In this talk I'll discuss how to interview developers, what matters to me and what I think is less important.

1. Hiring
Developers
Mission: impossible?
ALT.NET Paris
December 2013

2. ALT.NET Paris
www.altnetfr.org
www.meetup.com/altnetfr
Julien Lavigne du Cadet
http://www.linkedin.com/in/julienlavigneducadet
@julienlavigne

3. This talk is not about
convincing developers to
join you

4. It’s about interviewing

5. The start of a debate?

6. Disclaimers

7. Context matters

8. Interviewers make a
judgement call…
with limited information!

9. Obvious stuff?

10. The Resume
Screening

11. Diploma?

12. “One of the things we’ve seen from all our data
crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a
criteria for hiring, and test scores are
worthless”
Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at
Google

13. But I do trust*:
Resume Length
Spelling Mistakes
* … to skip the resume…

14. The Interview
Process

15. The worst process ever?

16. The worst process ever?
No technical questions…

17. Are you hiring developers
or sales people?

18. The funnel effect…

19. What I like about a
candidate*
* In no specific order

20. He knows the basics

21. He reads about software
development

22. He does his homework

23. He learns between
interviews

24. He knows how to code
basic stuff…

25. He knows how to code
basic stuff…
… and how to test it!

26. And he does not lie

27. The real question:
Do I want to work with
this guy?

28. I have mixed
feelings about:

29. Brainteasers

30. Writing algorithm

31. I really don’t care
about:

32. Framework X or Y

33. If you already work
in my field

34. Some final tips

35. There’s no stupid
question

36. Me: How many bits in a byte?

37. Me: How many bits in a byte?
Candidate: 3.

38. Go in depth

39. Candidate: I don’t like recursion.
Me: Why?

40. Candidate: I don’t like recursion.
Me: Why?
Candidate: because it involves a context
switch.

41. Thank you