How I Hire Programmers
There are three questions you have when you’re hiring a programmer (or anyone, for that matter): Are they smart? Can they get stuff done? Can you work with them? Someone who’s smart but doesn’t get stuff done should be your friend, not your employee. You can talk your problems over with them while they procrastinate on their actual job. Someone who gets stuff done but isn’t smart is inefficient: non-smart people get stuff done by doing it the hard way and working with them is slow and frustrating. Someone you can’t work with, you can’t work with.
The traditional programmer hiring process consists of: a) reading a resume, b) asking some hard questions on the phone, and c) giving them a programming problem in person. I think this is a terrible system for hiring people. You learn very little from a resume and people get real nervous when you ask them tough questions in an interview. Programming isn’t typically a job done under pressure, so seeing how people perform when nervous is pretty useless. And the interview questions usually asked seem chosen just to be cruel. I think I’m a pretty good programmer, but I’ve never passed one of these interviews and I doubt I ever could.
I could not agree more with you mate. Honestly, what happens to my country (Cyprus),
is something to laugh and at the same time to cry about.
Employers think that people should be NASA-like persons that exceed the average standards i.e. from been normal human beings
to become robots [shall I say productive machines?]. Yeah I know, all big companies want that, but
what about companies that are in lower level than the middle class companies, that DEMAND to find such persons with the lowest
wages?
Do they think that people spend countless hours of personal time, money and interest, and / or self-sacrifice, to gain this kind
of knowledge just for a few dollars or euros that a company is offering them? Of course they would say a big NO!
If I had the knowledge that would make me feel worth more than normal / average standards, then yes,
I would demand these money, and if they would decline my request I would create something on my own which would be preferable in such
situation. It’s better to work as freelancer than be unemployed.
Now, I am sure that you will be confused and you would say to me, “hey Stefanos, what it has to do with my post?”. Well, what you have
mentioned to your post, happened to me, not just once but many times. The reason is the “magic paper”; the college / university graduation paper, that
“proves (!!!)” my knowledge(?). Let me tell you that the knowledge I have acquired all this time was so detailed and in such depth,
that no college or university education could provide it. The best university is out there, through internet, forums, blogs, IRC channels
that are dedicated to such fields, either through research or personal satisfaction. That university is called loving freedom.
If you, the companies’ owners do not believe in your staff or in the people you are about to hire (or to test under probation), then
I think you should close your company
Fortunately for me, my current job is at the college where I first started my studies (and then abandoned them for a professor)
and these guys are so kind to offer me a course per semester for free. This brings me closer to my initial target,
which is to overcome my greatest fear: of being aknowledged for who I am and what I do.
This is for you companies’ owners: Let your people prove you what they are capable of. Do not put them under pressure to prove you
from their first interview what they can do. Let them breath first and afterwards they will “play around” the code and will provide
you the greatest results. Hey, that’s why we have koders.com and such websites! You want RAD, you may have it. Just believe in your
staff, train them for goodness’s sake, don’t feed them with words. Take those words and make them actions!
If you don’t invest in your staff, how do you expect to succeed?
That’s all from my side, I let you think for a couple of seconds because that’s the way to function. Anything you don’t like goes to
recycle bin.
“Look after the customer and the business will take care of itself” – Ray Kroc [McDonald’s Founder]
“Knowledge that has not yet shared, it should not be existed at all” – Ancient Greek quote