On 3/28/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>>>>>>>>>> > BTW, if you are a university student trying to impress potential > employers over a long period of time before graduating, would you not > want to work live? > > And wouldn't companies have an incentive to watch these broadcasts to > identify talented people? For example, software companies would > probably get a better picture of how a programmer will work on a daily > basis by watching them code on an open source project for long periods > of time. > >>>>>>>>>>>> > > Let me speak as a software professional. I'm working on a Ph.D in > computer science, am employed by Motorola, and was a developer of Google > Talk. > > Watching a coder's screen is really not an effective way of getting a feel > for a coder's talent. There are a few reasons. The first is that, if a > coder puts in an 8 hour day, it's going to take at least 2 hours to watch > it. This is massively wasted labor hours for the reviewer. The second is > that the minutae of the coding process is irrelevant; the final product > and total hours spent is. Thus, an employer could learn just as much > about the recruit simply by reading about the project on the recruit's > resume and reading the source code of the final project. The third is > that watching a coder's screen will tell you nothing about the skills in > short supply among coders- social talents. Those are so important, I have > been at interviews where my programming skill was never discussed...the > interviewers just wanted to make sure they liked me enough to talk to me > every day. Finally, employers have their own internal methodologies which > will be different from how a coder works, and that learning curve will > exist universally. >
What I propose gives you an additional source of information that you can use to select people. It's not a replacement for resumes, interviews, etc. Watching someone code live gives you some information that might be hard to pick up otherwise: * how quickly does this person think? * how error-prone is this person? * how does the software design emerge? * how does this person debug? Technical interviews do try to get into people's heads as they solve puzzles. What I propose allows you to get into people's heads as they write non-trivial code over long periods of time. It also gives you an insight into what they would do on a daily basis. Amir > -- > Rhett. > > --------------------------------------------- > This message was sent using Endymion MailMan. > http://www.endymion.com/products/mailman/ > > > > > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > > > > Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/videoblogging/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
