Given how I’ve sold it over the years, wouldn’t you just love to have my job? Well now you can. The advert for my replacement has gone out.

It’s not exactly my job, because this time they are actually going for a programmer, so some of the non programmy admin is going else where in the department. They pay isn’t what I’m on (33k’ish if you want to know) so I wouldn’t apply for it, but that shouldn’t stop you.

So, Apply for my (soon to be old) job

I’m on the final run in to the end of my job, just 8 working days to go. A leaving present? Thousands of meetings (ok not thousands but lots), and gosh is it tiring.

Last week I was on holiday, and I was full of beans, cleaning the house, washing the dishes right after tea. I’ve been back at work two days now, and I’m knackered, you don’t realize the mental effort work takes out of you. Staring at computer screens isn’t great, and being asked to stay awake for 2 hours in a very warm meeting room, is equivalent to sleep deprivation if you ask me.

I think I might be reaching the point where I need to increase my amount of exercise, we noticed this last time, I started coming to work on my bike, the exercise actually made me less tired for the duration of the day. Ruth ofcouse thinks I’m a freak; but given how tired work appears to be making me, and the fact that I start a new job in three weeks. I think it could be time next week to break out the WD40 again.

My job is currently winding down, after all I’ve only got 12 working days left until I leave an start my new job. As a result I’m doing less and less coding at work (i.e none), which is just as you would expect it, but this is having a negative knock on effect to my post work day.

When work isn’t occupying my mind, I end up getting all creatively deprived, which means at night I am desperate to do something creative, and as I’m a programmer that usually means write code. That’s how this website started, and the library happened, and to some extent poopcell was born*. The problem is I get up at 6:30 in the morning, which means by the time everyone is fed and the baby is in bed it’s 7:30 at night, a whole 13 hours and a working day since I got up; I’m just to tired to get into the zone.

So tonight once Daisy was in bed I had a 45 minute nap, It’s not as drastic as polyphasic sleeping or anything, but it’s a start, and I do feel much fresher now (if still a bit rambly), all I need do now is actually have an idea as to what to create…

*poopcell was as much about being creative, as it was a place to hide from the stress of the wedding planning. Ruth ran to SimCity and I wrote poopcell.

Well I’ve done it now. After almost a month of hanging around, I’ve handed my notice in. I officially finish work on the 14th May (the observant among you will notice this is a Sunday) and start my new job on the 15th May. Let the countdown begin

I have 16 working days left! (holidays are already booked)

Most people will agree that some Monday mornings can be difficult to motivate your self, and get into work mode, especially if you’ve had an extra long weekend. I can tell you it’s ten times worse, when you add the fact that you’re leaving your current job in 5 weeks.

maybe caffeine will help?

So one of the things that’s being going around my mind, based on my recent experiences is. Just what makes a good interview question to ask developer?

I’m a firm believer that asking technical ‘quiz’ questions, doesn’t really work, it doesn’t separate out the good programmers, from those who’ve read the documentation before they’ve walked into the room, for example you may ask, what is polymorphism? (clue it’s not that episode of morph, where Chas* cloned him). Now I’m a quite decent programmer if I don’t say so myself, can have a go at describing this of the top of my head, but in reality, the person who swallowed the book just before they went in to the interview could give you a better answer without really understanding it (the lesson here would be, if someone reels of a textbook answer, they got it from a textbook).

So just what can you ask to separate the 1’s from the 0’s?

Well before we start, let me just point out, I’ve not been on the interviewing course, so I have no idea if you can ask these types of questions, without going against all fair interview techniques, but if it was totally up to me.

What books do you read?
When I told Ruth she said, “what like terry pratchet”, and initially I thought no, it’s more “what books relating to the field do you read”, but then I thought a bit more, and yes, if somebody answered, “I’ve read every terry pratchet novel twice, and I am the owner of the terry pratchet fan fiction site, where I’ve written several noveleet’s about disc world” then that gives you a good incite into somebody’s persona.

The problem is that there is of course no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer to this one, it’s far to subjective, but I think if the right person came to interview, this would be the question to make them stand out. (for me the answer, C++ Hackbook & learn yourself perl in 24 hours are the ‘wrong’ answer)

Anymore good questions?
I think the point here is that the best questions aren’t necessarily about the subject you’re interviewing for, the beeb have some nightmare interview questions, which if nothing else, make you glad they’ve never happened to you. (a jaffa cake is a biscuit by the way), of course we could just look to Microsoft, who after all have at least a few good developers working for them. they have a range of interview questions with some scarrly technical and also more of the wall questions.

It turns out I agree with Bram Cohen (inventor of bittorrent):
“Interviews are practically worthless for screening candidates. In an interview you can tell if a person is a pleasant conversationalist, and you can give some technical questions to rule out the truly inept, but beyond that you might as well be rolling dice.”

I have to say, I absolutely despise where do you see yourself in five years? It’s the most thinly veiled, do you have ambition and drive question I’ve ever seen, I mean who answers “duh I don’t know, I thought I would just bum about in this job for a bit”

*I’ve checked and Tony Hart’s website says it’s chas (pronounced Chaz)

it’s the hardest question you can get from someone you currently work with.

• because i didn’t want to get stuck in the same boring job for the rest of my life
• because there are no job propects
• becasue in five years, we will still be working on the same thing, and it won’t have moved on
• because the politics is everywhere and just grinds you down

All of these tend to leave the impression that you are saying, “you’re life sucks, and i’m better than that” which isn’t why i’m leaving, although all those reasons are part of why i’m leaving.