Here's reality: 100% of the technologies I work with today did not exist when I was in school. The only thing that has remained constant, useful and relevant is basic science, math, physics, etc.
What, then, make an engineer a good engineer in any domain? This applies to all aspects of engineering, from software to manufacturing engineering?
If I had to pick one thing I'd say their ability to remain current, learn and apply new unknown technologies through self study. Their flexibility and willingness to do so. Almost their drive to do so.
What I am interested in is someone who has the right approach and attitude for the job, an ability to solve problems creatively and a significant enough desire to learn. I am not looking for a robot that can memorize a hundred coding solutions in a month.
Part of the discrepancy here might lie in a difference in environment and stated goals. I have never worked in Silicon Valley but I have a feeling it is a dog-eat-dog mercenary environment where people are chewed-up and tossed out as quickly as others are hired.
If you are looking for quick hires and you are not looking at the idea of adding a team member for a long term relationship with the company and the goals of the business, yeah, sure, filter them through some quick "can you code this shit fast" puzzles and move on. Great! You are hired. Here's your desk. Here's your ankle chain. Now code away!
If, on the other hand, your industry and approach is such that you view people as a long term investment you really should not care about those skills. Anyone with decent ability can memorize coding problems. And it is worthless. What you are looking for is to bring someone on-board who will become a true asset for the business. I see it as almost short of looking for a partner. I don't care about memorized performance, I care about the ability to problem solve and the creativity, culture and thinking they can bring into the business.
These are two very different views. One is hiring cattle. The other is hiring people.
> If you are looking for quick hires and you are not looking at the idea of adding a team member
> filter them through some quick "can you code this shit fast" puzzles and move on. Great! You are hired. Here's your desk. Here's your ankle chain.
> One is hiring cattle. The other is hiring people.
You seem to be arguing against several points I never made. I took issue with your insinuation that you can just bring someone in for two hours and talk at length about some of their code that they bring it. That cuts out most of the hiring pool, which might be okay if you're Google, but for most companies isn't a smart move at all.
> What I am interested in is someone who has the right approach and attitude for the job, an ability to solve problems creatively and a significant enough desire to learn.
This has no correlation with programming as a hobby or having a wealth of freely reviewable code. Plenty of people love their job, are great at it, very creative, and fantastic technically and never write one line of code that isn't closed source or behind one or more NDAs. They go to work, do an amazing job, then go home after 8 hours and don't write any code or even touch a computer until the next work day.
If they don't have any code or project whatsoever they are able to discuss I have zero interest in interviewing them.
I have never said this is a universal formula for all to adopt. This is what I do. And it has worked very well for over thirty years across a range of engineering disciplines. Google and others can't take this approach because they need to hire people by the thousands. Not me.
Another interesting thing is to talk about someone's hobbies and passions outside of work. This is where you can learn so much about a person. People are passionate about one or more things and that is a reflection of their personality.
We do a lot of work in aerospace. There are very obvious legal barriers to disclosure there. Yet, I have always found that most engineers who are truly engaged with their craft have enough interesting things to talk about outside of work that you can really get a sense of who they are and how they will approach work.
An interesting example was when I needed someone to work on some Python code. I brought in people who had zero experience with Python. I could not care less about that. I wanted someone with some of the qualities I have already mentioned. I ended up hiring a programmer with lots of C++ experience and no Python chops at all.
The first three months were dedicated to taking a deep dive into Python while getting up to speed on the project. After that the focus shifted to the project itself. This person has been with me for many years and doing an amazing job with various technologies we didn't even know we would touch when I hired him.
I know this person can pick-up any technology we might need to utilize and do an excellent job of it.
The investment is in the person, not the technologies or the ability to memorize coding puzzles.
Here's reality: 100% of the technologies I work with today did not exist when I was in school. The only thing that has remained constant, useful and relevant is basic science, math, physics, etc.
What, then, make an engineer a good engineer in any domain? This applies to all aspects of engineering, from software to manufacturing engineering?
If I had to pick one thing I'd say their ability to remain current, learn and apply new unknown technologies through self study. Their flexibility and willingness to do so. Almost their drive to do so.
What I am interested in is someone who has the right approach and attitude for the job, an ability to solve problems creatively and a significant enough desire to learn. I am not looking for a robot that can memorize a hundred coding solutions in a month.
Part of the discrepancy here might lie in a difference in environment and stated goals. I have never worked in Silicon Valley but I have a feeling it is a dog-eat-dog mercenary environment where people are chewed-up and tossed out as quickly as others are hired.
If you are looking for quick hires and you are not looking at the idea of adding a team member for a long term relationship with the company and the goals of the business, yeah, sure, filter them through some quick "can you code this shit fast" puzzles and move on. Great! You are hired. Here's your desk. Here's your ankle chain. Now code away!
If, on the other hand, your industry and approach is such that you view people as a long term investment you really should not care about those skills. Anyone with decent ability can memorize coding problems. And it is worthless. What you are looking for is to bring someone on-board who will become a true asset for the business. I see it as almost short of looking for a partner. I don't care about memorized performance, I care about the ability to problem solve and the creativity, culture and thinking they can bring into the business.
These are two very different views. One is hiring cattle. The other is hiring people.