[Chicago] Sanity Check

[Kumar McMillan]

This is a big thread but I think it's important to discuss.  Every
company should strive to hire the best possible talent but they are
going to lose out on some smart people if they continue their
excessive bureaucracy.  I think companies should respect open source
more -- you can discover all sorts of ways the developer operates and
collaborates with others (mailing lists, bug reports, etc).  If open
source is not the dev's day job then it's probably what he/she does
*for fun*.  Check out their projects and you'll learn tons about a
potential hire.

I recently took a job at Mozilla and thought the interview process was
great.  Lots of discussion about complex problems, sure, but in ways
that made me want to work with these people.  I had to do tests but
they were just sanity checks about Python and JavaScript nuances and
knowledge of http, etc, and we did it all on a whiteboard, not take
home tests.  You have to do checks like that because there are some
seriously deceptive people out there who will do anything for a job.

Christian Heilmann wrote about starting at Mozilla recently too and
talks about why the more common hire-by-intimidation strategy is not a
good one http://www.wait-till-i.com/2010/10/28/so-what-is-the-job-i-am-going-to/
especially:

"I went through a few other interviews (no, I won’t mention names) and
felt unhappy during the interview. A lot of companies try to make you
uncomfortable or intimidate you during an interview. I find this
pathetic. The interview in Mozilla was 5 hours of the best
brainstorming I had done in a while. We bounced ideas off one another
and people came into the meeting room in between interviews as they
were excited to see me there and asked me for a quick comment on a new
idea of theirs. It was pure creativity."

As a developer who also has conducted interviews at my last job,
hiring talent is a fine art and it's difficult to master.  Some people
are gifted at hiring -- find out who they are in your company and
always ask them to help conduct interviews!

On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 1:03 PM, Lance Hassan <lance at roytalman.com> wrote:
> Hey, me & my buddies *like* our corner... y'all might too. ;-) Look folks,
> I'm not unwilling to compromise - I'm looking for a job instead of spending
> my time cooking and riding bikes. Rent's gotta get paid, that's fine.
>
> And no one is saying there is anything wrong with your corner...and I was
> likely a previous occupant...it's about choices and how you manipulate the
> options (yeah I know ...duh). my only advice would be to not get too
> emotional about the choice, at some point you might want/need to change your
> mind and you are better off if you have left the bridge intact (mixing
> metaphors). This message will self-destruct in five seconds.
>
> Thank You
> Lance Hassan
> Roy Talman and Associates
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: chicago-bounces+lance=roytalman.com at python.org
> [mailto:chicago-bounces+lance=roytalman.com at python.org] On Behalf Of Peter
> Fein
> Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2010 11:59 AM
> To: The Chicago Python Users Group
> Subject: Re: [Chicago] Sanity Check
>
> On 12/02/2010 09:06 AM, Jason Huggins wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 10:47 AM, Lance Hassan<lance at roytalman.com>  wrote:
>>> Hugs...yup...that would be about right. The question for you becomes
>>> if you take all the things you won't do or compromises you won't
>>> make... just how big is the corner you've painted yourself into and
>>> how long do you want to live there :-)? That is the real sanity check
> question.
>>
>> Shhh... I'm trying to let Peter learn the lesson on his own: "Life:
>> Some Dancing Required." ;-)
>
> Hey, me & my buddies *like* our corner... y'all might too. ;-) Look folks,
> I'm not unwilling to compromise - I'm looking for a job instead of spending
> my time cooking and riding bikes. Rent's gotta get paid, that's fine.
>
>> P.S. Let's start talking about Python again! :-)
>
> Yeah, +1. For a closing thought, I think I'm going to tell these particular
> folks to take their test on a hike (politely)... not super interested in
> this one anyway. But mainly, I want to get some data on how they'll react.
> I'll let you know.
>
> Thanks all.
>
> --Pete
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