So, it's been my experience that non technical folks have a hell of a time interviewing technical people. This article came up today on Slashdot, and was pretty much on-the-money for what helps to separate a good tech from a mediocre one from a terrible one in an interview.
how-to-recognise-a-good-programmer
Since it's been Slashdotted and the server is nearly dead, the summary section, with slight edit for completeness:
Positive indicators:
- Passionate about technology
- Programs as a hobby
- Will talk your ear off on a technical subject if encouraged
- Significant (and often numerous) personal side-projects over the years
- Learns new technologies on his/her own
- Opinionated about which technologies are better for various usages
- Very uncomfortable about the idea of working with a technology he doesn’t believe to be “right”
- Clearly smart, can have great conversations on a variety of topics
- Started programming long before university/work
- Has some hidden “icebergs”, large personal projects under the CV radar
- Knowledge of a large variety of unrelated technologies (may not be on CV)
- Knowledge of a few bleeding-edge technologies
Negative indicators:
- Programming is a day job
- Don’t really want to “talk shop”, even when encouraged to
- Learns new technologies in company-sponsored courses
- Happy to work with whatever technology you’ve picked, “all technologies are good”
- Doesn’t seem too smart
- Started programming at university
- All programming experience is on the CV
- Focused mainly on one or two technology stacks (e.g. everything to do with developing a java application), with no experience outside of it
2 comments:
I'm not sure I agree with some of those negatives.
I like my programmers to have something going on outside of programming, for example.
I like my programmers to be good programmers no matter the tech, and to be experienced enough with a variety of things to be comfortable tackling challenges across a variety of technologies.
Or maybe it's just that I don't really like to talk "shop" when I'm not at work... Unless it's personal projects.
The frequent recurrence of articles like this suggests to me that there's a market for 3rd party companies that do technical interviews well.
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