MagicAndi

Thanks for the links, I missed these discussions!

I've been following this series of posts on this job search (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30003106), and this post really resonated with me. I've experienced interviewing companies making unreasonable demands before, and generally, these are the companies to avoid. In my experience, they're also the companies that are most resistant to making any allowances to the interviewee's personal circumstances. As always, the interview is a two-way process, and it gives you a view of what working at a company could be like. When a company treats you badly as a candidadte, they don't suddenly improve when you become a full-time employee.

The United Kingdom's very own version of the ICANN debacle.

Terence, I love how you are throwing it back on others to protect their social media account names from being snatched by people like you.

[Edit] Corrected typo in Terence's name.

Agreed. As someone who follows Terence's blog, I was surprised and disappointed to read about this nonsense. It certainly screams entitlement.

Interesting article, has similar concerns to those raised by Cathy O'Neil in her book 'Weapons of Math Destruction', and also by Tim Wu in The Attention Merchants. Those of us working in software rarely stop to think about the biases we're hardcoding in our programs, and how it can impact users. We really need to wake up to how we are affecting people's lives.

I like the fact that this is a simple, easily measurable metric that can give you a very good idea of the quality of your application. In fact, I'm now trying to think of what simple metrics I can use to track the quality for the application I'm currently working on (a web application).

Isn't this more the effect of Google employed engineers downvoting criticism of their beloved Google, and upvoting the Plex approved propaganda?

These are the sites that I have came across:

1. China Tech Insights: https://www.chinatechinsights.com/

2. All Tech Asia: https://medium.com/act-news

3. China Tech News: https://www.chinatechnews.com/

4. China Digital Times (Sci-Tech): http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china-news/main/sci-tech/

5. technode: http://technode.com/

This article is actually argung that instead of a team leader, we need both a mediator, and a healthy and productive software team. The later aren't that common in my experience, and I've found that those that do exist are typically formed around a strong senior developer, i.e. the team leader that this article argues against. Productive teams may not need a team leader forever, but I suspect they do need one in order to come about.

An interesting article that shows the vitriol that some feel obliged to throw at others who are successful. The takewaway from the article is that life is too short to try and reason with a troll, so ignore them and move on.

Very UK centric I know, but I found it to be a very interesting report. As pat of a wider review of STEM subjects [0], Sir Nigel Shadbolt investigated the performance of Computer Science graduates, specifically why they have higher rate sof unemployment follwoing their course, relative to other STEM subjects. The full report can be found here [1].

[0] http://www.hefce.ac.uk/kess/gradstemreview/ [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/computer-science-...

This. So true. No disrespect to the author of (grand-) parent comment, but working in SV or a startup is not always refelective of working elsewhere (in the US or further afield). I'm based in the UK, and had to endure long working hours/insane deadlines early in my career while working for various consultancy firms. Once I moved away from these 'churn and burn' factories, I made a point of working for employers who take care of their employees. Since then I rarely work weekends (never in my current role), and would rarely work more than the required 45 hours a week. Despite this, I find I'm more productive, and achieve more than I ever did earlier in my career when I was working long hours.

Basically, you have to treat the interview as a two way process - they are interviewing you, but you are also interviewing them. You need to look at how the company has treated you from the moment you applied, and pick up on any indicators that the organisation you're applying to is toxic.

I would look at the following:

(1) How has the company communicated with you since you applied to the position? Has it been a single person communicating to you, or several, or an automated process?

(2) How did you find it – personal or completely anonymous?

(3) Was there a telephone screening interview with HR?

(4) How were you tested technically? Were you sufficiently tested?

(5) Did you have to write code as part of your interview process? If not, this is a major failing. If the company doesn’t know if you can code or not, what is the point hiring you?

(6) How large was the interview panel? This is most visible way of assessing how important a company views recruiting developers.

The interview itself:

(7) Were the questions asked relevant to the work you believe you will be doing?

(8) Did the questions asked match the advertised job? If it doesn’t, it is likely that the job advertised won’t be the job you will actually be doing.

(9) The interviewer’s personality and behaviour. Were you treated with respect?

(10) Would you like to work with these people? Remember, in an interview, people are on their best behaviour on both sides of the table. If you come out of an interview thinking that one of the interviewers was a pain, then they will be most likely be a complete bastard to work with. You need to trust your gut instinct about people.

(11) How was the outcome communicated to you?

I've blogged about this previously at http://www.andyparkhill.co.uk/2015/04/the-software-developer...