Re:Resumes are dangerous?
by mikepurvis on Monday April 25, 2022 @11:02AM
(#31155847)
Sure. But not because you're expecting the treehouse to be at the caliber of a major building project. Rather because it's an opportunity to witness:
- What their work looks like when they're solely in charge of it and it's not a massive, long-lived team effort.
- Obvious flaws that shouldn't be acceptable to anyone. Like, loose boards, nails sticking out, a fence that's not supported and may collapse if a kid leans on it wrong.
Neither of these things are the entirety of the evaluation, but IMO they're a relevant signal to use in combination with talking through past professional projects, particularly if the professional projects aren't visible or known to the interviewer.
The difference with software is that you are not allowed to look at the skyscraper, because it is the intellectual property of another company.
So you're saying that, if skyscraper engineering designs were considered confidential and proprietary, preventing you from being able to directly investigate them, it would be perfectly reasonable to fall back to evaluating structural engineers for skyscraper projects on the basis of how well they put together treehouses?
What you’re going to do, though, is ask them to let you have a look round the treehouse they built on weekends in their backyard.
After all, the choices of materials and techniques they use there in that ‘not for production’ context probably tell you a lot about how they approach their work, right?