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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

#271

Post by scarejunba »

pmiller2 wrote: post #244
scarejunba wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a non-trivial number of people are incapable of accepting feedback (even if only to discard later) and react in anger. That's unpleasant for everyone. Best to avoid it. That's a safe neutral ground.

Right. It's a tragedy of the commons type situation. Ultimately, everyone would be better off if companies would tell candidates why they were rejected, but nobody does, because it avoids a slightly unpleasant situation for no immediate benefit. Short-termism at its finest.

Early on in my career I actually did give someone some advice post an interview and what to read up on etc. He sent me an email thanking me. Then six months later he thanked me saying he got a job at what is now a famous startup after studying up on the topics I recommended (algos and data structures in general and the basics in particular - he wasn't a CS major).

I was proud of that one but man would it have been sensible of me to have asked him to re-apply at that time. I love working with people with that attitude.

Unfortunately, I had my first unpleasant interaction shortly after that and then have never given pointed feedback ever after. Is that really short-termism? I don't see the short-term/long-term implications. I only see that there's a lack of information and no way to prove that one is trustworthy enough to warrant the interaction.

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

#272

Post by keeptrying »

noonespecial wrote: post #38
taeric wrote: post #12

The practice interview point strikes me as odd. In large, because I have never done one. Do folks really typically do that many practice interviews? I don't even know how to study. I sometimes consider it, but have never spent more than an hour prepping for an interview. :( It worries me, because I know that interviewing is a skill. But are we not setting folks up to over index on that skill such that they have diffi…

I went through a phase where I interviewed for fun . When there's nothing on the line and you're treating it like a TV gameshow, the innate absurdity of the whole process is laugh-out-loud funny and a generally good time to be had.

How did u do? Sometimes having this attitude helps!

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

#273

Post by C1sc0cat »

twoquestions wrote: post #11

It doesn't help that job ads are wanting "Top 3% only!" or "Only top 1% Ninja Rockstars need apply!". Kind of reminds me of the market for singers or concert pianists, you absolutely need to be the best, even imperceptibly worse makes you unemployable. Should those of us who aren't top 5%/didn't go to a top school just find another industry, one where sub-perfect work doesn't actively make other people's jobs harder?

Where do you see those sort of job postings I haven't seen many of those sort of adds - a tiny hand full less that 5 that I remember.

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

#274

Post by benibela »

slededit wrote: post #237
fizx wrote: post #228

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. What's fun is that this isn't just a possibility, its likely! Despite the following being a clearly artificial argument, the general shape of it is true. Let's say that you can rate employees 1-10 on each of technical skill and employability/soft-skills, and that both are equally sou…

Microsoft in the 90s figured out how to work around that. Just silo them and have their manager do the external interfacing for them. This was assuming they really were at least an 8/10 which was required to make the whole thing worthwhile. That of course works much better when everyone has their own office so the angry outbursts are only heard by the 2-3 closest neighbors.

Or everyone works remotely, so no one hears their outbursts

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

#275

Post by C1sc0cat »

mdpopescu wrote: post #247
driverdan wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously I can't speak for every company but those types of questions are typically used as a filter. - Anyone who skips those questions are rejected outright. If you're not willing to put in a little time you're not interested enough to be considered. You'd be surprised how many people skip these questions. - If you've done something crazy cool or interesting it's a plus but if not it isn't a negative. - Can you co…

> ... those types of questions are typically used as a filter. Yep, same here. > Anyone who skips those questions are rejected outright. Any company using these questions is rejected outright. I'm looking for someone who is willing to give me money for code, not a wife.

That's a one sided view of work and how team dynamics work.

Please don't take this the wrong way but "presenting" in this way at an interview is not helping you.

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

#276

Post by C1sc0cat »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #156
beat wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often ask interviewees about a project they worked on that was very successful, and why it was successful - what did they like about it? That's a good way to find those passion points. It's also a good way to find weak candidates without independence or leadership skills, because they can't really talk about their role in a big success - they didn't have much of a role, usually. A flip-side question is to ask about…

projects they worked on that failed That's a bad one, considering that everyone is supposed to be upbeat and positive in the face of adversity. You can't place blame on management and the environment that was in no way conducive to success because that's not culturally acceptable. Are we supposed to prepare an answer for that question now as well because the true answer (unrealistic expectations from upper management…

Why and in which culture is this not acceptable

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

#277

Post by C1sc0cat »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #187
beat wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Are we supposed to prepare an answer for that question now as well ? Nope. I don't want a prepared answer. I want an honest answer. Hence throwing them a rough, non-technical question that absolutely will not be on the resume, but has been part of the career of any experienced candidate. "Autocratic management" isn't a good answer, because it's too general. What did autocratic management do? Were the requirements i…

How would a life scientist coming from Theranos before it became common knowledge that the company was a sham talk about their experience in a culturally acceptable manner? Developing reproducible blood tests from tiniest samples was never going to work, and upper management was actively malicious at that company. We now know where the blame was (with Holmes and Balwani), but if you started there because their projec…

how do you know that "reproducible tests from small samples " would never work? Is there an equivalent of Shannons law that you could prove this.

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

#278

Post by belorn »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #145
anon84598 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting, but I feel like it isn't as thorough as I would like. Men and women speak differently in ways that can't be masked by voice modulation and I suspect that phrasing, choice of vocabulary, intonation etc. also play a role in how people are perceived. My hypothesis would be that men are more familiar with how men speak, so if a woman also spoke like that, they would see an improvement. I'm not saying…

One day recently, my oldest commented on his observations that when he picks up food at the deli for us, he and other men say things like "Give me half a pound of potatoes." Women typically say things like "Can I have..." They sound like they are asking permission to eat even though they are a paying customer. My experience is that other people are weirded out when I talk in an empowered fashion like a man. Some peop…

After the 2016 election there was a bunch of articles exploring the different debates, and one theater group tested the idea of replaying one debate but reversing the genders. Every gesture and sentence copied by two actors. In that singular case the audience reported to not been weirded out by the female actor. It would be interesting if a more scientific study were done where recorded situations such as interviews are replayed with actors that gender reverse the scene while keeping wordings and body language intact, as it seems to conflict with the perception about what reaction people have when men and women use phrases and body language that of the opposite gender.

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

#279

Post by C1sc0cat »

RugnirViking wrote: post #123
geggam wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different from the past ?

Depends on how far you go back - it wasn't that long ago in the grand scheme of things that in most places/industries there was no reliable way to get information about job listings - your best bet was to go to a recruiter or go directly to the front desk and ask about vacancies

Or in the UK you read Computer Weekly and Computing (90% Job adds) and probably the Telegraph on a Thursday when the published the engineering jobs.

I got my first tech job out of the local news paper btw

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

#280

Post by mohaine »

ramphastidae wrote: post #163
mohaine wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done 3 interviews in the last couple weeks where candidates couldn't do a simple Python dictionary lookup. These were people with a Masters in CS and have Python as their primary language. I wouldn't worry about being an Impostor.

Am I missing something, or do you mean they didn't know `myDict['key'] `?

Yes. One candidate remembered to do it that way after some searching, the other never did.

Both started out by looping over the items in the dict and stopping at the correct one. Asking if there was a simpler way to get values out of dict didn't help.

The third candidate really didn't get far enough to get the dict wrong so I counted them as well but they may have known how to do a dict lookup.

Here is the exercise:

Given these dicts:

{"a":[1,2],"b":[3,4],"z":[5]} {"a":[66],"b":[77]}

Write a program in language of your choice that sums the common keys.

a and b are common so result is:

{"a":1+2+66,"b":3+4+77}

so output should be:

{"a":69,"b":84}

This exercise is stupid simple. Note this is in an IDE/Editor, not a whiteboard.

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