26th April 2017

Great Developers, Interviews and Projects

Over the past year or two I was responsible for conducting a number of interviews and found that there are a lot of developers that turns out to be just clock-punchers.

This post is purely on how I feel, there is no stats or science behind this, just an observation, and I can be wrong about this. Feel free to leave a comment if you disagree with me.

During a lot of the interviews I conducted I found that most of the developers have no idea what they doing, or they are just there for the pay check. Some are getting paid way more than what they should be, and in some cases I could clearly see that people have been promoted purely on the success of the team and not personal achievements.

Let’s start first with how I operate and what technology and development means to me before I continue with how I conduct and interview and what I look for in new candidates.

For me technology has always been a passion, it’s part of who I am and since I can remember I have in some form or another been involved with learning it, mastering it, making it, and owning it. Ever since I started software development I have strived to be the best, to learn as much as I can and always deliver more than what was asked. I am at the point where I started giving back to the community in terms of my blog, GitHub and soon to launch YouTube videos. But I still find that every day I learn something new.

This view I created of how I operate is most likely why I find it difficult to interview other developers. It pains me deeply when I come across someone in the technology industry and software development that just want’s to go to work and go home, no learning, no experimenting no passion. It saddens me deeply.
Software development I think was never supposed to be a “job”, to me it’s a calling, something you do because you have a deep need to be one with a computer, you speak technology better than your native language.

What I normally look for in an interview is the following:

1. Show me the code

If you have a GitHub page, or some kind of code repository or even a showcase of what you have done before, then you already in the lead. I believe looking at what you can or have done is far more valuable than asking random interview questions.

2. Do you have a side project (or 6)

I always look for developers that has some form of side project. It says to me that you are still actively learning and experimenting. Having a side project also means that you are not just going to work and going home, you go the extra mile. I enjoy seeing developers apply new learnings on side projects, because you never get to do it on corporate systems. If you wait for your day job to give you an opportunity to learn, you will never grow fast enough. This also helps you to build a showcase regarding what you are capable off.

3. Lets play the knowledge game

This one is also very important. In this step I try to probe your knowledge to see how well you know the technology, the industry as well as the previous projects you worked on. This is more like a traditional interview, and some of the questions are pretty standard. In this step it’s easy to see if a candidate can articulate what they are doing, I can also quickly see who have been floating on the success of others and if you will be able to sit in on meetings or even drive them. If you can’t even explain a project in an interview I don’t thing you will be able to design a system in front of a client. Having the ability to articulate your knowledge and explain to others your though process is very important in today’s modern teams. We rely on different people and views to come up with the best solution.

4. Culture

Last but not least is company culture. Will the person being interviewed fit into the culture you have or trying to create. By the time you get to this you should by now know a little about the person, and if not switch the interview to some casual talking and learn a bit more about the person you are interviewing. It is very important that the person is a team player, can collaborate and play nice. There is no point in hiring the best person if they can’t work together to solve problems.

The bottom of the story is there are Awesome developers and not so awesome developers. The awesome developers are like needles in a hay stack and very hard to find. You will go through a whole lot of needles and hay stacks before finding the right candidate. Personally I would have loved it if every developer strived to be amazing, but there are place for every one, and every project do need people that can take over long term support, and unfortunately that is where the awesome developers don’t fit in, they get bored with the mundane day-to-day tasks very quickly.

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