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Show HN: Touvlo – Technical Interviewing for Hardware Engineers (By Humans)

touvlo.co

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Re: Show HN: Touvlo – Technical Interviewing for Hardware Engineers (By Humans)

#21

Post by cporios »

stratosgear wrote: post #20
cporios wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re both greek, it’s meant in a joking way :) What do you think of the name?

Greek here. I would NOT want to associate in any way with a site named Touvlo, even if it is used in a joking manner. Too offensive! For a non native speaker, ignorance is bliss. But once they found out what Touvlo really means, i still bet they would feel cheated, and/or embarrassed. Therefore in both cases, it's a no go. Just my 2 cents.

Thank you, this is good feedback. We’re both native greek speakers, and we meant it in a lighthearted way, but you’re right that not everyone will see it this way.

Re: Show HN: Touvlo – Technical Interviewing for Hardware Engineers (By Humans)

#22

Post by cushychicken »

cporios wrote: post #13
cushychicken wrote: post #3

Do you say “hardware” to mean “mechanical engineering”? That’s kind of what it seems like from your description and screenshots. It’s probably worth making this a bit more descriptive - to some people “hardware” means PCBs and electronics. (I’m one of them!) It’s an interesting idea and I like that you’ve stood up something minimal to test your product offering quickly. What’s your elevator pitch for your value propo…

That’s a good point regarding hardware in the name. Eventually we’d like to do all hardware and more (e.g. architecture), but currently our expertise is in mechanical and robotics engineering. Our pitch: We make recruiting easier, better and cheaper for the companies building the hardware of tomorrow, by letting them focus on their product rather than repetitive candidate skill assessments. Currently, senior engineer…

That’s an interesting thesis.

I know recruitment firms serve some of the phone screen purpose you’re proposing, but just with basic Q/A of resumes.

I think, if I were looking to hire you, I’d be wondering how alike your working style was to that of me and my team. I’d want to know how much I could trust your judgment in a candidate’s technical approach.

I’d also offer that you can’t really outsource the job of evaluating cultural fit - which is still really important in spite of all the baggage that term carries.

Re: Show HN: Touvlo – Technical Interviewing for Hardware Engineers (By Humans)

#23

Post by spapas82 »

cporios wrote: post #21
stratosgear wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greek here. I would NOT want to associate in any way with a site named Touvlo, even if it is used in a joking manner. Too offensive! For a non native speaker, ignorance is bliss. But once they found out what Touvlo really means, i still bet they would feel cheated, and/or embarrassed. Therefore in both cases, it's a no go. Just my 2 cents.

Thank you, this is good feedback. We’re both native greek speakers, and we meant it in a lighthearted way, but you’re right that not everyone will see it this way.

I would also agree with the grandfather comment. The name is a little too offensive when used in a professional environment...

Re: Show HN: Touvlo – Technical Interviewing for Hardware Engineers (By Humans)

#24

Post by cporios »

cushychicken wrote: post #22
cporios wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a good point regarding hardware in the name. Eventually we’d like to do all hardware and more (e.g. architecture), but currently our expertise is in mechanical and robotics engineering. Our pitch: We make recruiting easier, better and cheaper for the companies building the hardware of tomorrow, by letting them focus on their product rather than repetitive candidate skill assessments. Currently, senior engineer…

That’s an interesting thesis. I know recruitment firms serve some of the phone screen purpose you’re proposing, but just with basic Q/A of resumes. I think, if I were looking to hire you, I’d be wondering how alike your working style was to that of me and my team. I’d want to know how much I could trust your judgment in a candidate’s technical approach. I’d also offer that you can’t really outsource the job of evalua…

Thank you - we think we’re at least 10x better than a non-technical recruiter (also because they have completely different incentives).

These reservations are fair. Hopefully, eventually we’ll have enough endorsements and references to give you some confidence. If you’d like to give us a try before then, happy to talk whenever at founders@touvlo.co!

We don’t do cultural fit at all, and we don’t intend to. I agree this is very important, yet very difficult and inefficient to outsource. We don’t aim to replace all interviewing: becoming a better substitute for early-stage technical screening is more than enough.

Re: Show HN: Touvlo – Technical Interviewing for Hardware Engineers (By Humans)

#25

Post by Danaemp »

buescher wrote: post #17

Looks like a CAD operator's interview, not an engineering interview. I guess the basic DFM question is marginally engineering.

Good point! We do our best not to test any skills that would be tested in a CAD certification. Our questions and rubric don’t emphasize style for eg or comfort in a software. The collaborative CAD portion is a section where more complex engineering questions are answered, through a platform and in a way where they’re usually solved in the workplace. We view this as analogous to the coding portion of a software engineering interview.

Re: Show HN: Touvlo – Technical Interviewing for Hardware Engineers (By Humans)

#26

Post by cporios »

neilv wrote: post #5

Interesting. What kind of customers do you serve? (Non-hardware companies that just want to spin a product but no idea how? Companies that need lots of hardware engineers but don't want to interrupt their current ones to interview?) How are they thinking of hardware engineers? (Like an interchangeable commodity or one that can get a letter grade? Very transactional, maybe a gig?) Will your customers do substantial ad…

These are all great questions, thank you.

We don't want to serve non-hardware companies that are hiring their first hardware engineers. We want to serve companies of all sizes (including startups) that are building products that are so critical that they can't waste their senior engineers' time to do 10-20 technical interviews a week. These customers will care a lot about their hardware engineers.

Yes, our customers should do more interviewing for candidates that pass the Touvlo interview. We think that our service should be primarily a technical screening before the company invests more in additional interviewing, but you're free to use it for at any step of your recruiting process. There is also more to evaluate in a potential hire than technical skills (for example, cultural match).

> Why did I spend 4 years in engineering school, and build my professional track record, yet have to keep doing these negging tests? Does this company not employ anyone who can get a sense of a fellow engineer's skill and professionalism just by talking with them? Did they read my resume? And now they're not even administering the test themselves?

There's two parts to this: (1) On one hand, the interview should never feel like a negging test and the interview of a graduate should be completely different from the interview of a senior engineer with 5+ years of experience. And if you are extremely senior with an amazing professional track record, then perhaps no technical interviewing is necessary at all. (2) On the other hand, no one should feel offended for having to do a technical interview that matches their seniority and experience. It's outsourced to a third party company, because we can do it better and faster. Candidates will be happier, because they can interview outside business hours (incl. weekends) and have a positive experience. Also, the alternative in many cases is that the company won't bother interviewing the candidate at all, or worse, they might send a take-home test that takes hours to 100 candidates and then spend 0-3 minutes reviewing each.

Currently a job-seeker can not get their report card sent to multiple employers, however this is a good idea to consider after getting to a certain scale. At that point, we would essentially become the standard in hardware technical interviewing. Figuring out a fair payment model would be one of the challenges.

Re: Show HN: Touvlo – Technical Interviewing for Hardware Engineers (By Humans)

#27

Post by iancmceachern »

This is an interesting idea, the one challenge is this is really only a small part of the interview. This covers the CAD skills part, but where is the industry specific knowledge part, communication skills, presentation skills. I can't emphasize enough a "hardware" engineer that has 10 years of experience designing surgical robotics and one that has spent 10 years designing catheters or sunglasses may be wildly different in their suitability for a given role. Both use Solidworks, onshape, etc to design hardware, but these things are not the same. How do you address this challenge?

Re: Show HN: Touvlo – Technical Interviewing for Hardware Engineers (By Humans)

#28

Post by cporios »

iancmceachern wrote: post #27

This is an interesting idea, the one challenge is this is really only a small part of the interview. This covers the CAD skills part, but where is the industry specific knowledge part, communication skills, presentation skills. I can't emphasize enough a "hardware" engineer that has 10 years of experience designing surgical robotics and one that has spent 10 years designing catheters or sunglasses may be wildly diffe…

We don't want to replace all interviewing. We won't test for culture fit, or presentation skills (although we can test for some industry-specific knowledge and communication skills). You can think of it as technical screening stage.

Re: Show HN: Touvlo – Technical Interviewing for Hardware Engineers (By Humans)

#29

Post by buescher »

Danaemp wrote: post #25
buescher wrote: post #17

Looks like a CAD operator's interview, not an engineering interview. I guess the basic DFM question is marginally engineering.

Good point! We do our best not to test any skills that would be tested in a CAD certification. Our questions and rubric don’t emphasize style for eg or comfort in a software. The collaborative CAD portion is a section where more complex engineering questions are answered, through a platform and in a way where they’re usually solved in the workplace. We view this as analogous to the coding portion of a software engine…

You should show an interview example with engineering questions then. The questions in your example interview are technician-level. Checking a mechanical drawing for consistency is not an engineering task - the job that does that is "design checker". Design checkers typically have associate's degrees in drafting or CAD operation. The DFM question is arguably engineering but it could be even better answered by a machinist.

Engineering questions do not have to be complex, but they are different in kind.

Re: Show HN: Touvlo – Technical Interviewing for Hardware Engineers (By Humans)

#30

Post by iancmceachern »

cporios wrote: post #28
iancmceachern wrote: post #27

This is an interesting idea, the one challenge is this is really only a small part of the interview. This covers the CAD skills part, but where is the industry specific knowledge part, communication skills, presentation skills. I can't emphasize enough a "hardware" engineer that has 10 years of experience designing surgical robotics and one that has spent 10 years designing catheters or sunglasses may be wildly diffe…

We don't want to replace all interviewing. We won't test for culture fit, or presentation skills (although we can test for some industry-specific knowledge and communication skills). You can think of it as technical screening stage.

That's what I was hoping to dig into. If I'm at a surgical robotics company interviewing for a hardware engineer to design a robot arm, I'm going to give a completely different technical portion of the interview than if I were at a catheter company doing the same, or at a sunglasses company, or dialysis, etc. You could perhaps handle it by having "vertical" specific interview templates. Just thinking through the challenges to adopting this in my workflow. I wish you all the best!
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