Dealing with "new hires"....

[TheCPUWizard]

All,

Basically this is me just venting, after a 16 hour day...

Today, my current client hired a new consultant to do C# development (and yes C# will rank heavily in this post, but it really still is general...

This "consultant" did not know how to:

1) Configure a VS-2003 project to run an executable, in order to debug a class library...

2) Did not know how to attach to a running process to debug the same

3) Did not know how to implement "get" and "set" accessors.

4) Did not know how to set up references between projects.

5) Did not know how to reference entities which were in a different namespace.

6) Did not know how to write test routines. (not anything specific, just some code that would call all of the "production" code so that all code paths were covered.

7) Did not know how to convert a "raw" array to/from a collection

...And then I stopped counting. :mad:

My question is, "What level of expertise do you expect from a consultant, specificially hired for a given technology???" (I am assuming some of you are in a hiring or hire/consulting position). btw: This hire was done exclusively by the business office. No technical people were consulted....

End of rant...but I do feel better....

[Shuja Ali]

Well well.

David, there seems to be a problem with the hiring process. If you are getting some one who doesn't know howt to use get/set accessors, then you have hired someone who has not actually worked in C#. I don't like the idea of hiring someone without a technical interview or without discussing it with someone who is technically good.

Fire him.

[Vanaj]

David,

My guess is it was a decision made solely on $$$$ and nothing else. I have run into the same thing in flying for the past 30+ years.

You get the question "Why should I hire you and pay you 3 times what this other pilots is asking for?". You are paying for my vast knowledge that will keep me from having to use my expert skills to save YOUR life.

You are paying for experience, and vast knowledge to get the job done quick and correct and not fighting deadlines and "issues" 6-12 months down the road.

[TheCPUWizard]

Thanks for listening to my rant. I want to make it clear that neither myself, nor my firm were involved in this process at all. The company in question is a client of mine (where I am spending most of my time), and hired the consultant from another firm.

It looks like he will be leaving at the end of the week.

Unfortunatel he seems like a "good guy" with a good attitude, just no working knowledge.

[Vanaj]

Thanks for listening to my rant. Anytime my friend, anytime. One of the advantages of being in our age bracket, we can rant and rage and people do listen, well the smart ones anyway.

[Kheun]

Yeah, definitely a hiring process problem. I also don't believe that it will work out without any technical folks to access the would-be hired technical skill set.

Recently I was interviewing for new firmware engineer and it turned out to be quite unpleasant. Well you see, our interviewing questions was set at least 3 years ago. Probably you can guess what happen during the interview..... :(

It happened that one of the interviewee had a pretty good resume with 3 years of working experience and was able to answer almost all questions in the paper, including some subtle firmware question. There was a question on recursion and the interviewee answered perfectly. However, when my colleague told the interviewee to convert the code from recursion into interative, the interviewee got stuck and couldn't even write a for-loop. We feel something went wrong and we sent back the interviewee.

This is outrageous! Somehow, it looks like someone is leaking our interviewing questions. :mad:

[TheCPUWizard]

This is outrageous! Somehow, it looks like someone is leaking our interviewing questions. :mad:

It has been known to happen. I know of a few "recuiters" who post interview candidates they send out to see exactly what questions are asked.

I managed to "get back at" one firm. The first candidate came in on a Monday, and was given a (fairly) sdandard test (write a few sample programs, diagnose some bugs, etc).

On Wedsnesday two other candidates came in. Beccause I knew of the policies of the recuiting firm, I deliberately gave them similar but subtly different versions of the tests. The methodologies which worked for the first round no longer applied.

One candidate (who got hired) has absolutely no problems.

The other candidate "attacked" the problems based on what had been in the first test version. It was actually hard not to feel pity for the poor fool (who did not get hired).

[TheCPUWizard]

Yippee!!!

This morning I asked the department lead to assign a simple programming task to the person in question:

1) Create an enum with 3 values
2) Create a datamember of that enum type
3) Create accessor property for that datamember

Two hours later, the person had not accomplished the goal, and had implemented some of the strangst code ever seen...


enum X { a=1, b=2, c=3 }
X x;

if (X.a = 1) {.....}


The department lead called him aside.

The explaination "I have been doing architectural level work, and have not had to bother with this type of detail. Perhaps you have a more senior position available" (I am NOT kidding!!!)

He was asked to creal his desk, and go home.....

[Kheun]

The explaination "I have been doing architectural level work, and have not had to bother with this type of detail. Perhaps you have a more senior position available" (I am NOT kidding!!!)

Wow, no way! This is pure bullshit!

2 hours is more than enough to for any newbie to post a question to any forum, including CG :), get an answer and verifying the code on any compiler. Basically, your "friend" fails at 2 areas which is basic C/C++ knowledge and worst still, researching skill. I don't believe he has his skill set for a senior architecture. Probably he can become a manager! :D

[CBasicNet]

That was what the tests are for: To filter out the incompetent interviewees. In Singapore, most of interview questions I encountered, are quite easy, at least it is for me. Once I was given a test to create a simple database in 40 minutes. After I completed it, the interviewer told me the reason they had a simple test, was because there were many people who claimed they knew the language but in the end most of them couldn't even pass or complete the test.

In the programming line, it is important that you must have the passion. If you have the passion, you will learn easily what you need either by yourself or on the job.

But I heard that some companies have very difficult tests, example, Microsoft.

[exterminator]

I have heard some people answer - "I did that code in my college days. If you are interested I can search that and email you the code." The interview was a Java interview involving multi-threading (thread pool) and the position was tech lead. The candidate was very furious in his reply he gave above. :)

Well, they have a valid point. :D Architects left coding days back. All they know is drawing boxes and connecting them with different kind of lines... :D

[TheCPUWizard]

Well, they have a valid point. :D Architects left coding days back. All they know is drawing boxes and connecting them with different kind of lines... :D

I could take serious offsense at that. I basically bill myself as a "Software Architect". In order to determine the best approaches for a given business need, I have to be expert in many different systems down to the lowest levels.

Too many software architects fall into the "Frank Loydd Wright" syndrome. His architectural designs were fantastic, however many of them could not be built for over 50 years (and some still cant) because the materials and technologies did not exist.

[Kheun]

In order to determine the best approaches for a given business need, I have to be expert in many different systems down to the lowest levels.Agreed. The architects in my company do a lot more than drawing lines and boxes. They are essentially super programmer. They know the entire architecture so well that only them have the knowledge to debug the most subtle defects in our codes.

[exterminator]

I could take serious offsense at that. I basically bill myself as a "Software Architect". In order to determine the best approaches for a given business need, I have to be expert in many different systems down to the lowest levels.You could, but you shouldn't. But there are a lot of guys who believes themselves to be that. Interview them and even if they have 5-10 years of experience they would want to take the role of an architect. Not that I am talking of the genuine ones, but the non-genuine ones are really funny and disastrous cases!

[TheCPUWizard]

You could, but you shouldn't. But there are a lot of guys who believes themselves to be that. Interview them and even if they have 5-10 years of experience they would want to take the role of an architect. Not that I am talking of the genuine ones, but the non-genuine ones are really funny and disastrous cases!

THAT I can agree with (all except the "funny" part, it can truely be tragic!)

[Zaccheus]

We had a few catastrophic contractors at the company I work for; honestly I think all contract workers have to be monitored carefully.

Some of them seem to have lost the ability to think 'how will this be maintained' because they keep jumping from company to company without having to clear up the mess they cause.
:(

[TheCPUWizard]

We had a few catastrophic contractors at the company I work for; honestly I think all contract workers have to be monitored carefully.

Some of them seem to have lost the ability to think 'how will this be maintained' because they keep jumping from company to company without having to clear up the mess they cause.
:(

Definately an issue! :eek:

Companies must always remain viligant (even with direct employees, since so few make a career at a single company for life).

This is porbably one of the reasons I have been able to stay in business throughout economic downs. Some of my clients today, have been my clients since the 1980's. The knowledge that I have remained around, and am willing to support (or rewrite ;) ) complete applications literally for decades, gives them that "warm comfortable feeling".

[CBasicNet]

Agreed. The architects in my company do a lot more than drawing lines and boxes. They are essentially super programmer. They know the entire architecture so well that only them have the knowledge to debug the most subtle defects in our codes.

There is one software architect whom I worked with, who is so good that I admitted I can never be like him. His knowledge is vast but that is not the part I admired about him; anyone could read a lot of books and gain that knowledge. What I admired about him is his problem solving skills. During many brain storming sessions, his solutions/algorithms are often simpler and more elegant than my suggestions and my colleagues'.