11–19 of 19 posts
What's the most important part of your job if you're a software developer in a pre-revenue startup? Hiring people who are smarter than you.
If you don't believe that, do your colleagues and investors a favor and quit.
I'm serious.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. A few times at Apple a real disaster would make it through the phone screen, and there would be a panic about what to do. Usually we just went through with it, but it always seemed to me to be more respectful to the candidate and the interviewing team to just pull the chute as soon as it was obvious. The real answer of course was to fix the phone screens, but that requires actual energy be put into thinking har…
Also, many of these "disaster" cases may simply be suffering from an unfortunate, but all too human cases of stage fright, especially if it's their first F2F at a big company like Apple. Some people just freeze up involuntarily, and trip all over their tongues when being grilled by people they look up to and respect. They're human beings, not quiz-answering machines, after all. Not that we need to slow down and make…
I thought about doing a SPICE in LoseThos. Everything is pointless, in jail.
God says... C:\Text\BIBLE.TXT
his brother pursued after Sheba the son of Bichri.
20:11 And one of Joab's men stood by him, and said, He that favoureth Joab, and he that is for David, let him go after Joab.
20:12 And Amasa wallowed in blood in the midst of the highway. And when the man saw that all the people stood still, he removed Amasa out of the highway into the field, and cast a cloth upon him, when he saw that every one that came by him stood still.
20:13 When he was removed out of the highway, all the people went on
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Here's my interveiw question:
double f=2.125;
printf("%016X\n",f);
I'd be strongly inclined, especially in the current hiring environment, to do whatever else was on the schedule anyway -- finish the interviews, take the candidate to lunch, sell them on the desirability of working at your company , whatever, even if I received obvious signals that it was not a mutual fit . The rationale is partially "Even if this particular candidate does not end up working for our organization, our…
Have you met these bay area social media people?
I applied at twitter a few years ago (a direct referral from ev). The first technical phone interviewer tweeted part of my resume along with a sarcastic comment before the call. He then proceeded to not be very friendly on the phone screen (and called 15 minutes late). A few days later, the second phone interviewer asked half the same questions as the first interviewer.
The recruiting staff was excellent, and the people I met on-site for interviews were great.
"Professional" to the engineering staff seems to mean "I'll do whatever makes me feel good as quickly as possible."
Since then, seems like everyone's just making it up as they go. Hiring, evals, reqs, QA/test, whatever. The pinnacle of methodology may have sucked, but at least we all pretended to try.
When I interview candidates now, when it's a "no", I chop it off asap. I give precise reasons why, as nicely as possible. It's fair, honest, constructive, and is how I would want to be treat. I also believe in the Roman Evaluation Method, where anything less than a yes by everyone is a no.
Alas, I'm a solo act in a large organization. eg, Another interviewer, even after it's a clear "No" (we compare notes via IM), let's things drag on, always doing the "do you have any questions for us?" bit, and then wraps up with a "our people will contact you..."
I'd be strongly inclined, especially in the current hiring environment, to do whatever else was on the schedule anyway -- finish the interviews, take the candidate to lunch, sell them on the desirability of working at your company , whatever, even if I received obvious signals that it was not a mutual fit . The rationale is partially "Even if this particular candidate does not end up working for our organization, our…
Conversely: the message behind the incredibly popular "bum's rush" technique of flushing sub-optimal candidates seems to be "aww, you sucked so bad, most likely your friends all suck, too -- so we might as well deter them from applying, also."
It's been a long time (late '90s) since I've seen a formalized (documented) interview process. It helped immensely. We basically treated recruiting like a sales funnel, had a ranking/scoring system, had self-selecting teams, etc. Since then, seems like everyone's just making it up as they go. Hiring, evals, reqs, QA/test, whatever. The pinnacle of methodology may have sucked, but at least we all pretended to try. Whe…
in the past, when i've been the interviewer, i've "kept going to the end". i've not interviewed people recently, but if that changes in the future i will try this approach.
(vaguely related - thinking back, at least twice, as the candidate, i've volunteered myself as not suitable for the job. one resulted in an early exit; the other limped awkwardly on.)
They don't need to know that there were other interviewers lined up after. And the others are thankful the "guaranteed no's" don't get to them.
I felt pretty terrible about it since it was 100% my fault that they wasted their time by coming in, but time is too valuable to throw good after bad...