SummarizingHowToFindGreatSeniorEngineers

source via RSS, last accessed 2024-07-26

Summary

Ken Kantzer identifies three topics that are helpful and three topics that are unhelpful for identifying effective software engineers.

Helpful:

1. Case Studies
2. Three Why’s
3. Ask them to break the rules

Unhelpful

1. Job history
2. Asking about mistakes
3. Asking about major contributions

Takeaway

For the helpful category, each of the topics is designed to assess a different dimension of expertise. For example, the underspecified case study is useful for determining if they can ask the right questions. The three why’s approach helps determine domain-specific expertise and ability to communicate at varying levels of granularity.

For the unhelpful category, I appreciate that Ken discusses things in terms of a signal. The signal that he’s looking for is whether or not they are an effective hire. However, he recognizes when a topic is tuned to a different signal. For example, he mentions that asking about mistakes really measures how well the candidate can “manage up.” All the unhelpful topics seem reasonable when you’re first starting interviews.