I’ve been thinking about Martha Stewart and her felony conviction this past weekend. I use this quote in the hiring book: “Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don?t have the first, the other two will kill you.” — Warren […]
I write a “management fix” column (alternating with Esther and Elisabeth) for Better Software and February’s column was Two Candidates, One Position. Enjoy! Labels: hiring decision
A colleague emailed me a few days ago, and asked “for a code base with a [given size], what can we expect to see for numbers of defects per KLOC (given the actual industry average or given what the industry believes we should expect). We need some way of gauging whether or not our
In Michael’s comment to When Candidates and Interviewers Disagree About “The Answer” he raised a critically important point: how much does the the candidate know about this issue and how hard will the candidate push to make sure that the interviewer hears his or her side of the issue? First, let’s separate the two issues
Joel’s discussion of project managers (MS calls them program managers) and developers got me to thinking about the differences between project managers and developers. The difference between project managers and developers is where they deal with complexity and decision-making. PMs deal with complexity and decision-making between people. Developers deal with complexity and decision-making in
Feature Article: Decreasing Project Completion Time, Part 2 Last month, I discussed techniques to decrease project startup time. Now it’s time to look at practices that can decrease project completion time once you’ve started the project. Ask the developers to unit test their code. There are free unit test development tools for Java, C, C++,
If you are (or work for) a fabulous manager, you have weekly one-on-ones with your staff and discuss their accomplishments, and file those accomplishments in a folder. At the end of a year, you know what people have done, you’ve given them feedback on their work, and writing their review is a piece of cake.
You’re a candidate. You’re talking to a couple of technical interviewers. One of the interviewers asks you a question. You answer “black.” The interviewer says, “No, it’s white.” Wishing to avoid confrontation, you don’t push the answer. Geek that you are, you check the answer when you get home. Sure enough, it’s “black.”Well, you have
I’m editing a chapter in my hiring book, and the original sentence reads: …managers amplify the work of other people … The editors have suggested that amplify is the wrong word, and suggested “facilitate.” I’m still thinking about this. Managers do facilitate the work of other people. They also make their staff more effective.
We were on vacation last week in Breckenridge, CO. I enjoyed it, although it did take me a few days to acclimate to the 9600 feet altitude. Returning on I-70 East, we saw some great road signs: Truckers don’t be fooled – 4 miles steep grade Truckers you are not done yet – 1.