begin quoting Guillermo Antonio Amaral Bastidas as of Sat, Oct 20, 2007 at 03:32:20PM -0700: [snip] > I use polished keyboards on all my systems, this forces my daughter to > type without looking at the key tags and keeps people away from my > terminals.
Did you at least get a keyboard with control, alt, and meta keys in the correct locations? > You could polish the tags off a keyboard so that the next time > you interview somebody you could ask them to write a script, app, essay or > e-mail on the system using the blank keyboard. This will help you determine > if they consentrate on the 'keys' or the 'task', depending on what you > asked then to write you could also get some much needed insight on how they > communicate if at all. And a reasonably competent interviewee will look at you and say "Are you nuts?" -- and quite possibly walk out on you. Schemes that drive off your best candidates are *stupid*. Unless you're testing for something other than skill, talent, or interest -- which makes sense if you're looking for someone who will put up with crap for no good reason. Which is, let's face it, a major characteristic desired by the less competent manager. > OT: When I interview somebody for a development job, I show them some code > that contains a few errors and useless bits of code hidden inside. I ask > them to review the code and e-mail me back with details on how the coding > guideline for the company can be improved ( clearly a trap ). Same kind of thing. You're not looking for developers... you're looking for peons that don't object to being punched in the kidneys. > Most developers just submit some wacky guideline improvements ( I discard > them quickly as they did the code ), but a few developers actually spot > the 'trap'; they do so by trying to understand the code. They find the > errors and try to fix them they might also notice that code contains some > absolutely redundant or poorly implemented sections and submit patches > along with a few guideline improvements. Bah. That sort of code doesn't deserve a patch. Whenever I am asked to help someone figure out what's broken in their code, I refuse to offer feedback _beyond_ "guidelines improvements" until the code is decently formatted. "My code doesn't work." <look> "Well, it sucks. Clean it up." "But what's broken?" "Your habits. Clean it up, and if you don't discover the error on your own, THEN come back." -- Life's too short to put up with poor grammar, atrocious spelling, or trash code. Stewart Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
