Bah! If I am interviewing someone (and there have been a few choice occurances of this in the past which were against my will and my manager had to drag me from my console sessions, kicking, screaming, and clawing cube walls the entire distance to the conference room) I am not looking for what they have done in the past, what books they read, what animals might be on the cover of books, or what degree the person has.
When you think about it, these criteria are positively useless. Using the above, the interviewee might well 1.) have seen the books in passing and be able to identify them, 2.) might copy someone elses design concept (what if it is patented, or confidential?), or 3.) have a degree (or not have one at all) in one field, but have been subverted into working with the platform of choice at some point and been doing so for some time. (I once knew a talented AR System developer who was nuts about the product and was darn good with it, but had a Phd in Theoretical Mathmatics. He'd teach an occasional class at a college when time permitted as well. Go figure.) So - you see, most of the criteria that get used so often are - IMHO - bunkus. An ideal candidate is one that is a passionate person; who is not just fond of a platform or a technology, but rather is obsessed with it. A candidate must be willing to learn; to go to bed at night with the technical manual and wake up in the morning with the zipper-like seam across their forehead because they fell asleep face-first on the manual. I don't want someone that is able to recite back what they learning sitting in a classroom at some training center and thinks that it's "cool" because they now have a cute little cert sitting in a frame on their cube wall. If I were to pick, I'd want the person that gets a smile on their face about the technology, the one that one legs starts jumping up and down when they're talking about the platform, and the one that the heart rate starts to pick up when you show them the latest version of the software. The whole point is not what you know - it's what you can do with that which you do know. I'd hire the person that has notes scribbled all over the manuals, and keeps crib notes stashed in his/her pocket written on napkins and bubble-gum wrappers or a "code book" (a book where random ideas about system design are sketched out), and I would more than likely file-thirteen the resume of the canidate that has all of the certs, and a zillion years of experience with whatever it is that your working on. Why you may ask? Simple. There is no room in a small cube for an ego that has been developed to such an extent, nor is there an allowance in a budget for the salary that is demanded. Most really good developers are forged in the fires of code, learning, and tribulation - not stamped from a mold, prepackaged and shrink-wrapped for sale. C'mon, you know that this is a fact... How many of us got up one day when were kids and said, "I wanna grow up to be an AR System developer?" I'd wager that the answer is - ahem - none. We all got drafted. If you're hiring for a position, more than likely you want someone that is going to do the job (maybe the candidate might not be able to at first, and would require some training or getting their hands wet with the technology first), someone who will be obsessed about it, and not someone who is going to cost you a few hundred an hour with perks and travel expenses. You want someone that you can drop into the desert of a server room one day, and the next day when you check on 'em, you can see that they are dug in, got a suntan, a water reservoir, and have some sort of meat cooking over a BBQ spit, rather than finding that your million dollar candidate is parched from calling for room service and looking for the butler. Hire ninjas with very little or nothing to lose, not samurai that come from the court with vast tracts of assets. Just my thoughts... Offered humbly... > Best question I ever got as a developer was a request for me to design a > Car.... > > Of course the interviewer was looking to see if I'd ask questions about > the > type of Car, Usage, etc.... > > If I had just designed it as I wanted, I'd be back in Ohio! > > Warren > -- ------------------------------------- Will Du Chene ------------------------------------- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.myspace.com/wduchene ------------------------------------- "...you're an anti-Microsoft zealot..." - Norm Kaiser ------------------------------------- _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org Platinum Sponsor: www.rmsportal.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"
