@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk
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jezhiggins

@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk

Freelance software grandad -
software created, extended or repaired

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jezhiggins, to random
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

Over the past four or five months, I've been pulled into the recruiting process at work. I say pulled in because I didn't have any prior experience or training in recruiting, and because I'm not sure our process is particularly great. I don't think it's bad, necessarily, but it is quite drawn out. At least, I think so although people tell me it's not unusual. Anyway...

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

As part of the process, we give people a "refactoring exercise". It's a small chunk of not very good real code, and ask people to make it better. We're deliberately a bit vague about what that might be, because we don't want to steer people in any particular direction. We have a good read through, and then we have a call to talk about what they've done, how they found it, what they were thinking about and aiming for, do a bit of pairing on the code, explore the paths untaken.

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

It's in this conversation where I generally get involved and, actually, it can be a lot of fun. People take it all kinds of ways, and have lots of different ideas, and I've had some really good conversations with people.

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

When it's not fun, though, it can be really quite depressing. People who look like they should be good candidates - six or seven or eight years in, working in the same sector, for well known companies, who are bright and pleasant - turn out to be pretty poor programmers.

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

We're not looking for perfection. I'm not looking for people to reproduce what I did when I started - I'm over 50 and been working four, five, even six times longer for a start. I was able to treat the whole recruitment process in a way they can't. What I'm looking for is promise.

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

When I did the refactoring exercise, I treated as a piece of theatre. I ended up submitting as radical a refactoring as I could, wrapped with a set of characterising unit tests, a pageful of notes, and a git archive with 70 or 80 commits in it. I was, in very real way, showing off.

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

People earlier in their career don't have that freedom, which is fine, and they often seem to lack confidence. I've had a number of candidates who take the code in a particular direction and don't seem to follow through. It's like they've set off on a path, then rein themselves in. In our conversations, I try to encourage to, yeah, let's go down that path and see where it takes us. And some can, and some really can't.

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

If, for example, someone says "I added this interface to make things more abstract" it's natural for us to ask how it does that. It's kind of awkward when they can't answer. I don't mean they're not expressing themselves well, I mean can't answer.

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

Some candidates make good looking large scale changes, but don't seem almost blind to the smaller scale things. I have had people expressly say that didn't write tests because there was no need, but then stumble when asked how they know the code still works correctly. In as many ways as people do well, there are people who are simply floundering.

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

I do not blame a single one of them. I wish we could hire them, I really do, because I think there are people here who could really show them what working with code can be, what a joy, what a challenge. I don't doubt that all of them could be terrific programmers, who could really contribute, and have a good time doing it. But we can't, at least we can't take them all.

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

They aren't failing candidates, they're candidates that have been failed. They've been failed by the trade at large, because collectively we know, or at least have some good ideas, about people can learn and grow their skills. They've been failed by their past employers, for not have desire to help their own staff develop, not have the structures in place.

jezhiggins, to random
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

Only the best adapted survive

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

The school logo being, it appears, is a stylised Darwin finch, which seems a little close to the bone given the standing jokes about people from Norfolk.

catnip, to random
@catnip@mastodon.online avatar

Random musing about language and labels.

What if we discover there are more ND folk than NT folk. Will we have to switch the labels? 🙃

I am likely ND, but not officially diagnosed yet.

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@aegir @catnip This is what I increasingly believe. They're are no normals, we're all on a multidimensional manifold, and we're all moving, on both short and long timescales.

llamasoft_ox, to random
@llamasoft_ox@toot.wales avatar

Carpet fitters came today.

What they did not do: Fit the carpet.

What they did do:

  • Drive their van off the edge of my driveway
  • Get stuck
  • Refuse to do the job because it was "too muddy" to walk to the house
  • Call the AA to pull them out
  • Utterly destroy the entire edge of my driveway including the daffodils that have grown there the last 25 years and were just starting to come up
  • Moan about it the whole time
  • Charge me £25 for the privilege

Fantastic.

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@llamasoft_ox Too muddy? In West Wales? How do they get any work done at all?

Floppy, to random
@Floppy@mastodon.me.uk avatar

Wondering if I'm anxious because (a) I'm going to a school 30-year reunion in Ipswich tomorrow or (b) I'm paranoid about the finances for my work on @manyfold and whether I'm working fast enough. Hoping the former.

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@Floppy @manyfold Even if it is the latter, the former absolutely isn't helping.

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

MAD CONSPIRACY THEORY: JFK, as POTUS, had access to the FTL drive of the saucer that crashed at Roswell.

FTL implies time travel. So it's a time machine.

He saw his 2nd term would be dominated by the Vietnam War turning to shit, so he assassinated himself to trigger a grandfather paradox then bumped off Elvis and replaced him then lived happily ever after.

This is as plausible as the current Taylor Swift nonsense, amirite?

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@cstross I mean I love it, but Bubba Ho-Tep JFK and Elvis will always be canon for me

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@nyquildotorg @cstross That's correct.

Elvis and JFK live in a nursing home, where a series of deaths leads them to confront the revivified mummy Ho-Tep.

They are both marvellous.

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@nyquildotorg @cstross The film is quite possibly Bruce Campbell's finest hour, which is not a claim I make lightly

CatherineFlick, to random
@CatherineFlick@mastodon.me.uk avatar

That thing you feel when the voice actor of one of your favourite video game characters emails your Morris dancing team to ask if they could come record a podcast (!!!!!)

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@CatherineFlick That's a sentence that takes some parsing, but yay!

Floppy, to random
@Floppy@mastodon.me.uk avatar

Can anyone #recommend a good blood pressure monitor that works neatly with #AppleHealth? Ideally no pointless extra accounts or data harvesting. #AskFedi

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@Floppy When you say "works with Apple health", is "just typing in the numbers" an acceptable value of working? If so, any of the myriad of 30 quid jobs at the chemist will be more than fine.

Edent, to random
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

🆕 blog! “Book Review: Hokey Pokey - Kate Mascarenhas”
★★★★★

OK. What the actual fuck? This starts off as a rather charming period piece - 1920s hotel will all the guests snowed in - and then gradually descends into horrifying madness. I'm used to the bizarre worlds created by Kate Mascarenhas - but this took the creepiness up to an extreme level. There's an almost …

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/12/book-review-hokey-pokey-kate-mascarenhas/
⸻
[

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@Floppy Her books are terrific.

(Mild disclaimer - I used to know her husband a bit, but before she'd been published, nonetheless predisposed to like her sfufflt)

jezhiggins, to random
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

Yellow warning of Christmas wind in effect

jezhiggins, (edited )
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@CatherineFlick They'll be fine. We might sound around like a small badly tuned motorbike passing by but I'm pretty sure it'll be all sound but no fury. 🤞

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@CatherineFlick ☝️

jezhiggins,
@jezhiggins@mastodon.me.uk avatar

@CatherineFlick You can hear it from there? Blimey!

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