

Ask Programming Superstars: Do you have to interview? - freework

This is aimed at those of you out there who are programming superstart. That is to say, people with popular open source projects with 1000+ github stars.<p>When you start a new job, do you have to go through the interview process? Do those companies make you bang out FizzBuzz on a whiteboard in front of the team? Or do they just pretty much take the fact that you authored a popular project as an endorsement of your technical skills?
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ig1
If you're at the superstar level you don't generally apply for a job, you get
headhunted. Typically someone who you know will be used to reach out to you to
setup an informal conversation to test interest which is generally followed up
with meetings with other senior staff, etc. before a formal offer is made.

References are generally taken much more seriously at that level as well (i.e.
taken from mutual acquaintances who have incentives to be open).

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mstump
Yes, for two reasons. Almost all bad hires come from some exception to the
hiring rules. If everyone goes through the same process it limits that risk. I
wouldn't want to work at a company that didn't seriously and exhaustively vet
candidates.

The second reason is cultural fit. You're going to be spending a lot of time
with these people, you want to make sure you're going to get along.

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stevenameyer
I completely agree with this. I would be very hesitant to join a company that
doesn't do a thorough job at evaluating potential employees, even if they have
a sparkling reputation this would be a huge red flag for me.

As well an interview to me is two way. As much as the company is evaluating
wether I am a good fit for the company, I'm evaluating wether the company is a
good fit for me. If I am actually good enough that I should be offered the job
without an interview then I certainly should be good enough to prove it in an
interview.

Also anybody who feels above going though a company's interview process should
be a massive red flag as an employer.

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Donito
Absolutely, many people don't realize that interviews are a two way street.
Not only is the company interviewing you to assess your technical skills and
cultural fit, but you are interviewing the company as well to see whether
you'd like to work there.

If you're a "superstar" (I don't really like that term), you want to work with
other talented individuals. So if the interview process is non-existent or
overly easy, it sends a negative signal about the "potential" quality of other
hires.

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freework
I'm not referring to the high level conversations that occur between company
and employee. I'm more referring to the "nuts and bolts" process of doing
fizzbuzz and writing out binary tree parsers and things like that.

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relaunched
I've often wondered what it was like, for example, for Google to recruit Eric
Brewer. I would imagine it was something similar to [http://www.quora.com/How-
Was-X-Recruited-to-Facebook/How-did...](http://www.quora.com/How-Was-X-
Recruited-to-Facebook/How-did-Yishan-Wong-get-recruited-to-Facebook) , but it
could really be anything.

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rg81
I've only been on one job interview where the hiring manager looked at my
github account prior to the interview

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marco_salvatori
If there is any on line code I can reference I will always take a look.
Looking at someones code is a great way to see how they approach and structure
problems. The code as well as the problems they choose to tackle tell a great
deal about the candidates level of maturity and the kind of code that they are
going to write once they start working with you. One of the last candidates I
interviewed, when I was corporate, was a great talker but when I looked at his
code on github it was full of
AbstractDefaultFactoryProxyDecoratorBuidler's...Mehhhh, my boss hired him and
loved him anyways (and now he's working at LinkedIn, so what do I know)....But
he did fill up our code with the above types of garbage classes.

