
The Qualified Manifesto on Hiring Software Developers - geoffroberts
https://www.qualified.io/blog/posts/the-qualified-manifesto-on-hiring-software-developers
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malvosenior
This is a pretty good manifesto. Something that I rarely (never) see mentioned
is that the ability to quickly evaluate a technical hire is a skill managers
can and should cultivate. I never give coding tests. I sit down with a
candidate and within 20 minutes of verbally discussing their prior projects I
know if I want to hire them or not. This does mean that the manager has to be
technical and have the ability to deep dive in these conversations. It's by
far the most efficient and candidate friendly (and interviewer friendly!)
method I've seen. I've _never_ had a bad hire doing this and I've hired dozens
of people

~~~
bradleyjg
Even if we take your word that you have a zero false positive rate how would
you even know what your false negative rate is?

I don’t understand why so many seemingly otherwise scientifically minded
people swear by anecdotes when it comes to hiring.

~~~
tmn
What does false negative matter for? As you said, you cannot know it, so why
bring it up as a missing metric? What matters is if they hired for their
demand, and their hires met or exceeded expectations

~~~
bradleyjg
We cannot know it by anecdote. We can know it using a well designed
longitudinal study. Why settle for the former? Why do so many proudly refuse
to read the literature?

The only other thing I can compare to the anti-intellectualism around hiring
is a similar phenomenon around nutrition and dieting.

~~~
tmn
I mean, I think you're planting your flag in some intellectual what aboutism.
The confidence in the strategy of the process here is only as anti-
intellectual as it is simultaneously conducive to that actual work trying to
be accomplished.

Say a man marries a high caliber lady. Beautiful, smart, great personality. If
he says, 'I did great here'. Does anyone say to him, 'Well what was your false
negative rate?'. I guess you might

~~~
bradleyjg
You ever read one of those interviews with a centenarian where they ask him
what his secret is and he answers something like “I smoke a cigar every
Sunday”?

~~~
tmn
Yeah

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unlinked_dll
Something else that should be mentioned

Don't send technical pre-screens to candidates before you talk to them. You're
not Google. I'm not going to waste my time on something before I know anything
about the company, the team, or the job itself.

I haven't really seen this interviewing for jobs on the west coast, but
there's a lot of shops in Chicago (fintech) that seem to be under the
impression that anyone applying for an engineering job is desperate.

~~~
mcfunk
Some companies use this kind of screen more as a way to filter out people who
aren't adequately interested in the company/job to put in the effort on the
testing -- so perhaps in some cases it is working as designed.

~~~
unlinked_dll
well there's the rub. How am I supposed to be "adequately" interested in the
company/job if I don't know anything about the company or the job?

That's what I mean by talking to a candidate before the screen. Going through
a recruiter isn't sufficient for most of the information I would like before
deciding to apply for the job.

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sportanova
Multiple hour coding assessments will work for people who are motivated for a
new job. But every company wants "passive" candidates that are already working
somewhere. If they're already (moderately) happy somewhere, they're not going
to spend 3+ hours on your pre-process.

Companies that can identify talent without wasting the talent's time will be
at a huge advantage

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z3t4
I would love a coding assignment. But make sure you have an style guide and
tell me what paradigms to use and what patterns, and have an auto linter and
style formatter. I would hate to be rejected just because I used tabs and you
prefer tabs or vice versa. A could adapt to anything, even write the damn app
in brainfuck if thats what you want. Instead you dismiss me after 5 minutes of
soft talk with a group of people i never met.

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digb
My key point every time my team discusses hiring: If you think your take-home
project takes N hours, add 1-1.5. You already know the context, and are
underestimating the difficulty even if you've run through it before.

~~~
jagged-chisel
> ... _especially_ if you've run through it before [edits mine]

We're doing a hackathon-style interview session this Friday, and I've already
had to remind the team that one of our coding challenges is "easy" because we
know the answer. You need to think back to the first time you saw it. Also,
we're not actually interested in the solution, but how you arrived at it. Once
you grok the problem, most software people hit on the solution pretty soon,
and can begin coding - we want to see how you come to the realization, and
then how you work to create the solution.

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TulliusCicero
How do you verify no cheating with work samples?

> Create a project based coding assessment that directly reflects the work the
> developer would be expected to deliver if hired, making sure to provide some
> open-ended flexibility that allows candidates to showcase their strengths.
> This might require the developer to digest an existing code base, gather
> requirements, communicate to your team a push request they’d like to make,
> or provide a detailed description of code that they’ve submitted before
> merging into production. These activities move your assessment process
> beyond the code, revealing insights into what a candidate would actually be
> like to work with.

That sounds like it'd take more than 3 hours, unless it's based on a very
small project.

~~~
twblalock
> How do you verify no cheating with work samples?

You can't really, and that's the main reason most of the teams I know avoid
them, or supplement them with onsite whiteboarding.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Yeah, I know some teams say that they discuss the project after, which would
work if the candidate couldn't code at all. But if they're just a mediocre
programmer who's been coached, it may be harder to detect, especially if they
have a talent for BS'ing.

