| I've developed a simple set of questions to avoid these types of pointless interviews. It was last tested about two weeks ago when I was casually talking with the founder of a local startup who wanted me to join his team. I politely declined the offer. Here are the questions: 1. What is your product? If the answer to this is marketing talk, they fail the test. 2. Who is your customer? Same with #1, but add "everybody!". 3. What is your development setup/rules/guidelines? No source control? Bye. Testing on production servers? Bye (this startup did that, and wondered why their app failed to work). No workstations? You mean that I will use my personal computer at your office? Bye, Bye! What language/framework/technology do you use? If the answer is PHP/in house MVC then I'm out. I dont mind PHP/MVC, but most are hacked up pieces of crap that can't compare to symfony or even code igniter/cakephp. This allows me to consider working with people who know what they are doing, instead of wasting time with people who want to test me on what they think I know. This simple test was developed after an interview with a local startup. The interviewer was the "software engineer", and he had pulled questions from project euler to test me. After realizing this, I ended the interview quickly.
Their product? A web app for realtors to showcase their listings. Yeah, that required developers that were able to solve advanced project euler exercises. |