On the flip side, with so many people contributing code mistakes are bound to happen. That’s normal – after all we’re all just people, and people make mistakes. One thing that I’ve found particularly admirable about our team here is that people own up right away, and strive to fix things as fast as possible. No one wants to ship buggy code, but it happens. The nice thing about working with so many smart and friendly devs though is that you can trust that someone will be there to catch you if you fall and help you fix things.
We've caught and reported 4-5 bugs in production to Zenefits on really basic features. Three of our employees have now been asked to send a screenshot of the dashboard with the JS console open...
Why exactly? They are talking at the individual employee level, not company wide. The statement above is: "[As an individual developer] it is ok to make mistakes, just own up to them and take responsibility."
They didn't touch on test coverage, integration Vs. unit testing, code reviews, UI automated testing, code quality inspections (both automated and manual), regression testing, external audits, or a whole bunch of other things a company can do to improve the quality of their software over the medium to long term. These exist to help mitigate an individual's errors.
If we take what you said above at face value, you're essentially saying: "It is unacceptable for an individual employee at a company who manages benefits to make mistakes ever period." Which when re-phased like that is patently absurd.
Your anecdotes above may be legitimate reasons to gripe about the quality of Zenefits' software. But these are issues with organisational quality, not individual quality. Individuals can and will make mistakes at any endeavour no matter how mission or life critical, the way organisations detect and resolve these mistakes is what is key to quality, not pretending that people should be mistake free, that's a pipe dream.
It's an incredibly useful product (and leagues better than the competition) but when they can't even calculate your 401(k) contribution correctly, imagine what's going on behind the scenes...I'm trusting them with a lot of financial and personal information and it erodes a lot of the trust & confidence I would have in them to see such shoddy work.
I really can't speak for the company—it's just a single sentence in a blog post on an otherwise unrelated topic—but I imagine that's what the OP was thinking about.
Glad my benefits aren't handled by Zenefits.
We informed them. Never checked to see if it was fixed :)
This article did little to tell me how to ace it other than a little snippet of "I did a cool project to stand out". Which, admittedly, is cool, but I don't feel like it gave many tips on how to "ace" the phone screen. Also the end was basically an ad for Zenefits (well done).
* you know something about my company and why you want to work here (visit our corp. site, interrogate the recruiter, read up on our press and know something about our space)
* you know what we're looking for and understand that we're talking to you because there's some intersection between your experience and our search criteria.
* for that intersection in the venn diagram of our candidate requirements and your resume, brush up a little so that you can speak to how you used technology X. If it was 2 years ago or less know it well... if we're talking 10 years ago being more general is fine.
* be able to describe how you got to where you are in your career and where you want to go.
* know who you're talking to in the phone screen and LISTEN to what they're asking you. i can't count how many folks i ask to describe how they built a particular solution go on to just ramble on about feature descriptions and process without ever getting to how something was built.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-way-to-start-my-caree...
http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-ceo-rescinds-job-off...
A ceo who isn't a prick might have said we understand your concerns: here's [blah blah blah] reasons that our work is more technically challenging than it may appear from the outside or from your limited time interviewing here, and it's a personal and/or company goal to be recognized for the quality of our technical achievements as a peer of google.
I happen to think that zenefits is not particularly technically challenging and is mostly wiring together integrations with 3rd party systems, but I'm open to being wrong. Nonetheless, this might have won them the employee without being a dick.
He made a public spectacle out of something small and he paid the price in bad publicity. But I've seen worse, by so-called pros. Sometimes people let their ego get the best of them. But that doesn't mean that every decision they've made is invalid.
College is a prime example of this. Why are certain schools (Ivys, primarily) so highly recognized? Do they universally have better programs? Sometimes, sure, but so much of their cache comes exclusively from the institution itself being a signaling mechanism of exclusivity, and as was put, "buzzwordyness".
In my view, it would be irresponsible to NOT consider any potential added value of positions when comparing them. You are not doing a disservice to either company or your own integrity as an engineer as long as the work you do is sound, and to suggest that you should put your own best interests aside because a given metric isn't "tasteful" seems shortsighted. (I do not mean to suggest that hopping companies to ride trends is something to be looked up to, but that when you make a decision, the more data that helps you obtain a positive outcome the better.)
Everyone can, and should, consider how a job will help them advance their own careers. This is exactly why I quit COMPANY_X. At the time, their codebase was entirely based on not one, but two obsolete technology stacks. If I didn't leave quickly, I would have been locked into that narrow ecosystem for the rest of my life, at a "flattened" company with almost zero opportunity for career advancement. It would have been almost like someone deciding to move into COBOL programming starting in 2016.
And I have been frequently laid off as a result of startup failure, acquisition redundancy, or just the company's loss of contract work. There is no longer any loyalty from the typical employer to the typical employee. If you can manage to work your entire career at a single company, you are an extreme outlier, because at many, if an accountant predicts you will be unprofitable next week, you will get laid off on Friday afternoon, with no severance package.
So asking yourself "would this look good on my resume?" is something you should do very frequently, even if you are currently content where you are. We wouldn't need to chase after buzzword-related experience if HR didn't look at those buzzwords when hiring people!
And anecdotally, the name of a previous employer has helped me to get hired at another company. After COMPANY_X, my future co-workers told me at the interview, "COMPANY_X is great! We know they hire only high-quality people, and we also know that the best all want to leave after about two years. PERSON_1 and PERSON_2 used to work there!"
A. Include it with your resume before hand
B. Bring it up when asked about previous experience tangential to it
C. Bring it up when asked about your outside work activities or what sort of continuing professional development you've been doing lately
D. Mention it when asked about the "coolest/most fun" thing you've hacked on lately
E. Whip it out when asked the usual "what do you think we do here and what can you bring to the table"
Or, when you start asking your questions about the company/culture/ect. (DEFINITELY ask those types of questions), weave it in with a question about what kind of side-project or 20% type program they offer/support.
You could also throw it up on a design site or your blog and drop it in whichever social media channel they may have.
Cultivating a curious attitude (or sincerely making an effort to fake it) will help calm your nerves a bit as well.
Why not make it about their brand? It shows his desire that he wants to work there, and it's also clear he just made this. It isn't some cool thing he did awhile ago and is showing many different companies in interviews. He wants to work there, and that initiative shown will go a long way (and was successful, in this case).
Worst-case scenario is that he doesn't get the job but spent the night learning more about pseudo elements and how the interact with other elements. That's a win-win.
I phone screen a lot, and would be impressed by Albert. However, if you are strong on resume, knowledge, and interviewing, you don't need any special tricks. I think such tricks are important if your resume does not support the position you're seeking: either a mediocre school, no degree, long unemployment, or switching industries.
As for acing a phone screen - no silver bullets here, but it pays to know something about the company and the screener. I know we're just company #923 to you, but don't show that.
As a way to get past HR idiots, it may be useful.
So the obvious followup question I would ask first would have been, "Why did you choose to do this with CSS rather than with a language designed for vector graphics, like SVG?"
Shall we also hire all the other people who can make their cats bark and their dogs meow?
That's the point. This person did a neat little project that uses skills which are directly relevant to the job being applied for. The project probably isn't actually useful on its own, but it shows interest and ability.
Great advice, Albert! I'm glad you like your new job, too :)
It is supposed to be a PHONE screen after all. ;-)
