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I don't like being tested

I talked to a developer today that was checking me out for a recruiter. Unfortunately, he was one of these jerks more interested in trying to establish his superiority than finding out what I can do. Don't quiz me about some obscure design pattern that you read about in some book. I'm not impressed.

I'm a problem solver, not an academic. I make things work, and acquire knowledge as it's required of me. That's how I roll, and so far it has served me pretty well.

After encounters like that, I don't think I can go back to cubicle hell.

5 Comments

  • Yeah!! You tell them. I totally agree what I do best is solve problems. If I don't know about a subject then I research and learn about it to solve the problem at hand.



    Wes

  • The best thing to do when someone asks you about something that you don't know about, is to say "I don't know."

  • My favorite interview anecdote is from 7 years ago...



    After getting past the HR rep, hiring manager, his manager, and the project leader (who all wanted to hire me ASAP), I was interviewed by an Indian H1B woman (around 22 or so) who was to be my co-worker. After playing a round of Jeopardy and Double Jeopardy...and getting all of her 3-4 dozen trivia questions correct (much to her consternation), she decided to use her most evil question (i.e., run my through one of those Klingon pain-stick gauntlets) in order to make sure I wouldn't get hired (since I wss much older than her, much more knowledgable than her, much more skilled than her, you get the picture!)



    Her show-stopping evil question: "What's the second parameter of a CreateProcess function call?"



    Of course, when I answered that one correctly, she was now fuming...and so she proceeded to tell me that I was wrong.



    Big mistake! I had previously written course material for a bunch of night class instructors (at UC Santa Cruz Extension) and one of the sections was "Processes and Threads". I whipped out the course material I had written to prove her wrong. She asserted that my course material was erroneous, even though it had already been used in 2 quarters (6 classes) by over 300-400 students.



    Needless to say, she was NOT amused to being proven wrong... I can only surmise that she had stumbled over having to spawn a process and had to write her one and only CreateProcess function call just in the previous week...and thought it would make for a good gauntlet question...no doubt, guaranteed to trip up old farts like me!



    Of course, being told my course material was wrong caused me to have a LITTLE attitude problem. I asked her if the job entailed knowing how to write a CreateProcess function call on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or once a year basis. (I.e., is it a "3 times a day skill", a "once a day skill", a "once a week skill", etc.) She got even more PO'ed when I suggested that for most business applications (versus system programs), I couldn't concieve of it being more than a "once a month" or "once a quarter" skill...and thus, should NOT have to be rote memorized!



    I then proceeded to grill her on why she was NOT asking about "once a day" skills instead of "once a quarter" skills...and then asserted that she was just trying to create an artificial barrier to entry because she wanted to be the "grand poobah" and make sure no one else knew more trivia or had more skills than she had.



    Then I walked out of the interview...(after I told her, "A month from now, even YOU won't know the answer to your own trivia question!")



    It was quite refreshing to tell off a trivia junkie!



    In the following 2-3 months I walked out of 4-5 more interviews that were really nothing more than trivia gauntlets. But that was during the great DotCom Boom, when hiring managers were allowing recent college grads to interview seasoned experts (and weed out anyone over the age of 25). I'm hoping things have changed since then... (The age discrimination was blatent and sickening...)



    Since I'm going to be interviewing again in the next few weeks, I was thinking of having a "Just Say NO to Trivia!" button made to wear to interviews... A simple slashed red circle with the word "Trivia" in the middle would do just fine!

  • Good story, Steve. Well done!



    I told the guy I didn't know when he asked me obscure stuff. An hour later the actual recruiter called me asking if we could move forward and I politely told him I couldn't work with someone like that, especially having an hour commute each way. Thanks for playing.



    If you're a .NET person in Cleveland with a couple of years of experience, you'd have no problem finding work here if you want it. Now finding a job that fits you and is interesting... that's something else.

  • Oddly enough...I moved from Cleveland to Sillycon Valley over 20 years ago. Mainly due to the limited job market back then... (The only big and stable places to work were the banks, e.g., Cleveland MisTrust, National City, and a few engineering firms...and of course, NASA LeRC, now NASA GleRC. Not much for a systems programmer like me...)



    Having noticed several bloggers (such as you and Eric Wise) are in Cleveland, it would seem the job market has finally improved. Maybe I should move back! (Oh, but that dang Lake Effect weather! It was 75 here in San Jose yesterday... HHhuummm......)



    Coincidently, Eric said recently on his blog (at http://codebetter.com/blogs/eric.wise/) that he's looking for an ASP.NET contract. Judging from his blog articles, i think he'd be a good guy to grab while you can!

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