How To Hire a Hacker 370
itwbennett writes "If you want to hire a hacker, you need to take a more psychology-based approach to the entire interview process to determine whether he or she has changed their ways enough to be a trustworthy employee, says Mich Kabay in a recent Network World blog post. But this approach is also 'germane for highly skilled staffers, even those that don't come with arrest records or who have done something questionable in their pasts,' says David Strom. For example, in your next interview, ask a question that will suss out how much of a sense of entitlement a candidate has — or how much you or your company has. 'One time when I interviewed with Microsoft in Redmond I couldn't get over this sense of corporate entitlement — it was one of the biggest turn-offs that I had during my interviewing day there,' says Strom. 'I got the feeling that I wasn't going to fit in, no matter how smart I thought (or they thought) I was.'"
Had any scary interviews? (Score:5, Interesting)
Like a lot of big geeks on Slashdot, I take pride in always receiving a job offer after an interview... accept once. Once I interviewed with the EDIF reader group at Cadence, and the manager had exactly one technical question for me: "Do you understand recursion?" "Well... yes I do." "Well, then, you have all the skills that matter. What really counts is that you know how to fit in, and you don't impress me there."
I'm still shaken up over that interview.
Think this one needs a Part 2 (Score:5, Interesting)
How to Fire a Hacker
(Without getting pwned by her/him or his/her friends)
Because (let's face it), there's a chance you hired one on accident, without realizing it, and that they don't have an arrest record, for one reason or another.
How to... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:In fairness (Score:5, Interesting)
Wish I had mod points (Score:4, Interesting)
Surely Slashdot can get cracker vs hacker right? (Score:1, Interesting)
Surely a site dedicated to news for nerds can get the distinction between hacker and cracker right?
Nothing more to say.
Re:Had any scary interviews? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm still shaken up over that interview.
Don't be. Although one can often tell in the first five minutes of an interview if you want the geek or not (I'm being generous with the time here) that sort of perfunctory questioning and the glib dismissal you received most likely means they already someone else had in mind for the job, and are just following procedure at this point - often you're competing with an internal promotion or other reasons not related to technical competence.
Where you might need to improve is in believing your first impressions about a firm interviewing you. Hunches count, and your ability to drive the interview the way you want is a good indication of what level of person they're really after. I wasn't there, but my off-the-cuff opinion is that you were either bloody well jobbed, or the juxtaposition of the "Reader" group in the name and your choice of words (e.g. an "accept once" in your resume) was a deal killer. But they shouldn't have brought you in if that were the case.
Disclosure: I've interviewed about five hundred candidates for technical jobs. I've hired one hundred, of which two turned out to be poor choices. It's a serious, expensive business to bring the right people on board.
Re:Think this one needs a Part 2 (Score:3, Interesting)
Because (let's face it), there's a chance you hired one on accident, without realizing it, and that they don't have an arrest record, for one reason or another.
Having no arrest record might be an excellent qualification for a hacker. Think about it.
Re:In fairness (Score:1, Interesting)
The proper thing to do is ask them to do an "interesting" project for very little pay but an excellent and helpful resume chit. I have done that in the rocketry field to good benefit. The jobs they go to are high paying, and the work in the mean time involves a certain amount of fire and smoke. :) Probably an above average tolerance for aberrant behavior too.
Rocketman
Re:Sounds more like (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I think your amazing team-building system would work best with extroverted dopey white guys aged 20 - 30 and see nothing wrong with TV. Mooks, basically. It assumes a non-diverse team, so by definition it's a weak way to build teams in general.
Re:Had any scary interviews? (Score:1, Interesting)
If you always receive a job offer then you're a celebrity in your industry, you've barely attended any interviews, or you're not really challenging yourself. I'll dismiss that you're acting in bad faith by working on the basis of only a couple of interviews. If you're a celebrity then the interview is just a formality, but we can dismiss this option too because any celebrity is either technically brilliant (and will be aware of where he's needed) or socially brilliant (and would have understood why he was rejected from Cadence).
I conclude, then, that you simply lack the drive to be challenged. You're not the youngest geek, so you began in an environment of demand for employees far exceeding supply. You've plodded carefully between jobs, demonstrating good competence in each. You rely on years of experience on the resume as the gaggle of young whippersnappers has grown with the sexiness of the market. If you were living on anything but the blunt edge, you'd know that geeks these days are a dime a dozen - good enough ones two dimes if pastiness of skin is not a prerequisite.
Now, if you want to take risks with interesting ideas, putting the mind you seem to think you have to full use, you will enter the fold of world leaders in a technically influential position; if there is no such establishment good enough for you in your field, you will find the best start-up; if there is no such start-up, you will begin with only yourself. Many of your endeavours, from interview to funding through to (gasp!) technical implementation will fail, and fail again, but eventually you may succeed.
Great thinkers, if they were to mark days of breakthrough on their calendar in green and days of frustration in red, would be haemorrhaging. The average will take pride in never failing because they never set the bar very high.
Re:Had any scary interviews? (Score:2, Interesting)
In the last 10 years, I've been interviewed by someone qualified to technically interview me just once.
The other interviewers didn't know what I did technically and didn't understand it. I was filling positions for 3 technical people on the new team AND understood most of the goals since they were doing flight test engineering (my training). During that interview, the "manager" guy seemed to assume I'd accept a position, then started telling me all the ways I could be fired, for 30 minutes. Then a "peer" came in and confirmed what was on my resume, asking "you did X?" "yes." "You did Y?" "yes." The pay rate was a little low and the manager was an asshole, but the work would have been AWESOME! Once in a lifetime dream job.
They called 2 days later and offered the position. I was still interviewing, so I pushed off a reply for a week. I ended up taking the job from another location where the manager and I clicked for $30K more a year. He's still a friend. I worked at that position for 9 years even though my boss left after 1 year. It turned into a wonderful job until the company was bought and a year later the position became a cookie cutter job. I left.
Over the years, I've been asked to talk with Microsoft multiple times. I've never allowed my resume to be sent. Simply not interested at any price. Sorta like I'm not interested in drinking burnt coffee or having tofu 5x a week. Blah.
Interviews are a 2-way process folks. We each need to look for a place where we fit as much as they need to find someone who fits. If your work isn't mostly fun, find another job or start a company where it will be mostly fun for you and find some friends to join you for the good times.
Re:Wish I had mod points (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Had any scary interviews? (Score:3, Interesting)
Whoa! That's an impressive guess as to how I spent my entire life based on one very small comment! It's pretty close! I drifted between jobs, rather than going out there and finding the hardest one, but did very well in most of them. I tried to start several companies, and eventually succeeded, though I had some good experience at startups first.
I'm guessing that to have that kind of insight, you're probably been around for a while... you're probably over 40.
Re:Sounds more like (Score:2, Interesting)
Posting anonymously, since I have coworkers who read /. too.
The direct corollary to that is that if you start with a mediocre team, one of your first tasks is to help them up the curve a bit. We don't always get to pick the team we work with, but we can have a direct influence on what they become.
One of the problems I struggle with at work is that some teams don't really get this. A few bright, self-directed guys float to the top, but the rest get stuck where they are and they really don't know why they're stuck there. They're so busy trying to get what they're assigned to do done that they don't get a chance to learn better ways of doing things, and no one takes the time (or seems to have the time) to mentor them to raise their abilities. It reminds me of the old saying "Don't work for a sawmill that's so far behind it doesn't have time to sharpen its saw."
One of the practices that I've seen helps is to have semi-frequent code reviews, where everyone gets a chance to see and understand everyone else's code. To be effective, it also needs to be treated as an opportunity to share best practices so that everyone has a chance to learn from everyone else's strengths and observations. It's a chance to employ a positive network effect.
One of the teams I work with never does this, and never seems to get a chance to do it. The result is that everyone gets siloed on their individual piece, doing it as best as they can figure out how to do what they need to do, and never gets a chance to learn from others' strengths. It's very frustrating, since everyone is now operating below his/her potential, and the whole team moves slower (and produces lower quality output) as a result. A few bright stars might rise, but then a large competence gap develops. In fact, the team becomes reliant on these bright stars to be "heroes," since in the end they're the only ones that can pull off "the tricky bits," when really it shouldn't be that way.