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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

#661

Post by powerset »

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…

This corroborates my experience interviewing at Amazon. Fortunately the recruiter prepped me well on what to expect and the LPs I should study. I was happy to "study for the test", and the interview went well. They even allowed me to bring a "cheat sheet" with notes about the stories I planned to tell, and I made myself a little index mapping stories -> LPs and vice versa. It was great practice and I carried those techniques (keeping the cheat sheet in my head) to other interviews, even though other companies don't put quite as much emphasis on LPs as Amazon does.

The questions didn't seem too veiled, but maybe that's because I knew what to expect.

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

#662

Post by flattone »

rovolo wrote: post #54
flattone wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha. So the more driven and hungry i am the worse ill be viewed. The more silver spoon and apathetic ill be cherished. Sounds like dating ;)

A different way to view this is that being desperate makes you behave badly. For example, someone desperate for a job won't push back against bad decisions and will become a "Yes Man". Someone desperate for a date won't engage with the other person as a person.

That is a different way to view it. An incredibly negative seeming view of humans. Ill lay my cards down though, i have limited years of really varied experience (ups, ski resort, landscaper, metal grinder, fork lift driver, house painter, door to door vacuum sales, google pm, msft Analyst, trying to break into infosec.)

In my short list (ignoring years of time wasted travelling), i have only met 1 yes man. He came from money, and sales. Owned 4 large businesses, and would over promise, under deliver and over receive ALWAYS.

So what are your experiences like and from where?

I think no backbone can be a personality trait, sure. But it is NOT a trait of 'need' and action, in my experience.

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

#663

Post by mavsman »

goostavos wrote: post #74
decafninja wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel in the tech industry, networking and knowing people only gets you so far - typically just to the whiteboard interview. Then you have to solve the leetcode problems just like everyone else. Especially so in larger companies. FWIW, all of my friends who somehow managed to get into FAANG or other top tech companies swear that were they to go through the interview again, odds are they would fail. This despite all…

I'm actually a little scared to leave my current FAANG gig for that exact reason tbh. I'm fairly certain I wouldn't make it back in the door without more leetcode grinding + repeated loops than I'm willing to do at this point in my career. Plus, stack on top of that, I've seen how the sausage is made. I've done 90+ interviews on the other side. At the end of the day, it comes down to how lucky you got in the loop. I'…

I was this way too. I got into Amazon via acquisition so I never actually passed a real interview process (though there was a limited one as part of the acquisition).

I transferred teams within Amazon and then left for my current company. I do wonder if I'll ever be willing to put in the work to get a FAANG job again but at the moment I really don't care. I like where I am so I'll just cross that bridge when I get to it. If I want it badly enough at some point then I'll go through the steps. If I don't, I'll just find another job.

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

#664

Post by amscanne »

munk-a wrote: post #511
rc-1140 wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but C2H sounds like a great idea to you because you have the luxury of having already earned FAANG money on your side. You'd have to pay me considerable money for me to consider taking a C2H role so I could cover health insurance across the usual suspects (general health, dental, vision, specialists just in case). Like many people outside of this website (and enough here), I don't have the luxury of FAANG mone…

This is one of the reasons I've always found it paradoxical that people in the US seem to think that universal healthcare would depress the labour market. Up here in Canada not all procedures are insured, Pharma, Vision & Dental are the big three that most either pay out of pocket or purchase extended insurance for - though there are generally pretty good provincial programs to help with the costs of those. However,…

I’ll point out that untangling health insurance from employment does not necessarily require a “Medicare for all”-style universal care system. This is a subtext to your comment since you jumped there from the parent’s complaint about employment-based insurance.

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

#665

Post by frizkie »

thecrumb wrote: post #616
koheripbal wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One trend I've noticed that is markedly different from when I started programming in 1998, is how dependent we've become to program via Google/StackExchange searches. I'm not sure I know how to write anything from scratch anymore, because I just search/read/alter/test. The breadth of what I work on is 100x wider than it used to be, and so I've become absolutely dependent on quickly reading docs, copying code found on…

This. Last interview I bombed because no one would ever remember what they were asking for in the interview test. I said I'd just google it and then dropped "Never memorize something that you can look up." ― Albert Einstein

I like this quote, but I think the point comes across better if you rephrase it:

> Never _intentionally_ memorize something that you can look up.

I guess you can't quote Einstein, then.

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

#666

Post by [deleted] »

user5994461 wrote: post #312
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.

I would wager the opposite. That many people looking for a job are open to a (paid) trial week, when the alternative is countless grueling interviews that lead nowhere.

[deleted]

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

#667

Post by mathattack »

solidasparagus wrote: post #227
mathattack wrote: post #213

This is why internships are so important. Sometimes it’s still hard to tell after 10 weeks. It’s very naive to think we will know after a 30 minute interview.

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.

Very dependent if they have a job already. If they have a job already, references from people inside the company are a very strong signal. If they’re currently unemployed (or a student) the internship is very valuable.

The next challenge is it’s unfair to weight too much on referrals because it punishes people who don’t know insiders. It also fuels a monoculture.

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

#668

Post by andrewflnr »

dimtion wrote: post #445
opus132 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Couldn't tell an average from a median Without meaning to attack you personally (especially in the context of the rest of your comment), a comment like this annoys me a bit. I presume by "average" you mean arithmetic mean, but the median is also an average, and depending on the context the median might be a far more useful statistic than the mean. Confusing the mean and the median is one thing, and perhaps you actu…

I know nothing about GP, but note that it is possible that English is not his first language, and the subtleties of the story and vocabulary might be lost in translation. In my native language (French), as you describe it, there is no word for "average" (the technical and the common terms "moyenne" are exactly the same). Until your comment, in English, I assumed you could use "average" and "mean" interchangeably.

In most practical situations, your initial impression is correct. As a native English speaker, I've never heard seen or heard someone use "average" to refer to a statistical summary other than the mean. If it doesn't refer to the mean, it doesn't mean anything formal/technical at all. I read GP as "median is sort of an average in the broad sense", but this is honestly kind of a stretch.

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

#669

Post by [deleted] »

_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?

[deleted]

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

#670

Post by mathattack »

greggman3 wrote: post #363
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.

I don't see how internships help. I get the point that at the end you know if they're a hire but you still had to filter who to intern in the first place so you're still back to interview people to be interns which is the same problem you had. Also, training a new employee or intern in your systems, code, company procedures etc takes a bunch of time and investment so it's not like you can intern some higher multiple…

Let’s say an internship increases the chance of your getting a good hire from 50% to 75%. In that case 10 weeks will pay for itself.
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