In the last two weeks, four different colleagues have found themselves suddenly unemployed, all for the same reason, “You didn’t do what we expected you to. Since your performance is inadequate, we’re firing you.” My colleagues and I were surprised. Three of the four people received raises and good-to-great performance evaluations in the last […]
In response to my last blog entry, Questions for Hiring Architects and Designers, Dave Smith wrote this: “I took a slightly different approach when I was a hiring manager. Instead of canned set of questions, I would get the candidate to a whiteboard, pose a vaguely-stated, open ended design problem with no “right” answer, then
I’ve been thinking a lot about some of my clients’ problems managing their projects. Two of my clients are stuck on the notion that there is a silver bullet, one right way to solve their problem. Then I read Steve Norrie’s blog entry this morning, and saw this quote: “Nothing is more dangerous than an
How do you differentiate true designers and architects from other software developers? This may be the hardest question to answer, and the most necessary. A real designer or architect, someone who doesn’t just hack a bunch of software together, is worth more to your company than you can pay him/her. A real designer or architect
In previous hiring tips, I suggested you ask behavior description interviewing questions and perform auditions. I haven’t discussed hypothetical questions yet, because they can be difficult to frame well. In response to my current Stickyminds column about how to improve tester performance. Suzan Noden said she uses this as a question: “how would you test
I’m not big on information hiding. I’ve always wanted to know what was going on in other parts of the company, so I could better understand how to do my job. I recently read Laurent’s post on Information Hiding, and realized that I when I recently spoke about open book management, some people didn’t understand
I was extremely fortunate in my choice of companies and work early in my career. I developed in assembly language and microcode and Fortran for a few years. Then, I moved to object oriented languages, primarily at Symbolics, using LISP. At Symbolics (I left in 1990), we practiced incremental development, iterative planning, and some
Summary: Before a software application is released, its upgrade is already being developed. But what about upgrades for software testers? In this column, Johanna Rothman offers some ways to strengthen the existing talents within your test team. I was speaking to a senior manager, and he said, “I don’t have the money to hire an
Many project managers (and senior management) still have the mindset of “How much can we fit into this project?” instead of “How little can we do?” How-much thinking carries these assumptions (even if your managers don’t agree): People are a scarce resource, and that we should put all of them to use immediately, working
One hiring manager loves this question: “If you had a magic wand, and three wishes, what would they be?” My three wishes deal with enough money to buy a sailboat, paying someone else to drive my kids to their doctor appointments and lacrosse games, and buy books whenever I want. I don’t want to tell