AMA Just gave a test to two applicants for a developer position and they both sucked, ama

 
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Hmm...
Yup. I whipped up a simple web page with PHP and JQuery errors and gave them a test and one guy took almost 2 hours to not get past the first problem. The second guy gave up after 30 minutes and did work in other areas so he had something to show.

AMA me anything while I chuckle to myself about their failings.


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Vien 'Quitonm#1598 is my discord
Are you really Sigourney Weaver?


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I'm sorry deci and I tried our best


 
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Where did you find them?


 
DAS B00T x2
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This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
Did you tell them to git gud?


 
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Hmm...
Are you really Sigourney Weaver?
I'm her stunt double.
Where did you find them?
The owner (who is not a developer person) interviewed them formally and then sent them over to me. I think he found them through Craigslist.
Did you tell them to git gud?
No. But I was tempted to tell the one guy to just leave, but that wasn't really my call.


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What sort of developer job were they going for?


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What kind of problems did you give them?


 
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Hmm...
What sort of developer job were they going for?
Web.

What kind of problems did you give them?
Simple stuff. It was a page pulling in user data from a database (name, email, phone, and a comma separated list of IDs that were matched with another table's values) and displaying it in panels.

The "problem" was that I declared the database array OUTSIDE of a function and then referenced it INSIDE a function, which is bad. It should have been as simple as "oh, look at this error message that points to a line in the code, I must go to this line in the code and figure out what the problem is. Oh yes, I just add this "global" declaration to the variable and it's fixed."

Literally had to just figure out I was referencing a variable out of scope and make it global.

The second one was related to two script calls which were out of order. One was a framework called UIKit and it relies on this thing called jQuery, which I also called. The thing is, you HAVE to have the jQuery call before the things that depend on it, or else when the UIKit stuff looks for it, it's not there.

Might sound like French to you normies. But it was back to fucking basics and it's honestly kind of hilarious and sad at the same time.

Literally neither of them figured this out and they were supposed to be developers. One even had a portfolio of sites he had done.


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What sort of developer job were they going for?
Web.

What kind of problems did you give them?
Simple stuff. It was a page pulling in user data from a database (name, email, phone, and a comma separated list of IDs that were matched with another table's values) and displaying it in panels.

The "problem" was that I declared the database array OUTSIDE of a function and then referenced it INSIDE a function, which is bad. It should have been as simple as "oh, look at this error message that points to a line in the code, I must go to this line in the code and figure out what the problem is. Oh yes, I just add this "global" declaration to the variable and it's fixed."

Literally had to just figure out I was referencing a variable out of scope and make it global.

The second one was related to two script calls which were out of order. One was a framework called UIKit and it relies on this thing called jQuery, which I also called. The thing is, you HAVE to have the jQuery call before the things that depend on it, or else when the UIKit stuff looks for it, it's not there.

Might sound like French to you normies. But it was back to fucking basics and it's honestly kind of hilarious and sad at the same time.

Literally neither of them figured this out and they were supposed to be developers. One even had a portfolio of sites he had done.
Thats just sad.


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the one true God is Doctor Doom and we should all be worshiping him.
What sort of developer job were they going for?
Web.

If they had gotten the job, what would their typical tasks involve? General coding, or something more specific, or...?


 
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Hmm...
What sort of developer job were they going for?
Web.

If they had gotten the job, what would their typical tasks involve? General coding, or something more specific, or...?
Taking website "orders" from clients and building sites. Sometimes working on existing ones and/or adding functionality to the client's site to get it to do a certain thing.

For instance: I routinely build custom WordPress/Joomla plugins. We have some of them published on their respective directories, actually. We do a lot of rebuilds (mostly), since the sites from the 2005ish era are out of date and lots of companies want to upgrade.

So...website stuff.


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If you know, you know.
I still dont know shit about JQuery.
I know what it is, but wouldn't have a clue otherwise.


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What sort of developer job were they going for?
Web.

What kind of problems did you give them?
Simple stuff. It was a page pulling in user data from a database (name, email, phone, and a comma separated list of IDs that were matched with another table's values) and displaying it in panels.

The "problem" was that I declared the database array OUTSIDE of a function and then referenced it INSIDE a function, which is bad. It should have been as simple as "oh, look at this error message that points to a line in the code, I must go to this line in the code and figure out what the problem is. Oh yes, I just add this "global" declaration to the variable and it's fixed."

Literally had to just figure out I was referencing a variable out of scope and make it global.

The second one was related to two script calls which were out of order. One was a framework called UIKit and it relies on this thing called jQuery, which I also called. The thing is, you HAVE to have the jQuery call before the things that depend on it, or else when the UIKit stuff looks for it, it's not there.

Might sound like French to you normies. But it was back to fucking basics and it's honestly kind of hilarious and sad at the same time.

Literally neither of them figured this out and they were supposed to be developers. One even had a portfolio of sites he had done.

...seriously?

How long have these guys been doing stuff?


 
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Hmm...
What sort of developer job were they going for?
Web.

What kind of problems did you give them?
Simple stuff. It was a page pulling in user data from a database (name, email, phone, and a comma separated list of IDs that were matched with another table's values) and displaying it in panels.

The "problem" was that I declared the database array OUTSIDE of a function and then referenced it INSIDE a function, which is bad. It should have been as simple as "oh, look at this error message that points to a line in the code, I must go to this line in the code and figure out what the problem is. Oh yes, I just add this "global" declaration to the variable and it's fixed."

Literally had to just figure out I was referencing a variable out of scope and make it global.

The second one was related to two script calls which were out of order. One was a framework called UIKit and it relies on this thing called jQuery, which I also called. The thing is, you HAVE to have the jQuery call before the things that depend on it, or else when the UIKit stuff looks for it, it's not there.

Might sound like French to you normies. But it was back to fucking basics and it's honestly kind of hilarious and sad at the same time.

Literally neither of them figured this out and they were supposed to be developers. One even had a portfolio of sites he had done.

...seriously?

How long have these guys been doing stuff?
One had been doing it for a couple years at least and he was worse than the other guy, who was I think fresh out of college.