Have you met genius programmers?

Question

Programming

Hello! I want to ask the respected community of programmers, have you ever met geniuses in your field of development?

I will briefly tell my story.

Я работаю на позиции HR в одной крупной IT-Компании. Недавно нам потребовался младший специалист на позицию junior-bekend разработчика. Десятки резюме пришло. Многие были приглашены на собеседование, но запомнился мне больше всех один кандидат. Резюме его тянуло на senior, а в комменте к резюме говорилось об отсутствии командной разработки и том, что кандидат интроверт. Особого значения этому не придала.
Пришел на собеседование парень 23 лет. Был усажен за рабочий комп. Ему дали тестовое задание. Очень простое, с которым он не справился. Но, от него поступила просьба сделать задание на своем компьютере. Я и собеседующий разработчик компании были не против. Он достал из портфеля свой ноутбук и с невиданной до этого скоростью решил новую тестовую задачу за 22 минуты, на решение которой, наш уважаемый тим-лид отвел минимум 4 часа. При этом смотря на нашего разработчика принимающего задание, я сделала вывод, что кандидат не просто справился, но сделал это блестяще. В дальнейшем кандидат не захотел у нас работать не назвав причину.

Dear friends, please share your experience and tell me how to see a genius in a candidate? Tell us about your encounters with such people and how did you determine that a programmer is a genius?
PS It is worth adding that none of the candidates coped with this test task. And the developer who was talking to me noted that for the first time in his life he saw such an approach to solving a problem and those tools that the candidate used were not known to him. The candidate used an unknown IDE and several text documents formed in a certain way, in which he used a keyword search and always found a certain code.

Answer 1

No need to look for geniuses. Eccentric geniuses have a place in the institutes. In business, their genius is almost impossible to apply. Look for a person suitable for your working conditions and requirements.

Answer 2

I see here that the guy fumbles well, but like all normal people, he needs directories, docks and a trite working environment. The fact that people could not do it on your computer, but on their own, says that your environment (developer) is shit. It’s uncomfortable there, it hangs here and stuff like that.
I know two dudes who work together for 10x and generally rummage around, while normal guys.
May I ask what the test was?

Answer 3

I see the question is popular, so I will also share my thoughts. The people who answer above look at this question from one side, and I will tell you from the other. I will not call myself a genius or even talented, but nevertheless the situation you describe is very familiar to me. I myself am. Not sociable, with my laptop, I solve non-obvious problems, I mostly do freelance work to reduce meaningless communication on general topics, although I occasionally run into commands. There are similar friends. I will not give advice or recommendations. I'll just share my observations from the other side, and you can draw your own conclusions.
Стоит сказать, что такие люди часто мыслят излишне системно и при выборе места работы используют холодный расчет. Например ведут шкалу рейтинга компании и каждое событие, письмо, звонок, ответ на хитрый вопрос, отношение к тому, что он пришел на 10 минут раньше и все, что при этом происходит (а иногда такое происходит...) имеет положительный (например предложили посидеть 10 минут на диванчике) или отрицательный (полный хаос, переговорная занята, все бегают, ключи от кабинета потеряли, резюме только печатают, еще не читали) коэффициент. Если после собеседования компания окажется в минусе - такой человек скорее всего не станет ее рассматривать.
Резюме. Скорее всего там есть на что посмотреть. Очень приятно придя на собеседование услышать, что твое резюме читали, что твой гитхаб заинтересовал или еще что-то такое. При этом крайне обидно (я понимаю, что звучит глупо, что все это скрывают, но это и правда обидно) слышать в свой адрес "мы не верим, что ты это написал, поэтому вот тебе тестовое задание". Если не верите - спросите. О своих проектах всегда есть, что рассказать, по делу такие люди говорить могут, а в присутствии технического специалиста диалог будет интересным и покажет все, что человек делал и к чему стремится.
Дело в том, как такие люди обрабатывают информацию. Почитайте другой ответ, я там приводил пример. Для сохранения рассудка отдельные факты не запоминаются и есть необходимость иметь свой набор закладок/заметок/исходников чтобы что-то сделать. Иначе получается, что "кусок мозга отрезали", а без него даже простейшая задача, которая не встречалась в последний месяц, может вызвать затруднения.
Это следствие широкого кругозора из предыдущего пункта. Просто есть особенность: если вы говорите "сделай мне xxx с помощью yyy" такой человек с большой вероятностью скажет "но с помощью zzz это сделать проще/быстрее/понятнее/проще_поддерживать и.т.д.". Не стоит сразу отбрасывать эту мысль, практически всегда она будет серьезно аргументирована. Это касается оценки заданий на собеседовании - если вы получили решение или ответ, который не ожидали - это стоит обсудить. Так вы покажете свою заинтересованность в знаниях кандидата. А это жирный плюсик в ваш адрес.
В ответах выше говорят, что
Это спорное утверждение. Такой разработчик быстро устает от рутины, но даже рутину он может делать быстрее, чем кто-то другой. Или вообще может ее автоматизировать используя знания из других областей. Да, работать 9 часов в день практически невозможно. Но и за 4-5 часов при частичной занятости можно успевать очень многое.
Тут есть еще одно наблюдение, которое мне несколько раз подтверждали: многие разработчики почему-то боятся, что человек, который решает сложные задачи быстрее сможет их "пересидеть" в компании, поэтому пропагандируют идею о том, что им "такие" не нужны.
Еще там кто-то сказал
Такие люди почему-то думают, что коллектив должен быть сплоченным, что все должны дружить, ходить в боулинг, вместе кататься на велосипедах и участвовать в корпоративах. Я это видел несколько раз в разных школах, потом в институте, потом на работе. Но на самом то деле (практически всегда) им нужен человек, который будет работать. Пришел. Взял тикет. Сделал. Взял. Сделал. Поделился с кем-нибудь опытом. Предложил какое-то решение. Еще поработал. Ушел.

Answer 4

You gave him a task that he had worked on before. At your table, he could not solve it, because he was supervised and there was no ready-made code. Already on his laptop, he searched a little for the previous project, copied a couple of the most important points, googled a little, asked on the toaster, and voila in 22 minutes !!!

Answer 5

Oh, echars! They are such eychars! No matter how much I talked with them, they are lovely, wonderful people. But how far they are from the people!
I had to interact with HR both from the position of a candidate and from the position of a manager.
Valik-jan, I'll tell you one smart thing, but don't be offended (c) G. Danelia The
manager makes a decision on hiring a candidate based on two main components:
evaluate only a techie, for example, a team leader;
b) psychological qualities (how he will join the team, the process), which should be assessed by the HR specialist.
Don't try to solve someone else's problem. Conducting the technical part of the interview, determining how "brilliant" a person as a developer is not for you.
The most you could do is determine what special conditions this candidate needs and communicate this to the tech lead and manager. Believe me, it is for this that the leader will be grateful to you, and not for the fact that you have identified a genius in someone.
And yes, geniuses are problematic. I know myself :)

Answer 6

Genius has nothing to do with your situation. Banal discomfort at the interview / testing - notes every second candidate (if not more).

Answer 7

4 hours were allotted for the test.
People did not cope with it, so for 4 hours he sat and thought about it.
Now look where the focus is!
Man spends 4 hours thinking about the task, pretends that your working environment is shit, and takes out his laptop. And it solves the problem in 22 minutes.
But he solves it not because he has something special there. But because before that he had been thinking about a solution for 4 hours)

Answer 8

Since I didn’t decide without my software, it means I’m not a genius. I just put together a bunch of stuff. Which is also great, but in no way characterizes him as a genius. Although the element is A non-standard approach to solving is a sign of either genius or lack of classical education.
A funny, but not fantastic option:
a person didn’t do it on your software on purpose and specially opened his computer in order to break your base. Perhaps this is really a genius from a company of competitors. That is why he refused to work without giving a reason. Or maybe just your neighbor and he needed your wi-fi password. They are now sitting behind the wall and quietly laughing with the whole office.
In general, the last time in the 90s I heard that the test task would not be performed remotely. Why waste time on a trip to the office. Especially in an IT company.

Answer 9

Perhaps he remembered that he was solving a problem similar to yours, and taking out his laptop simply restored the code, adapting it to your task.
> to solve which, our respected team leader took at least 4 hours
Not an indicator. Team leads are also ordinary people, and some things may well be overlooked and not be aware of some technologies. It is impossible to cover everything in the world.

Answer 10

Studio challenge!
I remember they gave me a test task, there for the day of work - to make an admin panel for the zoo, the server and client parts, everything is online (one user changed - the other user updated automatically in the client), etc. The choice of technologies is at my discretion.
I made in 1.5 hours - Firebase + Angular. Task done? Done. Works? Works. Am I a genius? No.

Answer 11

I saw among the students. One such handed me an excellent semester project, then hung out in Yandex, got upset because of the lack of code reviews and development culture, went to Google.
It is worth trying to hire such people if you have tasks that you do not know HOW to solve. If all the tasks that you solve are more or less technically obvious to you, they will run away from you out of boredom.

Answer 12

Yes. It was only once, but yes - I met. Moreover, I am even very familiar with this genius, because he is myself, my own person.

Answer 13

geniuses will not waste time on your tests, there will be companies that will take them on better terms and without your humiliation

Answer 14

I have not met. There were several people who can be called quite talented, but I don’t remember such a genius.

Answer 15

genius does not exist
it's all about experience and access to information
if the team leader has not seen the snippets, then let him read Nietzsche: "everything unknown seems wonderful to us"

Answer 16

“At the same time, looking at our developer accepting the assignment, I concluded that the candidate not only did it, but did it brilliantly.”
No, you can’t say it was brilliant or not, and in order to evaluate genius you need to be in first and foremost a technician.

Answer 17

As a rule, you have to pay for genius. Very often such geniuses have problems with socialization, and in the worst case, with the psyche - an extremely unpleasant and dangerous thing.

Answer 18

Met. The main difference is that he writes code from 9 am to 8 pm with food breaks. Works several times more productive than the average programmer. Has no problems with communication, although he is an introvert. To find this, it is enough to talk about this and that, for example, about the urgent tasks in the project and how he sees the solution to this real problem from our project, because he will do it. They talk about the same, oddly enough. Outwardly, I met only two categories of productive programmers: jocks and bobbucks. Perhaps there are others.
The jocks look something like this:
and the bobos look like this:

Answer 19

Geniuses are the creators of new languages.

Answer 20

I agree that it can be difficult with geniuses. It all depends on whether the team wants to work with such a genius, well, it depends on the genius himself. This one didn't want to. You don't have to look for them. It's a waste of time. Look for the best fit for the position.

Answer 21

the trick is that there are few generalists
a few dozen ide
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_environment...
wiki to help
if you require work from a person (namely work), then give him a regular tool and not the one you have
Are the results important to you?
most IDEs with open licenses are therefore free (but do not forget to conclude an agreement for verification)
as well as with hairdressers: some have a typewriter and others have scissors
or write in detail on the application IDE such a language such a language standard, etc.
I don’t understand why you did not connect their old employees?
albeit with additional payment, but are you the leader?

Answer 22

A developer is not a genius when he knows how to use the Internet, search engines, knows how to set up the environment and install the necessary plugins.
He should just be able to program quickly and well! Be able to apply algorithms, make code that you are not ashamed to show and that will work efficiently and without errors.
Yes, I have met such developers. Usually they used a minimum of tools.

Answer 23

A man of genius is a genius in everything. It seems to me that a brilliant programmer will not go to interviews and look for a job.
I met such a person. Back in the mid-90s, he easily wrote a toy on his knee like "Cossacks". He himself soldered a covox (such a thing that music played, like a sound card). Now he works as the head of the security department in a company that services cash registers throughout the country.
And about what he could not - maybe something unusual for him. Put me in some thread of the PHPStorm, too, I'll get lost right away. On his machine, he has an IDE configured so that he can connect the necessary modules with snippets, as an example.
Well, for example, he needs a jailbreak or a bootstrap. You gave him Eclipse. And this is the first time he sees him in the eye. And he couldn't do anything.
And on his car he created a project, where he immediately pulled up a boilerplate with jacquery and bootstrap, and he only had to insert snippets from EMMET, for example. Hence the time savings.

Answer 24

Decided to answer abstractly. Of course, this statement (99.99%) is a compilation of all my previous experience related to the concepts of "giftedness, talent, genius". However, such a postscript can be put, I think, almost everywhere. The difference is only in the shades of meaning brought specifically by me / you (and they again expand the perception of the object / phenomenon, show something else) ...
In short, IMHO.Genius is a natural ability (which, perhaps, is further brought to a high level by hard work and will) to find elegant and effective solutions to those problems that we usually don’t think about (although they can be quite applied in the end), and first - ask questions that have not yet been asked (or formulate the problem in such a way that significant, but previously unnoticed, aspects of it appear). Those. such a person sees very broadly and at the same time does not lose sight of the details and their interconnection. Pronounced originality of thinking, inventiveness and passion, and, preferably, turning aside, after all, creation) And, preferably, the absence of a high heart rate and other complexes. But where do you find such saints...