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Campbell Ritchie wrote:Thank you for explaining what you meant by "false negative".


Of course, this employment process test that occasionally produces false negatives is designed to reduce the number of false positives.
 
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R. Grimes wrote:and all he knows is one language: RPG IV on the AS/400.


I think I may have a bit of a leg up on him.

Jeff Langr wrote:I've met a lot of managers, and I honestly haven't met a lot of good ones... managers that is.


Same here. Good management is hard.
 
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The title or label "Manager" is too general and really cannot be used to describe anything clearly. There are many different styles and types of management. Software Architects are "managers" in many situtations and they may write code and manage staff and/or projects at the same time. Personally, I write code and write performance reviews, schedule and approve time-off, manage a budget and a bunch of other things that "managers" and "programmers" both do. So, there are managers that do indeed write code and there are managers that do not write code. Generalizations based on labels without a context are primarily "hog wash."
 
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Jimmy,
How many people do you manage?
 
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When they first come to interview, don discuss about the job scope first, give a test paper for them to work on it

1) if your company software is already up there and just need a programmer to write Java code to change some Change Request
and your company just need Java programmer who don't know Object-Oriented and code like a C programmer
a) a question on simple logic ( for...loop, if...else, switch...case, etc.)
b) give a Class with static and non-static method, ask them to write their own class to call the method

2) if your company software development follows good practice, design pattern, architecture, layering
a) prepare MCQ which similar to those SCJP , and only test those question related to what your company need
b) get a technical strong staff to interview that guy on all those concept (and HOW did they use it practically in past experience)

... what I am trying to say is ask and test them on what your company WANT and NEED

I have go through companies which give those MCQ test up to SCJP standard, test OO concept, and talk about MVC, multi-tier, layering ... but end up their code using Map/Vector as a Class to store attribute and value (argue that it is for flexible), getting to see presentation layer code call stored procedure directly, business logic in controller .... So, if your company doing all those things (which I don't want to argue whether it is right or wrong), you need to discuss all this with the candidate, and find out whether they feel that they are suitable for this ... but not trying to hide it.
 
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Jeff Langr wrote:I've met a lot of managers, and I honestly haven't met a lot of good ones... managers that is.



I always wondered why so many managers sucked. I knew that if I became a manager, I wouldn't suck. Then I became a manager. I'd like to think I didn't totally suck, but what I learned is that at least half your reports will think you should do better than you are. I also learned that managing is very hard to do, much less do well. The ones I observed never seemed to do what I thought they should. When I was a manager, I found it incredibly difficult to do what I thought I should do.

I am no longer a manager, but I definitely have a different view of management after having been one. I watch as my fellows are promoted into management - great people - and all I can do is commiserate.
 
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Jimmy Clark wrote:The title or label "Manager" is too general and really cannot be used to describe anything clearly. There are many different styles and types of management. Software Architects are "managers" in many situtations and they may write code and manage staff and/or projects at the same time. Personally, I write code and write performance reviews, schedule and approve time-off, manage a budget and a bunch of other things that "managers" and "programmers" both do. So, there are managers that do indeed write code and there are managers that do not write code. Generalizations based on labels without a context are primarily "hog wash."



But, I think most people, when they generalize "managers", mean real managers - not programmers with glorified titles because they have a few extra duties that take up 5% of their time.
 
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R. Grimes wrote:This can be used in conjunction with the debugging "test" described in the article you linked to. However, the problem I have with this is you'll miss some good developers who will simply suffer from a brain freeze when presented with a program and asked "Where's the bug at in this code?" It can be very nerve wracking to have an interviewer staring at you while you look over a program and are expected to spot the bug



Right, that was my comment on this. I have been there! Had to do an interview, in English, not my native language, had to present myself. Then I suddenly got a paper, where is the bug? I totally did freeze. Now I can take such tests, later, after the interview. I will do them happily and with good result. But not in the interview itself please.
 
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Jeff Langr wrote:I've met a lot of managers, and I honestly haven't met a lot of good ones... managers that is.



I know management is difficult. But the thing about most managers is.., they are managers. They have personalities, should have a personality, totally different than that of a developer. Many managers with no developer background just don't understand that analyzing difficult problems requires some silence, and that not everybody wants to have happy hour every week, and once a month a company outing. Many times managers have done things to stimulate me, that set my teeth on edge. Developers and Managers just come from different planets.
 
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