Tactful Project Selection

[Garrett Smith]

This is what I don't want:

To meet an agenda, perhaps a moving target from marketing, that is poorly planned and does not get done with proper design. The web dev team has management-induced panic and [motto~="just get it done"].

How to eliminate jobs like this? What sorts of questions do you ask to determine the type of project it is and how things get done? How do you assess the interviewer without sounding interrogative?

Or should I just be more up front with what I do and hope they know what I do? How do I know they're not using "web standards" and "CSS" as buzzwords. How do I drill the interviewer and keep his confidence, not intimidating him and not making him feel insecure?




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[Mark]

You could try to find some websites they build... and just ask some innocent questions which give you a good idea of the team. What those innocent questions should be like I don't know.

- [url="http://neo.dzygn.com/"]Mark[/url:m8tto34f3h]

[Tim Scarfe]

Unless you are working for a very large organization projects will always be poorly planned and need to be done yesterday. Welcome to real life!

You as a developer should still be able to deal with situations like this. If you have a manager, you can discuss things with him/her.

--
Regards,
Tim Scarfe <tim@developer-x.com>
http://www.developer-x.com

[wranlon]

<blockquote id="quote"><span class="smalltext" id="quote">quote:<hr id="quote">Unless you are working for a very large organization projects will always be poorly planned and need to be done yesterday.
<hr id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></span id="quote">

Even still, large organizations are plagued with different management problems, sometimes leading to the same reactionary requests.

<blockquote id="quote"><span class="smalltext" id="quote">quote:<hr id="quote">How do I drill the interviewer and keep his confidence, not intimidating him and not making him feel insecure? <hr id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></span id="quote">

Carefully. It's far too easy to come off as threatening or from a different point of view than the interviewer. I've sunk many an interview this way.

<blockquote id="quote"><span class="smalltext" id="quote">quote:<hr id="quote">How do you assess the interviewer without sounding interrogative?<hr id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></span id="quote">

That's part of the interview, isn't it? To find out if you even want to work with that person, team, or company.

Some of the basic questions I have found to sustain conversation were: why did the team choose to use [x] approach or technology? Would they have done anything differently, and if so, what? Does the interviewer like [x]? Why?

I find I usually concentrate more on the interviewers to find out if they are the type of people I want to work with rather than the technology they use. If I like them and they have good answers to my questions, I'll pick up on the technology as needed. On the other hand, if I concentrate on the technology, then I completely miss learning anything about the interviewer and I have less of an idea of whether I would want to work with them. So, I'd say it's a balance between the two.

Stephen W. Cote
wranlon@hotmail.com
http://www.whitefrost.com/