Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

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On the one hand, this resonates with me... the last time I was doing a round of interviewing (being interviewed at several companies), one person asked this question -- and it was the one point when I really "lit up" and really enjoyed being interviewed.

On the other hand, I wonder if it really produces results that are any better. At least, with a quiz, you can give it to current employees who work great, and discover the quiz turns out to be worthless. (As the author described.)

But with a open-ended question inviting open-ended answers, how can you tell if it's really working? Of the many coworkers I've had before, I can think of one who certainly would have aced the question -- a programmer through and through -- but who was fired after a few months due to poor work ethic and sloppiness. Because while he had enthusiasm for programming, he had no time for "standards" or "teams" or "business needs" -- things like commenting code, communicating well with others, following through on commitments, etc.

So I wonder if the author is going to discover, after a few more months, that there are a few more questions than just this 1 question that also matter just as much...

To answer your question, I worked for another year for that company and must have done about 100 interviews with that method. It wasn't perfect, but I found that it gave better results than the other stuff I had tried. Also, I found that the more I would bring the person in his comfort zone, the better appreciation I had for their qualities as a programmer. Also, that one question would always lead to a 30 minute discussion about their project (hobby or work). I would of course ask a bunch of other questions, but it was on the things they were the most comfortable with. I didn't have to ask them if they knew this or that, they would tell me all that they knew and we would discuss it. And wherever there was excitement, there was an indication of a good hire.

I recently went through an interview where they asked me somewhat similar questions, where I was able to talk about my personal projects and let them see how much I love doing that.

Before the interview, they told me they went through my Github and looked at my projects, and actually called me for an interview partly because of that. My Github served me as a portfolio. Artists have to hand in example of their work, and I believe programmers should do as well.

That should be enough to see most of those who don't comment enough, don't follow rules and standards, etc. It still comes back to the issue of having time to work on personal projects and having it displayed somewhere, but the same could be said for Artists.

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