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Re: not enough real programmers? (was Re: Byte Magazine: 18 Vintage issues, 1985-1986)

>>>>> On Sat, 07 Aug 1999 12:27:42 GMT, prs@gol.com (Peter Stephenson) said:

Peter> It can be difficult recruiting good programmers, though.  I
Peter> mean, how the hell do you find out whether they can code in an
Peter> interview?

Good question.

A few (obvious?) candidates:
 o Ask for their environment customization files (.emacs, .kshrc,
   .profile, .login, etc.)
 o Ask for samples of their work
 o Ask to which open source projects they contribute and what they've
   contributed. 

Some things that I like to do are make jokes that would depend on
someone having some familiarity with what I'm referencing to get it.
Then don't laugh unless the interviewee does.

 int *laser;

An interesting exercise would be converting a small program from one
language to another.  Of course a real showoff would instead write a
program that would accept input from the source language and spew the
target language. :-)

This thread has been very interesting.  I have started to collect a
few thoughts to refine into a "how to (recruit|hire) programmers" FAQ,
aimed at recruiters and human resources types.  Is there anything
along these lines already?

(I have been thinking about doing something like this for a long time, 
as over the past two years, I've been getting a steady stream of
increasingly bizarre requests for various services.  More than one
recruiter has tried to hire me to break into a few big companies'
personnel directories and fork them the names and phone numbers of
everyone in the company, along with descriptions of what they do!)

ObCSA2: ] CALL -151
        *

-- 
Matt Curtin cmcurtin@interhack.net http://www.interhack.net/people/cmcurtin/