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Good question. That's what I'm struggling with right now. There really is no way to determine this accurately at interview stage - a smart person will always figure what kind of answer you're looking for. One way is to have them describe in detail what they're doing at their current/previous positions - if they mention legacy code/doing support or maintenance, ask for more details. See how they're describing it - matter-of-factly, or in a negative way.

However, there really is no good way to do this, other than to hire somebody for a trial period and have them do actual real world tasks. That's what I try to do most of the time, but unfortunately it's not always possible. If someone has better ideas, I would love to hear them.




Personally, I've found a sense of humour to be a reasonable indication - person 2 is more likely to be able to step back, smile, and say "okay, this is horrible and it's going to go badly for these reasons. But if I had to do it, I'd X the Y with Z". If they can do that and laugh about it, I get a sense of levity and perspective.


If you interview a guy/girl very good technically buy seems to work on shitty, boring and otherwise inane projects more often than not, you might still have found it. For a lot of corporations that's where you send the programmers that eat it up and just do their job...




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