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Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

blog.interviewing.io

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Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#71

Post by screye »

vlovich123 wrote: post #50
StillBored wrote: post #23

Role clarity is a huge one in my book. I've turned down numerous offers because when I asked what the specifics of my day to day job were going to be, the answers weren't clear. From the secret FAANG that likes to pretend what they are doing is defense contractor level top secret, and even after your hired you might not know what your actually working on, to the big companies where its clear the hiring manager only h…

Of the big tech companies, I've worked at Facebook, Google, & Apple. I've still not quite cracked what's different about Apple culturally that they seem to be more immune to this problem. The only main difference I can spot is I don't recall ever encountering a PM at Apple. To do planning engineers would propose improvements, new features, etc. These were bubbled up. Then executives would be responsible for building…

Yep, I have noticed this about project managers too.

I have worked with some amazing project managers, but almost all of them were more hybrid-somethings than purely business-degree folks. Usually designer-PMs or SWE/DS-PMs who drive the vision for the product at large. They make sure everyone in the loop buys into the same idea, is on the same page and stays in sync.

However, to do it effectively, the PM must have deep insights into the product. even better if the make-or-break aspect of the product is their specialty. A PM who facilitates communication without insights of their own is being treated like an expensive secretary by the company, and IMO, hurts the development of both the product and the individual.

I maintain that an amazing PM has scope to make a far larger impact than an amazing SWE. On the other hand, an average PM actively slows down progress, when an average SWE meets expectations and still gets their work done.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#72

Post by snazz »

vp8989 wrote: post #25
iratewizard wrote: post #12

This article seems like another example of mid-level people giving advice to junior-level people. There are far more red flags you can expect from a company by asking the right questions. The article doesn't dive into any of that and reads more like a few gripes from a guy who did way too many interviews and became jaded by it. The technical interview itself is not likely to be a good indicator of what work looks lik…

Welcome to the Internet. Hot takes about interviewing are a dime a dozen because it's an easy thing to have an opinion about, and as long as you punch up then your takes will generally be accepted. What's always missing from these articles is any empathy for the people on the other side.

I think this article demonstrates some empathy for the people on the other side. For example, the "Consistent lack of interest or low morale from interviewers" and "Your interviewers aren’t prepared for the interview" sections take the point of view of the interviewers into consideration.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#73

Post by ericmcer »

NHQ wrote: post #33

How did they get 60 interviews? Do I really need to join LinkedIn?

He is exactly what most tech companies are trying to hire. Very strong resume, masters from respected college, clearly passionate about tech, and a PoC to top it off, he literally checks every box.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#74

Post by pmichaud »

duxup wrote: post #40
sna1l wrote: post #5

"Not Enough Clarity about your Role" - Like the author mentions, this can definitely signify that the role is not important. The other thing I've noticed over my career is that it could be that the role involves "grunge" work (awful oncall shifts, doing backend work when you want to do only frontend, etc). Companies hide behind cool titles/department names/etc, promising whatever you want to hear to get you in.

IMO it's not really 'not important' as much as 'not honest'. Someone, somewhere at that company chose to hire someone... and they know what they want them to do. Why aren't they telling me? Here I am sitting down expecting to divulge all sorts of things / do a dance, but they can't tell me what they want... There's all sorts of reasons to not tell anyone / corporate circumstances, but it's a really bad foot to start…

You're probably right that sometimes people are hiding something from you. But I think a lot of the time it's more like "I have 10 people doing a bunch of things that vary over time and on a day to day basis, and what each of them does specifically really depends on what they are good at and what comes up. I really want those 10 people to be able to do 10% more of that confusing mix of activities than they are currently doing. So I guess I'll hire someone new."

And when that new person asks what they will be doing, the answer actually is, honestly, sort of ambiguous.

It's not a great sign for how organized they are, but it's still a realistic way someone could both be hiring and not know exactly what the new person's day to day will be like.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#76

Post by C1sc0cat »

ericmcer wrote: post #73
NHQ wrote: post #33

How did they get 60 interviews? Do I really need to join LinkedIn?

He is exactly what most tech companies are trying to hire. Very strong resume, masters from respected college, clearly passionate about tech, and a PoC to top it off, he literally checks every box.

Is that actually a helpful comment, its certainly not in the sprit of HN

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#77

Post by skohan »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #66

As someone with 20+ years in the experience, red flag #1 for me is being expected to go through a skill-testing technical whiteboard (or similar) coding exercise before even having a deeper discussion about the role and whether there's a fit, etc. I've seen this many times and I find it baffling: I already have a very high paying high quality job, I want you to sell _me_ on the position before demanding I do stressfu…

I get the feeling a lot of this is cargo-cultism: I.e. people want to work at the kind of place which only hires geniuses who can dazzle with their real-time problem solving, but they don’t actually get the reasoning behind such an interview

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#78

Post by 101008 »

kempbellt wrote: post #48
StillBored wrote: post #23

Role clarity is a huge one in my book. I've turned down numerous offers because when I asked what the specifics of my day to day job were going to be, the answers weren't clear. From the secret FAANG that likes to pretend what they are doing is defense contractor level top secret, and even after your hired you might not know what your actually working on, to the big companies where its clear the hiring manager only h…

Role clarity issues during an interview feels like going on a date with someone who doesn't know if they want to be in a relationship, or would rather adopt a parakeet. They don't understand why they are talking to you, "but maybe you can, I don't know, maybe do something of value here, but we don't know what that is. So here's a bunch of money. FIX US". It's usually a sign of lack of vision by leadership in the comp…

Oh, I am going through that. I started as a Python Sr dev a month ago, now I am handling server which is not my expertise. They are going down, deployment pipelines are not working, when I mentioned several times, my superior answer is "You are becoming a devop ;)"...

I know they will be mad the day we deploy this to production and everything fails, but I honestly dont know what else to mention.

(In my interview I said I had minor experience deploying to AWS, but in this company they are using Azure)

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#79

Post by C1sc0cat »

intricatedetail wrote: post #35
iratewizard wrote: post #12

This article seems like another example of mid-level people giving advice to junior-level people. There are far more red flags you can expect from a company by asking the right questions. The article doesn't dive into any of that and reads more like a few gripes from a guy who did way too many interviews and became jaded by it. The technical interview itself is not likely to be a good indicator of what work looks lik…

It's good to ask a manager whether they read the CIA simple sabotage manual and if they practice any of the techniques in the company.

Id be impressed if that I have worked where third part agencies whet that would be an improvement.

Seeing a set of minutes/notes from a couple of meetings would be a good filter

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#80

Post by svachalek »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #66

As someone with 20+ years in the experience, red flag #1 for me is being expected to go through a skill-testing technical whiteboard (or similar) coding exercise before even having a deeper discussion about the role and whether there's a fit, etc. I've seen this many times and I find it baffling: I already have a very high paying high quality job, I want you to sell _me_ on the position before demanding I do stressfu…

It's largely a symptom of having mostly new grads do the interviewing, and favors new grads getting the positions, so around it goes.

After a while you can get a feel for whether you're going to get anything out of the interview process other than a black hole (and probably lowball) offer and just abort the whole process before it starts. There's no point jumping blind from a good position into the unknown, especially given all the ??? are a bad omen.

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