Steve Yegge on Interviewing

Sorry, Steve for dragging out that lovely photo of yours that I took at Foo Camp. But hey, it's the only one that I have :)

I've been interviewing a bunch of folks for our 4 open positions (a nice fellow just accepted our IronRuby SDET position). Some of the other folks I would like to believe would have done better if they had read Steve's Get that job at Microsoft blog post [1].

I've told folks that my MS interview was on par in difficulty as my Ph.D. candidacy oral examination, partly due to the fact that it was much, much longer. (A Ph.D. oral exam is done by 3-5 professors vs. you in a room and they decide whether you continue in your studies or whether they kick you out). Mine started at 10am and ended at 6:30pm or so when I sat down with Scott Guthrie at the end of my loop.

Steve has a lot of good tips (including bring your own dry-erase markers - my last interview candidate actually ran out of ink and I wound up running down the hall to get some more for him). It's essentially a syllabus on what to study for a technical interview. 

[1] At least that's what IE on MS CorpNet shows me :)

Comments

[David Seruyange]

Do you look for different things in language designers than data structures + algorithms?

Compilers etc?

[Mike Moore]

Glad to hear the IronRuby SDE position is still open. :)

[software_developer]

very lovely photo of Steve :)
thank for short notes and links..

[Mark Dennehy]

The thing is, how many of the potential applicants for those roles were pre-filtered by a bad job ad? The last few weeks, while searching for my current role, I've been up to my teeth in poorly written ads for various roles. And the mistakes are *exceptionally* basic in nature:
http://stochasticgeometry.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/tips-for-hiring-new-engineers/

[John Lam]

@Mark: those candidates all came from referrals. I don't think there was a single candidate that came in from a want ad of some sort.