Interviewing Experienced IT People? 835
thricenightly writes "After more than 20 years in IT I've learned that the most valuable people in a team are frequently the old timers. Young pups straight out of college might (think they) know all the latest buzzwords and techniques, but in the real world, where getting working products delivered on time and on budget is of paramount importance, people who have been doing the job for a decade or two tend to be the people I'd rather be working alongside. I've recently been elevated to a position where I get to interview and choose those who get hired in my department. Although I'm very much focused on choosing the right person for the role regardless of age, experience or whatever, it's probably fair to say the more mature applicants will get a more sympathetic hearing from me than they might from most other interviewers for IT roles. The question is, what do I ask older applicants to get them to demonstrate the value of their experience? My current gambit is something like 'IT is seen as a young man's game. My next applicant after you is 23 years old. What do you know that he doesn't?' This gets responses ranging from the vague to the truly enlightened. All next week I'm interviewing for a number of senior software designer and developer roles. What should I be asking of the more experienced applicants, and what responses should I be looking out for?"
Slashdot ID (Score:5, Funny)
I recently took a job at a web hosting company. During my interview with the senior admin, my 5-digit slashdot ID gained me major bonus points... especially since I'm only 24 years old.
Re:Slashdot ID (Score:5, Insightful)
I was fortunate enough to be thrown in to it and gain the experience in the Air Force, and how anyone "gets their foot in the door" blows my mind. I have some very smart friends who are very capable, but in an actual work environment, they'd be completely lost, and that goes for most everyone fresh out of college with a computer science degree. Experience is what makes you useful. An experienced programmer doesn't need experience in a particular language to be at least servicable, but a hotshot young gun could know a language like the back of his hand and be worthless.
I'm not saying I don't think you are capable or even that I don't think you have the experience. But whereas you (I'm assuming semi-jokingly) refer to how long you've been on slashdot as evidence that you know what you're doing, I would refer to the projects I've worked on and not only the work I've done, but how I've affected the team working on them as a whole and how they've affected me.
Which brings me to the OP's question. Some of the important things I listen for in interviews is how people have dealt with adversity. Name a problem you had on a project and how it was overcome. Name a time your solution was wrong and how you dealt with it. Tell me about a time you had a problem with someone on your team and how you overcame it. The technical stuff is a given -- look at their resume. I want to know how this guy will make us successful.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Collaborating with others, sharing ideas, designing, working with customers, leveraging your position to gain resources, convincing management why you're right, scheduling, so on and so on.. you don't get that coding at home and you don't get that at school.
Really? 'cause being on a senior design team doing a build for a competition means I've had to do all of that, plus budgeting & reimbursement nightmares. Add on being team leader for extra headachy fun. Throw out senior design and I've gotten a lot of that just working for a research lab, or at least the one my professor runs. (And filling out purchase orders, so I've got sympathy for the project manager.) It's kind of like what another poster was saying: experience is everywhere, a kids just gotta know
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget that coding consists of 80% programming and 80% troubleshoo
Re:Slashdot ID (Score:5, Funny)
Don't forget that coding consists of 80% programming and 80% troubleshooting.
I can see why.
Re:Slashdot ID (Score:5, Funny)
What do I get for a low 3 digit one? :P
Re:Slashdot ID (Score:5, Funny)
The last word, usually.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The last word, usually.
You must be new here.
Re:Ask him if he can get you a woman (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently a 236 UID doesn't get you troll resistant armor.
Guess I'll have to re-roll my character.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Try this one: "if we paid for additional training, or gave on-the-job support for it, what skills would you pursue"? And since you want experience, but you won't want to hire people who've reached their level of incompetence, ask them how much higher up the skills list they think they can go, and what they're doing to pursue that.
And do ask "what documentation you've written is still in use, and where"? Then go read it, if you can.
Re:Slashdot ID (Score:4, Funny)
If your memory does not match reality, question reality.
What they bring (Score:5, Funny)
I think you'd find they have a keener understanding of how to bring a civil suit for age discrimination.
Re:What they bring (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What they bring (Score:5, Informative)
It's very easy to suddenly whip out the discrimination card
I believe that was the GP's point.
Seriously -- my mom worked in human resources for many years (not her proudest moment), and bringing up age is not something you want to do in an interview. Another good way to get slapped with a lawsuit is to tell someone who is calling for a reference that the candidate in question was fired from your company for stealing -- even if he was. If you don't understand these things, I would seriously suggest requesting a sit-down briefing with your own HR department and have them fill you in on the labor laws in your state.
Re:Oldster (anti-)bias (Score:4, Funny)
I like that last one.
I actually wrote code that was self-modifying, managed to crank a four page pyramid of nested if-then-else blocks of code into one amazing twelve line chunk of code that modified itself at runtime based on the evolution of the data as it was being processed.
When I was young.
And stupid.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They want time off to be with their families.
But they potentially compensate for that by being more "loyal" employees. People who have dependents tend to be less likely to quit their job to go looking for something else on a whim. A single twenty-something with minimal expenses might not bat an eye at jumping between jobs every year or so.
They want more time off because they've been around longer (2 weeks for new hires don't cut it).
Wow. I wouldn't take a job fresh out of college that only gave 2 weeks of vacation. When I started, 3 weeks was standard, and I thought that was merely 'acceptable'.
Re:What they bring (Score:5, Insightful)
What you want is not so much an employee that is necessarily older but an employee with predictable skills, attitude, and way of thinking (or at least tolerable) in your eyes. As a bonus, you end up with the most compatible person for the role, regardless of age.
Exactly. (Score:3)
And remember that just because someone's been working in IT for 20 years does NOT mean that they have 20 years worth of experience. They might have 1 year of experience, twenty times over.
What I'd be interested in is how they understand the changes from when they first started to today.
And where they agree and disagree with the changes.
After years and years in this industry, people form opinions.
In my opinion, WinNT was great at 3.51 and became unstable at 4.0. Moving to 2000 was okay but they've kept the s
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There is some truth to this: They fight for more reasonable deadlines and budgets to start with.
In fact, I've seen inexperienced programmers say out loud things like "7 weeks? What will I do with the other 5?"
No. (Score:5, Informative)
For kicks, here's a clear-cut quote:
(c) It shall be unlawful for a labor organization-
(1) to exclude or to expel from its membership, or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of his age;
On mentoring. (Score:3, Interesting)
The best way I've found is to set up situations that you've found in the past and let the new guy make the same mistakes you made. In a controlled environment.
In my experience, most of the mistakes are repeated over and over. For the same reas
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
True, but the solution is simple:
'IT is seen as a young man's game. My next applicant after you is straight out of a top 5 university CS program. What do you know that he doesn't?'
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sadly, having interviewed people straight out of top 5 university CS programs, the answer might be "what a hash table is".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
'IT is seen as a young man's game.
Good job not bringing up age. Might I suggest, "IT is a field that requires constant learning to remain effective. My next applicant after you is straight out of a top 5 university CS program. What do you know that he doesn't?"
Wrong idea! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wrong idea! (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Slashdot,
I have a set of pre-interview biases. How can I frame my interviews to support those biases?
I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a trend to hire young IT people because certifications were the thing to have, and younger people work longer hours for less money. The problems with those types of qualifications are starting to bite the IT industry on it's collective ass.
If you want qualified personnel, ask questions that quantify them as a good technical and social fit. Pick some script language they don't know. Ask them if they would take a few minutes to create a 'hello world' script. If all they know is one programming language as seen via one particular IDE... well, it's something you want to know.
It's odd, but hobbies can tell you a lot or nothing about an individual. If they skydive twice a month on average, it says something. If they are working on an OSS project and can show you the sourceforge page... that says something.
There are other considerations; There are not many young Cobol programmers. If an applicant was invovled with the team that implemented X.25 for a large IT company back in the 90s, he's probably a better fit for X.25 network systems than a 23 year old would be.
If all you need is a [name your language here] monkey... you can find that in any age.
Look at your requirements, find a good match to that. Age does not dictate value, but experience can. Anyone of any age 'can' have the right experience, but statistically, it usually works out a bit lopsided.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"This person is lucky."
Unless you're interviewing a zombie...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
A skydiver would know. Ever panic and make a mistake? Skydivers don't do that often. Those who do are often not around to tell you what happened or went wrong. Staying calm under pressure is a skill, not just an attitude. Taking risks is a good thing in moderation. Repeatedly taking the same risk creates skills. Crossing the street is a skill you learned long ago, but it takes practice and always involves risk. Risk taking has many forms. It's more of a strength than weakness.
Translated: Yeah, ok, I don't know language xyz or have not used ABC IDE, but lets go for it if that is the management decision. A skydiver (as an example) will also know that if you are asking for something that will probably cause an accident, the time to speak is before getting on the plane, not as you jump out of the doorway. There are other things I could relate to skydiving... or other hobbies. The point is that personal activities tell you more than many certification papers will if you understand what you are looking at.
Certs are like the Md after someone's name.
Q: Know what they call a doctor that graduated 800th out of 800 in their class?
A: Doctor.
Do you care where your doctor graduated in their class if they have performed dozens of operations just like you're about to undergo with 100% success rate? A walking breathing skydiver that jumps twice a month is like that.
Character is worth a lot. You can glean what a person's character is like from a lot of things. These were just examples. Some might not want a risk taker on their team.
Questions about Experience (Score:5, Funny)
"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike...what do you do?"
I'd follow it up with a more direct problem solving question:
"I need to get all the primes less than 1000, and all I have are these punch-cards...go."
Re:Questions about Experience (Score:5, Funny)
"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike...what do you do?"
Get ate by the Grue.
What mistakes have you made? (Score:3, Insightful)
And what have you learned from them?
Re:What mistakes have you made? (Score:4, Funny)
In other words, I've never made a mistake
Re:What mistakes have you made? (Score:5, Insightful)
That good GPA indicates you passed up a lot of opportunities that you'll regret later.
Re:What mistakes have you made? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm a fresh graduate with...no work experience.
In other words, I've never made a mistake ;)
Oh, you've made one mistake all right.
Interesting question ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Definitely an interesting question.
Most senior (read: geezer) geeks I know have firmly held opinions on ... just about everything. In most cases these opinions are the distillation of decades of experience. This doesn't mean that they are (necessarily) stuck in a rut, but it does mean they are unlikely to be swayed by the language/methodology du jour.
So one thing I would want to know is can they work in the specific environment you have in place (or planned). I've got 35 years and N^2 languages behind me, but you say 'Java' and I say 'Life is too short'.
Another valuable trait in a senior member is the ability to pass on their experience to other members of the team. This can be as a role model, as a mentor, or even as someone who gives periodic instructional seminars. A way to keep balance might be to have some of the younger members give talks on things that are more cutting edge and that the seniors might enjoy learning. For example, I've been using RCS/CVS/SVN since God was a young child, but I had someone half my age sit me down and give me a real tour of Mercurial (hg) and it blew me away.
I'll be interested in hearing what you come up.
Re:Interesting question ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Funnily enough, I've had the opposite experience: people who are younger, in terms of experience or age, are a lot more positive in their opinions and close-minded than older or more experienced people. I don't have a lot of theory around this, except that a more experienced person has had a lot more opportunity to be proven wrong about their preconceptions.
This matches my own personal experience. I can really only compare my "old" self with my "young" self, but I would say that the young me was more confrontational and irritatingly positive (you can use Perl for everything!), and more willing to do a lot of pointless after-hours work and be oncall. He was a lot less reflective and somewhat less rational regarding his decisionmaking. He had little broad perspective and familiarity with a few technologies that looked to him like all there was to know.
The older me is more knowledgeable, certainly, and more familiar with lots of "allied" tasks associated with programming. I'm a lot better at handling people. I'm a lot more willing to experiment or investigate new technologies for something rather than relay what's already in my toolbox.
This might seem paradoxical, but it makes sense to me. An inexperienced person has probably had few revelations like the hg example you give or using a functional programming language on a real project. An experienced person has a good feel for what kinds of tasks are no big deal and what takes a lot of time.
All that said, I dislike very much the idea that programmers are characterizable by their languages, their age or experience or their domain. Frankly I would leave that out of it and just do a straight interview (though you may be interested in analyzing differences after the fact).
Passion is critical (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Passion is good. But the ability to learn and problem solve is better.
Passionate people go all out on everything. Successes are huge successes and mistakes are huge mistakes.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Wish I could mod you up at the moment.
I think this is more important than many people realize. You do want to see evidence of experience and a grasp of concepts. (Some people, while eager, are simply trying to "bite off more than they can chew" by interviewing for too complicated a position for their current skills.)
But overall, yes! The person who "lives and breathes I.T." will be FAR superior to the person who views it as "just a way to get a paycheck every couple weeks".
Ask about priorities (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a question you can ask every applicant. There is no right answer, but it would be interesting and telling to see what they do with it.
Organize these IT concepts by priority:
Uptime
Backup
Customer Service
Security
Documentation
User Experience
Fault Tolerance
Best Practices
Add/subtract terms as you see fit. You get the idea.
Forgotten option... (Score:3, Funny)
You forgot CowboyNeal you insensitive clod.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, after the same generic blah-blah that it's unique to every application, I'd try to draw up three classes that could be at starting point at least.
For any project where the users choose your service:
1. User experience. Else nobody uses it anyway.
2. Fault Tolerance. They don't ask support, they're gone.
3. Security. You'll be under constant attack once you have a user base.
4. Uptime. You bet they expect the service to be there when they want it.
5. Backup, as a followup on security.
6. Customer Service. If
A few questions... (Score:3, Funny)
What is your quest?
What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Ask about their mistakes (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask them to talk about the mistakes they've made or project failures they've been a part of.
If they claim it's never happened, or it wasn't their fault, etc, then they probably are lying or stupid.
If they can explain the failure, why it happened and how they've avoided the same thing in subsequent projects you've probably got a good one.
Old goats vs young whipper snappers (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't want to generalize much, but there is a tendency for older IT folks to fall behind, often far behind, the tech curve. You know, as we get older, we have other priorities which is OK, but you want that experience they have, but you also want someone who can take your company forward. But older IT folks are also very capable to get upto speed on newer tech often quite quickly.
I wouldn't assume, either, that the young'uns are going to know the latest tech either or even be exposed to it. I do think it would be a mistake to think you could take an older IT person and put them into a mentorship role and have that work out.
There really is no such thing as "falling behind" (Score:5, Insightful)
You may require a specific skill set or technology, but the reality is that math and customer service hasn't changed all that much.
The servers need to work, the apps need to run and the customers and users need to be happy. If you need someone to twiddle something in the Next Hot New thing, hire the old guy and get him a code monkey.
Additionally, what the employee doesn't do is likely to be as valuable as what they will do. By the time someone hits their 40's or better, they're unlikely to say "screw the company" and fly off for week long drunken orgy with your secretary. They're also unlikely to do socially inappropriate things in front of customers or do really stupid things with your hardware like yanking good drives on a production machine "to see if the RAID works".
If you hire the right person, he's also likely to know how to cover your butt when something bad happens, where the young guy with nothing to lose would be just as happy to throw you under the bus.
Experience vs Time (Score:4, Interesting)
I have about 7 years full time experience under my belt not counting college or any small jobs through high school. I have a lot to learn and seek out people to learn it from. I have met truly ignorant individuals, age has no preference here. Wisdom comes with the right kind of experience. I have learned more this last year bouncing around different jobs than I did at the job I sat at the previous 5 years.
So yes, ask the question, and make sure you get an answer from the younger and older individuals, you will find that a couple of your kids with 10 years of experience will far outshine the older guys with 25 years doing a repetitive job. Same for a 5 year vs a 10 year.
Wisdom is what I look for, not knowledge.
no! (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't mention age! Don't mention you are discriminating applications based on age (even if you phrase it as being "more sympathetic"). You are setting yourself up to get sued bigtime!
I consider it to be a major problem that nobody in IT is willing to train junior-level employees up, anyway. But if you are convinced you need gray hair to do the job, ask them to give examples of projects they have lead in the past. That will give you a legal, meritocratic approach to being a discriminatory bastard.
"A young engineer comes to you at 5pm" (Score:4, Insightful)
... and describes he's having the following problems delivering a product out the door to a customer site that's overseas with engineer support staff that have been up and traveling for 24 hours to get there.
Do you
A) Tell him "Call tomorrow- it's quitting time"
B) Bend over backwards to help.
C) Grouch about it
D) Solve it in 6 key strokes or less.
We have quite a few 'old timers' around our organizations. They think they 'know' it all, too, and they don't. In fact they're much more of a hindrance. We just, after a 3 months of complaining, got one to agree to replace the motherboard in a sun station- we had gone so far as to SCOPE the signal lines on the ports to point out there was a voltage issue... and that didn't even phase them.
A newer younger engineer would have simply yanked the board and dropped a new one in- which, btw, worked perfectly.
There are no right or wrong questions- it's the attitude towards helping out your fellow coworkers that's important. They don't teach it in school but the industry does burn it out. If they're older and they still have the right attitude (including how to help skunk work a project that doesn't have funding through leftover hardware) then they're the right choice.
If they don't have the helpful attitude, they're the wrong choice- age independent.
I work with a multitude of qualified and unqualified IT folks through the military and other contractor sites. All in all it's all about the attitude- that is the one thing I can recall about every single site. Most of the young ones are better with that... but I'm open minded.
Interview the person like you actually care, oh an (Score:5, Insightful)
oh and ...
IT interviewers tend to be terrible as the person who is interviewing proceeds to treat the applicant like auditing a software application. The same terms, styles and such simply don't apply. They are people just like everyone else, only with less showering and better toys.
You interview IT people much like you would interview anyone else:
You ask them deep questions, that require more than a few words to answer.
You put them in problem situations they would normally face and find out their process for working through them.
Get a feel for how comfortable they are with you and other interviewers, culture fit is incredibly important for small organization sizes.
Actually have READ their resume and ask them questions on some of the more small or trivial things.
Ask questions about where they want to be in 5 years, how are they with shifting priorities, what's their work goal for the next two months. Get a feeling for how they deal with change over time.
Ask them what they dislike most about their field. What they LOVE about what they do.
Get them to describe any long term projects they may have been part of and what they feel was their ultimate contribution to it being a success.
Ask them about their worst fuck up, everyone has one. This says a lot about a person when they can easily tell you one and how they learned from it. ... and for fuck's sake don't ask lots of stupid little nit picky questions unless you are sure they are embellishing on their field knowledge. Asking someone about the different arguments to a specific command or sub call shows that *you* don't get it. There's more in IT than anyone person can know, find out instead how they go about learning new things and how actively they do so.
Re:Interview the person like you actually care, oh (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't ask the old guys
"about where they want to be in 5 years"
They don't give a toss as long as they are coding/testing etc.
Take it from me, once you get to a certain age, you don't give a shit about the greasy pole.
They know their limitations and thus can work within them and get on with the job.
And yes, I have called an old boss of mine a dipstick.
He didn't give me the sack. He just labelled me as an awkward bastard as what I told him about the project was true and it saved his ass.
I'm 55 and happlily desiging complex systems. I don't want to be a manager or team leader. I'm a Designer/coder/Architect/General Dogsbody who will tell you whats what with a proposal/project. Once my new boss understands that, we generally get along fine. Which is why I am a contractor and not a permie. I'm no threat to their job.
Experience (Score:3, Insightful)
Now an old timer will know this and set the zipcode field as a varchar.
The newcomer will not understand how to create objects as well as an old timer will generally as well. An old timer has alot of experience in creating objects and relationships and they have an easier time duplicating real life scenarios into a program or database.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The question's not bad but the evaluation is busted. What you want is someone who can have an intelligent conversation on the subject, and who understands that what type you need for a zip code is a more subtle question than it might seem at first.
For one thing, it's certainly a compound type: the zip and the +4, even just in the USA; and I can't imagine an application that stores addresses that would never need to store an international one. About this time I'd be online looking around for post code standa
Ask questions that test pragmatism (Score:5, Interesting)
I also don't want to hear never-ending whining from an open source evangelical. If I ask your opinion, and you say Microsoft sucks, that's fine. I asked. But after that, if Microsoft is part of the job, I want to know I don't have to listen to you bitch about it.
In fact, you might describe the environments/toolsets and ask the candidates how they feel about them.
Experience with disasters (Score:5, Funny)
Mention how your company is committed to Total Quality Management and ISO 9000 processes. If the guy doesn't start running for the exits, he's not learned anything from his experiences. Try and have someone track him down and explain that you were just testing before he makes it to his car, or you'll never see him again.
A lawsuit? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what you're doing is probably a worker's rights violation (disclosing others candidates' ages, asking candidates to make a case for a job based on their relative age). Even if it isn't or you don't get sued, no good employee would want to work for someone who interviews like that.
You should not be a manager. Nor should you be interviewing anyone. You represent your company extremely poorly and open them up to legal action. Or did I (and the editors) just get trolled?
Experience Ageism (Score:4, Insightful)
While I'm sure your heart is in the right place, you're looking for something specific and are labeling it in a very unfortunate way.
There's nothing wrong with wanting experience. Try to bear in mind, though, that this experience COULD be obtained in other ways. Fill in whatever examples you want, but YEARS OF LIFE are not necessarily at all what you are looking for - instead you want to know what was learned in that time.
So, by that metric, "My next applicant after you is 23 years old" is a horrible lead-in. You're just begging for an old-coot response, and that kind of environment certainly doesn't make HR Directors smile.
Try something more like, "Tell me something about your work experience that qualifies you for a 'senior level' position". Or, "Give me an example of a time where your work experience really worked in your favor."
Again, replace the desire to find age with finding experience instead. It really, mostly means the same thing, and it doesn't have to be IT-related experience either. One of my best employees used to drive trucks, and I consider him very experienced indeed.
The interviewer's delima (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like: "I am wanting a senior developer, but he needs to be less that 25 years old". Do you work for HR by any chance? You will probably want some who has 20 years of Java development next!? ;)
Way To Get Sued (Score:5, Insightful)
My current gambit is something like 'IT is seen as a young man's game. My next applicant after you is 23 years old. What do you know that he doesn't?'
It is illegal to discriminate against anyone over the age of 40. (For the US. Differs elsewhere.)
A question like that demonstrates, clearly, that you see age as a factor.
You see it in terms of encouraging older applicants.
People who don't get what they want are often somewhat bitter and tend to remember things differently.
They are going to simply see, "He openly voiced an issue with age. I'm over 40. I didn't get it. I'm suing."
Lawsuits aren't about who's right and wrong. They're about how much it costs you to defend yourself even when you are right. Your company may settle, even though you know you're in the right, to avoid court costs. They may win but still be out the tens of thousands it cost to defend themselves. Either way, you're the idiot who asked a stupid question and cost them a fortune.
Don't put age in to any question. Don't put gender in. Don't put marital status in. Don't put sexuality in. Don't put race in. Just leave them alone.
If you really want to give older people a chance, ask a question that's so removed from "age", no one can sue you over it. Try, "We've talked about specific experiences. What do you think the benefit of your culmulative experience is?" Then the guy who's got 20 years of it can be guided to what you're looking for.
But mention age, sex, race, sexuality, marital status, etc. and you're begging to get hurt.
You'd never ask, "I've got a male coming in next. Tell me how your being a female gives you an advantage he doesn't." or "I've got a white guy coming in next, tell me how the experience of growing up black in America helps give you the edge." Don't be stupid enough to do the same thing with age.
Know? (Score:5, Funny)
The proper response from this geezer would be, "I know that I can and will crush him under my boot heel, and then then you if you dare ask that question again."
What 20+ Years Have Taught Me (Score:4, Interesting)
My next applicant after you is 23 years old. What do you know that he doesn't?
I know what "Failure" means. Another thing I know that the 23 year old has no concept of is, "What takes to have a medium to complex project completed."
Most IT shops want Bit Flippers (Score:3, Insightful)
which are like Burger Flippers.
They will write code for near minimum wage or under $25,000 a year with a comp sci degree or Microsoft certification. Usually aged 22-30, no spouse, lives at home with parents, and works 80 hour weeks with no extra pay.
But does a sloppy job and systems crash 12 times a day or more, but good enough to get work done.
The 35 to 65 aged IT workers will draw too much salary via their experience and will be worth $45,000 to $150,000 a year as Master Programmers. They will do quality work and the computer system never crashes because they close every object they use and free up memory and other advanced programming techniques. But since quality takes longer to code that sloppiness the Bit Flipper is usually hired over the Master Programmer as most managers don't understand how computers or programming works and hires and keeps the ones that can code the fastest. Not the best at the job, not the higher quality work, and not the more experienced or professional either.
Bit Flippers are usually narcissistic and selfish, or more like egomaniacs, but they tend to keep to themselves and write code most of the day while cussing out coworkers and managers under their breath.
Follow the bouncing ball (Score:4, Insightful)
One common thing I noticed on resumes of younger IT candidates was the '18 month bounce'. The string of jobs they list all had right around 18 month durations. Which is just enough time to get familiar enough with a technology/process and put it on your resume before hunting for a new job.
The older candidates had longer stretchs of time at companies unless there was reorganizations/acquisitions or other events outside of their control.
I think it's a mindset thing. I don't know if younger candidates understand that a pattern of leaving just when you should be starting to add real value is a very bad thing to do to the company that hired you. It may be a 'what can you do for me' mindset.
Yes, I'm a bit of a codger myself in the IT field. When I was interviewing I would always ask what the candidate could do for the company. It's amazing how many of the candidates had no idea how to answer that but had plenty of statements of what the company could do for them.
If an interviewer asked me what you did I would thank them for their time and stand up to leave. If they don't know the difference between almost two decades of relevant work experience and a newly minted college degree then I don't want to work there much less spend the time explaining it to them.
What are you proud of? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to get information on how your older geeks think, just ask them, "Of what project you've worked on are you most proud - and why?"
If their eyes light up and you get enthusiastic responses then you know they do this job for the love of the project - the thrill of the chase... And that means they'll be an enthusiastic and contributing member to your team. If you get dull responses then they are in it for the money - or are burned out and might not be the asset you want..
The Question (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is this:
Given a software project such as (briefly describe a project the candidate might typically be asked to handle), how would you do it? What steps would you take?
We then let them speak. Everytime they stop speaking, we say "And then what would you do?"
The Question is terrific for evaluating a person's approach to software development. For example:
and so on.
Risking a lawsuit (Score:4, Informative)
Don't ask anything that even remotely looks like it's age related. If it gets out to the younger applicant, though unlikely, you may have an expensive age discrimination lawsuit to ask. It doesn't gain you or your company a thing to be so candid.
Do not mention other applicant's at all. Simply ask what experience they bring to the table that's relevant to the job, and what similar work they've done. Ask this for each applicant. "I spent 10 years working on critical system XYZ" is a much better response than "I helped the cute chick at the IT lab get her assignment in on time". Also, if an applicant answers this question well (regardless of age) it can lead in to more detailed questions and you follow up with the younger candidate if he or she gives a good answer.
Lots of problems in the question (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, the question doesn't make much sense. I don't mean the one you ask your applicants, I mean the one you asked us.
Is your salary range wide open? Most positions I know of that might attract qualified senior people are completely out of range for someone who's 23. If I were asked this (and I'm not THAT far past 23, though I started professionally at 21) I'd be surprised. No one that young has really had a chance to accumulate the experience required for the positions I interview for.
So if your salary range is low, you actually might want to discard your more experienced candidates. They should all hold better positions, and the ones that don't you don't want. There will be exceptions of course, but finding them might be rough.
But let's assume it is wide open, or at least a large range. What are you actually looking for? It sounds like you want people who are 'good'. That's pretty vague. Are certain skillsets required? Are you willing to let them learn on the job if they show promise (my current position uses a language I was unfamiliar with, but I made it obvious during the interview that I knew how to program)?
If you're looking for generic questions, then ask them how they would go about solving a variety of problems, from simple to complex. While what they consider a good or not so great solution is important, far more useful is the decision making process that made them arrive at the answer they gave you.
Also, a fun interview question I like to throw at people: I'll look at something they list multiple types of on their resume (usually OS and Database). Let's say they've listed MySQL, Postgres, Oracle, and MSSQL. I'll ask which is their preference. I don't actually care. It's a setup for the following question, which is why? Many candidates will pick one and not have a reason.
Me: What about Oracle do you prefer?
Candidate: It's the best database.
Me: In what way?
Candidate: ummmm
in contrast, I was perfectly okay with:
Me: Why do you prefer Solaris?
Candidate: It's the one I'm most familiar with.
Bottom line, figure out what you want. It'll make it much easier to know when you find it.
Don't mention age at all (Score:5, Insightful)
My next applicant after you is 23 years old.
This is a great way to create liability for your company. Age discrimination is against federal law and simply mentioning it is cause to be sued. Simply put, don't!
My next application after you has a penis. What do you and your vagina know that he and his penis doesn't? Obviously that sounds bizarre but hopefully it make my point. Asking questions which imply age is part of the equation is simply asking each applicant to sue as they leave the interview room.
Simply put, don't!
My favorite question: (Score:3, Interesting)
What is the most fascinating technical problem you've ever solved?
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't get rights just because you're young, old, black, white, yellow, pink, blue, male, female, etc...
Yes, all people are created equal, that does not imply that all people ARE equal.
Experience matters, as does intelligence, attitude and aptitude.
If you can say you have the experience that someone older has, as well as the attitude and aptitude of the older applicant, then you are equal, if you don't have that experience, attitude or aptitude, then you aren't, it's as simple as that.
It's not age discrimination, it's making a decision weighted on key factors that mean more than any education.
I'd rather hire someone with years of experience, a can-do attitude and the technical aptitude that enables them to almost intuitively understand a system or troubleshoot a problem, than someone with only a few years of experience, a PHD and a "I'm too good for your job" attitude any day.
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been writing software for nearly 15 years and real world stuff for almost 10 and I was supporting friends and relatives with IT stuff long before that. On my resume you see 5 years professional employment. Plenty of kids getting out of school now have been writing stuff since I started, have no "professional" experience, but have been cutting their teeth on open source for years.
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Common Sense - It goes so much further than anything else.
2) Ability to comprehend tasks - I don't want to have to explain things over and over for one. Secondly, if they understand what they are doing, there is a good chance they might have a good input to make it even better.
3) Communication skills - If they can't talk, articulate and be precise in asking questions or listening to answers, they won't do point 2 well.
4) Programming ability - Yes, it's way down on the list. Most programmers can program well enough. The value in good software/development isn't purely in scratching two seconds off an operation that takes three minutes. It's in making an application/solution that the customer wants to have - which isn't always exactly what they ask for.
As developers I look for people that COULD possibly be in the business role that they are developing for had they wanted to, but chose developing instead. People who can understand what the business/customer is doing will ALWAYS make better software than people who follow requirements to the letter. The four points above in that order will help you find people who will do the best work.
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've met plenty of people that are unwilling to listen to a good answer from a young person because the young person is young and by extension inexperienced.
That is the killer right there. Most older successful people know that everyone is a resource, and LISTEN to everything. Anyone that refuses to listen to someone because of some preconceived notion fails the test.
Usually what older folks bring to the team is the experience of their own mistakes, not just in their chosen field, but in life. People skills that successful people develop over time are super-valuable and can be the glue that holds a team together.
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If a person isn't willing to work with the team then you don't want them on your team. I've met plenty of people that are unwilling to listen to a good answer from a young person because the young person is young and by extension inexperienced.
Conversely, I've met plenty of young people who aren't willing to listen to someone older because someone older can't possibly have an understanding of all these fresh, new ideas that they're bringing to the table. (Hell, just a few years ago, I was /one/ of those young people - back before I lacked the experience to know that there are things I don't know. ) Nevermind that the 'fresh new ideas' are variations on the same themes that have been playing through the industry for decades.
The point I'm trying to make is that it's just as easy to get a young recruit with a bad attitude than an older recruit. That's part of what the interview process is for, to weed out the people not compatible with your organization. INterviewing people with the assumption that "older = stuck in their ways" and "younger = innovative and yet willing to learn" is a mistake that can cost you some potentially good hires.
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:5, Informative)
Neither.
if ($variable) ...
You are not assessing competence with that. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are just playing games with the interviewees by showing them how clever you are.
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:4, Interesting)
In a more general IT sense, you're not too far off the mark.
The question isn't meant to test the technical ability of a candidate - though is certainly can be used that way. It is more effective as a method by which the interviewer forces the interviewee to display critical thinking skills. Even if the interviewee answers incorrectly, the interviewer will likely have some insight in to their thought process - an important factor when evaluating specific experience.
At a previous employer I worked for, the team prepared a list of 10 very difficult technical questions (both related to the position and not) just for this purpose. One of the goals was to get the interviewee to say, "I don't know." Bonus 'points' were given if they added, "...but I'd like to know." The point of getting the candidate to say that was to see if they're smart enough to admit their lack of knowledge/experience and seek assistance when they really don't know the answer to a problem.
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are creating a false dichotomy there.. of COURSE you would prefer the a can-do experienced person over someone with an "I'm too good for your job" attitude. You are absolutely wrong, however, to categorize all old people in the first group and all young people in the second group. There are many young people who are experienced and have a can-do attitude, while there are older workers who feel they are too good for their job.
Most important: measure attitude (Score:3, Interesting)
They are passionate about what they do and did not want to get into management where their talents would be wasted. You want these ones.
They're grundging old farts that constantly got looked over for promotion etc. You don't want these.
Ask them about previous jobs. If they bitch and moan about "clueless managers" etc etc then they're probably in the latter group. Remember, most organizations are pretty much the same; they'll soon be grumbling ab
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm 46 and recently got recruited from a mechanical engineering position (~25 years in the business) to a more of an IT support-type role.
As the least experienced team member (but most experienced, engineering-wise) I was given what I perceived to be a busywork task, i.e., I "felt I was too good for the job" which was essentially data entry. After a bit of poking around on the internet and phone calls to contacts I was able to automate the process and document it, reducing manual input hours for future projects.
If I hadn't said to myself, "Myself, doing this repetitive work in this age is silly and beneath me, so I'm going to find a better solution" I'd be entering that data still.
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:5, Informative)
An article I read in Scientific American Mind basically suggests that the key to above-average or genius level intelligence is that sort of laziness.
It suggested that in mental tests given by researchers among two groups; one group of people with average intelligence and one group of people with above average or genius level intelligence, the difference seemed to be maximizing the resources we're all born with by minimizing the things they had to do in order to come to a solution.
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps I was going too far to imply that you were categorizing all young people into the one group and older people into the other. However, both your original post and your response to my post are clearly meant to make an association between youth and a poor work ethic.
Now what is your purpose in making this association? In the given context, it is clearly indicating that you believe it is a good practice to use age as a proxy for easily judging a person's work ethic. I believe this is wrong to do, and by assuming that a young prospect is going to have a poor work ethic because of their youth is unfair, unwise, and discriminatory, even if you are granting the possibility of exceptions.
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry you feel that way, as nothing could be further from the truth, as I myself started working professionally in the field at the ripe young age of 16, while still in high-school.
There was no *age* context given. There was, however, an experience context. It's unfortunate that the only way to get 'n' years of experience is to be 'n' years older than you were when you started.
Currently, there's no way to time-compress experience, if there were, it would be wonderful for all.
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:5, Funny)
There must be, or why do you see job adverts requiring 4 years experience in something that's only been around for 2?
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:4, Informative)
By the same token, young people often have things older people lack. Drive, ambition, flexibility, curiosity, and a lot more hours they're willing to work on salary.
Not every older person lacks those. Heck, I've been posting on /. since I was "the young IT worker", and now I'm approaching the time I'm supposed to be put out to pasture.
The real issue, I think, is that too many people suck at learning on their own. They come out of school with Java, and if they can't do that, they fail.
I interviewed an older coder in the past year. He was over 40 for sure, maybe 50, but was playing with RoR, knew python, but still had his C and bash under his belt. The *only* reason I didn't hire him on the spot was he was very expensive and it was early on in the interview cycle. (In retrospect, I'd have pulled the trigger; it turned out to be much, much harder to find good people than I had expected.)
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm curious what your definition of "often" is in this case. While I find people across age groups that are lazy, I'm finding it far more likely with younger people these days being the worst in that they want things handed to them and want to minimize what they actually put into the job. I've gotten to the point where I'll take a person with base knowledge and a drive (and ability) to learn over someone with a wealth of knowledge and no such drive any day.
I see this especially with fresh out of college grads and my teen aged sister's kids (and their friends). These people have, basically out of the gate, access to vast amounts of knowledge and great search tools that I would've killed for when I was starting out in computers and barely calling BBSes.. but so many of them aren't even willing to take 2 seconds to search google for an answer and want others to hand them the solution.
I've found that in the last few years, apparently the definition of the word "help" has changed to mean "do this entire thing for me and hand it back so I can take credit." Not to mention that "training" seems to mean "Give the final steps without explaining why any of this is required."
Though one of the worst offenders for both of the above ideas was a couple years older then me. Thankfully he's gone now.
I agree completely.
I've known plenty that just have no drive to learn.. and if you want to work in IT and don't like continually learning the new stuff, leave the field now, you're in the wrong one. But I have known a few that just can't get beyond a very basic level. They're just as bad in the long run and have no read future career path.
well (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess what I'd say is that when I encounter someone manifestly lacking in ambition or curiosity, someone who wants to "get by", they skew distinctly older.
But it's not as if my sample size is huge. I have speculated in the past that the reason IT doesn't have a ton of really strong older workers is because they all got rich and retired, and I'm only partially kidding. Of the tip top people I know, a significant percentage have a lot of money and no longer work by choice. There has been such a boom of oppo
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up? please? Why haven't you done it yet?
Seriously, there's a REASON the older folks don't tend to show the drive and ambition that the younger folks do. You can only work through so many nights without sleep before you finally realize you're not compensated enough (in pay, recognition, or even lack of complaints -- which == recognition in our field often). Sorry to be a whiny IT wonk, but pay alone doesn't cut it. You watch the person you made that app for take all the credit for it and you might get a ** mention in the fine print. They get promoted over and over and you get... another project. Let's face it, people good in IT are not often good with people, and there's not a lot of vertical headroom in tech-only positions in most companies.
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:5, Insightful)
When I graduated college 10 years ago, I was one of those ambitious people... I often stayed at work till 10pm to insure our products/projects met their milestones etc... Recently we hired new hires that are of the new generation. So far, many of these people are out the door as soon as the clock hits 5, regardless the status of their projects and when the milestones were... Even when I'm travelling on business and am halfway across the world, they don't want to take any personal time to give me a hand (even if it's to upload a project they are past due on). They didn't even bother taking their work laptops home, because they don't want to "work" outside of work.
I happen to be one of those people - I don't mind helping out with a few reasonable things and putting in a few extra hours on rare occasions, but many companies expect you to work 60+ hours a week, and if you don't you are not a "team player". Well I say fuck that. You pay me - I work. When you don't pay me - I don't work.
I don't consider my life goal to help some company achieve X business goals. I know the company is not loyal to me - they will fire me if they need to - so how can they expect loyalty from me??
Re:Here's your answer.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry you were so stupid when you were younger.
I'm paid to work a 40 hour week. I work a 40 hour week, and I do good work in that time. If you want me to work more, there's a method for that- it's called paying me overtime. Offer it and I'll consider it. Probably not though- I don't really need the money.
Life is short. Free time is far too valuable to be wasted by doing extra work. When you're older you'll never hear any of your coworkers say "Damn I wish I had spent more time at the office". You will hear them say more time with the kids, wife, etc. My father's passed on, and if I could trade a year I spent working for a year flipping burgers for minimum wage but spending time with him, I'd do it in a fucking heartbeat. We're just smart enough in this generation to know this now, rather than waiting til we have a stress related breakdown in our middle age.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's all good and fine. The problem is that the OP expressed all of this in terms of age, not
Re:Im young (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:uh.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Older workers might be more experienced, but also have more time to develop bad habits. Instead of asking questions like the one you listed, think up a few scenarios and ask them what they would do in the situation.
I don't think this is stressed enough. Age/experience has a very goldilocks approach in IT. It can be too hot and too cold. You can get the old dogs stuck in their tricks that want to port your entire system over to what they've been doing, or you'll get the ones that are so jaded in the civil war against management and marketing that they are nothing but a poison thorn in your IT department. You can also get masters of their craft that are seeking new ways to expand themselves, but may get bored with the tasks you have for them and leave just as quickly as they came. You'll probably get something inbetween.
These are all different cogs for different machines. Maybe you just need a human appliance in your IT department that you can rely on like a laborador to get his job done. Maybe you need someone who's unafraid to stick up for the IT in front of marketing/management (because lack of competent project managers?). Maybe you need a magnanimous whirlwind to roll through your department and get the engines greased and running on the right track within a short amount of time.
For your money, unless they're pursuing IT as a post-retirement hobby, the older ones will typically cost you more for their output compared to the younger ones, but they'll typically be more reliable as well -- as an imprecise generalization.
Re: (Score:3)
I haven't got 20 years of experience, but I've never been in charge of other developers. I don't think it's a question of trust, but of scope; the work I do is something that really doesn't require additional people.