Interviewing developers can be a tricky proposition. When I interviewed for a recent position, I was able to skip past any kind of developer test because of my specific background (leader of the local Perl Mongers group); I was delighted, because I do my worst work while someone watches every key stroke. A particularly abysmal screen-sharing session with GSG (long ago) comes to mind. Wow. So bad.

However, giving a developer an hour or two to write something simple should be enough to find out what level they're at during an interview. Getting them to debug an issue in some poorly written code would also be useful. For example. if the code's poorly written, do they use perltidy to clean it up a little? Do they use the debugger? When starting a new script, do they start with a comment about what they're attempting to do? Are the variable names sane?

Alex / talexb / Toronto

Thanks PJ. We owe you so much. Groklaw -- RIP -- 2003 to 2013.

In reply to Re^2: What is the right amount of onboarding? by talexb
in thread What is the right amount of onboarding? by talexb

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