Hacker Bits, April 2016

Look beyond People Like Us
and imagine what the world of
programming could look like in
10, 20 or even 50 years...
can imagine such a thing.
I know hiring people is
difficult, even with the very best
of intentions and under ideal
conditions, so I don't mean
to trivialize the challenge. I've
recommended plenty of things
in the past, a smorgasboard of
approaches to try or leave on
the table as you see fit:
• On Interviewing Programmers
• The Non-Programming Programmer
• How to Hire a Programmer
• The years of experience
myth
… but the one thing I keep coming
back to, that I believe has
enduring value in almost all situations,
is the audition project:
The most significant shift
we’ve made is requiring every
final candidate to work
with us for three to eight
weeks on a contract basis.
Candidates do real tasks
alongside the people they
would actually be working
with if they had the job.
They can work at night or
on weekends, so they don’t
have to leave their current
jobs; most spend 10 to
20 hours a week working
with Automattic, although
that’s flexible. (Some people
take a week’s vacation
in order to focus on the
tryout, which is another
viable option.) The goal is
not to have them finish a
product or do a set amount
of work; it’s to allow us
to quickly and efficiently
assess whether this would
be a mutually beneficial
relationship. They can size
up Automattic while we
evaluate them.
What I like about audition projects:
• It's real, practical work.
• They get paid. (Ask yourself
who gets "paid" for a series
of intensive interviews that
lasts multiple days? Certainly
not the candidate.)
• It's healthy to structure your
work so that small projects
like this can be taken on by
outsiders. If you can't onboard
a potential hire, you
probably can't onboard a
new hire very well either.
• Interviews, no matter how
much effort you put into
them, are so hit and miss
that the only way to figure
out if someone is really going
to work in a given position
is to actually work with
them.
Every company says they
want to hire the best. Anyone
who tells you they know how to
do that is either lying to you or
to themselves. But I can tell you
this: the companies that really
do hire the best people in the
world certainly don't accomplish
that by hiring from the same
tired playbook every other company
in Silicon Valley uses.
Try different approaches.
Expand your horizons. Look beyond
People Like Us and imagine
what the world of programming
could look like in 10, 20 or even
50 years – and help us move
there by hiring to make it so. •
* And for the record, I really do rock at
BASIC.
Reprinted with permission of the original author. First appeared at blog.codinghorror.com.
hacker bits
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