I asked for code samples during the last round of interviews I conducted for a PHP developer. It was an amazingly successful filter.
Those candidates that did not present any samples did so either because "it's owned by my employer and I'm not allowed to show it to you" or because they just didn't have any. The "proprietary code" candidates were still able to show an functioning application and discuss how it worked. When I questioned them on some aspect "How do you prevent the user from reloading the page" for instance, they were able to tell me and we could talk about. This told me they knew something. The candidates that did not have a working application online to demonstrate, also couldn't talk about coding in general. These interviews did not last long.
The people that did present code samples also fell into two groups. Those whose code was well organized and showed decent OO design skills; and those that embedded their overly complex PHP directly into the HTML on the page. More importantly than that, it also showed me who comments their code and who doesn't.
In the end it came down to two coders with good problem solving skills but one of them wrote well-documented code that would have been a pleasure to maintain if it was dumped in my lap. We hired the good commenter. When you've got to go back and revisit code you wrote after 18-24 months having the comments in there is a necessity. If a candidate isn't writing good comments in their code now, they won't write good comments in their code after you hire them.
So if I work from home and do the work at home but only transmit that work back to the "main office" when it's done where am I really working?
What if I don't use a computer at all but do all my work at the public library in Tennessee and then make a POTS call to the home office and give them the results of my work?
Slashdot Mirror
I asked for code samples during the last round of interviews I conducted for a PHP developer. It was an amazingly successful filter. Those candidates that did not present any samples did so either because "it's owned by my employer and I'm not allowed to show it to you" or because they just didn't have any. The "proprietary code" candidates were still able to show an functioning application and discuss how it worked. When I questioned them on some aspect "How do you prevent the user from reloading the page" for instance, they were able to tell me and we could talk about. This told me they knew something. The candidates that did not have a working application online to demonstrate, also couldn't talk about coding in general. These interviews did not last long. The people that did present code samples also fell into two groups. Those whose code was well organized and showed decent OO design skills; and those that embedded their overly complex PHP directly into the HTML on the page. More importantly than that, it also showed me who comments their code and who doesn't. In the end it came down to two coders with good problem solving skills but one of them wrote well-documented code that would have been a pleasure to maintain if it was dumped in my lap. We hired the good commenter. When you've got to go back and revisit code you wrote after 18-24 months having the comments in there is a necessity. If a candidate isn't writing good comments in their code now, they won't write good comments in their code after you hire them.
So if I work from home and do the work at home but only transmit that work back to the "main office" when it's done where am I really working?
What if I don't use a computer at all but do all my work at the public library in Tennessee and then make a POTS call to the home office and give them the results of my work?
Now where do I pay taxes?