Interview Questions for Developers
Posted in Interview Questions
The last few weeks I’ve heard some interesting interview questions for candidates and without going into too much detail asking a developer questions like, where do you see yourself in 5 years? just doesn’t cut it for me, so here is a list of interview questions I would ask a developer looking to join a company I work at.
- Do you have a StackOverflow profile, a Github or Bitbucket repo where I can take a look at some of your contributions or work?
- Are you a member of any User Groups or do you attend conferences etc?
- How do you keep up to date with the latest technologies and keep your skills up to date?
- Do you know more than one programming language and if so which ones and what ones do you like and why?
- If you’re interviewing and get to the next stage you will be asked to write code on a laptop and write unit tests, are you comfortable doing that?
- What are your thoughts around TDD?
- Are you happy to look at some code and review it and give us your thoughts around it?
- Do you have any knowledge of PowerShell?
- Tell me your thoughts around code reviews, are they important, if so why?
- Tell me your thoughts around code coverage, what percentage is reasonable and is it worth while?
- What is your favourite technology and why?
- If a member of your team is lazy and not putting in enough effort what would you do about it?
- Have you ever worked for a difficult boss and if so how did you handle it?
- Are you ok with doing support on legacy applications and fixing production issue on the legacy code base?
- What are some best practices you follow, and why do you follow them?
Ok short and sweet and off the top of my head – I’ll add to them over time.
> If a member of your team is lazy and not putting in enough effort what would you
> do about it?
It is a difficult one, what is your answer?
Yep sure is, get the boss to ask them to submit a report on what they’ve produced each week – too many people get an easy ride at their place of work.
Mmm, thanks for your answer, but I do not like it. Thanks also by make me think in this topic, I will continue thinking about it.
I also dislike the team member question. There’s hardly a right answer to it within the context of an interview, unless you are looking for someone who would answer it exactly like you would. It doesn’t tell you much about the interviewee, as I think most people would worry about what a reasonable response in an interview should be. Various forms of “tell on the person” might get the interviewee labeled as a backstabber or antagonist; various forms of “ignore the person” might get the interviewee labeled as not concerned with efficiency.
For what it’s worth, I think the right answer to the question is: Do nothing. If the person is actually lazy (note the “actually,” as perception versus reality counts), then a well-functioning team and a competent manager will discover this naturally. In general, unless the person reports to you, it is not your role to get worked up about another person’s output. You might not even be aware of all the things being done by the person (maybe off hours work) you are fretting about. Stop worrying about what others are doing and concern yourself more with your and the team’s overall contributions. For one thing, you’ll be a happier person. Don’t cover up for the person, and in a healthy environment any true issues will become obvious.
Minor criticism on the first two questions: Don’t let “no” to those shut the door on competent candidates. Not every competent developer has work or a presence in the public eye (open source contributions are positive, but the lack thereof should not be the end of the story). Not every competent developer is a member of a user group (mostly about networking and less about knowledge, anyway) or works for companies that fund conference visits (again, almost entirely about networking since conferences almost always make content available online).
Not every question is supposed to be to your liking that’s part of an interview, ask questions which invoke a response, I think you’ve answered that fairly well. There is no golden answer to most questions, its to see what the candidate would reply with, much better than bog standard questions like tell me your strengths and weaknesses which are all googled before an interview anyway.
Actually it tells me a lot, I am making the person think and seeing if they take time to think about an honest answer or will they just say do nothing.
I wouldn’t be looking to hire lazy people and so many could easily give a lazy answer.
Fair enough. And I do like the general idea behind the other questions. I understand the spirit of what you’re aiming for. Thanks.
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