Michael Kahn (8)

As Michael Kahn states in this book’s introduction, there exist many guides to giving interviews generally along with guides to being interviewed about software development, but there are few guides to giving interviews specifically to developers. This 2006 book tries to fill that niche. It is short and certainly not comprehensive – as if that were even possible. But it advances wisdom that people like me need in finding a software developer, especially for the first time.

I plan on reading a couple of other guides to giving interviews generally (frankly, books from this book’s bibliography), but this tutorial checked the checkmarks about seeing where the pitfalls are in the notoriously fickle but important field of software. First published almost 20 years ago, this book can seem a bit dated, especially in the technical questions. But the personalities of developers and human dynamics among this strange breed remain very similar today.

In particular, Kahn taught me a few categories to lump developers (and labs) into: internal collaborators, multi-disciplinary workers, and externally-facing individuals. He also showed me how to fight through common difficulties about relating socially. In a software interview, it’s easy to get led astray by a strong personality instead of focusing on the core reasoning skills required. Discerning between those can make the difference between a so-so and a great hire. Given the strong risk-value relationship of an additional employee, that discernment makes reading this book worth the time.… (plus d'informations)