World-writable memory on Samsung Android phones

Posted Dec 26, 2012 17:54 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

And you think stamping "No Hire" on the curricula vitae of interviewees who can discuss and show a good understanding of how Java code memory allocation maps to JVM/system level allocation will get you that?

Knowledge of JVM/system level allocation are great, but these not a replacement for common sense.

Joel said it better then me:

Our goal is to hire people with aptitude, not a particular skill set. Any skill set that people can bring to the job will be technologically obsolete in a couple of years, anyway, so it's better to hire people that are going to be able to learn any new technology rather than people who happen to know SQL programming right this minute.

Smart is hard to define, but as we look at some possible interview questions we'll see how you can ferret it out. Gets Things Done is crucial. People who are Smart but don't Get Things Done often have PhDs and work in big companies where nobody listens to them because they are completely impractical. They would rather mull over something academic about a problem rather than ship on time.

Now, go back and think. Do all these discussions about JIT, system level allocations, etc look like something academic about a problem? Well, that's the problem right there.

Now, I'm not saying that nix does not Get Things Done, more likely then not he just does not know how to adjust his knowledge to the situation of the interviewing process where interviewer have 45 minutes to say "Hire" or "No Hire", but well… it's his problem, not mine.

I would be sceptical that you will get such people if you stamp "No Hire" on the CVs of people who start exploring technical issues that arise out of ambiguities in questions, and instead hire those who don't, be that out of ignorance or timidity.

Well, that's why interviews must be conducted in person (even VC is not a good replacement although it can be used as “last resort” kinda thing). When someone tries to dig “too deep” (and discusses pieces which are not really all that relevant to the task on hand) or “too shallow” (and ignores most corner cases) you can quickly try to resolve the situation before it'll escalate. If someone raises JIT-related concerns then it's not plus or minus by itself! The next step is critical: if person says something like “well, usually these are not a problem on practice, let's forget about them for now” then it's big fat plus (interviewee knows about Leaky Abstractions problem but it knows when not to talk about them), but if person goes on to discuss all these minutiae details and abandons the initial task entirely… it's not a good thing to say the least.

It's much harder to do discuss these things on forums like LWN: no visual contact and no 45 minutes restriction.