Thank you for sharing. I just read through several of your blog posts and especially resonate with your “evolutionary design”. The idea of integration tests/test harness first over unit tests makes a lot of sense to me too. As a one person team myself, the “art” of creating quality software products, at speed, is revealing itself and is quite fascinating.
It’s not everyday that devs like me get to learn from someone with as much experience as you have. Thanks again for sharing your knowledge!
But I am quite aware that I have a ton more to learn, and places like this, are a good place to do that.
I should get around to doing some more writing, though. I've been very involved in a project, for the last couple of years, and haven't taken the time to write.
Now that the project is approaching release, I may be able to free up some time.
As a solo dev, "slow is smooth, smooth is fast" coupled with ruthless focus and prioritization has resulted in the biggest increases in my productive output.
None of the OP’s tips for increasing product velocity apply to my company. The essence of product velocity reveals itself when N=1.
Focus on a few things.
Don’t rush, do them well. Say no to everything else.
“Hyper growth mode” = hiring as fast as possible. Startups gotta borrow and spend their way to success, and fast, ya know. Can’t keep the VC’s waiting on their returns.
Shopify calls its first interview the "life story" interview, and (in my experience) it was a great place for me to talk about my career, reflect on past successes and mistakes, and demonstrate empathy and self-awareness.
I didn't feel compelled to share anything I didn't want to share. I really felt free to frame it in a way that I was comfortable with. It's as much a "career story" as a "life story", IIRC.
That’s a bit presumptuous. I was enthusiastic about the interview until afterwards
The interview was conducted by the recruiter and while she didn’t flat out ask personal questions, she asked questions that would almost cause me to reveal personal information such as my marital status and sexuality. It was not fun coming with made up responses to avoid that because it’s none of her business.
There’s a reason interviews should stay professional. I’m surprised they haven’t been sued.
Sorry if my comment came off at an personal attack, that wasn't the intent.
With that said, there are lots of reasons why a company might want to vet candidate attitude besides discriminating based on protected characteristics.
Out of curiosity, what kind of questions did you find invasive or discriminatory?
So it wasn't the questions themselves, but when you start asking about why you moved from this city to that, or why did you choose this school, etc. Maybe it's because your SO got a job there, or some other personal reason.
I get that it's totally an innocent intent, but there are much better ways to assess a candidate's soft skills, that is strictly related to their professional experience.
Okay, my Original Point was that maybe one of the soft skills the test is assessing is the ability and willingness to share their personal self in a positive and constructive manner.
Many if not most people find us a desirable attribute in coworkers and workplaces. I get that it's not for everyone, but not every workplace is a good fit for everyone.
I think you're getting some rude comments because of exactly this fact
honestly that is something I value as well, but I think that's when a lot of bias can come into play. Perhaps that bias is desired for culture fitting, but you still have to be careful if protected-class stuff comes up and you want to reject the person.
fwiw, when I interview candidates in a technical interview, I still attempt at some small talk to get a sense of "can I have a normal conversation with this person"
Sure, I think I agree that once you get into picking people based on cultural fit, you run some risk of discrimination suit, real or unreal. It is a tricky area.
Uh. I hope this was for a non-technical role. Otherwise, it sounds like a bad idea and best and a torturous thing that filters out a lot of non-native, non-extroverted people.
But then again, that's probably why the environment seems 'fun'
Being able to communicate empathetically with your coworkers is a core competency for technical workers too. There's a difference between an introvert and an asshole.
Asking people to tell their "life story" in a job interview seems like a sign of boundary issues, not empathy. An empathetic person would realize that people come to job interviews expecting to talk about their professional experience, so it isn't the appropriate environment to ask such an invasive question.
You choose what to talk about and what to share. It's open ended to give you the ability to share as much as you're comfortable with. You can tell the story of your career, no need to get any more personal unless you want to.
You've interviewed at places that didn't require you to talk about yourself?
Just because Shopify might name it something specific, doesn't mean it's all that unique. Some companies hold this potion entirely on a first/second phone call, others might having an initial section of the interview dedicated to talking about yourself and your experience.
Not sure how this weeds out non-native or non-extroverted people, both of whom are very capable of talking about their experiences. It would be great if you wouldn't infantilize them.
This is a strawman. Nobody is saying that people should not have to talk about themselves in job interviews. What people are saying is that "tell me your life story" comes off as creepy and invasive in a professional context where the parties don't know one another.
Huh? I'm an introvert and I can communicate and actually like interacting with people. But I'll need time for myself to re-charge afterwards. But everyone needs to re-charge somehow.
So only people who have slick enough social skills to bullshit their way through that will get hired. The quiet unassuming engineer who spend their free time programming will get passed on and the extroverted engineer who spent their free time partying will get hired.
1. That is a very deterministic statement
2. This is a part of the process, not the entire process. There are still technical elements tested during the interview.
3. The signal that they are looking for, but do not tell candidates, is a story about overcoming obstacles.
What I will say about the lifestory, is that it aligns with the skillset required to do well in a corporate environment. Namely telling stories, being relatively interesting, and having some ability to sell yourself and your accomplishments (in addition to being technically competent which is tested elsewhere).
“Yeah, we see here that you developed your own machine learning framework in your free time. That’s great and all, but jross225 didn’t find you interesting enough, so we’re going to have to pass, sorry.”
If you developed an ML framework in your free time and can't tell a compelling story about it in 45 minutes then I probably don't want to work with you either
