What a brutal deal for startups. The government has got to be able to find a better way to funnel money to startups than through these guys, who charge cash-strapped startups $3k to pitch (!!!) and then take 8% for themselves personally.
I only ran the test against the first name server listed. It would have been more complete to test again all/several, but I thought this would be sufficient.
LuiLui.com has changed its name servers since I ran the test. I just used the first domain that I found that used them.
Regarding Anycast, all 3 providers advertise as such, so I assumed that all their name servers would use it
My reason for publishing this is that I couldn't find any data comparing providers, or even any good ways to compare them.
No, I didn't do any measurements other than subjective observations. This was on my LAN and using BIND9 I would see noticeable delays between the 'looking up' and 'connecting to' messages in firefox. After switching to djbdns you hardly have time to read the 'looking up' before it starts the connection.
Presumably, you're only providing suggestions for what your applicant writes; if they want to demonstrate their ability by writing a modular synthesizer simulator in Ruby with an AJAX front end, you're going to let them do that instead. Open source or not, asking for portions of your own product up front is spec work, and it's also unprofessional.
Call it what you will, but as a hiring manager you really should review as much code as possible before hiring. Usually they can't show you proprietary code from their last company, so unless they've already done open source contributions, there won't be much to look at unless you give them a project.
In the past I've given candidates projects that we've come up with together. Check out the ones mentioned in the article... fairly straightforward Rails plugins. One of the was particularly successful, and included in the Advanced Rails Recipe book.
So you're fine with (a) open source contributors just providing you with samples of their previous work, (b) people who can show you non-public code just showing you that, and (c) candidates coming up with example projects totally unrelated to your own products, so long as it's demonstrative of the right expertise.
references can/should be really fast. can get them all done in a couple hours... worth it, given all the good stuff you can discover. You are going to work and pay this person for months/years.
Regardless of how long it takes the interviewer to review them, I think it is pretty extreme to ask the interviewee to give 15 references, assembling 10-15 references, especially if you are young or maybe have worked at a small shop for a long time would be pretty annoying
Agreed. If I can provide references from peers and superiors at my previous jobs and also character references from outside of work, why would I need more references?
The 10-15 includes all references of all kinds, professional, friends, even family.
I spoke to one of my hire's father, one time, because he worked for him for 2 years. You'd be surprised, family members are often the most honest. The point is to get to know the candidate as quickly as possible and make a good decision. Speak with as many people that know them as possible.
I like to keep my work life and my personal life separate. If I gave you references of my previous supervisors and a couple colleagues (3-5 references) will those extra references really matter to you? They certainly would to me. I would have to be pretty hard up to do anything but walk away if someone asked me for 10-15 references, unless it was the opportunity of a lifetime. Maybe that's what you are trying to screen though... On a related note, there are plenty socially inept hackers that would have issues with this.
I wouldn't specifically ask for friends and family of course. The moral of the story is to try to collect as many perspectives as you can on the candidate.
So, without commenting on the "ethics" of this --- I don't care that much --- it's worth it for readers to consider the practical implications of your approach.
(1) Most interviewers won't ask for a 10 hour sample project.
(2) Most interviewers won't ask for 10 references.
(3) Good serverside web dev talent, even in this economy, is not in surplus.
(4) There are extremely talented developers who are just going to say "no" to these weird requests.
Your loss.
I don't mean "unprofessional" as in, "you'll get kicked out of the guild". I mean, "this will make you look bad". It's as much an interviewer's job to sell their company as it is to qualify a candidate. Perhaps if you're getting a stream of people that's so bad you feel like you need to talk to their Mom and get them to work on spec for you, your real problem is that you just have a really crappy hiring pipeline.
I agree. I think it's great that these guys want to make sure that they get good talent, but yeah, I'd have to really want to work at a place before I'd put in the time to complete a 10 hour project and provide 10 - 15 referees plus whatever else is also involved. Maybe these guys are awesome to work for and stuff, I'm not really meaning to comment on this.
But from personal experience, I very much agree that it is also the interviewers responsibility to sell their company. I've been in the fortunate position for some years now that I haven't needed a job. When I move, it's from the position of already being employed. Near the end of a job interview there will usually be the point where the interviewers will ask if I have any questions for them. My stock questions always include:
a) What do you like about working here?
b) What do you not like about working here?
I love observing their reaction/response to question b) particularly. :) And I feel asking these kinds of questions sends a clear message to the interviewers that I am not desperate for the job, which puts me in a better bargaining position when it comes time to talk salary etc. Of course, this tactic only works when you really aren't desperate.
But asking for more references will not guarantee more perspectives; it is simply guarantees more data, possibly repeated data. It is quite possible that the 10-15 references you ask will say within delta of the same thing about the candidate. You get reinforcement, but that doesn't seem quite useful enough to justify all the added calls.
You'll get to know the candidate better if you go grab a beer and just talk than by interrogating their family. And I'd expect family members to be the least honest (we look out for each other).
Only someone who NEEDS a job will agree to go through this process, and in my limited experience, the best hires usually DO NOT need a job.
I for one am certain, that I would neither give 15 references nor agree to work on a take-home project as part of an interview process
