Category: Culture

I just finished one change to my Drupal-maintained web site, which I’ll cover later for those few who might be interested. I have many other changes I want to make, primarily because I want to try out some new technologies and I like to use my sites as testing ground.

I am thinking about cutting off comments, not the least of which is the ACORN post, which ended up being linked by Drudge Retort. The issues are too hot, too partisan to have a decent debate, and I’m tired of dealing with what passes for online “debate” anymore. I figure I have my space, others have theirs, and we can all have our say. Perhaps without the debates, we’ll actually resort to more thoughtful postings.

What I should do is just leave comments open on some of the posts, such as the purely technical. But even they have become increasingly “partisan” — we have become a people living on the polarized edge.

I did not follow through on my promise to myself to back away from the political and focus on the technical, or the artistic, or whatever. Damn me, too, for allowing myself to be hooked on the many lines tossed out into the aether. I feel like the old catfish in the Mississippi river, worn out from all the battles fought to survive, giving into the hook for the last time.

Scott at Lazycoder writes on his recent job interview experiences.

Certification and licensing should be about setting a base level of competency. You shouldn’t have to ask someone what the difference between a div and a span element is during a phone screen if they are a licensed web developer. You shouldn’t ask a C++ developer to find the memory leak in a given piece of code. What you really want to know are the intangibles. Are they a cowboy coder? Are they continuously trying to improve their skills or are they set in their ways? Will they speak up during a meeting if they see a bottleneck or problem coming or will they just ignore the problem? We, as a group of professionals, need to determine a structure and governing body that will allow us to not wonder if an applicant is lying on their resume, but instead focus on whether or not a person will be a good fit with the rest of the team.

Most tech interviewers haven’t a clue how to interview. Instead, they set up some code, and allow the code to do the interviewing. Worse, they set up the interview in such a way as to make themselves look good, while making the process as difficult and painful as possible for the interviewee. Rather than a co-worker, the interviewer sees the interviewee as a potential competitor, and acts accordingly.

It’s the only field I know of that uses this approach. Most other fields are populated by people who genuinely care about finding the best person for the job.