[ericb]

In the actual interview, I find that most give up after spitting out some pseudocode. About 40% have reasonable psuedo code that makes me think they'd get there (but these half-answers don't give me enough confidence to give them a thumbs up).

Actual code that works (and running it from a terminal), we are seeing only about 15% tops maybe lower.

We have started sending a fizzbuzz-ish question, a relatively easy css question, and a word-problem about performance as pre-interview questions through recruiters. This has dropped our resume inflow dramatically and saved a lot of time, but that's depressing in a way.

We are looking for a Rails or PHP dev in waltham (near boston) currently without a lot of luck. The job has a lot of pros, but probably doesn't do itself justice on-paper.

[dhimes]

The job has a lot of pros, but probably doesn't do itself justice on-paper

Keep in mind that you may be getting a lot of good people with a lot of pros, but that don't do themselves justice on paper.

[ericb]

Possible, but the painful disappointments have all been the reverse. Good on paper, but the paper is, to be generous, "embellished."

[dhimes]

Sure, but it's really hard to try it the other way: "Well, he looks like a dipshit on paper, but I've just got a feeling."

I haven't hired for my own company yet, but when I did if for previous employers I found it quite hard.

[acangiano]

> We are looking for a Rails or PHP dev in waltham (near boston) currently without a lot of luck. The job has a lot of pros, but probably doesn't do itself justice on-paper.

Are you attending local PHP and Ruby/Rails meetups and user groups? If none are available, consider starting one.

[ericb]

That is good advice. We are at just about every Boston Ruby Group meeting, though...

[IdeaHamster]

Related: Are you considering remote employees? There seems to be a trend of the top Rubyists working remotely (that's if you want a top Rubyist, I'm pretty sure you can find a competent Rubyist if you keep looking).

[oscardelben]

If you're considering remote employees or contractors I'd like to get in touch.

[ericb]

It is under consideration. If I can sell management on it (I'm senior dev here), I will be in touch.

[mattm]

Feel free to contact me as well if you get the ok on remote.

[rmc]

a word-problem about performance

Would you be able to share that? Simple programming/algorithm questions are a dime a dozen, but I'm curious what a word probably that's appropriate to coders would look like.

[ericb]

Sure thing:

Describe how you might approach researching, diagnosing, and reducing the page load time for a web page with poor performance.

[unshift]

that question is a bit of a turn-off to me. obviously "benchmark it, see what's slowest, and make it faster" is a correct answer, and so is a 40 page essay about browser rendering, minification, full page caching, fragment caching, AJAX, etc. have you tried anything more specific?

[ericb]

If you have examples of more specific questions, I'm glad to hear them. I would accept either of your answers, btw. Answers I have seen include "It is always SQL" and "make it ajax--ajax is fast."

The purpose is just to verify that they can put some ideas into writing, have a mental framework for debugging in place, and can verbally demonstrate any sort of familiarity with the technologies involved. It isn't a gotcha-type question that expects a specific answer.

edit: That said, your feedback is good and I will amend it to give more of an idea of how long a response is desirable.

[ahi]

To be fair, it almost always is SQL and ajax is a decent way to hide unavoidable performance problems when everything else fails. Point taken though.

[rmc]

Answers I have seen include "It is always SQL" and "make it ajax--ajax is fast."

Haha, I see what you mean, that is a wordy FizzBuzz