So I interviewed a guy yesterday for our group. I was one of five or six people who interviewed the guy and by the time he got to me it had been a long day for me. Not being one of the better interviewers, I tend to mostly just talk about the working conditions in my company in general and in our group in particular.

There are two purposes for an interview. One is to find out if the applicant is qualified for the job, will mesh in with the group, and wants to work there. The second objective (for the high-tech industry at least) is to sell the company. Chances are the applicant has a few other applications and it is a workers' market out there.

This guy is from Ohio, or at least he works there now. I think he's from India and got his Master's Degree in Kansas or Kentucky. Mainly what I want to know is what their current job is and how they did in school. I'm assuming people don't lie on their resumŽs. If you're not qualified and you get a software development job, you're just going to get hosed. And if Human Resources ever find out your ass is fired with no benefits.

In any case, I don't really care about specific skills or what kind of projects you've done in the past. If you have a BS degree from a good school, or a MS degree from an ok school then I know that you have the capability of learning. What you're doing currently tells me how far away you are from contributing constructively to the group.

School is more important that job experience, although it does equalize quickly. I don't care how many years of software development you have under your belt, if all the schooling you have is a BS in some 3rd rate state university then chances are all you've doing is coding, not programming, definitely not software development. A good Computer Science or Computer Engineering degree means you know theory. You know the fundamentals, the kind of knowledge that will make your code at least workably good, even if you don't have any coding sense.

No matter how many years you spend coding, you are just not going to pick up the deeper fundamentals. And you're not pick the knowledge up from a magazine or from random classes. You really need to spend a few years to learn these things, not a few hours. You'll be great at taking other people's direction and coding it, but anything you create on your own will be suspect.

Enough of that sidetrack. So I talk about the work environment, flexible hours, good boss, relatively cutting edge technology even though we work for a big company where 90% of the developers are coding in PL/SQL. Great gym, nice cafeterias, lots of little services to make life more convenient (and not waste your time when you should be working).

Then, in this case, I go over the Bay Area a bit. San Francisco, Fisherman's Wharf, Chinatown, opera, symphony, zoo, anything I can think of. Traffic is bad, weather is great, housing market is ridiculous, lots of companies to go to even if my company doesn't work out. Sell them the area and California in general. Even if they don't end up working for us, I'm happy if they work for another California company as it helps the California economy.

So when I interview someone I want to sell the company and our group, then sell the area and the state. I tell people to make sure that this is the right company for them. Make sure to get stock options, don't worry about the interviews since if we've flown you here we must really want you. Maybe I'm a bit too easy, but that's the way I am. One reason I tend to decline to interview people.