Alfred Thompson: Is he correct about the importance of having an app, etc. that you can point at?

Check out Alfred Blog over at:

https://blogs.msdn.com/b/alfredth/archive/2011/05/12/what-can-you-do-with-what-you-know.aspx

In it he quotes some industry folks about the interview process, certifications, etc. One of the issues that he doesn’t address is that many small companies allow a toxic atmosphere develop that really pushes newbies into a rathole.

Let’s face it, if you start with a small company and are the main developer, maybe the only developer for awhile and have been driven to distraction because of the amount of work, anyone coming in is going to increase your workload for at a short time. If you get someone who has gone through a “retread” process of taking classes and certification exams, they might not be ready to work on your products. Why? Because during the rush to get started the small company used what they called “agile” processes. This means that the product might work, but isn’t in condition to be maintained, tested or scaled.

Whose fault is this? And how do you pull out of it if every coin is needed for survival?

Though question. But one answer is that the new person should be put on documentation and maintenance initially, this will allow them to get up to speed. If you are using SCRUM, the new person likely should be in an external role and allowed to function to build documentation, do architectural work at least for the first week. That is an expensive situation for most start-ups, but the payback will be that the new person has a better idea of what the software is suppose to do and how the system works.

So I would expand on Alfred’s suggestions for the interview process:

• Ask to see a portfolio of work, if a game developer, then ask for games designed and web sites for marketing, as a small business I would need to see both of these kinds of thoughts.
• Ask for architectural documents, these should include UML, now the new hire can work with family, friends, etc. to make up UML designs, I would want to see how they think. This would include Class Diagrams, Sequence Diagrams, and of course State Diagrams
• Testing, how would the new hire set up a test pattern
• Finally, I usually ask for the interviewee to generate a paragraph to check their ability to communicate. If they don’t ask what the paragraph should be on and simply write a paragraph that appears to be original I am usually impressed. If they require a subject to get started I am ok with that. If they are unable to write the paragraph or refuses to do it, then I usually have a negative view of the interviewee. Some people are insulted by my asking them to do so in my presence but really it is a job requirement and allows me to see the potential employee do work.