171–180 of 239 posts
Now I really want to know how I save myself before the candle burns through the rope.
*note that it sorta doesn't matter because cats are notoriously good at climbing trees and likely wouldn't wait for you to fall.
On the plus side: I wholeheartedly agree with all those points. On the contra side: Nothing of this really felt like it helped me. I found interviewing people absolutely horrible and almost never had a good feeling. People who seemed like they may have been a good fit didn't get offers for one reason or another, some people seemed awesome in the interview and then weren't. Overall I've been happy with the decisions I…
At my last employer, I sat in on an interview for a co-op with my boss. After asking the interviewee some questions the conversation went basically like this: Boss: Do you have any questions for me? Co-op: No Boss: Would you like to know about the company? What we do? Co-op: No I couldn't help myself from laughing. I know he's just a student, but he's still a 20 something adult. No interest at all, just looking to ch…
I could see meaningful questions about vacation policy and overtimes and such, but that comes with experience and a.) youngsters wants pretend how they don't care bout weekends in work b.) companies lie about that sort of thing.
I know that this attitude exist so I will ask something, it is not about that. But, the exercise is mostly empty for someone who is inexperienced and does not fully know yet what are situations where he fit vs where he does not fit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll judge them all the same because it's not illegal to give someone feedback. Unless you have discriminatory hiring practices in which case the judgement holds true, or your legal team is so far up their own and everybody else's ass, the judgement still holds true.
Yes, it basically is illegal to let a non-lawyer give someone feedback. Not literally, but negligent of a company to allow.
Lately I have done a few at home code challenges for companies. They usually take several hours. They are perfectly functional and use minimal code but, the only feedback I receive is: "we're not moving forward". They won't discuss anything with me. The only impression I get is that your company is terrible and I will never respond to your recruiters again.
I hate these take-home code projects, to a point where I won't do them for similar reasons that you mentioned ("we're not moving forward, we will keep your resume on file!"). It's sort of a selfish way of interviewing; to write good code for these projects, it can take me upwards of 8 hours. An engineer where I live (NYC) can fairly easily make $50/hour (usually more), so they effectively expect me to give $350-450 o…
The good data science take-home assignments I've done suggest a 2-3 hour limit and they were correctly scoped for that limit, although technically there's no incentive for the candidate to stick to that limit.
The worst take home I did suspiciously did not have an expected time limit (but was due in 48 hours after issuing). It was extremely broadly scoped, and as a result it took 16 hours; even after a couple years as a data scientist now and familiar with time-saving tricks, it would still take 8 hours minimum if you weren't already familiar with the company's data.
So these kinds of posts keep showing up. How are interviews for not-software-engineers conducted? ie. how do you interview for a business analyst role, or a sales and marketing role? I have to assume that those roles suffer from the same sorts of issues a SE job does -- that someone can talk a good game but not be able to perform in the role.
The fact that a work sample test predicts work success makes a lot of sense - have them do the thing you want to pay them to do and evaluate how well they do it. Duh!
You should screen folks using the work that they are going to be doing for you. Are you hiring someone to code on a whiteboard? No? Then why are they doing that in the interview?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At my last employer, I sat in on an interview for a co-op with my boss. After asking the interviewee some questions the conversation went basically like this: Boss: Do you have any questions for me? Co-op: No Boss: Would you like to know about the company? What we do? Co-op: No I couldn't help myself from laughing. I know he's just a student, but he's still a 20 something adult. No interest at all, just looking to ch…
I just don't really get this attitude. What exactly you want me to ask assuming I know salary and position? General information about company is usually right there on the website. I am really not sure what exactly the hiring manager is supposed to be asked at that moment, especially by someone young who does not have enough experience to distinguish between lying hiring manager and the one that tells the truth. I co…
"Who are your most important customers?"
"What is your monthly recurring revenue?"
"What is your best selling product?"
"What's one thing you like about working here?"
"What's one thing you don't like about working here?"
This isn't very difficult. Just requires a slight interest in the industry you plan to work in.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate these take-home code projects, to a point where I won't do them for similar reasons that you mentioned ("we're not moving forward, we will keep your resume on file!"). It's sort of a selfish way of interviewing; to write good code for these projects, it can take me upwards of 8 hours. An engineer where I live (NYC) can fairly easily make $50/hour (usually more), so they effectively expect me to give $350-450 o…
"I typically write in a very functional lispy style (even when I did JavaScript), and while the overall understanding of FP has improved in the last couple years, a lot of the interviewers would simply not understand what I was writing, and ask me to write it "more object oriented"." Which is a good way for you to weed out companies where the developers are low to average intelligence. Not understanding basic functio…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate these take-home code projects, to a point where I won't do them for similar reasons that you mentioned ("we're not moving forward, we will keep your resume on file!"). It's sort of a selfish way of interviewing; to write good code for these projects, it can take me upwards of 8 hours. An engineer where I live (NYC) can fairly easily make $50/hour (usually more), so they effectively expect me to give $350-450 o…
> to write good code for these projects, it can take me upwards of 8 hours. The good data science take-home assignments I've done suggest a 2-3 hour limit and they were correctly scoped for that limit, although technically there's no incentive for the candidate to stick to that limit. The worst take home I did suspiciously did not have an expected time limit (but was due in 48 hours after issuing). It was extremely b…
16 hours is kind of insane and you have my sympathies. My record is around 10 hours.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doctors have to go through a rather grueling licensing process. The job interview is mostly about determining mutual interest. Doctors also need to go through periodic re-credentialing. To put it bluntly, when a doctor has credentials, you at least know that they're competent; and more competent than 2-4 1-hour quizzes.
Speaking as a licensed attorney, passing the bar does not mean that you're competent.
I look to see if I can trust them to not do dumb things. That's really it. What's the ego, arrogance, competence, willingness to ask questions, interrogate things, redefine problems to be less work (or none at all). Do you see what's not there? Programming language competency. Database knowledge. Things like that. I've been hired as a Ruby programmer, I didn't know Ruby. I was hired for mainframes in the 90s - I had…
In a sense, they were right. I have noticed myself increasingly comfortable with new codebases whenever I change jobs, so experience definitely counts for something.