A few years ago I moved to a new job having been programming for 2 years using C#, however this new company was mainly using VB6. I made the case for .NET and won, but one of the consessions I had to make was to use VB.NET and not C# (understandable as most of the other developers were already using VB). Three years later it was time to...
My company, a C++ house, is always looking to hire recent grads. However due to the Java Schools phenomenon, we typically end up interviewing strong Java programmers with maybe a minute smattering of C++. Often the C++ classes don't really prepare students for working in C++. Nevertheless, often these are bright kids, eager to learn and ...
When putting together a startup for Software Engineering web based applications/systems, what would you consider to be a good mix of talent, when trying to find partners? This mix would involve defining the product and market, defining, implementing and validating requirements, and making the product polished and production ready. And...
My hopefully-soon-to-be employer has asked me to sign an Inventions Assignment Agreement. Generally, the contract seems fine, as they wish to ensure their IP is protected and that I'm not screwing around on them. However, it makes no exception for work done on my own time/equipment that is unrelated to their business (my state has no l...
I'm currently working professionally in the arts/entertainment industry where the quality of your work (as seen in your portfolio) comes before all else. An employer cares about the following in this order: Portfolio Work Experience College Degree A college degree is a small footnote, easily overshadowed by a strong portfolio. My q...
I am interested in finding out what were considered important attributes of a developer in the early days of programming, i.e., 1950s, 1960s, or early 1970s. Post any examples/materials you have: interview questions, developer tests, expected experience, personality assessments, anything that was used to evaluate a programmer before Micr...
We're in the process of hiring a new Q/A person for our team. The previous person wasn't as technical as we would have liked and lacked formal Q/A experience. This was probably due to the former posting going up and the requirements not matching what the job expectations were! As a result our teams development suffered for quite a while ...
Lately I have been bogged down with my job. I'm working on open source software all of my free time(outside of my job) and that is my passion. However my job zaps me for energy with endless meetings, talks with dumb customers, ridiculous deadlines and a boss riding my ass from the start of a project to the end(even though I'm the top pro...
Okay...here's the short long story: I'm a graduate from a two-year programming course, earning my associate's degree (with honors, no less). Earlier this year, I had a brief stint where I tried to go back to school part-time for my Software Engineering BS degree, but that fell apart for various reasons which I won't go into here. I've ...
As a company it's important to choose which .NET language to go with. Many have chosen C# but are there any actual numbers out there to support going with C# over VB.NET? How many C# developers are out there vs. VB devs. I know that a good developer will be able to work with any language but the choice of language might dissuade a perso...
Is there no room in a good company for an average or above average programmer? It seems that articles around the web are only about hiring the best or great programmers. An average programmer has sound programming practices and enjoys the job. The individual may not always have the best solutions, get problems done in the most elegant...
When I hire developers for general mid-to-senior web app development positions, I generally expect them to understand core concurrent programming concepts such as liveness vs. safety, race conditions, thread synchronization and deadlocks. I'm not sure whether to consider topics like fork/join, wait/notify, lock ordering, memory model bas...
There are a bunch of great threads on hiring testers/developers based on skills and tips/tricks. That being said, I'm going over some resumes (first pass) right now and I'm seeing some which technically, look very sound. However little nuances bother me such as poor spelling, grammar and what look to be careless errors. Am I wrong for ...
Saw an article on this forum thread and wanted to get people's opinions here. Should hiring decisions be influenced by someone's game playing habits? Is this a fair reason to exclude someone from employment as a programmer? Do you feel that the concerns raised about productivity are valid? See the original posting at http://forums.f13.n...
I'm looking over resumes to hire a developer. On the resume it says - "I have 23 years of experience", but in the "experience" section it only lists about 15 years worth of work. Is it customary for programmers to cut short their experience section and not list everything, or is the current raised state of my left eyebrow completely just...
I am getting ready to add another developer to my team and I want to try and fix the mistakes I made in my last hiring cycle. I like to think of myself as a competent programmer (I can be given a project, I can deliver on that project and the deliverable work with very few if any bugs) and so I ask questions that I would ask myself in a...
Standard employment agreements stipulate that the employing company owns all inventions and discoveries produced during the period of employment. California code section 2870 exempts inventions produced outside of work and without use of company facilities by California employees: 2870. (a) Any provision in an employment agreement whi...
I'm running into Db performance issues with an OTLP project I'm working on. Another developer and I have reached the end of our accumulated performance knowledge and seek out an individual to join the team to help us speed up our application. For some background we've done schema changes to denormalize pieces of the data, optimized eve...
When hiring a programmer, do you tend to prioritize fundamentals or knowledge of specific technologies higher? Fundamentals include things like algorithms, data structures, decent communication ability, good understanding of design patterns and principles, a good understanding of system fundamentals such as memory management and pointer...
During hiring a .NET web developer I give the candidate a coding test. I tend to limit the candidate to MSDN installed on the test server - I think it holds everything the candidate needs to complete the task. I admit, this is not the normal case as I don't expect the candidate to do his work without use of the web. On the other ha...