Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 004.0683
EAN: 9780974435589
Edition: illustrated edition
ISBN: 0974435589
Label: Rampant Techpress
Languages: Array
Manufacturer: Rampant Techpress
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 150
Publication Date: 2004-04-01
Publisher: Rampant Techpress
Studio: Rampant Techpress

Offering accumulated observations of interviews with hundreds of job candidates, these books provide useful insights into which characteristics make a good IT professional. These handy guides each have a complete set of job interview questions and provide a practical method for accurately assessing the technical abilities of job candidates. The personality characteristics of successful IT professionals are listed and tips for identifying candidates with the right demeanor are included. Methods for evaluating academic and work histories are described as well.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Shockingly bad
Comment: I stumbled upon this little gem while browsing around the bookstore earlier today, and was so stunned that I ended up reading the entire thing. Hilarious and horrifying in equal measure!

The book is basically divided into two parts. The first part allegedly describes the characteristics of good and bad job search candidates. The second part is a bank of questions and answers, intended to help a hiring manager with no subject-matter knowledge "wing it" through a technical interview. Alarm bells should be ringing already at this point!


FIRST SECTION: Much of the material is generic to the point of being boilerplate. You could replace all instances of "Java developer" with "Web designer" or "Database administrator" instead... and recycle the entire section to create other books (perhaps the author has done just that!). The boilerplate breaks down as follows:

(1) One-third of the advice is of a nature that shouldn't require being said (e.g. don't hire people who show signs of drug abuse, long gaps in a candidate's resume are a warning sign, etc).

(2) Another one-third consists of information that is just flat-out wrong. I got a particular laugh about "proper" Java developers wearing dark suits with conservative ties! I've been a Java developer in Fortune 500 companies for over a decade now, and I've only heard (secondhand!) of one or two companies where the I.T. developers wear ties. This is of course putting aside the author's obvious sexism... whereas I've never seen a Java developer in a suit and tie, apparently the author has never seen a Java developer with breasts.

(3) Speaking of breasts, the final one-third is bizarre stereotypes and creepy illustrations. There are cartoons of technical workers dressed in drag and sitting atop a stack of pornographic magazines, or sitting in a basement stuffing their faces with pizza... to illustrate the author's warnings about many Java developers being perverts or slobs. I'm not exactly sure what a hiring manager is supposed to do with this "information", but it certainly does reveal a lot about the author.


SECOND SECTION: As mentioned, the second part of the book is a question and answer bank. Other reviewers have already noted that QA was lacking, as there are typos and flaws in the questions.

(1) However, even if these questions had been competently edited, the premise of many questions is flawed. A large number of these questions are of an "academic" nature that never comes up in real-world business... getting it wrong shouldn't reflect poorly on a candidate, while getting it right wouldn't necessarily indicate qualification either.

(2) Taking a step further back, the premise of this entire *section* is flawed. If you have no personal familiarity with a branch of technical subject matter, you *should not* be conducting a technical interview involving that subject matter! Standard management practice is to have an appropriate technical resource conduct the initial screening. Managers just interview pre-screened candidates to select the best personality fit. If you are B.S.'ing your way through unfamiliar technical questions, how can you really tell whether a candidate is B.S.'ing his or her way through the answers? This book is woefully inadequate for such a purpose.


In sum: this is a lazy book, intended for rubes with zero I.T. management experience, written by an author who may or may not have any management experience himself (the back cover indicates that he's a DBA contractor). The author either has an active disdain for technical professionals, or he is deliberately writing that way out of an assumption that it's what his audience wants to hear. To the extent that there is any value in this book at all, it is for entry-level technical professionals to help prepare themselves for poor management traits they will occasionally run across in their careers. Well, that and the creepy cartoons!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good Starter book for Java interviews
Comment: This is a good Starter book for Java interviews. There are some typos etc that authors should have attended to more. But if considered a starter book for Java interviews, this is a decent book. But rarely the interviews in real world are starters. But a useful handbook for quickly refreshing basic questions.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Terrible book
Comment: There is something fishy about this book. Some of the answers given for proposed interview questions are just plain wrong. The description of the author says he has some kind of Java developer certification but it doesn't use the right terminology for the Sun Certified Java Developer(SCJD). If he had the SCJD then he would also have the Sun Certified Java Programmer certification but they don't mention that one. Hey author, what's your SCJD certification number so we can look it up?

At one point the author cautions against hiring anyone 60 years or older because if the company provides full retirement benefits at 70, the company would only get 10 years work before paying for a full pension. Is that blatantly discriminatory or what? No wonder it's tough to get a decent job if you're over 50!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Well written for interviewees
Comment: I was happy to have this book to serve as a guide during my interview process for a Java apps programmer position. It was well written with an insightful assortment of interview questions - both technical and non-technical. The questions on Java are relevant to all releases of Java 2, but would like to see an update that includes new features found in release 5.0. Other than that, a well written guide.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Very nice Q/A section
Comment: I am a manager (and still developing, however as little as possible) for a group of developers working with Oracle Apps 11i and a custom integrated web application for our sales and manufacturing department. I own both the Java and the J2EE version of this book and will be cross posting my comments to both of them. The comments below are both mine and senior members of my staff that have gone through both books.

Both books contain very similar information with regards to the interview process - proper dress code when showing up for an interview, assessing job skills, the values of certification and formal education requirements.

The heart of both the Java and J2EE books, however, is the Q/A section. Both are filled with well written and insightful questions that could be used for many J2EE or Java candidate positions.

With regards to the Java book, I feel that there was fantastic coverage on key features of the language (threads, security, and collections) including basic object oriented design. I did find a few errors, some of which looked like typographical errors, but was able to located the errata on the publisher's site.

Generally speaking, both books are well worth the $$$ and I was very impressed by the quality (and quantity) of the Q/A section. I do see this book as an extremely helpful resource to any candidate preparing for an interview. Hopefully a newer version of this book will address some of the new features found in J2SE 1.4 and 1.5.

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