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On Jan 28, 2014 5:28 PM, "John Heim" <<a href="mailto:john@johnheim.com">john@johnheim.com</a>> wrote:<br>
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> On 01/27/14 14:00, Jim Lynch wrote:<br>
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>> On 01/27/2014 12:16 PM, Rev. Johnny Healey wrote:<br>
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>>> When I have done interviews in the past, I usually would expect the candidate to be able to implement a short algorithm (in their language of choice or pseudocode) and express the runtime in Big-O notation.<br>
>><br>
>> That's the interview I'd walk out on. Give me a week to perform and then judge my work on a REAL problem, but don't try to make a monkey out of me. Thanks, but no thanks.<br>
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>> Jim<br>
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> >>>><br>
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> I pretty much agree. Well, Rev did say he'd take pseudocode which would be a basic test of your understanding of programming. My department once hired a guy who had a BS in Comp Sci but had never written a line of code in his life. He couldn't even write HTML. The guy had a Comp Sci degree and it never even occured to me that he didn't know how to program at least a little. We never even thought to ask that.<br>
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> Once I was asked in a job interview to write some RPG. I had RPG on my resume as one of the languages I knew but it had been a few years and I couldn't remember a thing. I didn't get that job which may have been a good thing.<br>
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> Another time I was asked in a job interview which languages I knew. I'm not sure I'd have the bravado to give this answer today but the guy doing the interview said it was my answer to this question that got me the job. I said, "Well, I know all of them. Once you've learned three or four, you know them all. Give me an afternoon with a new language and I'll be able to produce working code. Give me a week and i'll be fluent."<br>
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> Really, depending on how much time you have to let an employee develop, it doesn't matter what they know. I suppose you can't take someone fresh out of college and say, "Okay, build us a web site where people can sign up for health care."</p>
<p dir="ltr">I spit beer out my nose laughing over this. I was just discussing how likely it was the healthcare site was subbed out and built by fresh grads with little experience.</p>
<p dir="ltr"> But if you're hoping your hire will be around for five or six years, it probably doesn't matter what they know at the time of the interview.<br>
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