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Comment by ojr | Hacker News Reader

The creator of ruby on rails wouldn't pass a whiteboard interview. Ruby on Rails had more of an impact at Twitter, Github, Airbnb than BFS is my guess

DHH's tweet https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1085987159406927872

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There's a reason such tweets resonate so well:

1. Creator of top software project can't pass whiteboard interviews.

2. I can't pass whiteboard interviews.

Therefore, they are stupid for not hiring me.

It strokes everyone's inner narcissist--why spend the hours on leetcode, they are stupid anyway.

i mean if had to choose between no graph theory vs no ruby on rails...i would probably go with no ruby on rails

What if you had to choose between someone with a proven track record of building high quality software used by millions of people who has also shown they're capable of leading groups of people in successful projects but hasn't memorized the specific algorithm you asked about and another candidate who doesn't have as good of a track record but can totally nail that easy algorithm you asked for?

Edit: Typos.

You think every candidate who comes in is like this. There are anomalies and outliers. The truth is resume padding is so common in the valley. Everyone can just say all these things. It's very hard to hire like this.

I don't work in SV. I assume it's like everywhere else where a potential employee who feels their skills are weak will take credit for things done by their teammates even if they were only tangentially involved.

My above comment was strictly related to the idea that DHH shouldn't be considered for a job over anther candidate who is an unknown quantity simply because DHH apparently is not good at algorithm problems in interviews.

Would you choose one-hit-wonder over proven engineers (Jeff Dean, Sanjay, other ex SUN microsystems folks?) that lead high-profile projects?

I know that sounds rude... but one seems better to be a leader while others are better engineers would you agree?

Total cop out answer but if DHH and people like Jeff Dean are both interviewing for a position with me you can be sure I'm doing everything I can to hire all of them. Even if it means starting entirely new departments.

I'd totally fanboy and hire Jeff though if it came down to just one though.

I don't mean to diminish/belittle DHH. What he's done (web framework, productivity SaaS, self-help books, sales/marketing, conference speakers, racing) it's not what Google does (web-browser, OS, AI, maps, search, scale, etc).

I also don't get why people like DHH is assumed to be a "miss" for not being hired by some of these company...

DHH is a unique individual with his own way of thinking. He wouldn't be DHH if he works for someone else (or under someone).

You don't generally hire people like that to work for you on something specific. You hire them with a very broad goal and give them the resources to accomplish the task how they see fit. With a bit of nudging here and there you should end up with a very marketable outcome wether it's a product or a prestigious research division or widely used piece of software that everyone knows is associated with your company.

What DHH does could absolutely be incorporated by Google. Angular => RoR, GCE => Saas, conference speakers => conference speakers.

Anyway the point is that even at a company like Google there's plenty of room for people that haven't memorized algorithms and data structures but companies that only interview on these sorts of things are missing out on them because they seemingly don't care or haven't figured out how to interview someone substantially different from what they normally hire.

SaaS != GCE.

I find the skillset required to build Basecamp differs greatly with building AWS/GCE portfolio (with over hundred different services that can be combined to deliver solutions for multiple ranges of companies...)

I don't think Google was looking for someone to build RoR or Angular. Those were merely side projects that came out once every few years. No offense but some of the key components of RoR were implementation of Martin Fowler's Enterprise Application Architecture patterns.

I wouldn't hire someone who cares so little about getting a job that he didn't spend the most basic amount of time studying for obvious questions that he was of course expected to be asked.

Such a situation would show me that he either does not care about getting the job, or is so arogent that he automatically expected that people who throw job offers at him.

That shows that this person has horrible personality problems and that I would not want to work with him, no matter how much he has accomplished in his life.

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