Comments by "Ton Bong" (@tongobong1) on "‘Your Hiring Policy DOESN’T WORK!’ | Allen Holub Talks About Terrible Hiring Practices In Software" video.

@beowulf_of_wall_st yes it is common for a company to lose competent people because it is not firing the incompetent.
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Yes I think interviews should be more like conversations between two engineers about common problems we face and not so much about answering questions about some details that we can find the correct answer on google in 5 minutes.
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Exactly. Once I worked in a company that paid me a low rate from the start with a promise that after 6 months they will pay me competitive rate if I will fulfill their expectations in the first 6 months. After 6 months they were satisfied with me so they hired me for indefinitely and they raised my salary just for about 4% so it was still far from what I could get elsewhere. This made me "drunk" so I didn't want to work hard anymore and eventually I left the company on bad terms. LOL!
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@rhornjr Yes I am suspicious to those who know exact definitions. I want them to explain the principles by their own words and I also like to ask them about disadvantages. Usually when they know disadvantages they have a lot of experience. So what are disadvantages of doing TDD? LOL!
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@pauligrossinoz OMG you did a huge mistake with that senior dev. He was afraid of you because you were too good so he didn't want to be your boss because you might take his position someday. The truth about interviews is that knowledge is just part of equation. I had some very strange interviews in my life. Once a senior developer at interview was excited to give me the job when I said unit testing is useful while I made the manager angry because he thought unit tests are waste of time. The most important is to find out who is the boss in the interview and make him happy because he will decide who will get the job.
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@harryd5571 depends on money. If they pay well then I can work with that too. I work as a contractor and all I care is my hourly rate that is much much higher than the rate of full time employees. I don't mind programming silly things on bad projects if they pay me well for that.
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Then you have a strange experience. Good developers are good in algorithms and refactoring to make code clean.
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@plouf1969 OMG you should improve your knowledge of algorithms. You can find great lectures on youtube from top Universities for computer and information science. Good background in algorithms can drastically improve your ability to find good solutions for mathematically complex problems and you will not feel threatened by junior developers that know algorithms well. I agree that refactoring, designing good architecture, unit tests... are very important topics but everything starts with finding good algorithms for solving problems.
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@plouf1969 I think asking about algorithms - (practical questions, not theory) at interview is great to see how good and fast is the candidate at formulating solutions to a problem. Of course the main focus should be on clean code and design skills.
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@7th_CAV_Trooper yes but you should always be able to get rid of bad hires because no matter how many interviews you have you can't find out whether he is really such a nice, honest and hardworking person like he seems on interviews.
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@harryd5571 the problem with incompetent developers is that they are afraid to hire someone that is much better than they are. It is important to recognize such a person - buyer and make him feel good by demonstrating that they are better at that job then you are. I know it sounds crazy but life overall is quite crazy. Don't you think so?
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@harryd5571 yea I don't like long term commitments.
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