I like Joe Kraus' blog entry on hiring engineers, particularly the "do you have a blog" and "do you contribute to open source" questions. I love interviewing engineers with blogs or open source work because I can do a bit of research and have something meaningful and in depth to talk about.

His other question, "what's your home page", made me smile. Yes, I had a start page back in 1994, but I've long since stopped using it. I use MyWay these days, but my real start page is DQSD, the fastest way to do Google searches on Windows.

Joe quotes my friend Marc saying "Jedi Knights make their own lightsabers and great engineers make their own homepages." But remember how in the original Star Wars movies Yoda didn't have a light saber? That's because he was so kick ass, he didn't need one. about:blank is the start page for Yoda engineers.

Update: Marc says
I did tell Joe my "Jedis make their own lightsabers" theory, but not in reference to engineers making home pages (I use about:blank, myself). Instead it was in reference to the Excel team making their own C compiler, as mentioned in this Joel on Software piece. Joel's piece is well worth a read, and some of its points overlap Joe's good points on interviewing, to boot.
culture
  2005-06-27 18:46 Z