w/byron sommardahl & how to interview better

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

Hey everyone, thank you again for tuning in. This rainy morning in Nashville. I have a guest this morning So I will not be running my mouth alone Which is always better to have guests. So Byron. Thanks for having thanks for coming on man. I appreciate it You got a buyer and I have not floated away yet in Nashville. But boy, I tell you what I think we are headed there I think I saw a canoe Just kind of float down by a street out here in East Nashville. It's crazy. What what we'll part of town of you and Byron I'm in Murfreesboro. So We're sending you the canoe.

That was your rescue canoe man. Yeah, I got it. Well, I gotta go So I gotta go get the canoe so thank you all for tuning in. No Well, y'all we'll go ahead and jump to it. Thank you. I'll give to you in the guys capture 2.0 again the whole point of this Live thingy that I do Is to allow people the opportunity to network is to allow the people to have a community around them because I know when it comes to finding a job It could be overwhelming. People don't know Where to start where to begin and so my goal for this is to allow others to learn something to network in the DMs with other people and to have guests on And so so for me today.

I have a good friend here in the National Market Byron on Byron Give the people what they want give it an intro about who you are what you do and we'll go from there Hi everybody. I'm Byron Somard on the CTO at Accland Avenue and Hero Unit and I do all things tech. I am a software developer of like 30 years and And I hire like a ton of technologists We were constantly getting new contracts and hiring new people lately.

We were looking for a lickser developers and We're constantly hiring node and other developers and so I was talking with Taylor about about just like interviewing and hiring and that's when that's when we decided hey Let's let's do something today Yes, absolutely absolutely Thomas is good to see you man again add us comments I know Byron would love to see your beautiful faces emm it was going on man So Byron yeah, so so you kind of alluded to it So you posted on Slack linked in wherever and and you were like, you know how to better interview Or you know how do you screen developers

and this has been a fascinating thing for me especially Overcovid Especially now because the market is just bonkers right now and I feel like hiring is this is this kind of this taboo thing Right no one wants to talk about it No one wants to admit that they stink at it No one wants to admit that that they need to get better at it So I wanted to go ahead and start talking to you about Maybe some of the pitfalls so let's be open here right what are some pitfalls that you guys have Right now at acorn avenue that you're trying to overcome from a

hiring perspective.

Let's start there and then I'll see you a few more questions Well, sure Well, so we have we have a couple of pitfalls or a couple of different directions One is when we don't have the time to really vet somebody technically we end up trying to cut corners and and this is not actually something that we do often But but there there are times when we've just got a lot of confidence around around a candidate and and for one or another very very good references and and we just we have this this process that we run everybody through that's like a really deep Really deep look into their technical ability, but sometimes we might not just might decide not to do that and then one one time out of A thousand it's like no, no, this was a bad decision This was not the right person and and and we catch it before we get them to the client But still we've spent all this time and and you know egg on our face for for saying hey with this this is the person Um, so that's one.

It's like how do you get that? How do you how do you get like the real worthy confidence that somebody can do what they say they can do because people lie lie lie all the time On their on their on their resumes like the resume like it is basically a piece of toilet paper in my in my book so The other one is Is when we wanted when we do the kind of technical vetting that we really really want to do which is really deep It's like it's very personal one on one kind of thing Then it takes time and it's yeah, it's expensive And so if we've got a lot of hires to do like we've got a wreck for a hundred developers on this thing Oh my goodness all of a sudden we've got a big bottleneck in our vetting system So those are the two the two pitfall.

I don't know if that's what you were looking No, no, it is so so let's talk so let's talk from a hiring process again You can share as much as you want to share and and and you know, share as little as you want But I mean for me What are like what are some things that you put your developers through right because I know the people who are watching this right like like Emmett talking about the process talk about the interview process I have a lot of people that are looking for jobs right now that want to better themselves On on how to interview what are some things that you guys do from an interview and perspective On that that maybe these job seekers about oh, well, that's interesting maybe I need to prep myself for that Okay, so I'll give you a little bit of a perspective from our from my companies and then Actually, I'll start with what we used to do and this is actually what a lot of companies do So we used to do something like a hacker rank or What the product was when it was something that was connected to code wars where they they have some platform where you can log in as a device.

I can send you a link and And you you do all of these algorithmic tests and stuff like that and and then I get back a report about how well you did and Okay, I'm this this maybe is a little bit controversial Taylor, so I'm sorry. This is why I do this. This is why I do this again There's no right answer everybody's wrong. So let's just be open and honest about it. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. So so I'm gonna mess up your show here so I think algorithmic Developer tests are are about as good as the resume that came before it which is they For those of you they say yes, well that paper so they They are great for College grads who just got finished doing all of these these classes about algorithms and data structures or you just got out of a boot camp And they and they they really filled your head up full of all of these algorithms and stuff So so if you're going into a job that that has these algorithmic tests because there's nothing else that they that they know to do Then you're gonna do great But if you're a developer like me for having I've gotten more than 30 years of experience I cannot pass one of those stupid algorithmic tests because in 30 years I have not needed those stupid algorithms Now if you go and work for Google or Amazon or one of the one of these companies that is managing trillions of whatever And you got to squeeze every bit of efficiency out of every line of code.

Then yeah, okay, I get it You need you need to understand some of the Some of the the the higher Yeah, yeah, you got to understand the the the the data structures so that you can squeeze every bit of efficiency out of them But most developers in the world like we're gonna I'm gonna go I'm gonna go statistics, you know 80 89% of statistics are made up on this Spot so 99% of the jobs in the world The work that you're gonna be doing does not matter as far as algorithms and data structures You're just trying to solve problems So if you want to sort something then just do dot sort if your language has that So that's true.

Yeah, you don't need algorithms for that. So anyway I hire those kind of developers people that can just get stuff done people that can solve problems and and whatever you know Netflix Is like is is like this the the the video crunching that Netflix has to do Yes, maybe you need some higher out some better algorithm understanding of that kind of stuff but it's not Everything else about Netflix is is putting things on the screen Navigation data flow just stuff like that. You don't need algorithms for that. So well we do now after after having about 11 years in the business. We've finally discovered that that we're gonna kick all of the algorithm stuff out the door and we're going to Just do some pair programming and we do pair programming over a kata So if you haven't heard of a kata or kata I thought you just said like a like a kat like something you sleep on I got real confused there for a second Yeah, sorry.

No, so this is kata with a cake Hey, a t a and if you've been coding for very long Then you probably have have come across these these coding katas Which are it's a throwback to the karate Kata the that series of movements that you do to earn your next belt in karate or tech window And and so you can do these coding katas that are also kind of repetitive motion motions that are trying to solve a problem We do pair programming over different katas and and that for me for over 11 years of interviewing Hards not even exaggerating hundreds of software developers Maybe even closer to thousand.

I don't know. I said it's a lot and I get a better view into the developers ability to solve problems While watching them work with a kata even with me like we actually do pair programming kata so it with with td Which that is also pretty revealing td is is super revealing Because important test driven development is And really I'll boil it down to this is just writing your unit test first and then you write the implementation code So why is that big? Oh man, okay, so it's big because especially if somebody's never done it before You get to see that person how they how they have to flip their brain to the other side To to solve the problem from from behind instead of from head-on It makes sense and and it's a really cool It's a really cool view into how they how they think how they Try to solve a problem that they've never solved before It's I wish I had a better better prepared Bull your good.

Why no, hey, this is good. I totally recommend it if you if you've if you're looking for a way to To work with to interview developers. It's just do some pair programming with td over a kata And so what we what we do is I I'll write some code and then the developer will write some code and then they'll write some code a test And then and then We go back and forth back and forth and you know, I don't know a lickser, but I've been developed a pair of elixir developers Almost straight for the past couple of weeks and I just I don't need to know elixir I go into the interview and say okay You teach me and then I get to see How well they can teach how well they can verbalize what they are doing how they can How can they communicate their thoughts?

If you can communicate thoughts over code Then you're probably a pretty good communicator and you can you can talk to the non technical people too Another window into things so let so so I want to harp on that right because because I feel like And this could be a little naive on me But I think I feel a shift I felt to shift their last few years especially pre-COVID going to conferences right like when I started to give my soft talk of Recruiters suck I was accepted everywhere Because not many individuals were giving soft skills talks Well, then now I've been blocked out of conferences because then you have all these tech folks speaking about soft skills And so I want to ask you has there been a movement to more soft skills?

Is is that something you almost value more than technical skills? It's so boor Maybe but okay anymore the the nerdy pocket protector Developer they can't exist anymore. They can't they can't They can't they can't drive in this market anymore They need to be a quote The the partner nerdy pocket protector in this developer Yeah, yeah, they can't it's not going to work for them anymore So they've got to grow some kind of Some kind of social bone and so emotional intelligence is a big thing for developers We we as developers we need to be emotionally intelligent We need to understand ourselves.

We need to understand our our interactions with other people is it more important than technical I don't know maybe it's equally important maybe it's the same because if you if you can code if you can code like lightning and you can you can you can You can build anything you can solve all kinds of problems But you solved the wrong problem because you can't communicate Yeah Or if you solve it in a way that's more robust than the client wanted because you can't communicate Or you you solve it in a way that's that's too brittle for the client because you can't communicate I mean it's

software is hard software is super super hard to get right and We developers all are all the time shooting ourselves in the foot by doing things the wrong way because we didn't communicate enough with the client Client look all the client if it's especially if they're not technical they're over there looking at our black box saying hey This guy looks pretty smart I'm going to trust this person to to build this thing for me and then You finally come out of the black box and say here it is and it's the wrong thing Because you can communicate that's not good Also especially in teams teams

have to have to gel and if and if you've got somebody over there that's that's like super anti-social and And they can't keep on doing this because I used to have glasses and that's kind of like the I shouldn't I shouldn't stereotype But but anyway, it if you've got somebody that's kind of messing up the social vibe of the team then then it can also have a detrimental effect on the on the product that you're building because you might have dissension So let me ask you this man.

I mean it makes sense right paired croat paired programming You know you can see how someone thinks you see how somebody communicates you can see how that person codes Why isn't it more widely used within interviewing Because it makes sense Yeah, well, it's something that we developed internally at at our company We didn't develop the kata, but we did develop this as an interview style And we haven't going out and told everybody about how to do it and that we're doing it partially because we don't want people to get over prepared before the the meeting like they do for for algorithms You know there there aren't any books yet about how to how to how to game the the eklin avenue Interview process that's why I'm doing this live show so everybody can now know how to hack the eklin interview process Yes, I couldn't have any got com slash jobs.

Yeah, I just head over there. We just won't tell you which kata it is, okay? but um the Yeah, the reason why you think it's not accepted just paired program in general Why do you think people quiz and again? There's no wrong answers. Why do you think people quiz? I'll see a space definition and It's harder. It's harder. You got to have some mad expertise to be able to pull it off so so you For no for just Being able to detect all of these nuances and transfer them into a rubric that community community can be communicated back to the recruiter um, so like when you do a hacker rank you get this nice pretty report With all of these different metrics about the person and how they did and what and all the different nuances of of that person and how they did but it's not You can get the same exact things or maybe even better things from a a an eklin style interview, but you can't You can't do that at scale like you came with hacker rank because hacker rank is is Well, it all made it and that kind of goes with m.

It's thing he goes. Do you think it's about time? And I probably right because it's so much easier to send a test instead of sit down with somebody and work through Yeah, yeah, I mean, we've got a team right now of like 15 engineers that are just there just burning through interviews And they're all part-time burning through interviews So so they're they're full-time developing on our projects, but then they they give their nights and weekends for some extra cash to To burn through these interviews and and so that's really the only way we've been able to do it is like scaling out So so we we use things like calendar Lee, which is nice because calendar Lee like Yeah, it's beautiful So so we could put a whole team of people into calendar Lee and then it round robin selects them Based off the schedule.

If your organization is not using calendar Lee, it's broke like you in my opinion You have to use it. It is the single most Important meeting tool that I've implemented for my job. That's helped me a ton. Yeah. Yeah, they forget all that What time is good for you? But but that it's it's it's right. You're right. It's about time like hacker rank sending people a link is super easy Or one of the tests that they can do about about C sharp or JavaScript. Those are super easy for the the organization They're not super easy for the and and and like I said before they are they are easy, but they are not robust They're not good like they tell you how long ago they graduated from the university mostly I don't feel like they tell you much more than that more than that But something like what we do is is super robust.

It tells us exactly what we need to know But it's costly. So it's like there's this restaurant in Murfersboro, Calvert And they they have these butter burgers And they they had these handmade Custard milk shake there everything is delicious there and you roll up to the window and they're like hey Is it's taking a little bit too long? Well, that's because we're making it homemade and so sometimes it's like worth the time To get the thing you want Um But it's costly and and we're paying for it, but we get really good results. Yeah, I mean that's I mean I think I think you said it best right there.

It's Interviewing right now. So right in my opinion Developers within the tech community are like a hot commodity. They're your most important asset especially if you're a custom software company like yourself Why in the world would you not slow down a little bit make sure you vet the people appropriately? So then you can speed up long term for me It's a no-brainer, but for a lot of organizations that I call Sales-driven development that just push push things out the door You don't have that type of time to vet and develop culture and to build Comradery within tech skills and also the people with the with those tech skills So it just kind of jacks up an organization.

So Again, it sounds like you're doing the right thing. Let so let's do this. So so few few things coming in Shane if you follow OFCCP compliance and build interview frameworks Hard standard results and how you make decisions. Yes, I've even know what the first few acronyms are But yes, you are correct. It's very hard I've had some developers build initial tests for me and my recruiting team just to weed out at a high level and it's incredibly difficult Just to build a simple test Um, Shane also then goes to the yeah, there's not two to four correct answers when you're learning something new like a lickser Yeah, absolutely and then Emmett goes to gotta take time to make that mother burger.

Yeah, now I want to vote I'm going down in Murphors So Byron so so let's do this last question and it will wrap it up here You've obviously you're doing a ton of interviews. You've seen a lot of cans coming to door And you've seen probably a lot of candidates just fail a lot. So what we wonder what's one or two tips To leave the individuals with today that are on the job search that are looking for a job How to better themselves in the interview process Okay, so Um, okay, if I want to say thank you So yes, be yourself But if if yourself Rubs people the wrong way then work on yourself So uh, and it's a good life last week in general It's a good life last week in general You know, I really think that developers need to focus more on emotional intelligence So if that's new if that's new terminology for you then just Google it emotional intelligence There are even free or $15 emotional intelligence tests that you can take that if you're just if you're just being super Honest with who you are today And you answer the questions based on that then it will tell you where you need to work What are some areas where you need to work on?

So I highly recommend Focusing on your emotional intelligence. They're like five different aspects of emotional intelligence and they're all super super valuable And if you are an emotional intelligence Emotionally intelligent person Then then you Like we were saying before it's not it's not more important than than the technical side But if you don't have some emotional intelligence about you Then it doesn't matter how technically Awesome you are you're going to You're going to run into problems and maybe even as early as the interview process So and a lot of companies these days they want they want people whether they know it or not They want people that are emotionally intelligent So I really suggest you know you've got the technical side of things down pat.

I'm sure And and you may need to go through some algorithmic Tests to get past that that that layer of the funnel so that you can get closer to the real people And so that's that's understandable in some cases, but If you could and once you finally get to the part where where you need to meet real human beings Then you need to be the very best real human being you could be I love that. I love that man. Well Byron. Thank you again for coming on I appreciate it before we end give a little bit more plug to Accland Avenue and how people can reach out And obviously reach out to Accland Avenue and find you Well sure so so what all what I'll do more than more than just Accland Avenue is what I'll tell you about hero units So hero unit is our our Staff augmentation arm and we've got contracts coming in constantly So and that we we need really great developers to fill those contracts.

So here's what I here's how how how you shall I pitch Hero unit we make it a great experience for freelancers So if you're a freelancer and you're tired of of Working on a project and then and then oh my goodness at the end of the project I've got to go out and find another contract then what you can do is you can you can basically sign on with hero unit We'll find the contracts for you and so when you get to the end of your project Then we're gonna start also looking for a contract for you so that you don't have to skip a beat It's kind of like the best of both worlds of being a freelancer and getting to choose your products Projects, but also having an advocate for you that that can help you find your next gig So that's hero unit dot IO and there should be a lot of links on that somewhere I love that man.

Well Byron. Thanks again for coming on on this Monday morning I appreciate you a ton and Have a great week everybody watching. Thank you again for everyone who tuned in emmet Thomas Kathy Stacy Shane Muhammad Thank you again y'all for for watching and Byron. We'll stay in touch Got it. Take a piece of man. See you