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A comment on When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling. Parent comment

Re:When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re s... by sarabande on Sunday January 20, 2019 @06:01PM (#18956179)
Agreed. In my experience, senior engineers are even better at glibly skirting what specific contributions they made at a company were, or what their true technical skillset is. They need to be tested.

The fact that a lot of time senior engineers will get pulled in to interview from other companies because someone knows someone and has worked with them for a long time only exacerbates this problem.

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Re:When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re s... by gregrata on Sunday January 20, 2019 @06:11PM (#18956219)
> because someone knows someone and has worked with them for a long time only

And this is the #1 thing that gets a near auto-hire from me. I'm not saying don't interview them, but most interviews don't really tell you what it's going to be like working with someone. On the other hand, WORKING with someone (for a long time) 100% tells you what it's like working with someone.

If someone has worked a long time with someone else and is willing and wanting to do so again, then hire them.

My experience is, most interviews suck trying to figure out how someone is going to do on the job. Working with someone a long time and wanting to work with them should weight heavier than anything else

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Re:When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re s... by tptacek on Sunday January 20, 2019 @06:19PM (#18956258)
I can't tell if you're saying "look at their resume and see if they've successfully worked on teams for extended periods of time" (don't do this; it's a debacle of a signal) or "hire them if you yourself have worked with them before" (this works fine but network hiring can lead to brittle teams that fall apart as soon as 1-2 people move on).
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Re:When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re s... by sethammons on Sunday January 20, 2019 @08:27PM (#18956830)
I read it as someone already with the company has prior work with the candidate and wants to work with them again.
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Re:When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re s... by gregrata on Monday January 21, 2019 @01:26AM (#18958116)
Correct. Best way to know what someone is going to be like to work with, and how good they are, is to work with them. Interview is that helpful
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Re:When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re s... by gregrata on Monday January 21, 2019 @01:27AM (#18958118)
> WORKING with someone (for a long time) 100% tells you what it's like working with someone

Not sure how that's not clear...

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Re:When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re s... by sarabande on Tuesday January 29, 2019 @07:48AM (#19025867)
Someone I've worked with before and whose work quality I respect may get an "auto-hire" from me, but that doesn't necessarily translate to a "auto-hire" from the team that is going to be working with them. I'm fine introducing good candidates I know if into a recruiting process, but not forcing them through just because I know them. In that sense, I want them to be able to demonstrate their abilities in an interview to the rest of the team, as well.
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Re:When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re s... by gregrata on Sunday January 20, 2019 @06:12PM (#18956226)
And yeah, I have strong opinions on this - I've been on both sides of the table for a long time, and don't think the average interview is a good indicator of how they'll do in the job.

I wrote a book about this :) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FJ6N8P1

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