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

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

#461

Post by ngngngng »

jcadam wrote: post #252
ngngngng wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an accurate view of take home assignments. Most of the take home assignments I've done were "supposed" to take 5 hours. Most of them too around 20. The worst take home assignment I ever had was an extremely tricky brain teaser, the answer to which could not be found on google, and had to be done in the not very popular language this company used. So I not only had to write useless brain teaser code, but I cou…

Yea, I had one take home problem where the instructions stated "Please don't take more than 1 hour to solve." So, just once, I decided to hold myself to one hour, and barely managed to get to a solution that worked. During the code review in the follow-up interview, I was raked over the coals for not writing tests, failing to cover edge cases, etc. ,etc. Basically, they expected production-ready code. Didn't get the…

And that's the worst part about the take home assignments, all the people you're competing with are claiming they did it within the time limit when they're really taking far longer to make it perfect.

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

#462

Post by yalestar »

random3 wrote: post #352

Having performed hundreds of tech interviews, I realized that my developed super-skill was to keep the candidates relaxed regardless of how well or bad they did. That meant carefully controlling my emotions when their answers were bad, and having a smooth transition when the answer didn't come at all - a situation that typically causes tension. You have to essentially hand out the answer or transform the question int…

That is indeed a super-skill! If you remove as much of the perceived power imbalance between interviewer and interviewee (often difficult, to be sure), and you can engage in a two-way conversation with them about the experiences on their resume, then you'll get a far better picture of how they'll be as a team member.

A candidate's ability to do performative whiteboarding while 1-5 interviewers stare at them tells me very little. For a software engineering job, of course technical ability is important. But equally (and often more) important is the amount of friction they could potentially introduce to a well-functioning team. What I want to know more than anything is: "Can I stand working with this person?" "Is this person a dickhead code-reviewer?" "Will this person be able to adapt and overcome when presented with a novel or urgent task?"

The way to divine these answers is by trying to put the candidate at ease as much as possible. So many interviews, unfortunately, become a sort of gauntlet or inquisition.

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

#463

Post by soared »

lbrito wrote: post #380
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…

I had this one interview some time ago where instead of having the HR person talk about what the company does and prod me to see if I was curious/interested in what it is they do, the opposite was expected to happen. That obviously didn't go well. After the usual "tell me about yourself" stuff, the HR rep asked me what I knew about the company and was noticeably disappointed when I said I had only accessed the homepa…

From your perspective why wouldn’t you spent 15 minutes learning about the companies and it’s products?

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

#464

Post by pfarnsworth »

rsweeney21 wrote: post #448

I'm a ex-FANG dev that started a recruiting company, so I am VERY familiar with the arbitrary tech interview process. I'm a huge proponent of contract-to-hire. Even started a company* to make it easier for companies to offer contract-to-hire. Now before you dismiss the idea because you are "too good" to do C2H hear me out. Everyone knows that actually working with someone on the job is the only way to get an accurate…

Why on earth would I quit my job or take days(?) off just so I can apply for a contract position? This would be strictly for unemployed software engineers, or truly desperate ones that needed to get out of their current job ASAP.

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

#465

Post by merlinsbrain »

mav3rick wrote: post #439
rainyMammoth wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are very wrong. Every single software person I know at a FAANG spend multiple weeks studying leetcode style questions. Think about it: you are passing an exam. Why wouldn't you study the questions that you know are going to get asked? It got even worse lately since every candidate does this, it raises the bar for the expected solution.

Maybe the people you know there are not that great.

Whiteboarding algorithm puzzles with code really does not define the greatness of an engineer. If people are practicing questions to be able to think along those lines and that is proven to work, maybe it really isn’t a test of greatness anyway.

This is the exact attitude that makes people have terrible interview experience.

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

#466

Post by rsweeney21 »

mikequinlan wrote: post #455
rsweeney21 wrote: post #448

I'm a ex-FANG dev that started a recruiting company, so I am VERY familiar with the arbitrary tech interview process. I'm a huge proponent of contract-to-hire. Even started a company* to make it easier for companies to offer contract-to-hire. Now before you dismiss the idea because you are "too good" to do C2H hear me out. Everyone knows that actually working with someone on the job is the only way to get an accurate…

Employers abuse contract-to-hire to get temporary employees with no intention of hiring.

Some companies might do this, but this hasn't been our experience. It's the opposite. Companies VASTLY prefer full-time employees for software developers because it is so costly when they leave. They want devs to stay forever. They almost always convert contractors to FTE within the first couple fo months. They want to get the golden hand-cuffs in place ASAP.

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

#467

Post by quadrifoliate »

rsweeney21 wrote: post #448

I'm a ex-FANG dev that started a recruiting company, so I am VERY familiar with the arbitrary tech interview process. I'm a huge proponent of contract-to-hire. Even started a company* to make it easier for companies to offer contract-to-hire. Now before you dismiss the idea because you are "too good" to do C2H hear me out. Everyone knows that actually working with someone on the job is the only way to get an accurate…

> It's crazy, I know, but I think it would drive dev salaries up if it weren't so hard to change jobs because of the tech interview gauntlet we've created for ourselves.

How does C2H help me jump jobs as a dev who is already employed?

Since I already work 9-5, typically my only free days are my weekends. I might be willing to work for a few weekends if it would lead to a hire, but are those really compatible with what the hiring company wants? My guess is that they want me to take the step of leaving my current job, which comes with loss of health and dental insurance, which is often a big concern.

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

#468

Post by rsweeney21 »

chc wrote: post #458
rsweeney21 wrote: post #448

I'm a ex-FANG dev that started a recruiting company, so I am VERY familiar with the arbitrary tech interview process. I'm a huge proponent of contract-to-hire. Even started a company* to make it easier for companies to offer contract-to-hire. Now before you dismiss the idea because you are "too good" to do C2H hear me out. Everyone knows that actually working with someone on the job is the only way to get an accurate…

Are you offering insurance to every C2H prospect? Otherwise, this seems like it basically works for healthy people without families.

We provide business insurance coverage for anyone on contract through Facet. For health insurance, we recommend people just use COBRA to keep the insurance they had at their last company. You have to pay for it out of your own pocket, but you just build that in to your hourly rate that you charge.

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

#469

Post by taurath »

rsweeney21 wrote: post #448

I'm a ex-FANG dev that started a recruiting company, so I am VERY familiar with the arbitrary tech interview process. I'm a huge proponent of contract-to-hire. Even started a company* to make it easier for companies to offer contract-to-hire. Now before you dismiss the idea because you are "too good" to do C2H hear me out. Everyone knows that actually working with someone on the job is the only way to get an accurate…

There's a class problem with C2H in almost all companies. Contractors are always seen as less than by management and especially hiring committees. I work at a company that I've been hired thru C2H. Everyone on the team, my manager knew I was one of the strongest programmers on the team. But when it came for my conversion interview I bombed. It was run by 3 of the most senior principles with the lowest acceptance rates and a penchant for "protecting" the company from bad hires. Being told despite amazingly good performance compared to peers you still aren't good enough is a nice little gut punch.

A short time later, I did another conversion interview, got people who were willing to tell me "look, we know you can code" because they had SEEN me code and design systems they were using every day. They still did some interview questions, but lo and behold I didn't feel like jumping out the window every second.

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

#470

Post by JakeStone »

mikequinlan wrote: post #455
rsweeney21 wrote: post #448

I'm a ex-FANG dev that started a recruiting company, so I am VERY familiar with the arbitrary tech interview process. I'm a huge proponent of contract-to-hire. Even started a company* to make it easier for companies to offer contract-to-hire. Now before you dismiss the idea because you are "too good" to do C2H hear me out. Everyone knows that actually working with someone on the job is the only way to get an accurate…

Employers abuse contract-to-hire to get temporary employees with no intention of hiring.

Counterpoint: I used to be a contractor and took C2H positions to see if I wanted to work with these people long term. Most of the time, I was happy to see the door when the contract ended, though all of them offered a conversion.

There was one where I converted to full time, and then we got hit with the dot com crash, so that sucked.

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