Unix

Conducting the Programmer Job Interview: The IT Manager Guide with Java J2EE, C, C++, UNIX, PHP and Oracle Interview questions!

Format: Paperback
Author: Janet Burleson
ReleaseDate: 01 April, 2004
Publisher: Rampant TechPress
Rating:

too general to be useful
The advice is all useful, but it's not worth the price and the style is a little goofy for what I expected to be a more professional book. The advice on interviewing is very general and can be found to the same detail with google.

The technical interview questions are atrocious. As others have commented, the "easy" questions are useful (e. g. how do you indicate comments?) and some of the solutions to the "hard" questions are incorrect (e. g. they try to illustrate a common C pointer bug in correctly written code).

The book just lacks content.

Rigidly conventional
It is almost impossible to please the author. This book is full of uptight opinions and puts the job candidate under the magnifying glass. You have to wear a bussiness suit(only white shirt is acceptable), if you don't, you may be considered disrespectful. Knowing the klingon language may indicate a personality disorder!! Let's get serious.
As for the interview questions some of them are ridiculous. Example: C++ section - How do you end a comment started with '/*'? I don't think a hiring manager can make up his mind after asking such questions.

I give it one star just because I can't give it none.

Some good advice


Hiring Manager: Give this book a try, but be sure to give it a critical read and don't take everything you read for gospel; use some common sense. Quick review:

Job Hunter: For you I call this 4-star; get this book so you know what to watch out for.

Full review:

Let's see, this isn't a bad book, nor is it a good book. It's middle of the road. It has some good advice, but it relies on a lot of generalization in helping you (the manager) identify a "good programmer. " To her credit the author sometimes will step outside her generalizations to say something like "Appearances can be deceiving" alluding to the old adage of don't judge a book by it's cover, but they she digresses back to something like (not a direct quote here, but you get the idea) "if the candidate doesn't have enough appreciation to dress up for the interview, then what kind of employee will they really be?" This seems to fly smack in the face of the previous statement.

There are several edits that were missed that sometimes interrupts the flow of reading. Some of the sample questions (particularly in the C/C++) section are given low/high difficulty ratings that I would argue about.

Overall, if the above represented the only issues I had with this book then I would have rated it 4 stars. As it is, if you are looking for a job, then I do give it 4-stars in helping you prepare for the tactics that some hiring managers might employee at your expense.

For the targeted audience though, I can only rate this a 3 star effort. The extra star downgrade comes from the short-sighted hiring practices that this book perpetuates. Throughout the text the author routinely warns the reader about legal pitfalls regarding certain questions given their obvious discriminatory factor, but then the author turns around and suggests subtle ways to get the candidate to volunteer such information. These suggestions obviously condone the use of discrimination in the guise of "getting the best employee. " The demeanor and suggestions continue to impart that "us vs. them" mentality when it comes to management and employees. The focus here is purely bottom line: get the most skilled employee for the lowest cost that will work the most overtime with complaining period.

This approach breeds a mentality that tends to overlook the benefits of developing a relationship with employees that respects their needs both in and out of the office. Just look at the companies rated "best to work for" and you'll see that there are intelligent people out there that realize there is more to how you hire and treat an employee and the consequences of those actions.

The "get the most skilled employee for the lowest cost that will work the most overtime with complaining" type of hiring that this book preaches will work in the short term, but will do nothing for generating a culture of low turnover, high loyalty, and high productivity for years to come.