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Hazarth
5y

Im to interview a couple of guys for a developer position and I was wondering, are there any questions you were asked or have asked someone while conducting an interview that you think were really useful and what do you think it revealed about you/them?

I'll start with a question I was asked when I started out that I found very insightful: "How would you explain a database to a 10 year old kid in three sentences or less?"

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  • 2
    5y
    Ask about SOLID and dependency injection. Shows at least a little bit if the possible new dev knows some basic principles.
  • 1
    5y
    It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again ?
  • 2
    5y
    @halfflat I mean, I don‘t go too hard on candidates not knowing that but some of those typical interview questions are normal.
    Like 5 minutes in I always ask something practical.

    I also give assignments to do at home to people who are just too nervous since I don‘t only want extroverts in my team.
    A good mix is the best.
  • 2
    5y
    Give them some very vague specs and ask them for a time estimate.

    That way you will see if they can tell if they don't know/ can't do something. In my experience being able to confidently say that you don't know something shows a certain Level of professionalism.
    Somehow testing if they can say no to stupid ideas might actually be even better but I never found a way to incorporate that into an Interview.
  • 1
    5y
    @Godisalie
    > If they say no to stupid ideas

    I need ones that don't say no to stupid ideas. The client we're working for only has stupid ideas ;_;

    But yeah, thats also a good tip! Thanks
  • 1
    5y
    @Hazarth Then you need someone to say no. I don't want to quote Bob Martin word for word but imo a true professional knows when a no is needed and won't hesitate to say it.
  • 0
    5y
    @halfflat this is a really good one, thanks

    @ExGetMessage ye, I had that asked of me too now that I look back. My reviewer were very dissapointed with my answer back then.
  • 0
    5y
    @Godisalie if only that was up to us, not even our management has any more energy to argue with this dude. The project is going on for well over 5, years and it doesn't have a single functional version in production, it just has a lot of change requests and bugs. Luckily I was assigned to a different one, gosh
  • 0
    5y
    @Hazarth will their money every end
  • 2
    5y
    @electrineer The guy is sponsored pretty successfuly from a few other companies he owns, so I dont think so, but he's starting to get pissed and blaming us for holding the project back on purpose (as if anyone would do that...) In reality we were supposed to have a release at least 5 times already and they non-stop introduce new features and the estimations keep piling up and the code keeps getting messier and messier -_-
  • 3
    5y
    Remember that what you ask is the first impression for the applicant of what to expect from the position.
  • 2
    5y
    @electrineer that's a very good point, I'll keep that in mind while preparing my questions
  • 1
    5y
    Every test I did, and a lot of friends, didn't get the good results.
    I was once asked what is needed to have a SQL DB. And the good answer was indexes...

    What I do now is feeling. To weird questions (why do iife, what type is thanks and why, the difference between map and for each)

    Then what kind of profiles do you search for? When I hunting for senior I do 20/30 mins of pair programming
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