

Ask HN: How to interview programmers - nlabs

I plan on hiring a programmer or two on a part time basis. These will be undergraduates in Computer Science. What kinds of questions would you ask to determine a programmers competence during an interview?<p>Edit: Im looking for Javascript and python programmers
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neiljohnson
I found this post by Steve Yegge to be really helpful, it's aimed at phone
screening but you can easily extend it to a face to face interview

[http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/five-essential-phone-
scre...](http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/five-essential-phone-screen-
questions)

~~~
rpledge
Thank you, this is an excellent link. I'd upvote more if I could

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eneveu
I'd bookmarked those posts: \-
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html)
\- [http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-
recognise-a-...](http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a-
good-programmer/) (was a good post, but does not seem to be available anymore
- it's in google cache though)

Also, since xmarks told me that those links were well ranked in the "hiring"
category, you could look at other links from there:
<http://www.xmarks.com/topic/hiring>

For example, <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hiring> and
<http://www.artima.com/wbc/interprogP.html> seem interesting

~~~
eneveu
Just stumbled on these links while reading
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1253411> . While not strictly about
interviewing, they might be of interest to you in your quest for developers:

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FindingGreatDeveloper...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FindingGreatDevelopers.html)

<http://stu.mp/2010/03/howto-recruit-rock-stars.html>

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1451216/how-to-recruit-
gr...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1451216/how-to-recruit-great-
developers)

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scorpioxy
Personally, i found that typical programmer interviews are a waste of time. I
played both sides of the table and now I just ask for a small project as a
sample to be written and brought to the interview and then discussed.

The discussion reveals a lot about the candidate from coding style to design
decisions and shortcuts made. I am especially interested in the shortcuts and
that the candidate understands what's wrong with them and have them explain
why he/she took that route.

The sample can be as easy as a command line todo application or any utility
that should take just a couple of hours to make.

Granted i don't do a lot of interviews, but when i did that's what i asked
for. My boss on the other hand does typical interviews and the quality of the
candidates shortlisted shows.

