion that you only hire
superstars rubbed me the wrong way, for whatever reason.

I don't think companies should be only hiring superstars. They should be
hiring some superstars, the best people they can find, especially for the
keystone positions in the company. But they should also be hiring people with
the potential to be superstars with the right training and mentoring.

training and promoting the best from within is too often ignored in favor of
enticing people away from other companies.

In any case, I believe the article does have a lot to recommend it, especially
once you get past the first parts and into the specifics.

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yanilkr
There is a new skillset called "Interview Engineering". 4 years of
computersciece/ real world experience may not get you a job but a month long
"Interview Engineering" research will crack a process like this.

Good Engineers/Tech leaders develop an intuition for things based on products,
programming, process and people. Most of the time coming up with a good
interview plan for a particular team makes a lot of sense. Not everyone who
reads this blog should interview. Interviewing needs a level of maturity as an
engineer.

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alxndr
Interesting photo choices.

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cdr
I take it you're not familiar with the blog - Joel always used random
photographs he'd taken, for no other reason than to break up the text and make
it more readable. I think he wrote about it once.

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ojbyrne
An idea he borrowed (and acknowledged borrowing from) from Philip Greenspun,
who wrote a book in that style. <http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/>

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alxndr
Huh. I find it extremely distracting.

