I finally read Smart & Gets Things Done by Joel Spolsky, and I regret it
I've been interviewing a lot of people lately, and I felt like I had to up my interview game. There is a book I always wanted to read but never got to, Smart & Get Things Done - Joel Spolky's Concise Guide to Finding the Best Techincal Talent. It's pretty old (first published in 2007) and not available as an audiobook nor as an e-book, which is why I never read it. This time I decided it was time and ordered the physical book.
In short if, it was a huge disappointment. If, like me, you are looking for advanced tips on how to effectively interview people to find out if the are smart and get things done, this book won't give you any. The documentation from the HR department at any company I have worked for in the past 10 years has better advice. In retrospect, I could have guessed it given that most of the positive reviews about the book are from before 2010.
Out of 7 chapters, only one (two if you include the chapter about phone screenings) is about the actual interview, and unless you have never interviewed people before, it doesn't tell you anything you don't already know. You shouldn't ask a person's religious affilation. You shouldn't obsess about acronyms and the technology of the day. You should avoid brain teasers. Duh!
To be fair, there are some useful reminders, such as:
- Great product are made by great programmers, so unless you want a mediocre product, finding the best people, no matter what they cost, should the priority.
- One great programmer can have a much bigger impact than 5 mediocre ones
- If you are not crazy about a candidate, it's better to reject them
The last one is obvious, but I have sometimes sent candidates to the tech interview just as a confirmation of what my gut was telling me, and it was a waste of everybody's time.
But mostly the book is about how great Joel is and how wonderful it is, or was, to work for his company. In 2007 it was still acceptable to say that every programmer should have their private room, that they should be flown in for an interview and picked up with a limousine, etc. There are some chapters about how not to manage teams (avoid the military approach, don't evaluate a programmer's performance based on how many lines of code they write) and others about how to find the best college graduates before they finish school that are very US-centric.
At least the book is short (I read it in one afternoon) and humorous, but a Dilbert strip would have done the job much more effectively.