[DUG] Work Wanted in Wellington

[Jeremy North]

>
> Are you meaning that - what you said about revealing peoples thought
> process in an interview illustrates it is not specific check boxes but
> again something more intangible or qualitative or human quality that is the
> sought after quality?  Along with the required technical proficiency of
> course.
>

Definitely. The person has to fit into a team and be able to work within
the team you have. The person might be the most highly skilled programmer
but if you don't think they will fit in why hire them.


>
> Specifics on what you said:
>
>    - Debugging on paper – now that takes me back!  my first programming
>    job had just that – there were more programmers than screens and that’s
>    what we had to do.  Useful to be able to do, and to be grateful you don’t
>    have to do it for day to day work.
>
> It's about understanding how code flows in situations, because if you need
to debug it to know where it goes, you will be less efficient designing and
writing it in the first place.

>
>    - Exception handling – is this also an area where opinions vary?   For
>    instance I read that the NASA Shuttle programming team had to produce code
>    so reliable that it never threw exceptions, and the production version had
>    all exception handling turned off.  (This being my side step)
>
> Every code you write should be so reliable that it doesn't throw unhandled
exceptions at the user.

>
>    - Any more examples of the sorts of questions you ask?
>    - The original question – what is the difference between people who
>    think they are good and those who are good?  Is there an answer? or is
>    there an answer only for a particular workplace and job?
>
> When they say all the right things but when you get the test back or ask
the verbal questions and they are found out of their depth. When things on
the resume don't match the things you are hearing. When you rely on the
generated code or don't know how to debug into the source. When you give
them an offer and they ask for a lot more money than you think they are
worth.

One issue with the money thing, is the often people get paid overs at a
previous company for numerous reasons.

>
>    - Right back to the original question specifically  – is there a
>    shortage for essential Delphi skills in NZ compared to Oz and Switzerland?
>    What is lacking – training/size of talent pool/non-intellectual focussed
>    culture/lack of or quality of IT industry training/Delphi community being
>    less lively etc?
>
> There is a lack of developers here. The ones that are more senior are
happy in their current roles. Many have moved one to other languages or
into management. Which is what I've been doing recently as well, but I
still enjoy writing code. Also a lot of developers seem to come from one or
two people teams that do everything, so introducing them to procedures,
peer review, source control can be an interesting experience :-)
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