Unruly Rambling - programmer tag

I'm Interviewing, Is anyone out there??? Anyone?

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 14:00:00 GMT

For the past week and half, I have been interviewing for a Senior Programmer/Analyst contract position at work. Out of 35 or so resumes, only 5 were from local candidates in St. Louis. The rest were submitting by consulting companies based on online test scores. Hmm, I wonder if cheating is possible in this paradigm... Let's just say that the answer to this question is a resounding YES! The fun begins with my first "phone interview". According to his account manager, this particular candidate did very well on his tech screen so he should be a good fit for my group. We set up a 3 way call and once connected I proceeded to ask questions and inquire about his past experience. Every single question I asked him, he repeated the question out loud and then paused for 10 seconds or so. After the pause, he began to spew back the answer in a very incoherent way and only with about 20% accuracy. My guess is that he either had someone next to him attempting to provide the answers or he was using google. Either way, could this really work? How long would it take for your potential peers to find out that the only thing you know about java is drinking it. Anyone else have similar experiences?

Of the few senior level candidates I was able to interview in person, only two have been able to explain how .equals and hashcode work with respect to the collections api. Maybe I should have listed Effective Java as a prerequisite for the interview. When asked how a collection deems an item a duplicated, I've received answers stating that those details are not exposed without going through source code and also that only hashmaps are capable of dealing with duplicates since they have a key. The latter answer was the best because I quickly responded with, "How do you know if the key is a duplicate of one that already exists". I got a blank stare and the candidate immediately changed the subject and asked out the culture. I find this one question a good litmus test for determining if someone might be a good java programmer or not. What are your go to questions when facing a potential candidate to hire? Am I being too hard? Is expecting the person to back up the details stated on the resume considered harsh?

Another humorous exchange that I had was about web frameworks. I told the candidate that they would be leading a project with a couple junior programmers and that they needed to pick a web framework. I told them there was no right or wrong answer but I wanted to know which frameworks they would consider and why. This particular candidate told me that they would pick JSF and they were pretty firm about it. I didn't remember seeing JSF on their resume so I quickly glanced over it again and sure enough, it wasn't there. I dug a bit further and asked why and the candidate told me that it was the web framework that listed most frequently on dice.com so it must be good. I then allowed the candidate to verify that they had no experience with it and also didn't have any friends or colleagues using it. I summarized with a statement similar to, "So you would pick a web framework that you don't know and also don't know anyone using it because of it's popularity on dice.com". After that the candidate got pretty quiet and the interview shortly ended.

Needless to say, the req has still not been filled and it appears that it might be open for a while. The only thing worse than being short handed is having people that need babysitting and slowing down already productive staff members.

For those of you looking, Joel has a good read on resumes and the interviewing process.

Java Programmers are not born.

Sat, 08 Jan 2005 18:28:18 GMT

I have been a long time reader of Dr. Heinz M. Kabutz's Java Specialists' Newsletter. His latest installment is titled Java Programmers aren't born.

In this piece, Dr. Kabutz explains what it takes to become a great programmer. On one side of the scale is aptitude and formal education, while dedication to this craft is on the other side. These ingredients are the main contributors to your makeup as a programmer.

First, Dr. Kabutz points out that the type of people that have the greatest potential to become great programmers are those that have strengths in "thinking subjects" like math and science. He also states that an undergraduate degree in Computer Science is the bare minimum formal education and encourages a Masters degree as well. While I agree that my computer science degree helped prepare me to enter the workforce, I have also worked with people that did not study computer science or engineering and were still competent programmers. What I'm getting at is that this line is not black or white.

The second of the critical attributes is more controllable by the individual. It has more to do with the amount of effort put forth and excitement about this field of study. Great programmers have a love for the craft outside of working hours. Wait, in my opinion even decent programmers have this. Programming is difficult and to do it in a maintainable fashion takes an endless pursuit of knowledge. As we develop new ways of solving complex problems(procedural, object oriented, aspect oriented), the problems get infinitely more difficult. Sometimes I wonder if we will ever catch up. In other words, if you treat programming as a 9 to 5 job, it is highly unlikely maybe impossible, that you will ever be great. Out of all the statements made in this article, this is the one I agree with the most. Having crossed paths with many great programmers throughout my career, this is one thing they all have in common.

Anyway, this article is a good read for individuals doing software development. You can sign up for Dr. Kabutz's newsletter here.

Code Reuse

Fri, 09 Jul 2004 12:20:02 GMT

This image is a response to Andrew's blog entry. Please excuse the rough image.