Back in 2003 I was living in Virginia. I had about 5 years of InstallScript and 
build automation under my belt.  

I was really busy doing a build when I received an unexpected phone screen.  I 
was really distracted when the interviewer asked how InsallShield handled 
locked files.  Now I knew all about MoveFileEx() and PendingRenameOperations 
but for some reason my mind blanked and I gave some generic answer about black 
boxes and white boxes and that you just select the potentially locked attribute 
and debug/profile if it ever becomes an issue.

The call was my only interview and I ended up getting the job ( in Texas ). I 
later asked my boss why he hired me when i really didn't even give him a good 
answer for the question.  His answer was telling:

"Because you actually *wanted* to write installs."

Passion for setup plays a big part when I'm interviewing someone.  

Chris

--- On Sun, 1/31/10, Sascha Beaumont <sascha.beaum...@gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Sascha Beaumont <sascha.beaum...@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Interviewing an installation developer
> To: "General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset." 
> <wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net>
> Date: Sunday, January 31, 2010, 10:04 PM
> When I interviewed for my current
> position I was asked about
> familiarity with InstallShield, no questions about MSI
> itself. I
> responded honestly that I had no idea, had used it once
> many moons ago
> and found it complex, horrible and a pain to understand.
> What I didn't
> realize for another 6+ months was that I needed to
> understand and
> learn the MSI fundamentals - your real question to any
> potential
> employee should be "are you willing to learn?"
> 
> The hardest part about Windows Installer is the debugging,
> not the
> writing. Rather than having your interviewee write a quick
> installation package, how about having them open an
> existing package
> in ORCA and review/debug/explain it? Maybe show them an
> error log and
> ask them what could be causing the issue? (e.g.
> non-deferred CA trying
> to write to HKLM has problems with registry
> virtualization)
> 
> Scripted custom actions are a no-no, I would say anyone
> with any
> "real" setup experience knows this... within 6 months I
> noticed
> problems with scripts written by my predecessor and within
> 12 months
> I'd pushed to eliminate them completely. (was still using
> InstallShield at this stage) -- I admit I still use
> VBScript in
> controlled environments such for our build process, however
> our
> released products are all native MSI with C++ CA's as
> required (I now
> use #define _USE_RTM_VERSION for all C++ CA's, something
> that was
> overlooked initially)
> 
> I think the best setup developers are not the best
> programmers,
> Windows Installer is all descriptive, not procedural. This
> is a *very*
> big generalization based on my own experience... but
> programmers are
> more likely to write a quick and dirty CA to "get it done"
> than figure
> out why things are breaking, or suggest to the developers
> that certain
> tasks be done post-install rather than during install.
> 
> Windows Installer is easy to learn, just read "The
> Definitive Guide to
> Windows Installer" and subscribe to the wix-users list and
> you're on
> your way. The problem I've found is that everyone else who
> doesn't
> have to write, maintain or debug installation wants to do
> *everything*
> in the MSI, being able to push back and suggest
> alternatives to doing
> something "in the MSI" is a huge part of my job.
> 
> Most people who *think* they know setup, don't. Consider
> hiring
> someone who can admit they don't know, but is willing and
> eager to
> learn... training from scratch is easier than retraining
> someone with
> bad practices ;)
> 
> Sascha
> 
> 
> P.S. Anyone who believes disabling UAC is an acceptable
> workaround for
> a broken CA should be escorted off the premises immediately
> :P
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 4:49 AM, Nathan Stohlmann
> <nathan.stohlm...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > This is probably a little bit off topic but I was
> thinking that this
> > list might have the right people for the discussion.
> >
> > We are doing some interviews for an installation
> developer position at
> > my company pretty soon and we got pretty burned with
> the person who
> > was previously in the role since I think we thought he
> had a better
> > handle of some of the fundamentals of installation
> development than it
> > turned out that he did. In an effort to keep that from
> happening again
> > we were thinking of coming up with some sort of
> exercise that could be
> > done during the interview that would show some level
> of proficiency.
> > Kind of like the classic "Write a sorting algorithm"
> sorts of
> > questions that are pretty common for more general
> development
> > positions.
> >
> > Has anyone had any really good installation
> development focused
> > interview exercises?
> >
> > My initial thought was to write up an installation
> package for some
> > sort of dummy software that had a few little
> requirements and have the
> > candidate verify the requirements were met by being
> able to point to
> > various points of the actual MSI where the requirement
> was
> > implemented. It's tempting to take that a step further
> and put a few
> > not so subtle bugs in the package to see if they catch
> them or not.
> > I'm not sure I can get a machine for the interviews
> though, but I'm
> > not sure if printing out a table dump from the MSI
> through something
> > like Orca would translate well enough. Thoughts?
> >
> > Thanks in advance for any responses.
> >
> > (And if you're in the Twin Cities metro area and are
> looking for an
> > installation development position, ping me privately
> and I'll see
> > about getting your resume to my manager)
> >
> > --
> > --Nathan Stohlmann
> > Minneapolis, MN USA
> > nathan.stohlm...@gmail.com
> >
> >
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