I've got my CS degree, I've been a professional developer for nearly 25 years, and I now manage a team of engineers at my company. I don't really care where someone went to school, or even if they went to school if they have the skills I need.
There are two questions I ask in interviews: Solve FizzBuzz. It's a super simple programming task, and then I ask the interviewee to make some simple change to the program once it's been written. This is all I need to do to determine if someone can think through a problem logically. Next I ask them to tell me about something they've worked on or done recently that they thought was interesting. Depending on how they answer, I can pick up on their level of passion for design, development, testing, or other areas.
Skill + Passion = Excellence
These attributes exist in people regardless of formal education, and it's not just programming. If someone has a sense for layout and color coordination, and they've got some experience doing interior design as a hobby because it's what they love, I would hire them any day over a professional designer who just does it as a job because it's a paycheck.
I've never hired anyone who was bad at their job just by following that simple interviewing formula. School exposes you to ideas you may not encounter otherwise, but anyone with a passion for learning can pick all of this up on various online resources (such as Stanford's excellent [and free] Computer Science lecture series).
Anyhow, cheers! Thanks for the article. I learned to program on a Commodore 64 in the 80's and also sometimes wonder why more people don't want to get into programming. :)
I've got my CS degree, I've been a professional developer for nearly 25 years, and I now manage a team of engineers at my company. I don't really care where someone went to school, or even if they went to school if they have the skills I need.
There are two questions I ask in interviews: Solve FizzBuzz. It's a super simple programming task, and then I ask the interviewee to make some simple change to the program once it's been written. This is all I need to do to determine if someone can think through a problem logically. Next I ask them to tell me about something they've worked on or done recently that they thought was interesting. Depending on how they answer, I can pick up on their level of passion for design, development, testing, or other areas.
Skill + Passion = Excellence
These attributes exist in people regardless of formal education, and it's not just programming. If someone has a sense for layout and color coordination, and they've got some experience doing interior design as a hobby because it's what they love, I would hire them any day over a professional designer who just does it as a job because it's a paycheck.
I've never hired anyone who was bad at their job just by following that simple interviewing formula. School exposes you to ideas you may not encounter otherwise, but anyone with a passion for learning can pick all of this up on various online resources (such as Stanford's excellent [and free] Computer Science lecture series).
Anyhow, cheers! Thanks for the article. I learned to program on a Commodore 64 in the 80's and also sometimes wonder why more people don't want to get into programming. :)
Thanks Eric. Great example of a sane hiring process. Just curious as to how many flunk the fizzbuzz test?