Ugarte

Sorry if that sounded like badmouthing. Just a comment--I realize I don't have the proper context.

"A pseudo-stack machine JIT runtime thingamajobber."

Ugh, really? I feel like 90% of the time if you find yourself writing a JIT compiler, you're probably doing it wrong.

And "quirky" is not something I want to hear ascribed to a codebase.

Re: past experience, I agree, but this is harder for college hires. It's not unreasonable for a student to have only taken the standard courses and done nothing especially interesting. I could ask about his job writing PHP or what he thinks of Compilers, but really, there's not a huge amount of depth there.

As for programming tests, I think you're playing into my bias about how everyone thinks the questions are stupid until they pass, at which point the questions become the arbiter of all intelligence and merit. ;) It's that sort of hazing ritual sociology that enshrines questions about moving Mt. Fuji or printing n to the power of 100 in decimal form.

I'd love to talk more about how we can improve on the typical fare of programming and algorithm questions.

I've had to write my own sorting algorithm perhaps twice in the last some-odd years. If you're writing sorting algorithms from scratch, you probably should sit back and consult your standard libraries.

So if I ask a candidate some basic coding question and he can't write a for loop, I know it's a no-hire. But past that basic bar, sifting apart the good candidates from the great ones is actually very hard. Do we continue to ask these questions because we can't do better?

(That's why I ask algorithm questions. I realize they suck, but I just don't have any better ideas. I'm an engineer, not an HR flack.)

So what's a better way to test a programmer candidate?

My understanding--and I'm an engineer, not a lawyer--is that many companies segregate contractors as a response to labor laws. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp.

The important point here is that if temporary employees are working alongside full timers doing very similar work for long periods of time, the employer (Google, not the agency) runs the risk of a suit like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp#Vizcaino_v._Microsoft.

Microsoft now (and I suspect this lies in part behind Google's various segregations of different classes of employees) makes an effort to restrict contractor access to various full-timer activities (like ski trips and such, as the author complains) and to ensure that contractors don't do full-timer work.

So this isn't some sort of evil conspiracy; it's an honest attempt to comply with US labor laws.

Agreed. The author is clearly a delusional moron. You could've been a bit more polite about calling him on it, I guess, but sometimes you call a spade a spade.

The two aren't mutually exclusive. My contract as a software engineer (for a major competitor of Google's, no less!) specified similar--I am not to talk to anyone about the work I am doing (which was legitimately confidential) nor, as I recall, my salary and benefits. Everyone knows the latter is intended purely for the employer's benefit, to keep a lid on compensation details. So what? It's not in any way an indicator of exploitation--compensation may be secret and very generous.

I doubt the compensation for those scanning books is generous, but again, should it be? Do people think that the mail sorters at the USPS are underpaid because they don't make six figures? The implication of this entire piece appears to be that paying less to those who do less valuable work is an affront. I'm a leftist, but I'm not _that_ far left that I think it's appalling that those who do manual labor or data entry get paid less than engineers (or doctors or lawyers or whatnot).

I guess I'm not seeing what the issue was. This Normon guy is clearly a cock. I don't personally think his dickishness is worthy of firing, but it sounds like he had a lot more interest in his idiotic "personal project" (which really is the height of middle class white privilege, yet he lacks the sense of irony to notice!) than in his work. I can see why some small video editing company concerned about a major contract would want him out the fucking door.