Maggie++

I have gone pink for October here and on twitter to bring attention to Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Web sites will Go Pink during the month of October to bring attention to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, get people talking about breast cancer, and raise money for research. But to be clear, raising money isn’t the primary purpose of this web event. The hope is that you turn your site pink (in whatever way works for your site), educate yourself about the multiple issues related to Breast Cancer, then take that knowledge and tell someone else what you’ve learned.

There are many styles of interviewing software developers.  The best processes are those that allow you to see if the candidate is a good fit for your organization and for the candidate to see if your company is a good fit for them.  Shortcomings on either side can lead to costly mistakes and wasted time on both sides.

When I worked on the GSM switch project at Motorola in the late 80s we spent considerable time recruiting software engineers.  Our process was typically:

• one engineer would escort candidate from HR to the office area giving a short tour on the way.
• manager would briefly talk with them and explain the project at a high level and the day’s schedule.
• depending on candidate’s level and on our availability 2-4 engineers would individually give technical interviews.
• one interview would include lunch out in a local restaurant.
• the manager would meet with them again for any follow-up questions and to inquire which part of the system they were interested in before they were escorted back to HR.

This was in addition to the countless hours looking through resumes, phone screen beforehand and HR’s interviews with them before and after ours.

My interview technique was to first have them explain their previous projects and I asked questions where I needed clarification.  Then I would draw a high level architecture diagram of my subsystem and explain how it fit into the product and its purpose.  I would let them lead at this point; I was looking for them to show an interest and curiosity about the system by asking questions and an aptitude for talking about a system from both a high level and a detailed level.  I was looking for inquisitive thinkers who seemed eager to learn and work on a team.

 The candidates did not usually have nor did we expect them to have any telephony experience or knowledge of cellular (analog or digital) phone networks.   Most did not know C or assembler nor had heard about the object oriented concepts we were designing with.  These were important, but at the time software engineering was all about design and process and not at all about the underlying technology.  In fact we did not know ourselves at the beginning if we would be using C++ or C.  Our previous phone switches were coded with assembler.  We ended up using C as the C++ cross-compilers were not proven for our processors at the time and would have been an unnecessary risk.

This process consumed much time but we ended up with an outstanding group of software engineers.

Two podcasts I’ve listened to this past week have had content on more recent interview practices.  First was Episode 16: Interviewing Software Developers from Herding Code.   From the show notes:

This week Kevin leads a discussion on interviewing software developers:

• What interview styles we find effective
• What sort of questions actually help us evaluate a candidate
• Why API trivia and puzzle questions don’t work
• Hiring mistakes we’ve made based on errors in our interview style
• Why we don’t do very well when the tables are turned and it’s our turn to be interviewed"

Second one was a podcast featuring Scott Kriens, of Juniper Networks, from Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Speaker Series brought to my attention by Dianne Marsh on twitter.   While the entire talk is not about interviewing there were a few points he made about attracting talent and employee growth that are of interest to the topic.  The first (watch here) encourages developers to embrace challenging interviews and not to let them intimidate you and the second one (watch here) talks about the value of training the employees you have rather than hunting for the one star player.  He states:  “It’s better to give somebody that’s never done something before the chance to do it, then to ask somebody who’s already done it to do it again with energy and enthusiasm. ... There is a real power and passion to prove yourself.  ... They will surprise everyone with their ability to succeed.”

The first one is hard for the candidate and the second is difficult for the employer.   I know times have changed much about the way software is built and funded and a full-day interview would indeed be a luxury and quite costly for all involved.  However getting good thinkers and problem solvers on your team instead of good test-takers is key.  Paying for training and the costs from missed work time can be great but by embracing education as a means to train and retain their developers , companies will see positive results with enhanced productivity and retention.   When growth brings the need for more developers I think an approach that enables both sides to really get a good understanding of each other is prudent.

What techniques do you find useful for finding good developers and what as a developer do you do to find a good employer?  Please leave comments with your ideas or blog about it and comment here so we can learn from each other.

maggie++

My first entrance to my programming career is described in How I got started in Programming and leaving to be a full-time SAHM (stay-at-home-mom) in Taking an off-ramp and an on-ramp in IT.  This post will attempt to describe what steps I took to re-enter the workforce.

We were living in Kingsport, TN  in 2001 when I started to think about returning to work.  I felt the first thing I should learn was where the programming profession was;  I knew it had to be radically different from when I left in 1990. At the time I did not know anyone there who worked in software or anything remotely similar.

[2001 -2002] I started a subscription to Dr Dobb's Journal and searched on the internet to find anything I could to learn about software; I did not really know what I was looking for. I joined the internet forum Systers and scoured the library for technical books.  I purchased Microsoft Visual C++ .NET Deluxe Learning Edition and 4 flavors of Java in a NutShell.  I completed the tutorials in both languages.  Additional books I bought and read during this time included:

• The Pragmatic Programmer

• The Humane Interface

• The Practice of Programming

• Design Patterns Explained
  

[2003] We moved to Cincinnati, OH both to live near some family and to obtain better educations for our children.  We wanted our son to attend my husband's alma mater, St Xavier High School, and we wanted choices for my daughter for middle school.  Moving and building a house took most of my energies that first year. I continued to read and search the net and visited the library and read books such as Code Complete, The Mythical Man-Month and a variety of books on Extreme Programming.  I Joined the Cincinnati Programmer's Guild and The Women's Circuit.  I attended meetings for both groups and started to meet "real-live" people that worked in the industry and was exposed to a very wide variety of topics and ideas. 

[ 2004] By 2004 I was starting to gain confidence in my software abilities.  I started looking at job advertisements all over the internet. I determined that there seemed to be more .NET jobs than Java in Cincinnati so I started to narrow in my focus on .NET.  I discovered C# and spent a fortune on books including:

• Programming Microsoft .NET Core Services

• Programming Microsoft .NET XML Web Services

• Network Programming for Microsoft Windows

• Domain-Driven Design

• The Unified Modeling Language User Guide

• About Face

• C# Cookbook

• C# in a Nutshell

• Head First Design Patterns

I wanted to take some college or graduate classes but was disappointed to find out that you had to apply for a degree in order to take a class.  I did not want to pursue a degree at that time as I already had a math degree and had completed all of the coursework for a MSCS.  I knew my job search would be difficult considering it had been a very long time since I had been employed and I wanted to prepare myself as best I could. Taking classes was the only way I knew to "prove" on my resume that I had skills. So during the summer I took C# and Relational Databases with SQL classes at the community college.  I really learned nothing new about either C# or relational databases.  The biggest value in the classes was exposure to using Visual Studio and SQL Server software as well as being able to ask questions of the instructors.

I then paid for a week-long training class "Developing Microsoft ASP.NET Web Applications using Visual Studio .NET".  This course was great as it introduced me to ASP.NET, ADO.NET, IIS, Web Forms, Web Applications and XML Web Services and also taught me how to use more features of Visual Studio.  I also learned much from the questions the other students asked as they were all employed and transitioning from asp to ASP.NET programming.

Once the Cincinnati .NET User's Group started in the end of 2004 I began attending and was happy to see many familiar faces from the programmer's guild.

Once I updated my resume with these recent skills I began to see a sharp increase of interest and started going to interviews. The interview
 process is time of growth. I started out extremely nervous but each one got better.  Once I was able to see for myself how many different companies opperated and managed software I knew more about what to ask and what to look for.  I was able to refine my resume, read the job postings with more knowledge and was able to write detailed direct cover letters that got me in the door.  In March of 2005 I started work for a small micro-film/imaging company on a C# Tablet PC application. 

I absolutely loved being back at work. It was a long journey but very much worth the effort.

maggie++

I learn much from listening to podcasts.  I thought I would share some of my favorite episodes with you from a user experience one that I listen too. SpoolCast is an audio podcast where Jerod Spool from User Interface Engineering interviews experts from all aspects of UX from usability, user testing to research and more.

SpoolCast: Product Evolution with Adaptive Path’s Peter Merholz July 2nd, 2008

A recent addition to my feed list is Managing Product Development  written by Johanna Rothman  founder of a software management consulting and author of Manage It!: Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management which is published by the The Pragmatic Programmers .

If you are not subscribed to her blog you are missing out she has great insight into managing software projects.  In her blog I came across an interview she did with Jurgen Appelo posted on his blog here: 5 Easy Questions for Johanna Rothman. 

The first question was on the toughest challenge in her past.  Se says "Making myself slow down to think through a problem fully." She describes beginning to write a book recently - she started with an outline and began writing then found that her flow was awkward and needed re-work.

When I realized I'd written enough to redesign it, I could see the emergent design. If I'd tried to define the full design for the book at the beginning, it would have been wrong (it was wrong!). Now, I have enough to see how it could work, and my new design is working for now. Who knows, I might have to redesign again. But I know the pieces I have to fit in now

To me this describes a process like code refactoring and helps illustrate why refactoring is so important for software projects. It is difficult to get the design right the first time.  It takes iterations and rework to get it right.  I had never thought that the process of writing a book was was so similar to software development.

 

maggie++

Flock, The Social Web Browser!  is a browser I recently discovered that aggregates social networking features into the browser interface.  So far I like what I see.  It is built on top of FireFox 2 and is super simple to set up and use. The description from the user's guide is:

Flock is built on the Mozilla Firefox open-source browser, so it has all the features you've come to expect in a high-quality web browser, like intuitive buttons and menus, personal customizability, reliable security, enhanced privacy protections, and automated updating. However, Flock is much more than that! The Flock Social Web Browser has been fully integrated with a wide range of social networking websites and popular blogging tools. So with Flock, you can now keep in touch and share text, links, pictures, video and more with friends, family and co-workers across the entire internet with unparalleled speed and seamless ease.

Getting Started Video

Side Bars available in addition to firefox's are:

• People Sidebar allows access to Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, Digg, Flickr and YouTube

• Feeds Sidebar is a built-in feed reader.

• Web Clipboard allows you to drag and drop text, links, and images to save for later use.

• Accounts and Services gives you access to all of the accounts you have configured with Flock and also lists all supported accounts with links so you can explore them.

My World, is a provided page opened through a tool bar button. It contains columns they call Widgets that currently has 4 functions:

• Favorite Sites, lists your most recently viewed favorites.

• Favorite Feeds, displays your feeds with the most recent activity and indicates how many unread items are in the feed.

• Friend Activity, lists friends updates from you social networks.

• Favorite Media shows streams from You Tube and Flickr that you subscribe to.

Flock has a Media mini-bar which is like a sidebar except it runs horizontal under the toolbar. This allows easy access to media streams such as Flickr and You Tube. I have hooked up my gmail into flock and am writing this blog entry with tools from Flock to check it out.

There is a Flock 2 Beta available built on top of Firefox 3 that I am going to try soon. 

If you want to see more start out by visiting the Getting Started page and be sure to watch their introduction video here from You Tube.  The videos on the Flock You Tube stream make it very easy to learn about the features; the short movies show the features so that you "get it" quickly instead of reading the manual.

I think as this browsers evolves it will be very useful and replace the use of many different clients that are now needed to access your information.  If you try it leave a comment and let me know what you think.

maggie++

Tags: social, flock, browser

CodeStock's mission is to bring the best and brightest code experts to East Tennessee for a one day conference open to all developers.

Are you among the best and brightest code experts?  If yes, then you are probably already registered.  If not, but you want to be, sign up and join me at CodeStock to learn and keep up with all of the new ways to improve your software skills.

There will be 6 choices of classes during each session and what I'm excited about is there will be Open Spaces all day where you can share and learn about whatever you are interested in. 

Open Space is a way to bring together groups of people interested in a common topic to have an interactive discussion. In an Open Space session, there may be an expert who is passionate about a topic presenting to an audience or there may be a small group of people discussing an idea.

Four principles of Open Space:

1. Whoever comes are the right people to be there
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened
3. Whenever it starts is the right time
4. When it's over, it's over

This is my kind of conference - a place where I can learn from other developers in a relaxed setting in beautiful Tennessee.  

Hope to meet you there.

maggie++

Gayle Force blogged about Women and the IT community when she was asked what to do to get more women involved in her local  Columbus Ruby Brigade. In reading her response I got to thinking about other experiences I'd had and the fact that a small percentage of attendees to user groups and communities events are women.

There do seem to be less women currently in IT jobs.  This has not always been the case.  I worked as a software engineer at three large corporations in the 80s after I graduated from college. There were actually more female than male programmers at the first and at the other two it seemed 50/50.  However there were no females in the senior/principal technical staff roles, who typically had greater than 10 years experience.

So what happened. Families. Women have children.  Some stay working full-time, some go part-time and some choose to stay home.  The ones that stayed full-time took the management track and became less involved in technical aspects.

The women who went part time were relegated to peripheral roles such as configuration management, source control, bug tracking and QA - these tasks were easier to share on a part time basis.

All of the women I knew who went part time, stayed home full-time after the birth of a second or third child.  None of these women that I know have returned to engineering.  Some have returned to full-time work in other fields.

In 1990 I left software to be a full-time SAH mom.  I loved my job and working on exciting projects, but the job also involved long hours, late nights in the lab and unplanned travel.  I was very dedicated to work and knew that I would have struggled to do both well.  I also knew I really wanted to be home full-time and to just concentrate on being a mom.

I loved being a stay-at-home mom.  During that time I met many extremely talented and creative women who had also left careers to be home.  There seemed to be a consensus that it was ok to take a year off from work, but any more than that would make it impossible to return to the work-force.

It does not need to be this way, a women does not lose her intelligence during this time and she also gathers valuable experience in the activities of being a mom such as organizing , leading, volunteering, coaching, advocating, researching etc.

Companies have noticed the effect of this female brain drain as noted recently in the Wall Street Journal in the article, Female Brain Drain in Science: “Much Has Yet to Happen”, where they discuss the study "The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology"   Sylvia Ann Hewlett discusses this in her book "Off-ramps and On-ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success".  She states that "corporations have done a dismal job of retaining female talent.  Indeed, they make it very easy for women to depart. When women take a temporary leave of absence to have children or deal with other personal matters, they find it difficult to return to work and contribute as they had previously. In essence, corporations provide women with many career off-ramps, but provide them with few on-ramps. This problem bodes badly for CEOs and top managers who view human resources as a critical asset."  Some steps companies can take are laid out in Flexibility Key to Retaining Women

I created my own on-ramp and returned to full-time software development in 2005.  It was not easy and I still have a lot to learn.  In a future post I will detail the steps I took to re-enter the work force.

maggie++