Customer Reviews

Conducting the J2EE Job Interview: IT Manager Guide for J2EE with Interview Questions (IT Job Interview series)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This book (and the series of books like it) are addressed to managers who do not know the technology that they are trying to hire for. It gives what many of us consider bad information, such as: People with BSEE's generally make the best programmers. Most knowledgeable hiring managers I know believe exactly the opposite, and that is certainly my experience. Being an Electrical Engineer is usually associated with poor software development skills--that isn't what EEs train for. And CS degrees differ so much among different schools that the BS cannot be relied upon as a serious discriminator with regard to software development skills.
In a recent visit to the SUN facility, I asked what they thought of these books, and they were horrified. The idea that people who don't understand the technology could be making decisions by asking questions they don't understand, and evaluating answers they don't understand based on a book like this would be laughable if it didn't have such serious consequences. Perhaps the worst consequence is that hiring managers will feel qualified to conduct these interviews as a result of reading this book. They will get what they deserve. However, great developers who give non-textbook answers will suffer. So the message to managers is: get someone who understands the technology conduct the technical interview. Or pay the consequences.

The author appears to have no serious managerial experience: he seems to be a self-employed DBA. And it shows. Bigtime.

The model candidate, according to the author, would appear to be a conformist left-brained banking clerk. I have worked with and hired developers with a varied range of dress habits, personal manners, backgrounds and education. Good developers come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colors. The best programmer I ever worked with never had a high-school education. Following this book's guidelines for assessing candidates' personal qualities would have excluded 2/3 of the best developers I know.

It's riddled with prejudice: "the female job applicant with three children less than five years of age may not be appropriate for an IT position that requires long hours on evenings or weekends." But it would be OK for a man with three such children to neglect them? And what does it say about a company and management which cannot organize projects without expecting excessive overtime?

The author appears to have no idea of the existence of employment legislation, anti-discrimination law, management techniques or how to motivate people. One has the impression that the recommendations would be more appropriate for a correctional facility or a kindergarten school than a twenty-first century development shop.

The technical questions reveal immaturity and inexperience. Design abilities are far more important to the fate of a project than technical minutiae. Yet no questions are included that would enable a manager to distinguish someone who really understands good principles of object oriented design. Just asking questions about patterns that a trained parrot could answer is hopelessly inadequate.

The technical questions are about half the book. But they are repetitious, the 'answers' are often too specific - one 'right' answer when several alternatives are equally appropriate. Some are obscure and totally academic: 'What is the Java Remote Method Protocol(JRMP)?'. Who cares? JRMP goes on completely under the covers and a developer has no need to know even of its existence. Some questions are plain wrong: 'What are the two transport protocols used by J2EE web-based client applications?'. 'HTTP and HTTPS transport protocols' comes the answer. First, HTTP is not a transport protocol but an application level protocol. Second, there is no HTTPS protocol: HTTPS is a URI scheme which is used to indicate that HTTP will be tunneled through secure sockets.

By the time the candidate has been asked Non-Technical Questions 8 ('If you were a vegetable, which vegetable would you be?') and 9 ('Describe the month of June'), any sensible candidate will already be asking themselves Non-Technical Question 10: 'Why do you want to work here?'

Sometimes I wonder if the author's advice is very biased towards their own knowledge of the technology and qualifications. I mean, come on, proper dress code???, education in the ivy league schools???

1. Dress code is the responsibility of each employer, some larger corporations might adhere to a stricter dress code, some smaller ones (especially technology companies) could care less if you wear jeans to work, as long as you are knowledgeable and productive.

2. College degree. I disagree with the statement that "You **must** possess a certification and/or degree. You truly can't make such hard qualifying statements, since most IT jobs in the industry require degree or equivalent experience. I mean, come on, I know plenty of great developers who didn't finish college, but have many years of Enterprise Application Development under their belt. What if you are an industry acknowledged expert, book author, and have many years of experience, do you disqualify that candidate if they don't have a formal degree?

Basically I almost felt like the author is a psychology expert (which half of this book is dedicated to), vs. sticking strictly to technical questions and qualifications. Does the author also have a **degree** if psychology? Otherwise based in his statements, he's definitely not qualified to make such recommendations.

Amusingly, Hunter states how certain questions should not be asked of job candidates in the US, due to non-discrimination laws. But he then immediately proceeds to broadly hint (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) how the interviewer should indirectly ferret out such data, if you deem it germane.

He then goes on to suggest that interviewees should adopt the dress of the executive and banking industries. Wretched idea. A spineless conformism. Do you want to have the chance to hire the best people or not? His advice can cause you to lose some creative and brilliant programmers who care little about a dress code or those employers who set store by it.

Sure, some top notch people will readily conform. But others won't. And the truly talented do not have to work for you. You are competing for them, more than the reverse. For a purely, self interested viewpoint, you should not impose a dress code. Maximises your chances of getting the best.

The book was delivered on time. The book is in excellent shape, other then couple of pencil marks it was like new. Great buy for the price.

50% of book is with general topics, other than J2EE

This is an excellent regrences for both the hiring manager and the job applicant. The manager can use the questions to pre-screen applicants and the job applicant can use it to see what kinds of questions thwy might be asked on a J2EE job interview.

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 J2EE book, I feel that there was good coverage on Servlets, JSP, JDBC and JMS, however, I would have liked to seen more (actually any) questions on Struts, DBO and Web Services.

Generally speaking, both books are well worth the $$$ and I was very impressed by the quality of the Q/A section. Hopefully a newer version of this book will address Struts and Web Services.

This is the most comrehensive J2EE interview guide resource.
It covers all aspects of the J2EE platform with
in-depth interview questions from novice to expert and
detailed answers.
This is a MUST for any J2EE job employer.

I found this book indispensable during my latest job search. I would be looking forward on a next release that contains more on Struts, EJB 3.0 and Web Services.