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Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

blog.interviewing.io

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Re: Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

#261

Post by dagw »

alxlaz wrote: post #91
ravenstine wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's another similar problem that I'm seeing that I don't think has been pointed out before. Recently, I've been applying for web developer positions and am coming across applications with these sorts of questions: - What's the coolest thing you've done both in life and at work? - What are your dreams? - Where do you see yourself in 10 years? I certainly do have answers for these questions, but I can't tell if the…

I've made a point for myself to never ask questions like "what are your dreams" or "where do you see yourself in 10 years" in an interview, ever. For a long time, I've used these as a filter, too. Getting this kind of question in an interview is a big red flag for me and a huge disappointment. Let me elaborate a little. My dreams are none of an interviewer's bloody business. I'm here to work not share the things that…

"what are your dreams" or "where do you see yourself in 10 years"

To me these are two entirely different classes of questions. The first is open ended and meaningless, while the second is directly connected to your career and thus highly relevant for both you and the company. I know where I want to be in 10 years career wise and thus I want to know if this job can help me get there. Equally the company probably knows where it wants to be in 10 years and as such wants to know if you can help it get there.

Re: Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

#262

Post by Flenser »

leeny wrote: post #124
daenz wrote: post #107

It makes me thrilled to see that we're finally talking about data around gender issues, regardless of what that data actually says. It seems like we're finally getting over the taboo and we're mature enough to look at facts.

If you liked this post, you might also like this one: http://blog.interviewing.io/we-built-voice-modulation-to-mas... TL;DR We made women sound like men and men sound like women in technical interviews and found that it didn't move the needle.

This is the most interesting finding though:

> women leave interviewing.io roughly 7 times as often as men after they do badly in an interview.

That could indicate a more general difference in men and women that could be effectively targeted to keep more women in tech.

Re: Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

#263

Post by Double_a_92 »

cheez wrote: post #219
Spooky23 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've observed that in pursuing the 1% unicorn candidate, many people step in unicorn shit and hire smart people who are bad employees. My goal is to not hire the bottom 50% of the workforce in a given discipline. IMO, you're better off building teams that make the average+ person more productive.

Yes! I love to build teams with average people that create above average results due to their configuration. It's my secret sauce.

Reminds me of that baseball movie where a manager hired low-value players, that very extremely good at only something.

Re: Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

#264

Post by FabHK »

ricardoreis wrote: post #249
pmiller2 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see these types of questions as the sign of an inexperienced interviewer. Given how many inexperienced interviewers one can see interviewing at tech companies, I would call that a chartreuse flag at best due to lack of signal.

I see these types of questions as the sign of an inexperienced interviewer. Yup - that's all it is. And you're going to have a certain envelope of negatives (usually far worse than this) in any environment. So while it does make the flag a bit bless verdant... to call it a "red flag" seems to be a bit of a stretch.

Props to both of you for the lovely synonyms for "greenish" :-)

(And as for the substance: agreed, and a capable interviewee should know how to work around those questions and similarly silly ones, like "what's your greatest weakness?". It's a two-way street. And while it's not a positive datapoint, it's hardly a KO-criterion. (viridescent? aquamarine? turquoise? :) )

Re: Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

#265

Post by Double_a_92 »

beat wrote: post #64
ravenstine wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's another similar problem that I'm seeing that I don't think has been pointed out before. Recently, I've been applying for web developer positions and am coming across applications with these sorts of questions: - What's the coolest thing you've done both in life and at work? - What are your dreams? - Where do you see yourself in 10 years? I certainly do have answers for these questions, but I can't tell if the…

I don't use these questions when interviewing, but I do try to find out what really excites/motivates candidates (assuming they've survived the first ten minutes of technical, where I probably already have a no and I'm just trying to finish politely). For me, interviewing the good candidates is largely about deciding whether or not I really want to work with this person - I've already decided they're technically comp…

But how does not having an exiting hobby make them an asshole?

Re: Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

#266

Post by jobigoud »

spectre256 wrote: post #184
nestorD wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a great article on the fact that everybody hires only the top 1% : https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/

The fact that people still parrot the top 1% idea after it was pretty thoroughly debunked by Joel almost 15 years ago is...interesting.

We are still making many of the mistakes laid out in The Mythical Man-Month so…

Re: Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

#267

Post by tremon »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #146
alxlaz wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've made a point for myself to never ask questions like "what are your dreams" or "where do you see yourself in 10 years" in an interview, ever. For a long time, I've used these as a filter, too. Getting this kind of question in an interview is a big red flag for me and a huge disappointment. Let me elaborate a little. My dreams are none of an interviewer's bloody business. I'm here to work not share the things that…

"Where do you see yourself in 10 years" is a simple way of asking how you expect your career to advance and what they should expect of you in the future - It's totally reasonable for a company to be interested in an employee's personal growth plans and yes, your long-term commitments to yourself If you don't have any work-safe dreams, you might want to see a psychiatrist. Again, though, you've misinterpreted the ques…

They're looking for you to express your spark of passion

That's the charitable reading. The adversarial reading is that they're looking for the emotional buttons to push to maximize your output while minimizing their investment in you.

Re: Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

#268

Post by chupasaurus »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #263
cheez wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! I love to build teams with average people that create above average results due to their configuration. It's my secret sauce.

Reminds me of that baseball movie where a manager hired low-value players, that very extremely good at only something.

"Moneyball" is the name of both the movie and the book it was based on.

Re: Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

#269

Post by camdenlock »

scarejunba wrote: post #226
sean2 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as practice interviews: Companies always take the full time they scheduled for your interview no matter when they've decided you failed. Then a week later they may drop you an email informing you that they've chosen to pass on your candidacy. They then ignore or deny any request for feedback (something about liability). So, interviewing with most companies may never inform you about why you're getting rejected…

No. That's not true. Many companies will early exit and we'll give feedback that indicates what broad areas weren't a good fit. We won't say "You should have used a probabilistic data structure here instead of a standard set" but we'll say "We expected a different experience from our whiteboard coding sessions." And then maybe something about the interview process being imperfect but the best that we have available t…

> "We expected a different experience from our whiteboard coding sessions."

Damn, that made my skin crawl. If I heard that, I'd be thanking my lucky stars that I didn't get hired by such a company.

Re: Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

#270

Post by scarejunba »

camdenlock wrote: post #269
scarejunba wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. That's not true. Many companies will early exit and we'll give feedback that indicates what broad areas weren't a good fit. We won't say "You should have used a probabilistic data structure here instead of a standard set" but we'll say "We expected a different experience from our whiteboard coding sessions." And then maybe something about the interview process being imperfect but the best that we have available t…

> "We expected a different experience from our whiteboard coding sessions." Damn, that made my skin crawl. If I heard that, I'd be thanking my lucky stars that I didn't get hired by such a company.

Oh ouch. That was not the intention but I can be socially awkward at times. Perhaps you can help me understand what I said that was wrong?

Happy to adjust the way I communicate so long as I can express that it was writing out code that didn't work as opposed to architecture and/or technical communication.

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