misterjangles

The OP admits that he didn't even try to answer the question. The interviewer basically gave him the answer, but he didn't ask for help or ask if he could look up setTimeout.

The OP's takeaway seems to be that he should have known setTimeout well enough to walk through a solution. With that approach I think anyone will have a similar experience, only it would be some other random question. The lesson learned should be to actually make the attempt and try anything at your disposal. Ask questions. Ask for hints. Don't just say "um, I don't know."

It can be a huge problem depending on the query that the server is running and the amount of traffic on the site. Avoiding completely useless auto-complete queries is fairly low-hanging fruit since it's so easy to fix.

It would depend on whether they're looking for a promising candidate or somebody who is already experienced. If they wanted the later then it would be obvious this was not the guy. Still, I think spending 5 extra minutes of your life with a young person to help them not feel like a failure - I don't think is too much to ask either.

It probably is a bit of both but there's no question that they are dead-on about many of the obnoxious and egomaniacal aspects of HN.

What is that supposed to mean? Did you even look at the site?

They dodged the hardest issues and politics by piggy-backing on the actual site to obtain the data. So you cannot really say that they did what the government contractors were unable to do.

But without a doubt they eliminated all of the cruft and whittled the site down to exactly what consumers want. I want the ACA to succeed and would love to see some variation of this "quick lookup" on the official site. The government would be wise to pay it some attention.

Their site doesn't ask for any data except your zip code then forwards you on. Where does HIPA come into play?

This is pretty much identical to what eBay and PayPal have been doing to sellers for years. They do offer "seller protection", though, which guarantees that that will come up with a valid reason for taking your money away when a chargeback occurs.

You're missing the point. What you are not realizing is how many people actually fail fizzbuzz.

If it seems so simple and useless to you because it's easy, then you are not one of the people who will ever be weeded out by a fizzbuzz style question.

Put it this way... Would you want to work with somebody who was unable to handle fizzbuzz?

To me fizzbuzz eliminates certain types of candidates who have absolutely no reasoning skills. You would be surprised at how many people are out there who have learned how to regurgitate lessons from school but seemingly have no clue how to solve any real work.

These people do manage to get themselves hired based on their academic degree and they wind up contributing absolutely nothing, while consuming time from the developers around them until eventually they are dismissed.

You don't want one of these guys on your team. Simple fizzbuzz exercises will usually uncover them unless they have managed to memorize it previously.

I thought it was going to be a historical article about issues and features being considered in early PHP versions!

Ah, thanks!

Exactly. Good clients will understand "hey, this guy just saved us $150k". Bad clients will think "I just paid a programmer to do nothing!"

Learning to recognize and get rid of those bad clients (or convert them into good clients) is a skill that can take a while to learn.

My sarcasm detector is showing erratic results from your post. AJAX was 3 years from being invented and John Resig was about 10 years old in 1995.

Perhaps a whooshing sound should be made though, if I didn't get the joke..?!

The tricky part is often convincing a client that pre-planning is a necessary part if the process and, though it is billable time, will ultimately save money. Many client don't appreciate that programming is not just writing code.

Also you can wind up meeting and planning yourself right out of a gig sometimes - which is fine if the gig wasn't truly necessary. But can be bad for your business if you spend hundreds of hours doing this for no compensation. This is a real situation that happens - you get a client that wants a big project and after many meeting and calls you determine that a Wordpress install will suit them perfectly. Their network guy does the install and for all the money you saved them your reward is that you don't get the gig!

Of course everybody would like their team to be all "A" level players. But unless you work at an elite startup with a tiny team and buckets of cash - you have to learn how to build a team from players of all levels. An all "A" team is not realistic for most companies, and even if you did assemble one they won't all stay forever. If you have a good process and thoughtful management then you can get great results from "B" level players. I see that as a great challenge as a manager - to get the most out of the whole team.

I have been on both sides if this, although as a boss I have always tried to give others the glory and take the heat. Also I probably do swoop in with ideas, but I don't leave people high and dry to figure them out.

The solution is really to speak up for yourself. You may have to remind your boss that he put you in charge. I can be a tough boss but I will listen to any argument and will be glad to be proven wrong or told that my idea is going on the list for later. But - you must convince me that your idea is better, or more practical, or that you at least have thought things through.

I know it can be tough because bosses tend to be older and, maybe in some cases wiser (but not always). As the boss your pressure is to keep a team moving forward and so you grow used to delegating. I had to be reminded that I gave somebody a project once and I felt really bad about not letting him do it on his own. I really just didn't want to see him fail, but I was micromanaging. It was difficult for him to bring it up to me but I was glad he did and we got past it.

I'd say - face it head on. If the boss still won't listen, then start figuring out another employment opportunity.

Great post. I've been holding off on an update due to the navbar issue and not wanting to deal with it at the moment. Thank for the write up!

Absolutely a great manager will inspire and motivate the team,. But, it is called "work" for a reason. Its a two way street. The employee has to put forth some effort as well. Your manager is not there to entertain you. At the end of the day you are there to work.

Same thing has happened to me though I'm older and just trying to work and stay current in technology.

I deleted all of the social apps on my phone, then installed a browser extension on my desktop that limits you to X minutes per day in certain sites. I still go to hacker news briefly most days, but blocked reddit completely.

You just have to get out if the habit of hitting these distraction whenever you get bored or face a challenging assignment. Stop feeling like you are missing out on important social news and start viewing these things as time wasters. It's ok to waste a little time, but limit yourself.

Anyway, I go through phases as we'll but it does work for me to just block myself with plugins and such.

If you ever own a company and you find yourself writing a salary check to somebody who you suspect did jack-shit all week - it's kinda amazing how difficult it is to not go into Ebeneezer Scrooge mode. Even if you know that people are not "on" 24/7. It can be tough to walk by somebody's desk and see them screwing around on Facebook instead of working - when you are the guy writing the checks. It takes a lot of faith. This is the same whether they are working on site or remote. It's easy to talk a big talk about what a generous boss you would be - but it is very different when you are responsible for meeting payroll week after week. I would challenge anybody to try it.

Joel's rules strike me as a little more specific than necessary, but I can very much relate to his feelings. I have experienced devs "working from home" who disappear all day and hold up the whole team because we can't find them to ask a quick question. The point is that when you say you are on the clock - then you should be working. I personally wouldn't care so much about the exact specifics of your internet connection or whatever. But, if you tell me that you're working then I expect that you're actually at your computer working and not laying by the pool or playing video games.

It's equally easy to say that you'd just fire somebody who you did not trust to work at home with no rules. But, as with many things, it's easy to take this hard line approach with your imaginary company and theoretical employees - quite another thing in reality though. Some people are very productive but maybe not so disciplined. A few sensible rules and expectations can prevent problems.

Yea I've seen them too. I'm like, ok this guy is fresh out of college with no work experience and he's done major redesigns for Nike, Budweiser and Home Depot?!

I definitely don't mind seeing whatever work a new grad has - we all have to start somewhere. But, I just like to see it marked as schoolwork or whatever so I can get some understanding of what part of the work they actually did.

The other thing is that I actually do regularly see portfolios with actual work for major brands, so when I see it in a portfolio, I tend to assume its real.

eBay at one time was dealing with a lot of seller fraud with sellers that didn't ship, shipped you a rock instead of a laptop, etc. over the years they started adding more and more buyer protection to keep shoppers from being scared away. Unfortunately they tipped the scales so greatly that now, as a seller, you can very easily be scammed. The scammers have simply moved to the other side now and commit their scams as buyers.

It must work out better for eBay that way. But it sucks to sell anything of high value.

If you go to the javascript console there's a whole game in there too!

As a non designer I like looking at them too. I will admit that I usually think to myself - this designer has no paying customers this month. But, I feel like they are hustling and trying to drum up clients.

When I see these in a designers portfolio, though, presented as real work, I feel like that is dishonest.

Nobody really says "here is a task I am delegating to you." Delegation sounds more like "I need this by Friday" or "How long will XYZ take?" or "Let's put this task on the top of your priority list."

Learning to delegate tasks is a tricky hurdle to get past if you start to get into management. For one you have to get over the guilt of assigning other people tasks. You just can't be a good manager if you don't learn to delegate. There's also a weird thing when you are too nice and timid about assigning tasks then it tends to create problems due to, I guess, lack of respect for the boss. If you're pretty confident and no-nonsense about it then people don't seem to question it. It's a weird thing. Assuming of course you're being reasonable, aware and considerate about people's abilities and workload.

I think this could definitely help with some of the bulk testing which would be fantastic. It seems like it might be difficult to test really complex CSS (which is the stuff that probably needs the most testing) like drop-down menus, interactive hover effects, etc.

I've definitely had those times where we've tweaked a stylesheet only to find out later that some page deep in the site now caused a floated div to move to the next line and mess up the layout. It would be so great to have unit testing to keep an eye on these kinds of things.

I liked turntable but it I felt like it required you to be a bit active to get the full benifit, whereas I think I'm usually a bit more passive in my music listening.

It's frightening that this would happen to a company that actually has a relationship with google in as much as having an account rep. Those of us nobodys who are just running generic ads with no personal contact would have no recourse at all.

I will say though, in every one of these cases there is always a little something odd. You never read about this happening without some small thing that was wonky about the setup. In this case there's a mention of the personal site without any details of what that is. I'd be curious to know what that was.

Even still, it sounds like a gross over-reaction.