[gameprogrammer] Re: Fire on the first day?

Wow. Firing after 1 day, that's pretty low. I hope you weren't rude
enough to hire him away from another company to then fire the poor
blighter on the first day. I have to say, I think it's one of the most
pathetic things I've ever heard. There is no reality in which one day
is enough time to work out how good/bad someone is. The only reason
someone should be first on the first day is gross misconduct. 

If you can't afford to give him a week to work stuff out, you can't
afford to be hiring people period.

Leighton....

On Fri, Mar 23, 2007 at 06:24:28PM -0700, Kevin Jenkins wrote:
> These are fair arguments but in the end it doesn't make economic sense 
> to keep him around.  It took him 8x longer to build the game than more 
> senior programmers have done before him, meaning not only is he slower 
> but he is more expensive.  His questions are too basic and become 
> disrupt to my own work as well.
> 
> He's a smart guy - if I had a big company I'd train him for 6 months 
> and it would pay off in the end.  But not a fit for my company where 
> I'm shipping the game in 2-4 months.
> 
> With some thought, I realize now I should have had him write code 
> during the interview.  He passed the knowledge and theory part, and in 
> fact has a Master's degree, but I didn't test what he could accomplish 
> in a real-world situation.  This involves things you don't learn in 
> school:
> 
> * Ability to quickly read and understand code written by others.
> * Ability to effectively navigate large bodies of code.
> * Ability to independently research and come up with good solutions to 
> general problems.
> * Ability to efficiently solve problems through reuse of existing code 
> and solutions
> * Ability to express oneself meaninfully
> 
> He failed on all those 5 points, all but the last of which come from 
> experience.
> 
> In the future, I think it will save time and be more effective just to 
> give a real-world problem as the interview.  "Solve this non-trivial 
> problem as fast as you can" and based on what I get back determines if 
> they are hired and what they are offered as salary.
> 
> Sam Nova wrote:
> >>If i were working at a company where I could be fired for a 
> >>single wrong answer, i don't think i'd want to stick around :P
> >
> >Or would anyone else in the company feel comfortable if this happened to
> >a new programmer, don't really think so.
> >
> >>FWIW i say give him a chance and I predict you will be 
> >>pleasantly surprised.
> >
> >Could very well happen. Hope to hear/read about positive results.
> >
> >
> >-Sam Nova
> >http://www.SamuelNova.com
> >
> 
> ---------------------
> To unsubscribe go to http://gameprogrammer.com/mailinglist.html
> 

-- 

#0421 113 305 - dayta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Linux is legacy, but it will be a start." Ken Kutaragi - SCE

---------------------
To unsubscribe go to http://gameprogrammer.com/mailinglist.html

Other related posts: