Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#321

Post by peruvian » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

_curious_ wrote: post #302

solidasparagus wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people are naive, they just don't have a better solution. Most established professionals are not interested in a 10 week trial period after which they might be back on the job market.

"Most established professionals are not interested in a 10 week trial period after which they might be back on the job market." Why not? If the position isn't a fit for either side after X time on-the-job, that's OK right?

Because maybe they support families with their job? Unless they had a ton of savings, parents aren't going to switch jobs with a chance of being unemployed again in 2.5 months. I wouldn't do it and I'm young and single.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#322

Post by RogerL » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

candu wrote: post #220

MattGaiser wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I have read from Gayle Laakmaan, they know this throws away many good engineers, but it is acceptable to them because it doesn’t let bad ones through.

I've definitely repeated that line in the past to justify tech industry interviewing practices - but sometimes it goes beyond "setting a high bar" to something more toxic: an interviewer using the interview as a chance to show off how smart _they_ are, rather than assess the candidate; deliberately creating high-stakes "pressure cooker" environments because, you know, that's just how we work here and they should get…

I think it goes far beyond that. I'd bet dollars to donuts that you will find both protected and unprotected groups over represented in the false negative pile. Do women have more test anxiety then men? If so, guess what your process is selecting for. Do minorities have more self doubt than majorities. Same thing. And so on.

And that doesn't address the file drawer effect. I'm 54. I can code a binary tree, hash table or what have you, if I have to, but I am not as practiced as somebody fresh out of school, because that heavy lifting is done by libraries, and I'm busy contributing original mathematical algorithms that no one ever asks about because they don't have the background to understand the explanation. So I don't go on FAANG type interviews. I know I will fail, and if I don't my offer will be predicated on that apparently lower performance. At best I will have an utterly miserable experience. So I self select myself out, mostly on age.

This is not good, for so many reasons.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#323

Post by stbtrax » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

benburleson wrote: post #280

chpmrc wrote: post #138

It seems pretty obvious to me that this kind of interviews are simply there to assess how much you want to work for a certain company. As in: would you be willing to study for months, go through mock interviews, read books, test your skills etc. to have a shot at working for us? Even though the majority of that stuff will likely have zero impact on your day to day work? That's all there is, really. I've had no proble…

Amazon is the king of assessing how much you want to work for the company. The recruiter will place a huge emphasis on nailing their Leadership Principles, and coming up with stories from your work to demonstrate you embody the Principles. They will even tell you that specific interviewers have specific LPs they will probe on, but in the actual interview they ask very veiled questions and you're supposed to know that…

is there a centralized place with information like this but for other companies as well?

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#324

Post by wolco » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

DrPhish wrote: post #39

I hire for industrial IT, and being able to handle the anxiety of a high-pressure situation with grace (e.g. mill down, losing tens of thousands of dollars a minute) is an important factor. No one expects miracles, but you need to be able to keep your cool and work the problem, not waste time fighting with your own rising anxiety. Seeing how they deal with a stressful situation is an integral part of the interview in…

Honestly if you built a better bridge more would come over.

Looking at white boarding comfort and judging that the person can't handle stressful situations when they have a defined role and understand the stack are two different things.

I feel like everyone wants to make a quick judgement and pat themselves on the back.

People can learn quickly but no one believes it.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#325

Post by _curious_ » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

leafboi wrote: post #159

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #115

I conducted a couple hundred interviews for my first FAANG employer, and I was constantly amazed at the percentage of candidates with years of Microsoft or Facebook experience on the resumes who apparently did not know how to program. I always thought, 'huh, guess I know why they quit after 3 years, amazing that they all lasted this long." Then I interviewed for another company and utterly bombed. It became suddenly…

You've been arrogant for years and you know what? So have I. I and many, many people in this industry have been doing this for years. What's different from you and many other people is that you admit and face your bias rather than justify it. I'm seriously curious what google interview board members have to say about this study. People like Gayle Laakmaan have been saying things to justify the whole process for years…

Over the past few years in tech, I have interacted with and observed (as a fly on the wall) a wide variety of recruiters, hiring managers, etc. from companies as small as a dozen (usually around the time a founder/CEO brings in external "support").

There exists an incredible amount of arrogance and ego among them by-in-large. The best are humble and curious while maintaining clear and direct communication. To be fair, they are often tasked with making important judgement calls sans complete information, though that's the fault of the leadership/culture as to a poor approach.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#326

Post by UncleOxidant » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:04 PM UTC

_qulr wrote: post #172

GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stress when interviewing is similar, but not the same as on the job stress. One major factor, with a job: you're still getting paid. I think the economic anxiety one faces is pretty stark, if you fail a job interview you're going to be unemployed until you can pass the next one.

Yes, interview stress is completely different. You have to commit a pretty egregious offense on the job to get fired on the spot, but literally anything you do during a job interview can cause you to lose the job.

And often you won't have any idea what caused you to lose the job in a particular interview. There's generally no feedback at all so it can be very difficult to try to improve.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#327

Post by fermienrico » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

schreiaj wrote: post #297

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #115

I conducted a couple hundred interviews for my first FAANG employer, and I was constantly amazed at the percentage of candidates with years of Microsoft or Facebook experience on the resumes who apparently did not know how to program. I always thought, 'huh, guess I know why they quit after 3 years, amazing that they all lasted this long." Then I interviewed for another company and utterly bombed. It became suddenly…

I was on the other side - I flew out to FB during a vacation earlier this year. I got there, could explain the solution but something was off and I kept losing the thread when I went to convert it to actual code. The interviewers didn’t know I’d gotten a call from my cat sitter that morning and one of my cats had to go in for an emergency check up. (He ended up being fine but didn’t know that at the time). Later that…

I mean this would apply to going on a first date as well. First impression is what matters and once the impression has been ruined, all bets are off.

It is not specific to the interview process.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#328

Post by scott_paul » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

vmception wrote: post #247

scott_paul wrote: post #122

When I interview a candidate, I'm explicitly and intentionally looking at how they respond to stress, how (if) they're able to say "I don't know", and how they communicate complicated ideas. I open with soft-balls to put them at ease and get them opened up and talking. Then dive deeper into technical things. All the questions are technical, but the main answer I get is how they communicate, how they relate to people,…

yeah, but these anti-patterns are completely different everywhere. your insight isn't a signal at all, when the next interviewer isn't saying what they mean and evaluating only correct answers.

I'm not commenting on how anyone else does it, or saying that there aren't bad patterns out there. I'm telling the room about a strategy I found that lets me twist the bad into good.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#329

Post by woeirua » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

throwawayiionqz wrote: post #257

There is a lot of anecdotes in the comments about these interview processes. The ones with the best data are the company themselves, especially those who interview thousands of candidates a year. These companies (e.g., all FANG) have enough data to assess which interviewer, which interview questions and which interview process have positive correlation (and even causation) with future employee performance. And they c…

There is literally no way right now for any company to assess the false negative rate, i.e. how many well-qualified engineers they turned away. They can only assess internally the false positive rate, i.e. how many engineers they thought were going to work out that did not. The fear of making a "bad" hire, is so pervasive that we optimize entirely to minimize the number of false positives, completely ignoring that making the interview more and more difficult is probably having a marginal effect on reducing the FPR but is drastically increasing the FNR.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#330

Post by annoyingnoob » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

sosilkj wrote: post #249

annoyingnoob wrote: post #225

This is why I stopped writing code. After I bombed a bunch of interviews I threw up my hands in disgust, it wasn't me it was the process. One thing that stands out to me about the process is that everyone gets the same interview, doesn't matter if you are fresh out of school or have a lifetime of experience. Experience counts for nothing in these interviews. Can you design twitter in 40 minutes, thinking through ever…

"This is why I stopped writing code." would be interesting to hear about what career you transitioned to, if you're willing to share.

I have a background in IT. I basically moved back to IT. I still write some code but its not the majority of my work. The code I write now relates to automation and integration and not so much building a product from the ground up. I have to build for reliability but I don't need to build for Internet scale.

Edit: I should say that the interviewing experience that put my over the edge was actually not a whiteboard but a take home exercise. What I didn't know and didn't appreciate was that it was designed with an adversarial review. There was a long list of requirements and I thought I met them all. The response was kind of rude and was a big turn off. After a second pass I was told that I was missing some fundamental things, which were never requested or discussed. The whole thing seemed designed to exclude rather than assess.