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No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

blog.interviewing.io

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Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#371

Post by somebodythere »

reificator wrote: post #326
kamaal wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I once put in about 8 hours on a take home project at a company (well known in these parts) that I had tremendous respect for, only to get an email back with "sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience". Looks like this is a common pattern with take home projects. I faced a very similar problem a few weeks back. Though they called me for the interview. The general approach is to take some ones overn…

> And then after two rounds of interviews they rejected me because apparently 'cat error.log | grep 'ERROR:' | wc -l' is not how real programmers find error count, but write python programs every single time they face such a problem. bulletsDodged += 1

Real programmers would write bulletsDodged++;

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#372

Post by cheez »

jsd1982 wrote: post #308

I was once asked in a web development interview how to asynchronously fetch a resource. I answered something to the effect of "you just add a `true` parameter in the xhr.open() call somewhere, probably the second or third parameter" without being too specific about it since I did not have it memorized. The interviewer did not accept this response and after every rebuttal of mine he just responded with "no" each time…

Interviews are a waste of time. We need to refuse to do them.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#373

Post by ethanwillis »

kstrauser wrote: post #354
kamaal wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I once put in about 8 hours on a take home project at a company (well known in these parts) that I had tremendous respect for, only to get an email back with "sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience". Looks like this is a common pattern with take home projects. I faced a very similar problem a few weeks back. Though they called me for the interview. The general approach is to take some ones overn…

> because apparently 'cat error.log | grep 'ERROR:' | wc -l' is not how real programmers find error count I've been on the other end of that, where we were explicit that the goal of the exercise was to solve problem X with technology Y so that we could gauge the applicant's skill with Y. And yet, we'd still get submissions that used Z because it was way better at solving X than Y was. Well, yeah, we know that. That's…

If you know that Z is the best way to solve X then why would you ask them to solve X with Y? Why not give them a problem to solve that Y is best suited for?

It sounds like you got multiple solutions that used the best tool Z, but yet you reward people for being fine with using an inferior tool. That's not exactly the pool of applicants I'd want to bias my search towards.

Edit: I just want to add that I don't mean to sound harsh. And maybe it would help to understand what X, Y, and Z are in your case. Details do matter!

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#374

Post by abfan1127 »

hoka-one-one wrote: post #259
vector_spaces wrote: post #246

I'm so disappointed to read comments on this thread to the effect of "There's nothing in it for the company but risk". I once put in about 8 hours on a take home project at a company (well known in these parts) that I had tremendous respect for, only to get an email back with "sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience". I asked them for a couple quick points on what I could have done better. I had ze…

I had a guy at Qualcomm Austin tell me to read Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation by Muchnik. I read it and a few months later I was working for Qualcomm San Diego. I've thought about thanking him but I doubt he'd remember me, it was such a small comment.

hello fellow Qualcommian! I'm in Tempe, AZ.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#376

Post by safety-third »

vector_spaces wrote: post #246

I'm so disappointed to read comments on this thread to the effect of "There's nothing in it for the company but risk". I once put in about 8 hours on a take home project at a company (well known in these parts) that I had tremendous respect for, only to get an email back with "sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience". I asked them for a couple quick points on what I could have done better. I had ze…

You probably wouldn't like the feedback. Most interviews these days are random because our field is obsessed with finding 10x megarockstar GTD superprogrammers. I can't think of a single field where interviews are such awful experiences.

All interviews could be simple Q&A sessions to make sure the person isn't a charlatan and then sell them on the position.

HR isn't a science, and it never will be. The FAANGs spend god knows how much time and money on it, and they admit that their interviews aren't better than a coin flip.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#377

Post by sroussey »

vector_spaces wrote: post #246

I'm so disappointed to read comments on this thread to the effect of "There's nothing in it for the company but risk". I once put in about 8 hours on a take home project at a company (well known in these parts) that I had tremendous respect for, only to get an email back with "sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience". I asked them for a couple quick points on what I could have done better. I had ze…

Did they pay you for the 8hr?

They should have.

And there is less risk in assessing a piece of work you paid for.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#378

Post by Can_Not »

anon102010 wrote: post #363

Hiring for a technical position. Women's studies major with some recent more technical junior work experience (her technical role was vague). Brought her in for an interview. Compared to others, not even close to what we needed (and didn't know what she didn't know). She went out of her way to both explain to us what idiots we were for not hiring her and demanding detailed feedback on where she was weak and others we…

Why would you mention her major instead of mentioning that other candidates had more relevant skills? It seems to me that you're grinding an axe for that women's study degree instead of giving her useful feedback.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#379

Post by exabrial »

Remember to thank your Lawmaker friends as to why we can't do this.

In other parts of life, all of us would gladly do this to benefit a person when it doesn't directly benefit us. But threatened with civil fines and ultimately jail time, most of us choose the sensible 'ghost em' route.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#380

Post by PopeDotNinja »

anon102010 wrote: post #363

Hiring for a technical position. Women's studies major with some recent more technical junior work experience (her technical role was vague). Brought her in for an interview. Compared to others, not even close to what we needed (and didn't know what she didn't know). She went out of her way to both explain to us what idiots we were for not hiring her and demanding detailed feedback on where she was weak and others we…

Don't reject someone because of their college degree. That is irrelevant. Reject someone because they don't know their stuff.
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