[LRUG] Fwd: My experience of Rails job hunting in London (so far!!)

[Frederick Cheung]

D'oh, didn't reply to list. 

Fred

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Frederick Cheung <frederick.cheung at gmail.com>
> Date: 27 November 2012 09:34:46 AST
> To: "notantspants at gmail.com" <notantspants at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [LRUG] My experience of Rails job hunting in London (so far!!)
> 
> 
> 
> On 27 Nov 2012, at 08:48, Anthony Gardner <notantspants at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Surely putting people at ease is an important aspect of interviews. Drinking a coffee, show them around a bit, explain what the next 2 hours would have in store, chew the fat, get to know each other. But no, let's sandwich this guy on a computer and get him working. I don't want to work for a company that does that.
> 
> On the other side I've also done interviews where I've spent time explaining what we do, having a chat etc. only to find out when we did get round to the technical side of things that they had no idea what they were doing - waste of time for everyone. 
> 
>> 
>> So LRUGers, I have some questions for you. Firstly, is it normal for companies not to get back to you. I was severely disappointed with that behaviour.
> 
> As company 1 I can only apologise (again). As has been said on this thread, in smaller companies the person doing the hiring is also trying to juggle various other tasks. There's nothing wrong with following up a few days later - if you're better organised than I am and proactive about it, that's a good thing!
> 
>> 
>> Pair programming: I am totally upfront with my experience with Rails and the fact that I haven't used it in industry, so no pair programming experience for me. What am I to do if companies insist on a pair programming exercise or just looking over my shoulder while I code. That really would not bring out the best of me as I would be a bag of nerves. Particularly after my first experience of doing that in an interview environment.
> 
> It's hard to assess someone's ability & qualities in the handful of hours you have, yet that is what happens (and the cost (opportunity wise) of picking the wrong person is so high. 
> 
> I value the discussion in such an exercise way more than the code produced ( if anything the code is just a item around which to structure a discussion) so I don't think being presented with a solution would be as valuable. I haven't tried it that way, so I could easily be wrong though!
> 
> Personally I don't ask people to write actual code in a text editor - l prefer a whiteboard session, which hopefully reinforces the point that it's about discussion more than lines of code. I think everyone knows that typing/spelling etc goes to pieces when someone else is watching. 
> 
> Fred.
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