Measuring LAMP Competency? 453
An anonymous reader writes "Our company is getting ready to hire a number of programmers. While the majority of the prospective candidates do have good-looking resumes, we are looking to see if we can get some clear metrics in the assessment process. After a little research we have learned that there is a well-established PHP + MySQL training and certification process, and some of the candidates are already certified. There is also a candidate with a good portfolio, a lot of experience, and no certification. Most of the applicants also have some college/university science-related education. So our goal is to be able to somehow measure LAMP overall competency as well as basic computer science concepts such as BNF, data normalization, OOP, MVC, etc. How do Slashdot readers go about this kind of characterization?"
Ignore the certificates (Score:5, Funny)
Get them to write a trivial app.
If it contains 'INSERT INTO table ('. $foo. ');'
Kill them.
Re:No faith (Score:5, Funny)
Its the same way with doctors and civil engineers. I'll take my bypass (both heart and highway) from the guy who was to busy getting shit done to get board certified.
Re:Ignore the certificates (Score:5, Funny)
the part that is not using the mysql_real_this_week_special_now_for_sure_escape($foo);
Re:Previous work (Score:5, Funny)
"The COO has come to you, because no one else is available. The CEO is flipping out. There's a server on the network running some common variety of Linux. Transfer rates from it to any other machine are very slow, regardless of the protocol. i.e., http, ftp, rsync, samba are all slow. What do you do?"
OH GOD OH GOD... what wall jack is that server plugged into...what? Not labelled? CRAP! OK, I'll just PING it and look it up in the switch arp table and cross reference the MAC and the switch port... OH NO...THE RDP client on my Blackberry just crashed and I'm in the middle of the highway during rush hour... CRAP. OK, OK...calm down...make up something... OK, um tell the CEO that the server is under service lockdown and frozen due to the upcoming board meeting and potential buyout... yeah...that'll give me a couple of days leeway... whew!
Then, since I'm in the network group, I can just blame it on the server group since they never patch their servers anyway... that E1000 driver never did work properly on Linux, yeah yeah that's what I'll do...
Re:why BNF? (Score:1, Funny)
because we want to use are arcane knowledge of CS as a blunt instrument of revenge on our MBA overlords when they ask us to do something unreasonable
Re:Ignore the certificates (Score:3, Funny)
You laugh. I've seen this in a code review.
<? header( 'Location: ' . $_GET['s'] ); ?>
That was the entire script....
No wonder why I'm bald.
Re:Ignore the certificates (Score:1, Funny)
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Re:Previous work (Score:5, Funny)
Egads - it's the whole "Root Cause Analysis" crap. A mile-long report filled with BS that means nothing to anyone else and and action plan of "how to prevent this from happening again" blah blah blah. I always felt those things should be triaged first to determine if the RCA was even under our control. But whatever.
I worked for a hospital in LA that rakes in far too much money than they should and they do those a lot. Usually they would pay the most expensive consultant to write one of those things up for it to only be ignored. They would have already vilified someone (responsible or not) and then just go through the motions.
As far as the interview - deal with it. If you can't stand a little heat stay out of the kitchen. I would probably just laugh at the guy slapping the table and then play along. I would say "Good. We have some spirit here. You there - table slapper. First thing I'll say is use some of that fire and gumption to get the reatrds with their neckties on too tight to get the f**k out of my way while I fix the problem - and be advised, every time you slap the table adds another 1 minute to my problem solving because you're being annoying, and another 10 dollar Starbucks card to feed my liquid crack habit."
And as someone who had to deal with a LAMP server I built on spare parts a few years ago I encountered just such a thing - ARP flux. I still don't understand a lot about it but was able to get it working. And don't knock Google. I don't pretend to have all the answers - never do. I am a jack of all trades, master of none. If all I am is all you got, you'd do well to either have coverage I can count on or a MiFi for me to have unfettered access to resources I've built over the year. Be smart. Leverage your people and their assets they know they can reach.
As to nobody being available and it filters all the way down to me to fix a critical server? Looks like that's the FIRST thing that goes into your RCA before you even THINK of rattling my cage, Mr. Manager. "Business Continuity Planning" - learn it and love it :-)
That said, I am now and always have been happy to roll up my sleeves and try something to help regardless of the circumstances. CIO, CEO, Line Manager or Mary in accounting who blushes at the comment of "I think your mouse has a dirty ball" :-)
One of my favorite things to ask is like what I read a while back on the site "Joelonsoftware". "Build me a house" and hand them a pen. If they just jump up and start writing a square - they lose. Ask questions. Probe a bit. "Who wants the house? Where? Underwater? In space? what's my requirements? I figure if you're asking ME to design a house we're pretty much open to anything."
Does the person have good troubleshooting skills? Are they well rounded? Common sense is not so common much anymore. What kind of things do they like to do as "stretch" things on their own time? I write hospital EDI interfaces for integration engines for a living and I very much enjoy it. It also means what I do touches many, many aspects of programming and system design to get things to work together. Part programmer, part analyst, part teacher, part hardware engineer, part tech support, part application setup, part network guy to help figure out VPN stuff. Being able to get iptrace running on AIX so I can grab a file for bringing in to Wireshark can be helpful too when the ass-hat on the vendor side says I'm sending him 2 of everything and I'm saying he's on crack.
So you wanna slap the table? I'll roll with it and we can laugh about it. I don't take any of that seriously. Be advised I might also stick my finger in your coffee and then taste it and say "Hmm.. A cream and sugar kind of fellow, eh? You should warm that up a bit." right in the middle of your mini flake-out. Someone did that to me years ago and I made the choice right then and there to laugh at that kind of thing. It was either that or I could have just kicked his ass. Of course he was much bigger than me so I was pretty sure I would have had to pack a lunch; since kicking his ass would have most likely been an all-day job. Lucky for both of us I was lazy.