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How I Interview

rkoutnik.com

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Re: How I Interview

#81

Post by [deleted] »

deathanatos wrote: post #71
koevet wrote: post #62

I have decided that I will no longer take technical interviews. I have 25 years of software development under my belt, I published a book, spoke at various conferences in Europe, have a Github profile (admittedly not very lively), worked for well-established enterprises and have great references. Why shall I still prove myself? If I was a senior lawyer or an architect joining a new studio, I strongly doubt I would ha…

> Why shall I still prove myself? Because we see candidates claiming that level of experience that cannot construct a simple for loop.

[deleted]

Re: How I Interview

#82

Post by estefan »

koevet wrote: post #62

I have decided that I will no longer take technical interviews. I have 25 years of software development under my belt, I published a book, spoke at various conferences in Europe, have a Github profile (admittedly not very lively), worked for well-established enterprises and have great references. Why shall I still prove myself? If I was a senior lawyer or an architect joining a new studio, I strongly doubt I would ha…

I'm not sure I'd go for that TBH. I've seen candidates who are good on paper (one former university lecturer springs to mind) who was incredibly difficult to understand and his experience was irrelevant.

We typically need to hire quickly, and having to wait 2 weeks - and coach someone on all the different components, create accounts for them, etc. - is not "free" for us.

If you're that good you should blaze through the technical questions in half an hour, and give us all confidence we're not wasting each others' time.

Then again you're a freelancer to so it's a bit different to being hired as a contractor/permie. But either way, we want the hiring gap filled, not as something we have to revisit after 2 weeks before we decide whether we have to go back out to market.

Put it this way. You come in for an interview, refuse the tech questions and we're left thinking "this guy looks good on paper, so why doesn't he want to explain what a design pattern is?". Straight after you a guy comes in who answers the technical questions OK. Who do you think we'd hire?

Re: How I Interview

#83

Post by enraged_camel »

tokenadult wrote: post #48

I wonder if the OP has ever read any actual research on effective hiring practices. I have a FAQ for that.[1] The short answer that research gives is to set up an actual work-sample test for the job in question. The longer answer is to add in a VALIDATED test of the worker's general cognitive ability. But if that kind of test isn't validated, the employer can be subject to legal consequences in the United States if t…

I can confirm that this works incredibly well. At my previous job, my team was responsible for technical training. So our interview process involved having the interviewee give a 30-minute presentation and teach us (the interviewers) a technical topic. Everyone we hired ended up having stellar job performance.

Re: How I Interview

#84

Post by estefan »

phamilton wrote: post #42
lilcarlyung wrote: post #6

Would be funny to come into an interview as the candidate and give the employer pre-packaged tasks to complete to evaluate them on, to decide if I as the candidate actually want to work there.

I've been toying with the idea of asking for a reverse interview. I get to ask about the challenges they've solved in great detail and how they dealt with potential and actual issues. They get to answer and decide to I know what I'm talking about.

Do it. You'll quickly find that their interview questions go out the window since you're demonstrating your knowledge obliquely: "Oh I've never really seen the benefit of docker for most architectures". Cue discussion on architecture, SaaS, devops, etc... I would far rather meet a candidate like this.

Re: How I Interview

#85

Post by koevet »

estefan wrote: post #82
koevet wrote: post #62

I have decided that I will no longer take technical interviews. I have 25 years of software development under my belt, I published a book, spoke at various conferences in Europe, have a Github profile (admittedly not very lively), worked for well-established enterprises and have great references. Why shall I still prove myself? If I was a senior lawyer or an architect joining a new studio, I strongly doubt I would ha…

I'm not sure I'd go for that TBH. I've seen candidates who are good on paper (one former university lecturer springs to mind) who was incredibly difficult to understand and his experience was irrelevant. We typically need to hire quickly, and having to wait 2 weeks - and coach someone on all the different components, create accounts for them, etc. - is not "free" for us. If you're that good you should blaze through t…

Talking about patterns, technologies, how I would architect/design a specific solution or how I would approach a technical problem is not a technical interview, IMO. And I would be glad to answer these questions, which are fair and interesting. What I'm talking about are the quizzes and the puzzles, the invert-a-binary-tree riddles or, as it happened to a friend recently, to write a full blown application with tests and stuff and don't even bother explaining why the application was rejected.

It doesn't make sense anyway. In 25 years, the sheer amount of cowboys I have seen literally bringing down projects out of incompetence and lack of humility is staggering. And these guys were hired out of technical riddles.

Re: How I Interview

#86

Post by madez »

s3nnyy wrote: post #65

I live in Switzerland and I used to code for a living. As an external, I hire engineers for different startups in Zurich. As I got deeper into IT-recruiting, I realised that candidate filtering at the top of the funnel is fundamentally broken. The market for software engineers is different from the market for - let's say - actors. Especially for senior developers there is way more demand than there is supply. This ha…

Don’t get me wrong, but your comment reads like an ad.

Re: How I Interview

#87

Post by estefan »

koevet wrote: post #85
estefan wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I'd go for that TBH. I've seen candidates who are good on paper (one former university lecturer springs to mind) who was incredibly difficult to understand and his experience was irrelevant. We typically need to hire quickly, and having to wait 2 weeks - and coach someone on all the different components, create accounts for them, etc. - is not "free" for us. If you're that good you should blaze through t…

Talking about patterns, technologies, how I would architect/design a specific solution or how I would approach a technical problem is not a technical interview, IMO. And I would be glad to answer these questions, which are fair and interesting. What I'm talking about are the quizzes and the puzzles, the invert-a-binary-tree riddles or, as it happened to a friend recently, to write a full blown application with tests…

Oh right. In that case fair enough. I'd far rather have a walkthrough of some of your github code to see your style and reasoning.

As a Good Person, you should get taken on by clients who don't have this requirement while others who do lose you.

I've only done one of those tests in the last couple of years because I wanted the (not insignificant) pay rise and it gave me an opportunity to learn something. It's all about negotiating power (they had more).

But yeah, in general I don't have to bother with them. OTOH I don't see them as entirely negative because hopefully it should mean you'll be working with competent people (provided the tasks are small demonstrations and not full applications which smacks of incompetence).

Re: How I Interview

#88

Post by s3nnyy »

madez wrote: post #86
s3nnyy wrote: post #65

I live in Switzerland and I used to code for a living. As an external, I hire engineers for different startups in Zurich. As I got deeper into IT-recruiting, I realised that candidate filtering at the top of the funnel is fundamentally broken. The market for software engineers is different from the market for - let's say - actors. Especially for senior developers there is way more demand than there is supply. This ha…

Don’t get me wrong, but your comment reads like an ad.

I am definitely biased: Besides coding, I source, screen, and interview software engineers that want to move to Switzerland.

Re: How I Interview

#89

Post by robmcm »

deathanatos wrote: post #71
koevet wrote: post #62

I have decided that I will no longer take technical interviews. I have 25 years of software development under my belt, I published a book, spoke at various conferences in Europe, have a Github profile (admittedly not very lively), worked for well-established enterprises and have great references. Why shall I still prove myself? If I was a senior lawyer or an architect joining a new studio, I strongly doubt I would ha…

> Why shall I still prove myself? Because we see candidates claiming that level of experience that cannot construct a simple for loop.

because swift remove the ++ operator?

Re: How I Interview

#90

Post by koevet »

estefan wrote: post #82
koevet wrote: post #62

I have decided that I will no longer take technical interviews. I have 25 years of software development under my belt, I published a book, spoke at various conferences in Europe, have a Github profile (admittedly not very lively), worked for well-established enterprises and have great references. Why shall I still prove myself? If I was a senior lawyer or an architect joining a new studio, I strongly doubt I would ha…

I'm not sure I'd go for that TBH. I've seen candidates who are good on paper (one former university lecturer springs to mind) who was incredibly difficult to understand and his experience was irrelevant. We typically need to hire quickly, and having to wait 2 weeks - and coach someone on all the different components, create accounts for them, etc. - is not "free" for us. If you're that good you should blaze through t…

Also, don't you think that the technical competence of a candidate is just a fraction of the elements required to work in a company? What if the guy is a complete toxic worker or dishonest etc. etc. It is not that difficult to pass a technical interview, after all.

I think that two weeks are a good time-frame to evaluate a mutual "love" and would also help better understand the soft-skill and how well the candidate fits in the company.

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