Chip DeWeese

I turn wood as a hobby. This is a display case of my work that is in a local shop in North East, Maryland. On the top are some pens and kaleidoscopes. On the middle shelf are wine bottle stoppers and bottle openers. The bottom shelf is full of wands.

I am based in the United States. I have worked with off-shore developers for over 20 years. One of the things I stress in all my interactions is to speak up if something does not make sense. Too often I have seen requirements go through a thousand iterations and end up with something that might not seem quite right. We are now asking for a square peg to fit into a round hole. They were both square to start with but through the iterations things changed a bit.  One specific interaction sticks with me today. This one was not specifically about a requirement but did involve some confusion. I was having an instant message chat with one of my developers. She is a great developer and we fostered a great working relationship. This misunderstanding took place early in the relationship. There was a long weekend coming up and she had added another day or two around it. I was asking about her plans. She volunteered that she was going to attending a wedding with friends. "That sounds like ...

Over the years I have witnessed more than a few interviews that have gone wrong. I do wonder sometimes what people are thinking. When they reflect on the interview, do they even realize where they might have gone wrong? Here are a five of my favorites: Those People... This was a phone screen. I was on the call with another manager. We were about 15 minutes in and it was going well. Then we elaborated on the structure of our team. The bulk of the development was done in India and we often have calls in the early AM hours when there was the most overlap. When our description was done the candidate's comment was "well I don't have any problems with those people." The other manager and I looked at each other as the alarm bells went off. We quickly, but politely ended the call. To this day I still wonder what people they might have an issue with. Candy is Bad... This one was in person. I used to work for one of the largest candy companies in the world. We were interv...