When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

Re:When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re s... by wool_gather on Sunday January 20, 2019 @09:07PM (#18957037)

To my mind, the simplest and most straightforward way to combat any fraud is also beneficial because it gives you even more information about the candidate:

Talk to them about the code they wrote.

Have a conversation, as if they were already your co-worker, with the exercise as the subject. Go through it, ask them -- non-adversarially -- why they did X, what they thought about requirement 2, how they could get better test coverage for Z. If you see something that seems to be a mistake, talk about it. If you see something awesome, discuss it. I can't imagine someone incompetent being able to bullshit their way through detailed discussion of code they were supposed to have written.

And this provides valuable info about how this person thinks and communicates about the work you want them to do.

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Re:When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re s... by bradleyjg on Sunday January 20, 2019 @09:13PM (#18957065)

That seems like a good idea, but does somewhat detract from the notion that once a candidate does the work-sample he is done with the technical part of the process.

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Re:When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re s... by wool_gather on Sunday January 20, 2019 @09:31PM (#18957151)

True, it deviates from tptacek's recommendations; about scoring and identical questions for everyone as well.

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Re:When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re s... by swish_bob on Monday January 21, 2019 @04:24AM (#18958969)

A nice approach I liked (back when I was interviewed by Thoughtworks years ago) was that one of the interview stages was to take the assignment you'd done and apply some new requirements to the story. It rapidly makes it clear if the candidate actually did the assignment or not.

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