This has nothing to do with "freedom of the press". It's CBS's prerogative to cover what they want to cover. If you don't like what they've chosen not to cover then vote with your feet and don't patronize CBS or its affiliates. Besides, "Streisand Effect".
No problem. If you're curious, the company was/is called Uplogix. I went back through my old email to find how their HR person described the assignment and their interview process in general:
As part of the interview we will give you a programming assignment in Java
that covers basic/core programming concepts. We have a machine with
emacs, eclipse, vi, pico, and notepad available.
Without giving too much away about the programming assignment, it is
similar to an entry level CS class homework assignment. The assignment
is completely open book. You can use google. If there is a particular
book reference that you use at home feel free to bring it. We are not
trying to intimidate people and we know this can be stressful, but it
has proved to be very useful in providing a lot of information in a
short amount of time (ie. a picture is worth a thousand words).
Some points I would stress if you're going to implement this:
1. Don't make it highly time-constrained. Allow people to "do it right" (whatever that means to them) and then verify that their vision of "doing it right" matches yours.
2. Don't test their knowledge of a specific IDE unless that's really important to you. If you're hiring Java devs then give the candidate a machine with Eclipse, IntelliJ and NetBeans and let him use whichever he prefers.
3. Let him use google, stackoverflow, etc. as much as he wants. Corollary: be sure to design the exercise such that it isn't trivial to google up a ready-made solution.
4. Make sure your exercise is as unambiguous as possible unless you're trying to test how the candidate responds to ambiguous specifications. You don't want to discard someone because your instructions were crap and he understood them differently than your interviewers.
The shorter life expectancy for Americans largely was attributed to high mortality for men under age 50, from car crashes, accidents and violence.
"Our health as Americans is only partly aided by having a very good health-care system," he said. "Much of our health disadvantage comes from factors outside of the clinical system and outside of what doctors and hospitals can do."
The authors noted that Americans who lived past age 75 had higher survival rates compared with similar countries, and Americans overall had better rates of surviving cancer and strokes.
Side note: I find the prospect of explaining and defending code I've already written much less nerve-wracking than having to write pseudocode on a whiteboard in real-time while someone is looking over my shoulder. At least in this scenario I was able to write the code "in peace", make sure it was correct, etc.
Yeah. I got asked some questions during the "group code review" portion that I couldn't handle and failed to gracefully handle them. Basically stammered for a bit and sort of made something up. Didn't get the job. But hey, good on them for screening me out if I wasn't what they were looking for.
Every other interview I've had has consisted of 4-5 developers talking to me for 30-45 minutes apiece, only without the coding portion. At this company there was the ~2 hour coding project (which didn't take up any of their peoples' time), then a one-on-one with a guy, then the group code review (which lasted maybe 45 minutes). It's also possible that if I hadn't completed the coding exercise correctly they wouldn't even have scheduled the group code review. As it was, all the "personal interaction" time was approximately equal to what I've seen at other companies that don't use any type of coding exercise.
I took one of these during an interview. They put me in a room w/ a computer my IDE of choice and had me do a project. The general gist was to build a program that read instructions from a file, parsed them, carried them out, then output the result at the end. The instructions all had to do with string manipulation. After I finished, they brought my code up on a projector and had four or five developers do a sort of code review, asking me why I chose to do various things in certain ways. So, not only did they test whether I could finish the project successfully, they got to see whether I can speak intelligently about design decisions and handle constructive criticism from other developers. Seemed like an extremely valuable exercise.
I would say a highly time-constrained exercise is not so useful since it will disqualify some candidates who might otherwise turn out to be valuable developers. That said, I think a non-highly-time-constrained coding exercise could be a very valuable tool. If you give a guy four hours to code up something that should take about two and it still has terrible bugs or the code is complete spaghetti (or he doesn't finish in the first place) then you can be pretty sure he's not someone you want to hire. This strikes me as infinitely more useful than "write binary sort on the whiteboard while I stare at your back".
Then I want an actual physical book. Not some ones and zeros that may or may not be portable to other platforms and that requires a "device" to access them. Even in a portable format I'd prefer the physical book. About the only instance where I'd prefer an e-reader is if I were going on a long trip and wanted to take several books with me but the physical bulk of transporting them all would be too inconvenient.
How about exactly what you just wrote: "you did something incredibly stupid, and are in danger of getting kicked out of the team". In a private email, along with a short explanation of why it was stupid and why such mistakes can't be tolerated.
If you think the developer is "fixable" then Linus's approach (very denigrating public shaming) doesn't seem to be optimal. Better to correct him in private and, if you want, lay out what the consequences will be (e.g. losing commit access) if he screws up again. If you think he's irredeemably broken as a developer then yank his commit access immediately and call it a day. If you want to send a message to other developers communicating how seriously you take this sort of thing then issue a short, polite email like, "So-and-so has lost commit access. We can't have situations like this in the future. I'm sorry; that's just the way it is." and be done with it.
If all you want is the piece of paper and aren't interested in learning much from your non-major classes, here's what I'd do:
1. Limit yourself to semi-reputable four-year universities. You don't need a top-tier school but you also don't want a degree from somewhere with a reputation so poor it will be only marginally more valuable than a two-year degree from Phoenix.
2. Do your research and determine which school (or schools) require the fewest hours in residence in order to grant a degree. My alma mater requires 60 credit hours (i.e. about four semesters as a full-time student) in residence. It's likely that many universities require less.
3. Do your research and determine which schools will accept transfer credit (and count it toward a degree) from either: a) online universities like Phoenix, and/or b) a community college in your area.
4. Knock out as much transfer credit as you can from online universities and/or your local community college. You want enough so that you only need take the minimum number of hours "in residence" at the school you intend to get the degree from.
5. Transfer all your credits and start working toward completing the in residence requirement. If you're going to be working full time you probably won't want to take more than two classes at a time. Though, you can also do this during the summer, meaning you can complete about 18 credit hours per year. That means it will take you ~3 years to complete the in-residence hours plus however long it took you to amass the 60-70 hours of transfer credit.
If you're dead set on working full-time during the entire affair (and I can definitely see the appeal) it's hard to imagine your being able to complete a degree in fewer than six years from start to finish. And that's a stretch.
It's reasonably safe to assume that if he was arrested for "chemicals that could be used to make an explosive" it was more than Coke and mentos. But thanks for the hyperbole.
Hack the SAT and get a scholarship that covers four years of tuition and fees at a decent state university. This is easiest if you're still in high school: in that case hack the PSAT. Despite the "A" in their names these exams only really test "aptitude" in the absence of any preparation on the part of test takers. That is to say if no students prepped then those with higher aptitude would generally score higher.; however, it is eminently possible to game them. Hone your basic test-taking skills, memorize a bunch of vocabulary and master the fairly basic level of math that's tested. Being smart lets you do well on the PSAT/SAT without much preparation, but (in my opinion) even a student of average intellect should, with some dedicated effort, be able to score very highly. For the PSAT it also helps to live in a state with generally poor student performance since the National Merit Semifinalist designation is given to the top 0.5% of students in each state. Much tougher in Mass. than in Miss.
Well, okay. What I meant to imply by that comment is that he's vaguely middle-eastern looking and has a middle-eastern sounding name, which might have made it slightly easier to choose to let him go than if, say, he were Hispanic, a group among whom the GOP is currently attempting to increase its support.
Slashdot Mirror
This has nothing to do with "freedom of the press". It's CBS's prerogative to cover what they want to cover. If you don't like what they've chosen not to cover then vote with your feet and don't patronize CBS or its affiliates. Besides, "Streisand Effect".
Some points I would stress if you're going to implement this:
1. Don't make it highly time-constrained. Allow people to "do it right" (whatever that means to them) and then verify that their vision of "doing it right" matches yours.
2. Don't test their knowledge of a specific IDE unless that's really important to you. If you're hiring Java devs then give the candidate a machine with Eclipse, IntelliJ and NetBeans and let him use whichever he prefers.
3. Let him use google, stackoverflow, etc. as much as he wants. Corollary: be sure to design the exercise such that it isn't trivial to google up a ready-made solution.
4. Make sure your exercise is as unambiguous as possible unless you're trying to test how the candidate responds to ambiguous specifications. You don't want to discard someone because your instructions were crap and he understood them differently than your interviewers.
Side note: I find the prospect of explaining and defending code I've already written much less nerve-wracking than having to write pseudocode on a whiteboard in real-time while someone is looking over my shoulder. At least in this scenario I was able to write the code "in peace", make sure it was correct, etc.
Yeah. I got asked some questions during the "group code review" portion that I couldn't handle and failed to gracefully handle them. Basically stammered for a bit and sort of made something up. Didn't get the job. But hey, good on them for screening me out if I wasn't what they were looking for.
Every other interview I've had has consisted of 4-5 developers talking to me for 30-45 minutes apiece, only without the coding portion. At this company there was the ~2 hour coding project (which didn't take up any of their peoples' time), then a one-on-one with a guy, then the group code review (which lasted maybe 45 minutes). It's also possible that if I hadn't completed the coding exercise correctly they wouldn't even have scheduled the group code review. As it was, all the "personal interaction" time was approximately equal to what I've seen at other companies that don't use any type of coding exercise.
I took one of these during an interview. They put me in a room w/ a computer my IDE of choice and had me do a project. The general gist was to build a program that read instructions from a file, parsed them, carried them out, then output the result at the end. The instructions all had to do with string manipulation. After I finished, they brought my code up on a projector and had four or five developers do a sort of code review, asking me why I chose to do various things in certain ways. So, not only did they test whether I could finish the project successfully, they got to see whether I can speak intelligently about design decisions and handle constructive criticism from other developers. Seemed like an extremely valuable exercise.
Presumably the exercise is more complicated than "print Hello World".
You would be surprised at the (low) quality of some candidates whose resumes suggest they're qualified for a senior engineer position.
I would say a highly time-constrained exercise is not so useful since it will disqualify some candidates who might otherwise turn out to be valuable developers. That said, I think a non-highly-time-constrained coding exercise could be a very valuable tool. If you give a guy four hours to code up something that should take about two and it still has terrible bugs or the code is complete spaghetti (or he doesn't finish in the first place) then you can be pretty sure he's not someone you want to hire. This strikes me as infinitely more useful than "write binary sort on the whiteboard while I stare at your back".
Then I want an actual physical book. Not some ones and zeros that may or may not be portable to other platforms and that requires a "device" to access them. Even in a portable format I'd prefer the physical book. About the only instance where I'd prefer an e-reader is if I were going on a long trip and wanted to take several books with me but the physical bulk of transporting them all would be too inconvenient.
I don't game. I do, however, dislike having to be "strategic" in my choice of drivers.
This article's summary pretty much sums up why I still have no interest in Linux as a desktop OS.
How about exactly what you just wrote: "you did something incredibly stupid, and are in danger of getting kicked out of the team". In a private email, along with a short explanation of why it was stupid and why such mistakes can't be tolerated.
If you think the developer is "fixable" then Linus's approach (very denigrating public shaming) doesn't seem to be optimal. Better to correct him in private and, if you want, lay out what the consequences will be (e.g. losing commit access) if he screws up again. If you think he's irredeemably broken as a developer then yank his commit access immediately and call it a day. If you want to send a message to other developers communicating how seriously you take this sort of thing then issue a short, polite email like, "So-and-so has lost commit access. We can't have situations like this in the future. I'm sorry; that's just the way it is." and be done with it.
If all you want is the piece of paper and aren't interested in learning much from your non-major classes, here's what I'd do:
1. Limit yourself to semi-reputable four-year universities. You don't need a top-tier school but you also don't want a degree from somewhere with a reputation so poor it will be only marginally more valuable than a two-year degree from Phoenix.
2. Do your research and determine which school (or schools) require the fewest hours in residence in order to grant a degree. My alma mater requires 60 credit hours (i.e. about four semesters as a full-time student) in residence. It's likely that many universities require less.
3. Do your research and determine which schools will accept transfer credit (and count it toward a degree) from either: a) online universities like Phoenix, and/or b) a community college in your area.
4. Knock out as much transfer credit as you can from online universities and/or your local community college. You want enough so that you only need take the minimum number of hours "in residence" at the school you intend to get the degree from.
5. Transfer all your credits and start working toward completing the in residence requirement. If you're going to be working full time you probably won't want to take more than two classes at a time. Though, you can also do this during the summer, meaning you can complete about 18 credit hours per year. That means it will take you ~3 years to complete the in-residence hours plus however long it took you to amass the 60-70 hours of transfer credit.
If you're dead set on working full-time during the entire affair (and I can definitely see the appeal) it's hard to imagine your being able to complete a degree in fewer than six years from start to finish. And that's a stretch.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007627+50001157&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&IsNodeId=1&Subcategory=280&description=&hisInDesc=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&AdvancedSearch=1&srchInDesc=
Intel branded boards seem like a reasonably good bet to work. If this is for an office you won't care about the lack of overclocking features.
It's reasonably safe to assume that if he was arrested for "chemicals that could be used to make an explosive" it was more than Coke and mentos. But thanks for the hyperbole.
I've always felt there should be a plugin to source-control that automatically formats source files at check-in.
Its cloud offering is pretty good.
Hack the SAT and get a scholarship that covers four years of tuition and fees at a decent state university. This is easiest if you're still in high school: in that case hack the PSAT. Despite the "A" in their names these exams only really test "aptitude" in the absence of any preparation on the part of test takers. That is to say if no students prepped then those with higher aptitude would generally score higher.; however, it is eminently possible to game them. Hone your basic test-taking skills, memorize a bunch of vocabulary and master the fairly basic level of math that's tested. Being smart lets you do well on the PSAT/SAT without much preparation, but (in my opinion) even a student of average intellect should, with some dedicated effort, be able to score very highly. For the PSAT it also helps to live in a state with generally poor student performance since the National Merit Semifinalist designation is given to the top 0.5% of students in each state. Much tougher in Mass. than in Miss.
Despite all the (legitimate) complaints about disinformation and scientific illiteracy in the U.S., there's this.
Well, okay. What I meant to imply by that comment is that he's vaguely middle-eastern looking and has a middle-eastern sounding name, which might have made it slightly easier to choose to let him go than if, say, he were Hispanic, a group among whom the GOP is currently attempting to increase its support.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/derekkhanna