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Admin
That database technician probably had Asperger Syndrome.
Admin
I assume your resume explains this, e.g. "8 years experience (5 years helping develop v1.0 plus 3 years using it in practice)". Someone might see "8 years" and reject you without reading the rest of the line, but would you want to work for them anyway?
Admin
You are correct and in fact you shouldn't even be asked about your marital/family status. However, it wouldn't be problem if you, the candidate, brought this up. I would argue that for some companies, this could be viewed as a positive if they percieve a married guy with kids as being more stable and reliable.
Admin
Err, let me guess, you didn't get the job?
Admin
I once had ajob interview where the two senior programmers took turns telling me all the crazy and broken systems and software in the company, waiting to see if I ran away screaming. When I didn't I got the job.
Admin
Sounds like your knowledge of law would provide for stimulating conversation.
Admin
Oh, amen brother.
I cringe anytime I read similar.
But when Sun's Java cert.s insist that I convert octal to hex, and divine oddball compiler errors, before I can be labeled a competent Java programmer, what can you expect?
Admin
And I love the requests for "sample code". I answer "I'm not a slut, I don't give it away. Pay me and I'll give you all the sample code you want."
Admin
I once had an HR manager ask me my political preference (after I mentioned it was an interest). I decided to answer, it's no secret and I didn't know a better way to handle it, but was surprised/shocked he asked it. Didn't get the job by the way.
(This was in the Netherlands)
Admin
And then there was the person who interviewed with us for a job, then posted a diatribe on their blog when they didn't hear back from us right away. Needless to say... they did not get the job.
Admin
Admin
You do realize that sample code is one of the best ways to judge the skill of a developer, right?
Admin
I recall interviewing a guy for position in 1998. He claimed to have over 10 years experience programming Windows NT. While I was sorely tempted to sarcastically ask if he used to work for Microsoft and had been involved in the development of NT since the late eighties, I held my tongue in check. I figured it was better to let him flaunt his ignorance so that other hiring managers might be warned...
The other funny thing was we were entirely a unix shop... no Windows machines anywhere other than HR, so I'm not sure why he even mentioned NT.
Admin
You do realise that in the case of a not-insignificant proportion of programmers, all production-quality code they have produced is owned by someone else?
Admin
While I'm not going to outright disagree with this, I think there are other ways.
For instance, why not just place the candidate down in front of a computer (Windows, Unix, whatever they will be using) and have them solve a simple-ish problem using C++?
From watching them you could see how fast they type, how well they navigate through the OS, how they handle various lookup tasks, and - of course - how well they program.
And the reason to have them use C++ is that it's my opinion that if someone can write some good C++, they can learn pretty much any language required (there are some exceptions of course).
Just my opinion though. But I like this method better than asking for sample code or asking ridiculous brain teasers where if you know the "trick" you can answer it in 5 seconds flat.
Admin
We're talking about "sample code" that's written at an interview, right? I mean, I'm assuming most developers don't keep a portfolio around to show off (unless perhaps they do a lot of open-source or personal development in their spare time).
Admin
Captcha is billgates which is perfect for my abbreviated Microsoft interview story.
Long time ago, around May 1991, got a plane ticket in the mail to go up to Redmond, after having impressed an interviewer at college.
Several interviews: one guy with a torn Star Wars t-shirt that looked to be from the movie's original 1977(?) release, another where we went to lunch but got in a tiny fender bender on the way back (no biggie, no one hurt, but HR lady asked me about it worriedly when she led me to the next interview), one guy who had a puzzle question about tree traversal so you can back out easily -- simple, keep a list of left/right moves made, then read that backwards - right? No, he reminded me that absolutely no extra memory could be used, no lists, no nothing. I just couldn't figure out how to do it with no extra mem used; he finally gave me the answer: on your way down, repoint the child node ptr back up to the parent where you came from. Ie: alter the tree as you traverse it. I asked him "what happens if someone else reads the tree while you've messed with it" He just looked at me funny! Like that couldn't happen! Classic MS - he thought he had the cleverest test but a central flaw would kill the whole thing.
But the real kicker: for one of the interviews, I (and I swear this is true, others have tried to call BS on it, but it is true I swear) was led to a programmer who apparently had just had several loved ones die in an accident or something. He was ghostly pale white, his face skin stretched back hard, pulled back hard from stress, and every little point I got wrong was greeted by the craziest most psychotic shouting I could imagine. Like, I mentioned knowing Motorla 68000 assembly, but not being real up at the moment on x86 assembly (though willing to learn). Apparently this was the wrong word. (extreeeme shouting): "You mean you don't know 8068 ARCHITECTURE!!!!!" You see, 'architecture' vs 'assembly' language was the key to the whole universe. Anyway, as I tried to work sample problems for him, on a sheet of paper that kept tearing (like the written exam part of "Men in Black" exactly), he no less than THREE times called the funeral home to see what progres was being made!! The funeral home, asking about wreaths and arrangments and stuff!! During my interview! And every time he hung up, he was more and more distraught and stressed and taut-ended face skin pulled more back, and tons more shouting of course!
Now, I had heard at school that Microsoft was extra-extra tricky in their interviews, so I figured maybe this is a really involved trick to so if you can work under pressure. (Also, I got a lot of screaming shit all my life at home, so I figured I could put up with it.) Now, this guy was nuts distraught over his friend / family member / whatever getting killed and my interview was where he got to work it all out on someone else (me) (I should have got up and left, but had no gumption or anything else as a 22 year old nerd. I just sat there and took it. (Having said that, I will k.i.l.l. that motherfucker if I ever ever run into him again, anywhere, anytime)) This guy was the real psycho thing, however.
When the interview was over, (and he was convinced I couldn't program, after I hadn't been able to even try to work out a solution to some fairly easy things, given that he'd showed me he would scream insane blood murder at any question I might ask, or any correction I might try to make) .. anyway when we walked out his office door into the corridor at least four people were gathered around, concerned/half-jokey looks on their faces, trying to see what all the commotion was/see if anything had happened, etc -- his batshit crazy screaming had gone through the walls of course.
Fuckin' jackoff.
Anyhow -- this is funny: one of the brochures they gave me (early 1991 remember) about how nice it was to work at Microsoft, had a quote from a current employee who said something like how important "lung power" (his words) was at MS, since that how technical issues were decided -- by literally shouting down the hall at each other, over data structs, techniques, etc, until (his words) "the loudest developer wins."
Fuckin' crackhats.
Admin
I work for a rapidly growing startup. Our interview process used to be grueling, lasting up to 8 hours and/or multiple days of back and forth, with take home projects. We have had to relax the process a little bit as we grow.
One of the most difficult things has been finding good web developers (in San Francisco, of all places -- all the good ones are making more than we offer or have nice cushy jobs that don't require all nighters).
Anyway, the other Web dev and me decided to save time with a candidate by doing the interview together. We always start the technical part with a laughably simple question to see how much they lied in their resume. In this case, we asked the guy to make a simple layout using CSS floats. He did fairly well, except when he got to the point where he got it backwards. We pointed out that he wanted "left" instead of "right" because of the way the code was written. This is usually not a big deal (we usually assume that anything that five minutes of googling will provide doesn't have to be memorized).
He said that no, that's the way it's done. We did a double-take and asked him to check it again. He stood his ground. Then we had him check his code in the browser. Even in the face of uncontrovertible evidence, he kept repeating his mantra of 'that's how it's done! I don't know what's wrong!'. Both of us reiterated "left, , instead of right". He would have none of it.
Needless to say, we didn't call him back.
Admin
I have a brother with this. Since he can function normally in most every respect people just think he's an inconsiderate ass. In reality he really can't do things like use the appropriate tone of voice or explain anything in a subtle manner. Every day we have to remind him "lower your voice", "don't interrupt", "It's good to be passionate about something, but try not to go into so much detail unless you are asked to" but it never sinks in.
We make it clear that he has to work hard at these things, but to some extent he needs other people to be more understanding. People with Aspergers tend to make good scientists and engineers, but if they can't get past an interview with HR or collaborate with co-workers their talent tends to get wasted.
Admin
Always a site full of great content, but I need more of this. It had me chuckling all day.
Admin
As someone with Asperger's - I agree. I've taken to reading acting books to learn how to play "roles" - without that, I'd be the horrid dork everyone avoided in high school. Still do it from time to time, too.
Funny thing is, most people I've met with Asperger's get along with fellow Aspies just fine...
Admin
(apropos captcha: 'shizzle'. That out of the way:)
Something remarkably like that landed one of my best friends his first job. Apparently several systems at the computer lab he was using were infected with a new virus that McAfee's scanner couldn't find (this was circa 1990 or so); he posted up on one of the company's bulletin boards mentioning it, and offered up a detection signature he'd figured out. John McAfee sent him a check for a couple hundred bucks and asked if he'd be willing to write a remover, too. After a couple more iterations he wound up as employee #8 at McAfee Technology.
Admin
So us single guys are supposed to starve...or what? Sorry, but anti-descrimination laws exist for a reason.
Admin
I'm sure you meant no harm but what good can come from saying where all the rich Jews live?
Admin
I was once interviewing a guy when I had a phone call, I had forgotten to switch it on to silent. I apologised to him and answered the call. To my utter amazement, it was his wife who then asked me to hand the phone to him so she could remind him of some errands.
I tried to handle this with good grace and humor, but once that was over I said 'goodbye'. It then took me another 45 minutes to get him out the door because he just wouldn't stop talking. No matter how politely I tried to tell him to go away he would find some excuse to keep talking, it was really quite bizarre. I think both he and his wife had some problems.
Admin
How in the world did she have your cell phone number?
Admin
But wouldn't using Esc+ZZ in the joke actually mean:
Remember, only God and Esc+ZZ saves and quits right away.
Man, what a harsh God. ;)
CAPTCHA: creative - hmm, probably should read "bleary-eyed". ;)
Admin
Admin
Admin
I suspect he meant his office phone; Any office phone should have a delightful number of buttons to press, including one to shunt all calls to voicemail or to say "I'm not available" in some other fashion. If you've ever dialed a call center, gotten to the hold music, heard it ring a couple times, then go back to the hold music, someone pressed their "I'm busy right now" button instead of answering the call.
Admin
Technically, it's only illegal to ask. If the guy volunteered it by himself, then the HR rep responded without asking a question, then there shouldn't be a problem.
At least, that's what I understood from personnel management class. shrug
Admin
Because Beechwood is where all the rich Jews live, it the only was to describe the area.
Admin
So hang on, the parents of the candidate turned up, and he went ahead with the interview anyway, knowing he was wasting his time???? There's the WTF right there!
Why be such a pussy? Tell them it not the way to do things, and kick them out! Sheesh!
Admin
My "office phone" is my cellphone. I have both a local area code number and a cellphone area code number assigned to it. Assuming you figure out what combination of buttons to press, it supposedly has the same functionality as normal office phone.
In response to the code samples, a couple of years ago, my standard code sample consisted of a rather elaborate piece of ascii art formatted code. I believe I sent it out to four or five companies in total. One of them responded that they wanted someone more skilled in the programming language. Two others gave me an interview, and one of them ended up hiring me.
Admin
You also used a "red flag" word. Terms like "Jew" and "Jews" (as a plural for Jew) are generally only used by the far-right, so someone using them in conversation may be letting slip far-right leanings.
Something along the same lines:
Me at an interview for a small company that develops systems for book libraries. Me and the MD (Managing Director - owns the company) get one really well, we are both sad enough to have written our own OS's, his that are using to base the system on, my for my final year project at uni.
Ok, I am pretty sure that I have got the job, just doing the walk around the company, showing me the systems they have in development. He asks one of the current devs to do a book look-up to show me how their systems work. We walk off, come back in two minutes, the book that was looked up was "mein Kampt" -- I am black.
I did not except the job offer.
CAPTCHA: clueless -- cant say any more.
Admin
I used to work in a bank but had a chance to transfer to their IT department. I turned up and was ushered in. The interviewer had my last 5 years staff reports which were less than steller (mainly because some of the basic skills like add-listing 8000 checks 100% right was something I just couldn't do). He looked at me, said 'according to this, you're crap! Still, this isn't banking, this is IT, lets go down the pub'. I don't remember much about the pub, just the train journey home, wondering why my face had gone numb (too much beer when I wasn't a drinker). Anyway, a week later, I got the job.
Admin
One of the most funny interview moments for me... was when they told me I could have my birthday off/paid for each year. I laughed by mistake and a piece of spit flew across the room landing on the interviewers face by accident. He did end up making an offer.
Admin
When I was in charge of hiring programmers, I remember we had to filter out all sorts of weird CVs, that would take ages but some of them were just hilarious, including a guy who declared having 10 years experience in Java programming in 2000, or a guy who declared being an expert in absolutely all programming languages (the list was endless) 1-2 years after graduation. We also had people who send pictures of themselves in large format (we never requested photographs). One guy sent a picture of him at a party with his girlfriend, both obviously having drunk too much. Also had an italian guy mentioning in his language skills "english spoken very much well and perfect".
Best interview I had was a guy who came in... with his mother. Mother is an overweight, bully-kind person. Son is a tiny, frail man with enormous glasses who did not speak a word except "Hello" and "Goodbye" during the interview. Mother did all the answering, so I did not dare ask any technical questions and we finished it off in 15 minutes, minimal lapse of time to respect politeness limits.
Admin
I applied to a job as a "PHP/MySQL developer" at a telecommunication company once. During the first interview, I met the company's HR lady. The talk was really positive. The company seemed very nice, too. She asked me I could provide a code sample in a couple of days. Not a problem, of course. I promised I'd mail it the next day.
I did and got a reply from her a day after, telling me that two of the company's developers had reviewed the code. They thought I'd make a nice addition to the team, and invited me to a second interview. Great.
This time, four people showed up: the HR lady, the owner of the company, a developer and a DBA. The talk went great. I had a good answer for all the questions they asked me and everyone looked happy. After another hour or so, we all shook hands, and they told me they had another interview later in the day and that they would contact me as soon as they had made a decision.
The next day, I got a phonecall saying that I got the job. Fantastic. I also got told that they "forgot to mention" something during the interviews. I'd also be a sysadmin for a mission critical server that handled SMS traffic. Plus, I'd have to be on call every night during weekdays and the whole weekend every other week. In fact, coding PHP or MySQL would "probably take up maybe one or two hours a day".
Clearly not the job I had applied for anymore, I turned it down. The weird thing is that the exact same thing happened to me before, only that they had the guts to just tell it to me during the interview then. (I applied as a PHP/MySQL developer at a gaming company, but during the interview the job description slowly morphed into being a sysadmin for servers that hosted national competitions and the like).
Admin
That must have been a long time ago, since all political parties are now almost the same anyway :)
Admin
Well, I've worked with a project manager who genuinely believed that "Management Secrets of Genghis Khan" was the most useful book he'd ever read, but I'm curious about this one.
I hate to ask, really. But what part of Mein Kampf would be useful in a software engineering context? And what part of a library system, other than the part that bans undesirable books, would prompt a quick reference to it?
And, outside of Idaho and Montana, what State would attract enough programmers to staff a company that relies on books like this one?
Admin
Admin
While I completely agree that Mein Kampf isn't exactly the best book to choose in this context, the words "bans undesirable books" make me cringe.
A group of people once decided that a certain type of books were undesirable. Those books were burned on several occations. That group were the Nazis and the books in question were jewish.
To ban Mein Kampf because of the history of the nazis only perpetuates this kind of intolerance. After all, purely looking from a historical perspective, Mein Kampf is an important part of our modern history.
Admin
Don't supposed it occured to you that it might have been something like a random book function, or a loan/return/sale/etc. on a certain date on test data grabbed from a real system, or the lookup wasn't on the title or author field.
And even is it was chosen specifically by that dev, that's just one dev, in how big a company I don't know. And I doubt reading Mein Kampf is a fireable offence.
You're also assuming that the guy agreed with it.
So that was rather a hasty turn-down really.
Admin
It was one of the books in the library (reading/lending library) that the system was being built for. So the proggy was either, have a pop at me, or thought it was funny. Either way not the sort of people/person that I want to spend 8 hours a day with.
As for G.K secrets, I have worked with some PM's who approach to staff/project management would have made Mr Khan look like a nursery nurse putting his charges down for a nap .
Example, after a 35 hours weekend -- yes weekend, we finally pushed a project out the door, almost literally onto the plane (UPS van, to the airport, to Saudi Arabia - with an hour to spare after finishing the code). Monday morning at 11am (4 hours after leaving the office), the PM phoned one of the devs that has been in all weekend for some advice on a project that was not due for three months.
Admin
It was chosen by the dev, it was the lookup function of the library system. He was asked to look up a book.
Would you have made such a joke to someone you did not know on first meeting? Would you really want to spend time with such a fool? It was a small company 20 people max.
Also, in my experience, you find where such jokes are tolerated by the others people in the office, it points to a general culture that makes that sort of rubbish acceptable behaviour. I really want to spend years of my life being called "chalky" or other such brilliantly funny nick names. You cant complain that it annoys you, as all you get is "grow a sense of humour" type responses. Nah, I rather go a work somewhere were people have a real sense of humour, and life wont be a struggle with idiots all day.
Admin
Once had an interview for a Oracle DBA position, trading company turning over a very nice proffit, highly critical 24 hr jobby, eveything in production including dev systems, you know the sort. Everythings going OK.
"So Mr J, do you have any questions for us?" "Yes. Can you give me an idea about your backup, regime. Types, times, sizes, etc?"
Blank looks between IT Head and lowly Windows SQL Server techie filling in for missing DBA.
Mr IT Head: "Well I believe we do them, but ermm, I think there are...ermm, well I do know the last one was about a month ago, I think? Well that's what you will be able to sort out! Right? Any other questions?"
I wanted to say: "Yes, where's the front door? This ship is sinking fast and stuff is gonna fly. You have no idea what your dept is doing and you techie here obviously couldn't even save a doc file to a floppy!", but I just thanked them and left very quickly.
Admin
I had one of those four hour long interviews once. It wasn't so bad I talked to some of the engineers and project managers. Some were more interested in giving me life advice than hearing about my qualifications, but whatever most of it was good advice. All was going pretty well until the wrap up lunch.
As it turns out my interview happened to be scheduled the same day as someones retirement lunch. Guess where I ended up for lunch. That was akward especially since I was all dressed up in a suit for the interview and everyone else was in kahkis I stuck out like a sore thumb.
Interestingly enough while I was at the lunch the guy I was "interviewing" with told me a story about an inteview he had fresh out of college that lasted 3 days, one of which was him partying at the CEO's house.
Admin
I once conducted an interview for a Perl coding position and a guy called Stephan showed up. Wearning diapers. Only. Taken aback, I asked him "Do you know what perl is?" and he immediately got out a pair of knitting needles and some wool (never mind from where, and yes, it was big diaper) and said "See, this is 'purl'" ...
Don't believe it? Well, I made this up, just like ole' Steph made up the slander about Rajib the (real) Injun ...
Seriously, I have worked in the IT industry for over two decades, and I have never ever seens anyones parents turning up to give a proxy interview (even Stephan's).
Admin
I once conducted an interview for a Perl coding position and a guy called Stephan showed up. Wearing diapers. Only. Taken aback, I asked him "Do you know what perl is?" and he immediately got out a pair of knitting needles and some wool (never mind from where, and yes, it was a big diaper) and said "See, this is 'purl'" ...
Don't believe it? Well, I made it up, just like ole' Steph made up the slander about Rajib the (real) Injun ...
Seriously, I have worked in the IT industry for over two decades, and I have never ever seen anyones parents turning up to give a proxy interview (even Stephan's).