I hate interviewing..

The first sentence of the candidate was, that he wanted to speak in english instead of german. Great start if you stated something else in the application.

And his english was even worse than mine.

And as expected from his tags in the application, he had a broad knowledge base. From IoT, LTE, node.js TCP, Java, Ruby, Python, to VLAN and firewalls.

Guess what, he had no in depth knowledge for the required job. Suprise!

Was that in Germany?

@DP1306 yes it was. And I wouldn't have a problem with speaking english, if he stated that in his application. And if his english would have been good. But I could barely understand him.

@mrtnrdl when he is a senior I would hire him without german.

At this point I even would like to hire someone with just a little bit of experience. But it seems to be impossible

@plusgut sensing he is an immigrant and someone from my country, since if he's German I doubt he'll ask for English. And having his English bad then it's not his native language.
I'd understand his bad English but I'd be really mad he has no in-depth knowledge of job requirements cuz he'd be wasting my time which I need plenty of it.

Good luck finding the right candidate

@gitpush sure it's understandable, but then don't write it on your resume that you are decent at it. And for the tech skills goes the same.

And thanks for the good luck wishes, I need it. Looking for more then half a year to staff my department.

@plusgut wow that much? I recall four years ago I was after a position in Germany and there was high demand for devs, sadly no one was willing to sponsor me. Thought it would be less now as I'm not seeing as many positions as I used to before.

@gitpush As far as I know it really depends on the field. What I hear from my c/cpp guys, there is not that much of a demand.
But experienced js developer? It's crazy rare to find some.

@plusgut man it must be hard, especially that JS is not like, say C# when you do something wrong visual studio gives you a detailed exception or warn you before compiling. You really need that luck

@gitpush Thank you :)
Yes that's true, but luckily there are tools like different linters, typescript or static code analyzers. Which help you with the issues. But sadly the ones who know there stuff are in tight relationships with there company, so it's hard to get a hold of them.
And don't get me started on automated tests, it seems like no one does it. Which is obviously not true, but it seems that way.

@plusgut ya tests are the most important part, I hate working on a project with no tests. Unfortunately so many now think writing code is mandatory and tests are just a waste of time :/

@gitpush true! So true!
I experienced that in my previous jobs as well. That's why I decided for myself never to work in an agency again. Only for companies which have there own product, it makes so much of a difference. But of course it's not a guarantee that it's better there, only better chances.

@plusgut yup it's a matter of luck. And we all need plenty of it

I guess that's where initial filters are applicable. Make the candidate write a simple program. If he posts the correct answer, you get the code and his CV. If he fails, don't even bother writing a rejection letter. This way you will waste exactly zero seconds of your time if it's a bad candidate.

@apisarenco if a company would want to have code upfront, without me knowing if I even like the company?
Hell no. This takes to much of my time. I can bare to talk to you for 20minutes on the phone and in the next step we can talk about some practice. But then I want to see company code as well, upfront.

I think the problem with the JS market is that while supply is high, demand is even higher. And the supply is mostly jquery juniors, while the market needs seniors with extremely complex compound experiences.

I'm a bit wary of the fullstack idea when hiring: I prefer getting a few good VueJS devs with very basic backend knowledge, pairing them up with some excellent graphql API builders who are shit at frontend.

Of course it's great if someone wants to learn it all, but there's no shame in specializations in my opinion. Development is complex and moves forward fast, there's simply not enough time in a day to keep track of everything.

gute leute sind schwer zu finden

@bittersweet I completly agree with your description of the market. I currently set my bar this low, that I just want to hire someone who has decent programming knowledge and is motivated to do js.

@mrtnrdl haha, no. When interviewing, sample code is basically a must. Unless you come with stellar recommendations from people that I really trust, I will not even consider your CV seriously without a code sample and a demonstration that you can solve a simple problem.

Probation periods are expensive because you have the onboarding process which takes away everyone's time. Plus you still have to pay the salary for at least 2 weeks (depends on the terms of the probation period).

No no. No code = bye bye.

It is even a common practice to have a trial day, to have the candidate come for a half, or full day in office to experience working with him. But only in final stages of the interview.

@apisarenco sample code is something else then giving me a task to solve.
I can give you the links to my opensource stuff. but require me to write something for you? That's another story. Won't do that upfront before the first interview.

@plusgut if you don't want to demonstrate your skills by solving a simple problem involving parsing some trees, or organizing some sample data, then you're not dedicated enough to the idea of joining this company, or you can't solve it, or you're impossible to motivate. The last 2 cases are an automatically deserved rejection. The first one is as well, because onboarding takes time, and costs a whole fucking lot. And if you weren't dedicated enough to write a hundred lines of code, then you're the kind of person who will most likely leave once anyone proposes something with a higher pay or closer to where you live, or if you get bored doing the same stuff for a month. In which case - bye bye.

Like I said, it's a good filter that works wonders.

Why github repos aren't a good judgement? They rarely show the ability to solve a problem. I met people with huge github track record on good projects, that couldn't answer simple questions or solve a simple practical problem.

@mrtnrdl exactly! I totally agree.
He seems to have a broad choice between lot's of people.

And I actually do believe that a github account tells me enough to know if his technical knowledge is enough.

And again: 100 loc upfront before an interview? oh no. This company seems to care zero about my freetime.

@mrtnrdl see? Neither me or you have wasted any time on a relationship that just couldn't last. You think of yourself as a superstar. Everybody who doesn't know you would agree that you have to prove that. If you don't want to prove that, it means that you'd probably just be a thorn in their asses during the contract.

So you get to spend your time with people who revere you, while companies can spend that time looking for cooperative people that can code.

@apisarenco Oh wow, you seem really prejudgemental.

@plusgut exactly the opposite. I don't know anybody and I can't make any conclusions about them. That's why I do what I can at the very beginning to test the basic requirements. The basic requirements, as explained, should be:
1. Dedication
2. Skill

I explained objectively why they are undeniable, unquestionable requirements. Without dedication, the 10k$ onboarding cost will be in vain when the person leaves for an offer that pays 2% more. Without skill, the onboarding cost is wasted on someone who can't solve a simple problem.

And even IF the person has skill, and doesn't leave for another job, this lack of dedication only means that the work day will be spent by looking at the clock, and interrupt work exactly at the end hour, because that's what a person says when they don't want to dedicate time for a simple problem.

@apisarenco okay, fair enough

@mrtnrdl I don't have to argue about your character.

I have provided a simple test that weeds out unwanted qualities. Whatever you might think of yourself, the behavior that you would demonstrate with that attitude talks actual reality.

Party A wants to hire candidate B. B needs to spend time researching about A, deciding whether he wants to work at A, and convincing A that he is the best for the role. That INCLUDES spending time on writing sample code, going to interviews, etc.
On the other hand, A invests their time in looking and screening the candidates, offering a lot of their top paid specialists to judge the decision of hire/no-hire. After hiring B, on whatever basis, A still has a ton of expenses related to onboarding, and the risks that it takes when hiring someone, as some people might be hired and end up as completely useless tools.

Refusal to take part in this mutually costly acquaintance speaks arrogance and lack of dedication, which have no place in a team.

@theScientist when you have a github repo, you don't know whether:
1. Code was written fast or slowly
2. Was it during usual days or only when in the mood
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3. What technical problems were encountered when writing the software, and what solutions were devised? That can only be determined after a costly audit.
4. What would happen if the scenario was slightly different? Because that software in the repos is useless to the company, which has a different problem.

The only thing that the repos give is a certainty that the person has knowledge of a certain language or platform. Also it can weed out the people who write horrendous code. That's it. Everything else is prohibitively expensive to determine.

Once, for instance, we've interviewed people for a role that required dealing with non-ideal situations. A bit of legacy code, a bit of dirty data, etc. I asked for solutions to get the most out of it. Fairly easy. We had prominent, confident people, active on Github, completely fail.