Could not agree more, I attend a fortnightly hackathon for just this purpose, one day when my dream job comes along (but don't tell my employer...) I want to be ripe and ready to be drilled by whatever they have to offer.
Re:Controversial programming opinions
by prodigal_erik on Wednesday August 29, 2012 @01:02PM
(#4449674)
If I can't write code during an interview, neither can I coordinate a staged release of a fix I just wrote during a 3 AM outage. That shouldn't have happened but sometimes it does; pressure isn't always artificial.
Re:Controversial programming opinions
by fghh45sdfhr3 on Wednesday August 29, 2012 @01:16PM
(#4449773)
Indeed. But if I find out that a company never does 3AM fixes, or death marches, then I know their management is damn great. And I really want to work for them!
Re:Controversial programming opinions
by quantumstate on Wednesday August 29, 2012 @02:34PM
(#4450291)
It depends what your company does. Where I work we write CAD/CAM software which gets released roughly twice a year. It is pretty inconceivable that a 3AM fix would be necessary. Even 0 day security flaws in the software (pretty unlikely since there isn't any need for network connectivity) really shouldn't be fixed at 3 am, they can wait 12 hours and be handled under less stress and tiredness.
I'm sorry, but in which line of work is coding and pushing emergency bug fixes at 3AM an acceptable occurrence?
If you only hire people who can write code during job interviews, you might get a great guy who was completely relax during the interview. Or you might get someone who's OK at writing code, and miss out on someone 100 times more productive only because they were nervous during the interview.
Nervousness is poison for thinking, fear is the mind killer, etc. I've always been most nervous at interviews for jobs I really, really wanted. Not because I needed a paycheck, but because I was passionate about the job.
Advice for job candidates: Drill coding under pressure.