There is a God

[Samwise]

I like to throw a few technical questions at applicants for the sole purpose of verifying that they haven't padded their resumes.  If someone claims on his resume that he's a Java programmer, he damn well better know whether Java passes arguments by value or by reference. 

About 50% of interviewees who get quizzed on something like that will er and ahem and mutter sheepishly that they skimmed through a "learn Java in 24 hours" book once and they don't remember that particular bit of information being in there.

[Murgos]

Reference.  What do I win?

[Samwise]

My suspicion that you may not be completely lying on your resume.  Better than the average candidate.  Although you lose points for not remembering that Java passes primitives (like int) by value.

[Murgos]

Fair enough.  I haven't touched Java in 3+ years.  I thought I recalled that the primitives all had object wrappers though (int and Int)?

[Samwise]

They do, but you get different semantics depending on whether you use the actual primitive type or the wrapper.  Kindy woogy IMO.     I haven't used Java outside of the one CS course I had 6 years ago that used it (the instructor was a big Java weenie), but stuff like that sticks with me for some reason.

[Yegolev]

I most certainly failed the technical interview.  I had just passed the AIX Admin cert but failed the AIX Support cert, which should pinpoint where I was, technically-speaking.  I also used the phrase "I have no idea" a lot, since there is a fine line between being incredibly optimistic and a filthy liar; I went with blunt honesty in the interview while the resume was more like a laundry list of thing I had touched at various times.  Another one I liked was "I don't know anything about that, but I'll learn it faster than anyone else."  Still, the idea that I should have been allowed root access to an installation of this size was ridiculous at the time.  Hooray for entry-level positions.

[Yegolev]

I know many of us, including myself, are irritated by Broughden for any number of things, but this one's a cheap shot.

I regret nothing.

[Hoax]

How do you get a job in HR anyways?  I've always wanted to be on the interviewing side of the process, it seems like trying to catch people in a lie all day could be kind of fun.  That or working for a collection company, coming up with tricky ways to make someone's life miserable enough that they pay up.  Seem like solid gigs to me.

[Roac]

How do you get a job in HR anyways?  I've always wanted to be on the interviewing side of the process, it seems like trying to catch people in a lie all day could be kind of fun.

Hopefully HR doesn't do interviews - or at least, only does the initial interview.  I've interviewed several openings, and I don't know that it's fun (for me anyway), but it is interesting.  The whole Q&A process feels very different from the other side of the table.  Made me much more prepared next time I went interviewing.  Kinda sad seeing people beg for jobs though - hated sitting there with one guy with an ok resume, but didn't know nearly as much as he claimed experience to, answer everything with "but I can learn and need a job".  I've had my fill of that, but others seem to like dealing with people (there are some gems of course, too). 

That or working for a collection company, coming up with tricky ways to make someone's life miserable enough that they pay up.  Seem like solid gigs to me.

My step-father did that as one of his first jobs.  As he tells it, he enjoyed the investigative side of his job, where he had to track people down, and collecting stuff from people who were screwing the bank.  He didn't like trying to collect from people who obviously had nothing to their name.  Good days and bad like any job I guess, but he called it quits because of too many bad ones.

[Righ]

it seems like trying to catch people in a lie all day could be kind of fun. 

Police interviewer is the gig you're looking for, or at the least, corporate fraud investigator. The most respected technique is the Reid Technique.

[Abagadro]

Or lawyer.  Your average deposition is a 6 hour exercise in bullshit detection.

[Strazos]

Criminal Litigation FTW

[Margalis]

I don't lie on my resume or "puff up" at all. I don't need to. If that sounds arrogant well tough. And I have too much pride to lie. If I can't get a job on my own merits well screw it.

If someone claims to know something and doesn't that is the absolute best way to get a thumbs down from me.

---

Java primitives are passed by value, there are no references and they aren't allocated on the heap. However in 1.5 there is auto-boxing which will automatically convert int to Integer, and reflection already did that to some extent.

None of the primitive wrapper types like Integer and Float are mutable anyway, so it really doesn't matter at all. Even if you have a reference there is nothing you can do with it. As they are read-only reference or value is basically irrelevant.

If someone doesn't know Java objects are passed by reference I wouldn't consider them as knowing Java at all.

[Bunk]

I adjusted a few dates on my resume to gloss over some extended periods of unemployment I didn't want to explain in an interview. Stretched out a few periods of self employment to fill some timeline gaps, that sort of thing. Actual facts on skills and expirence, all factual.

All the resume did was give me enough to get the Admin. Assistant to call me in for the competencey test. I was in against a few guys ten years younger than me, right out of tech schools. Half the test questions were on DOS, IRQs and jumper settings. I felt sorry for the poor bewildered saps.

After that, it was just a matter of not coming accross as a mouth breather in the interview.

[Strazos]

Jumper settings, lol...I barely even know what those are for, and I've never HAD to know.

[pants]

When I got interviewed for my current job (and my resume lieing was restricted to claiming familiarity with languages and software I hadn't touched in 5+ years.), my interviewer (and now boss) said the company barred "quizzing a subject on technical skills".

What the hell is the reasoning behind that? We don't give tests or anything but we usually phone interview our candidates before bringing them onsite and 2 or 3 of us will grill them with technical questions to see if it's worth our time to do a real interview.

The reasoning is that technical skills are the easiest thing to teach someone.  If you have someone who can get on well with their teammates, isnt a butthead, can learn stuff quickly, and is moderately intelligent - you can send em on a 2 week {insert technical skill here} course, and within a month or two they'll be a productive member of your company, and a great asset that will only get better with more experience.

 If you have the world's best Java expert who happens to be an insufferable jerk, they will be a PITA every single day they are in your company.  Technicall skills are easy to learn.  'Soft' skills and personality are far, far harder to learn.

[Righ]

Jumper settings, lol...I barely even know what those are for, and I've never HAD to know.

I think its something to do with knitting machines.

[Murgos]

Jumper settings, lol...I barely even know what those are for, and I've never HAD to know.

I think its something to do with knitting machines.

What like "Blue with a zippered front."?

[bhodi]

The reasoning is that technical skills are the easiest thing to teach someone.  If you have someone who can get on well with their teammates, isnt a butthead, can learn stuff quickly, and is moderately intelligent - you can send em on a 2 week {insert technical skill here} course, and within a month or two they'll be a productive member of your company, and a great asset that will only get better with more experience.

 If you have the world's best Java expert who happens to be an insufferable jerk, they will be a PITA every single day they are in your company.  Technicall skills are easy to learn.  'Soft' skills and personality are far, far harder to learn.

And I think this is flat out wrong. Failing IT departments are filled with people who took two week courses. There are a lot of subleties in software/hardware and trying to fill in technical skills with rote teaching will only get to you a certain point. It doesn't teach you troubleshooting or the interactions that you tend to intuitively understand when you have a much broader technical base.

I've seen some people that pass the paper tests (CCNA, etc) and all they can do at the end of the day is call the support hotline when it doesn't work. Some (not all!) people who have 'switched careers' into IT are particuarly notorious for this. You can't just take a guy who doesn't have the talent, send him to some classes and expect him to walk out as a senior programmer or engineer or administrator. Programming is even more skewed, where one programmer who's good can be more useful than 10 mediocre ones.

I fight against the idea that someone can just walk in and pick it up, becuase at the end of the day, only someone who has both a natual disposition, talent, and training is going to get you out of tight spots when lateral thinking is required. If you don't have someone who can do that, you'll be on the phone to vendor support whenever something unsusual happens. You're completely at their mercy. In programming, they just arne't going to be able to come up with inventive solutions and will generally work slower and make more mistakes. The people you rely on to plan ahead and develop solutions to problems aren't going to be able to evaluate different products or suggest future directions without a good foundation, and training them up on particular software isn't going to provide that.

That's not to say personality isn't important; Having a cohesive group that works well together is critical, but I think that it's easier to keep people separated than to try and train up a nice guy.. becuase the nice guy might not be able to pull his weight, even if he does get along with everyone.

It's why I shake my head at most of my interviews being not overly technical in nature; Just becuase I'm a nice guy doesn't mean I can do the job you hired me to do; you should ask me a few questions to judge my merit instead of taking me (and my resume') at my word and taking me out for a beer. It's hard, sometimes, when you don't have someone with that particular skillset on-hand to interview them, but there are alternatives, such as bringing in someone to do so.

Edit: and the only jumper you need to know nowadays is the one to reset the bios, everything else is basically jumperless at this point. IRQs? No, we have PnP OSses.

[Margalis]

I also agree that that is wrong.

It takes most people many years to become good at C++ or ASM and a few years to become good at Java. Learning to write multi-threaded stuff with wait() and notify() can't be done at a two week course. Now, if you are hiring a junior person with junior level pay that's fine, they can learn over time. But if you have positions to fill higher up the ladder they better know what they are supposed to know cold.

---

I get along fine with other people but I am not the office "nice guy" by any means. I'm a bit aloof, usually not that talkative, a bit arrogant and sometimes I'm a bit grumpy. But I know my shit way more than most people, and am hugely productive. Not only am I a plus but I'm really the only reason our company still exists.

Problem employees are a problem. Guys who just cannot get along with anybody, you don't want those people. But if a guy can co-exist that's good enough for me. At that point I'm choosing the person who is better technically.

At our interviews we give a standard test. It's very helpful. It gives you a good idea of how much the candidate knows and also is a window into personality.

Some people who think they are very qualified get pissed when they have to take a test - like we should just take their resume as gospel. Those people will not get hired. Their perspective is flawed. In my opinion I know Java very well and taking any sort of test is silly - but the interviewer doesn't know that and has no reason to take my word on it. People who get pissed at being give a test they are "overqualified" for are too egocentric.

Then there are people that answer questions with 2 word answers, even when they ask for an explanation. These people are poor written communicators and get the axe as well.

And then there are people that claim to be XML experts and can't answer basic questions about XML. Those people get the axe too.

I would never hire someone just because they kicked ass on a test, but I would certainly NOT hire someone if they did poorly.

[UD_Delt]

The reasoning is that technical skills are the easiest thing to teach someone.  If you have someone who can get on well with their teammates, isnt a butthead, can learn stuff quickly, and is moderately intelligent - you can send em on a 2 week {insert technical skill here} course, and within a month or two they'll be a productive member of your company, and a great asset that will only get better with more experience.

 If you have the world's best Java expert who happens to be an insufferable jerk, they will be a PITA every single day they are in your company.  Technicall skills are easy to learn.  'Soft' skills and personality are far, far harder to learn.

I'd disagree with that. I'm the first person you listed. I can pick up the basics of anything pretty quickly and can help out in a pinch in a WIDE variety of development. But I am not an expert in any one field despite doing this for 7 years. It takes a lot more than a 2 week training course to build good applications.

My specialty on the other hand is in dealing with those "insufferable jerks" you describe that just happen to be experts with any given tool. They are invaluable assets on a project team as long as you know how to manage them and can keep them working happily and limit their interactions with others.

You NEED the people that are more comfortable working in a dark cave with their heads up a computers ass. They're the ones that actually get things done.

[Ironwood]

Jumper settings, lol...I barely even know what those are for, and I've never HAD to know.

I think its something to do with knitting machines.

Heh.

[MrHat]

I've listed quite a few things on my C.V. that I took a few years ago, or haven't practiced in a while.  Because it's easy to open a book or search the internet for something.  I was actually asked a EE question at a sales-job interview that I couldn't remember, so I asked the interviewer if he minded, got up and walked to his bookcase, grabbed the EE bible, and found the answer for him.  Too bad that job didn't pay enough to make it worth it.

[Bunk]

Edit: and the only jumper you need to know nowadays is the one to reset the bios, everything else is basically jumperless at this point. IRQs? No, we have PnP OSses.

Luckily the company I work for has since updated their competency test. Hell, even five years ago when i wrote that, most of it was outdated. Mind you, the main program we were supporting at the time was a DOS based program, so knowing that type of shit could matter.

I'm proud to remember the days of manually setting IRQ jumpers on a USR modem and then going in to disable the matching port in BIOS. The pnp generation has it too easy.

[Strazos]

On some Mobos, you can remove the onboard battery and replace it in its slot to reset BIOS.

[Broughden]

Regardless, Broughden lying about residency status in NY to get the transfer seems small potatoes and a bureaucratic issue. I know many of us, including myself, are irritated by Broughden for any number of things, but this one's a cheap shot.

Thank you Engels.

Just to fill everyone in.....

a) Im moved in and have internet access.

b) I have internet access but due to a strenuous work load presently I wont be posting nearly as often either at home or work. (Yes, I know each of you will be deeply disappointed.)

c) Living here is amazing. The food and women have been phenomenal. Living in Manhattan is a dream come true. (Rent prices suck for a 4 bedroom apartment, but oh well)

d) I quit smoking cold turkey. This is hell on Earth.

e) I did not lie about my qualifications or experience. I commandeered an address to satisfy a bureaucratic residency requirement with the FULL KNOWLEDGE of those doing the hiring. Don't like it? Feel free to call the federal or state government and bitch about it......or uselessly whine on an internet forum. Either way I could give two shits less.

To most of you....thanks for the kind words and those of encouragement. I will be back in the Politic's Forum arguing when and if I get time.

[sarius]

d) I quit smoking cold turkey. This is hell on Earth.

I quit in April after 30 years.  I highly recommend the Dick Van Dyke methodology of Cold Turkey. :) 

Glad you like the big city, it's all yours!