White Board

After dozen of interviews I’ve come to the conclusion that it is not legal to enjoy interviews. It leads to frustration, disappointment, evil loads of paperworks, and the birth of a black hole.

I’ll get straight to the point.

There are times when you meet a reputable candidate. The kind that claims to be able to write in 5 different languages (one of it is Klingon), a little hubris on the technical end with some sweet gravy when it comes to economic sense, but insist that it only takes one byte to store a pointer! Just where in the world did you get your degree from?

I was about to close a deal one time, and this chap seemed like a nice kid. He talked about his church, his grandmother, and how hard he works in his present job despite being underpaid. Then I asked the magic question: “Can you work late and occasionally travel around the region?”, to which he replied, “I got to be home by six to feed my dog.”

Another example. I interviewed this girl that seems to have it all; the brain, the looks, the brawls. She’s any typical male geek dream girl. The cutest moment was when she said, “If I don’t get this job, I probably won’t be applying anywhere else.” Hiring her would probably mean distraction for most programmers and would lead to productivity breakdown. But she got hired, performed her duties, and excelled in her own domain. The decisions that an interviewer has to make gets tougher everyday.

So they’re not all bad encounters with the Darwin-kind. If humans are indeed God’s big budget sequel to the monkeys, they ought to be endowed with something more than just charisma to make up for their inability to walk around naked and carefree among their own species. It’s so important that it distinguishes us from apes in pants. Ready for it? It’s called a brain.

I’m looking for someone who can deliver codes, not just copy it from the Internet. I want someone with enough initiative to learn new skills without being told. I need someone to get off their programming seat once in a while and ask the other guys whether they have a need for new tools or complex solutions. And then code it!

So here’s what I’m concluding: Try not to interview experienced programmers. If they’re on the job market, the chances that they’re worthless is 70% (a figure plucked from the wind) of the time. Good programmers are usually harvested fresh from colleges and do not remain on job market often because they have a goal of where they want to work. And they’re usually well taken care of by their employers too.

If you really have to interview experienced candidates, do it first over the phone. This will save your time and theirs. Try to gauge whether this guy or girl is really the material he or she claims he or she is by asking down to earth technical questions. If that works out all right, then call the candidate for a face-to-face interview.

Real programmers are not intimidated by hard facts. They love statistics and raw codes.

Personally I enjoy hiring fresh graduates more. They can be trained and they’re always eager to please, which leads to them taking more initiative than their experienced peers.

There’s this tale about a senior engineer and a newcomer. The senior engineer was given a task and said it can’t be done. The newcomer on the other hand, has no previous experience to say it can’t be done, so he just took it and worked on it. And he did it!

A lesson out of interviewing programmers is the same old sound wisdom our K12 teachers taught us: Do not judge a book by it’s cover. I’d say, do not judge a candidate by their talk but by their codes.

Lesson learned.