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

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

#591

Post by pm24601 »

rchaud wrote: post #569
pm24601 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If feedback can be interpreted as being discriminatory, or reflective of bad company culture in general, well, word gets around. If the feedback can be interpreted in such a way .... then the rejection is discriminatory. Pure and simple. "Culture fit" reasons are code for bias. "Culture": * national origin * age * religion * gender * sexual orientation.... ... all protected classes, yet covered with the "culture fi…

I agree. Looking back at my comment, I did phrase it in a way that made it sound like "the company has no choice but to do this"; that wasn't my intention. Discrimination on the basis of the school you attended, your nationality/race/ethnicity, even what you choose to do in your free time, is likely to be behind more than a few rejections. "Culture fit" is a polite fig leaf to hide that.

Props for your recognition

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

#592

Post by ProZsolt »

hvidgaard wrote: post #424
safety-third wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find the article because its hidden behind Google's previously admitted coin flip, brain teasers. An interview only has one question to answer: How long will it take this person to do what I need? Everything after that is you trying to sell the company to the candidate. After you do the interviews, you pick the person who needs the least ramp time. Quietly staring at a person writing on a whiteboard while tak…

I simply have to disagree. The amount of unqualified candidates that have a decent CV and are reasonable to talk to, but completely unable to correctly write a while loop is too damn high. That is what my whiteboard questions filter out. They're super easy stuff such as "I give you as input a list of integers, return the index of the first consecutive pair of numbers that when added is 42 - you can use any language o…

Doing interviews (as an interviewer) greatly reduced my impostor syndrome as a junior software engineer. When a guy interviewed with 10+ years of "experience" couldn't write a for loop was eye opening.

I work really bad under pressure and don't like memorizing algorithms. I hate programming anything complex on a whiteboard or anyway on-site.

Simple stuff, like your example is fine. It's a good way to weed out charlatans. A few points what I consider a good test:

* No previous algorithm knowledge required.

* No ticks.

* An average candidate should finish it in 5 minutes. (So we gave them 10 mins)

* It can be written in 10-15 lines.

* Pseudocode is fine

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

#593

Post by joaogui1 »

yodsanklai wrote: post #454
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 recently interviewed at Google and Facebook. They provided valuable feedback at every stage of the process. It gave me a good impression on the companies culture and the people who work there, and only makes me want to re-apply in the future.

What kind of feedback? They never gave me any specific feedback when I interviewed

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

#594

Post by hx2a »

bigiain wrote: post #285
hoka-one-one wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do it anyway. You know if someone you don't remember from an interaction ages ago emailed you to say "Hey, you probably don't remember this, but you once told me $thing, so I took $action, and now I've achieved $outcome. Thanks you for that, it really helped my career!", it'd make you feel great and would probably be the highlight of your day, right?

Earlier today I was sitting in a presentation by a faculty member who included a slide with an email quote from a former student who did exactly what you said right before the presentation. It absolutely made his day. And I know the former student and have a hunch he reads HackerNews.

This also made my day because I saw the real-world impact of something on HackerNews. And perhaps it will make your day to know your comment has influenced more people than the poster you were replying to.

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

#595

Post by KwisatzHaderack »

The article and many of these comments assume that hiring decisions are made entirely based on talent. But hiring decisions are equally if not more influenced on the vague and often problematic "culture-fit".

If the company is being completely honest, half the time, the feedback would sound like "You're a talented engineer but you're not a great culture fit", which can open the company up to litigation. Especially if the culture-fit reasons are specifically based on demographics.

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

#596

Post by Afton »

Zarel wrote: post #514
Afton wrote: post #7

I got verbal feedback exactly one time (at Microsoft) during my attempt to land a post-1-year of university internship. I had solved the algorithm in a few minutes, but when trying to code it up, I struggled a fair amount before figuring it out. The feedback I got was "You seem like a smart person, who hasn't done very much coding. That makes you a bad risk. Go practice programming and come back next year". It was in…

Oddly, I had the exact opposite experience interviewing at Microsoft. I blazed through all the questions the manager asked, and the manager told me I was the most talented person he'd ever interviewed and would definitely get the job, and then I didn't get the job, and got no further feedback. It was the most confusing interview process I'd ever been in. I sent him to ask him if there was some sort of mistake, and he…

Yeah, big company, lots of variation in the interview process. Ultimately, the hiring manager has final authority, but if someone came out strong against you for some reason, they might be loathe to override. But it does sound like a strange experience. Just consider it an anti-loop. (https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goo...)

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

#597

Post by Afton »

RandallBrown wrote: post #289
criddell wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You seem like a smart person, who hasn't done very much coding. That makes you a bad risk, Assuming Microsoft actually measures this stuff, that's kind of surprising to me. I've never placed much weight on being able to write a program on the spot.

It's been awhile since I last interviewed at Microsoft, but the only coding I did was on a whiteboard. The best part about it? I was already a full time employee at Microsoft. I just wanted to switch teams. I still had to do a full interview loop with the team and well... I didn't get the job.

I interviewed several people who wanted internal transfers. People who took 30 minutes to write a function like "write a function that takes an array of ints and returns the largest value". I have no idea how they got hired in the first place.

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

#598

Post by safety-third »

hvidgaard wrote: post #440
safety-third wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not be shocked. I meant it when I said to weed out the charlatans. I certainly do some basic FizzBuzz. I do it over the phone and in-person because sometimes they get a friend to do the phone interview. There is a giant difference between this and the current whiteboard interview fad. I don't think false negatives are good. How many positions go unfilled for months and years? A lot. At a larger company, it wo…

> I don't think false negatives are good. How many positions go unfilled for months and years? A lot. At a larger company, it won't take long before they remove the position entirely. They might not be wrong to do so either. Eventually your bus factor goes to zero, and whole teams go away. I'd rather that happen, than hire unqualified people. Hire and then fire someone is damn expensive - months of salary and a lot o…

I have personally hired false positives. Like you say, they are expensive. I have never once hired someone who was literally incapable of doing the job. It's never because of work directly. A person who was incredibly professional in the interview turned into a massive asshole at the office. One fought good coding practices because he thought it was over-engineering. Another spent all day playing online poker on their phone. One spent their entire time at the office making Forth interpreters.

Doing 7 hours of whiteboarding interviews for every candidate won't flush out any of these. Not a single one. If you can tell me the magic 8 ball I need to shake to fix this, I am wide open to suggestions.

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

#599

Post by safety-third »

ProZsolt wrote: post #592
hvidgaard wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simply have to disagree. The amount of unqualified candidates that have a decent CV and are reasonable to talk to, but completely unable to correctly write a while loop is too damn high. That is what my whiteboard questions filter out. They're super easy stuff such as "I give you as input a list of integers, return the index of the first consecutive pair of numbers that when added is 42 - you can use any language o…

Doing interviews (as an interviewer) greatly reduced my impostor syndrome as a junior software engineer. When a guy interviewed with 10+ years of "experience" couldn't write a for loop was eye opening. I work really bad under pressure and don't like memorizing algorithms. I hate programming anything complex on a whiteboard or anyway on-site. Simple stuff, like your example is fine. It's a good way to weed out charlat…

I dislike pseudocode. I make candidates use an actual language because it smoke checks the ones who put X years of Y language. I don't demand perfection, just that the general shape be there.
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