SPUG: Why aren't they hiring?

[James Moore]

> The last time I got interviewed by an actual developer, they asked me
> such basic questions that I don't know how they could possibly have
> differentiated my answers from those of any of the other candidates.
> They had me write a "hello world" CGI script in Perl.

I'm guessing you haven't done a whole lot of interviewing as in hiring, not
looking for a job.  You'd be completely astonished at how often people can't
solve the most trivial programming questions in interviews.

When I ask people to write basic code in an interview (things like write
ls -R in perl or something similar) I'm looking for two things.  Can they
write any code at all?  People who can usually look at me like "you want me
to write what?" and then I explain that what I want them to do is take the
opportunity to talk about how they do code development and this is a good
hook to do it with.  The actual code written is meaningless and instantly
forgotten.

 - James


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