short takes

[cellio]

Yesterday's mail brought a lovely magnet from browngirl based on the Kipling poem "Helen All Alone", which I had not previously read. Good call and beautiful art!

We're playing D&D this Saturday, which means we can have a longer session than when we play on a weeknight. I'm looking forward to it.

And now a few links:

A really interesting article on how to interview candidates for software jobs (link provided by goljerp).

Buy T-shirts and more from the Total Information Awareness store! This is the Orwellian logo they don't use any more. (Link provided by a co-worker.)

Everyday etiquette hell (source forgotten). Put the Coke down first. Really. Either that, or plan to clean your monitor.

Comments

[jducoeur]

It's important that the discussion run long enough for the candidate to get the lay of the land, but I think it's worth the investment.

Yes. Our rule of thumb for second interviews (which is when we do the design-discussion thing) is that we slot an hour of the entire team for it, and we let it run long if it's going well. (Since, if it's going well, it's probably producing useful food for thought anyway.)

I'm not very good at conducting interviews, though part of that is presumably that I don't get much practice.

It is actually not as hard it might seem. Over the past couple of years, I've begun doing a lot more interviews (partly because my title's gotten a bit fancier, and partly because I've been in small startups where most of the team does interviewing). I've found that being organized is about 75% of it -- thinking in advance about what you want out of the interview, and some appropriate leading questions. A good interview is more of a conversation than a grilling, and a good candidate for most positions is someone that you can converse with well. So if you have fodder to start with, a good interview will often take care of itself.