How Heroku Works - Hiring
craigkerstiens.com
craigkerstiens.com
I guess it'd be fine if you just want to hire consultants, students or the unemployed. Am I misunderstanding something about that post?
Major companies with good hiring processes (Microsoft, Google) require 1-2 full days of your time for the interviews, so it's not different time-wise. The difference is that instead of talking to several people for 1hr each, you spend the time coding.
If you ask me, coding is better as a way of judging if someone knows how to, you know, code.
Have you found any skills that are harder to evaluate through starter projects than through traditional whiteboard interviews?
Good thing you guys aren't a Canadian company, lest you be fined into non-existence. Seriously, folks, call your employees what they are. Programmers, DBAs, Sysadmins.
I personally appreciate the work that Heroku has done with PostgreSQL, but I'm ate up when I see technology companies (whom are employers of the previously listed titles) refer to their employees as 'engineers'.
Those fields that still life safety components are of course regulated, primarily through PE licensing but there certain is no reason not to properly use the term 'Engineer' when its due.
For what its worth my degree is in electrical engineering and have never even considered getting a PE license, its not applicable in the fields I work in.
I don't think it's backwards thinking so much as an important distinction between how Canada uses the word "Engineer" and how much of the rest of the (English speaking) world does.
'Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of people.'
Regardless of the formal designation of 'PE' or other designation many people do fit the term 'Engineer'.
The real issue is that some limited jurisdictions have decided that 'Engineer' must equal 'PE'. That doesn't make the use of the term 'Engineer' improper outside those jurisdictions nor does it make the choice to equate the two concepts universally correct.
I legally cannot call myself a "Professional Engineer". In order to prevent unintentionally misleading people, I stay as far from the word "Engineer" as possible.
I suppose it's not really dishonest. I depends more on the individual's intentions.
Of course, this gets severely down-voted because many people on HN and similar sites think of themselves in this fashion, and their ego takes a hit when they run across a comment such as mine.
To me "engineer" evoques a specific methodology and state of mind that is shared by all engineers, whether they build bridges, sewer systems or software. It emphasizes that your job is to create solutions to real-world problems - and that writing software is just one part of that job.