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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

#201

Post by closeparen »

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…

A recruiter drops an interview on my calendar; I go where I’m told. Most likely the role has nothing to do with me or the people/projects I know firsthand. If I knew about the project I would tell you, but I don’t.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#203

Post by Zippogriff »

megiddo wrote: post #84
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'm with you on this. 20+ years. My usual MO is to walk away from interviews that have jump-scare whiteboarding or require a quiz prior to an actual interview. I recently broke my own code at an interview and was rewarded with complete nonsense. Never again.

My new rule after my last job search is that I don't interview if I don't know enough about the interview process to be more than 50% certain I'll come off OK in it. Not that I'll get the job, but more than 50% certain I'll at least look alright.

The FAANGs practically (sometimes, actually) give you a study guide, at least. Lots of smaller places act like knowing anything more than the names and titles of the people you'll be talking to would be cheating or something. I'm not gonna burn half a day or more just to bomb a question about graph traversal I haven't brushed up on lately, and I'm not gonna study everything unless I'm shooting for FAANG. Tell me what to expect, a few days out, with decent detail, or I'm not interviewing. I don't need to know exact questions but "first thing in the morning we'll ask you to do something with very basic data structures, like one of [short list of possibilities], and it will be on a whiteboard".

Then if you tell me the day is packed with 6+ hours of whiteboard problems I know not to bother, because I'll definitely be tired AF and bombing them after hour 3 no matter how much I study, because I'm not built to literally perform in front of people for hours on end. It saves us both some time.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#204

Post by IggleSniggle »

_heimdall wrote: post #168
vlovich123 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I worked at Microsoft for a few years and later as a contractor at AT&T for about 2 years. I saw the 2 extremes as far as PMs go. My PMs at Microsoft were all good at tracking tasks/projects and managing blocking issues. At a minimum they saved me a lot of headache having to answer why a task was late when I was blocked by a dependency. They also had quite a few technical PMs, my brother was actually a PM there befor…

I had the displeasure of using AT&T's website today and even before I read your comment, I was thinking that AT&T must have a dysfunctional "development by checklists-for-PMs" culture. The site seems like UX appropriate for an SPA, but whenever taking an action, you get redirected 4 or 5 times before landing on the page you intend...only to have some of the elements "lazy" loaded, where "lazy" means "never actually materializes."

And when working through their two-factor-auth process, I kept getting redirected to a version that wouldn't accept my one-time-password because the javascript on the page wouldn't load for some reason. The trick was to switch from Chrome to Firefox.

I wish I didn't understand why it's possible for stuff to exist on big-company websites like AT&T.

Anyway, sounds like an absolute horrorshow for both PMs and devs alike.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#205

Post by GaryNumanVevo »

umeshunni wrote: post #199
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Role clarity is a huge one in my book. Yes, if you want to be a cog in a machine. That said, it seems you're complaining about FAANG-type companies. These guys are hiring "top talent" only as a defensive measure, so that upstart competitors don't get them. It's not expected for "top talent" to actually contribute to something useful.

> These guys are hiring "top talent" only as a defensive measure, so that upstart competitors don't get them. It's not expected for "top talent" to actually contribute to something useful. Citation needed

Anec-data: Turned down an $800k Principal ML Scientist job at a FANG. Interviewed with a director who couldn't answer what I would be doing / working on. Facebook is notorious for this, lots of friends get absolutely eye-watering salaries to sit around and provide 1% lifts on click-through-rates. Most fortunately leave after the 1-yr vest.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#206

Post by edanm »

claudeganon wrote: post #188
C1sc0cat wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am reading this correctly a short list of 50 for a single role?

It’s completely insane if they’re interviewing 50 people per role. The filtering process is entirely broken if they’re doing that many. The most people I’ve ever interviewed for a job is 7.

Do you have some context around that number? E.g. are you in a large company that pre-filters the pool for you?

I ask because 50 is not completely unreasonable. I've had positions where we've had to interview dozens of candidates, in our small company. In larger companies, often someone else does some initial interviews though and that filters out candidates who e.g. can't code at all (sometimes - not always!).

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#207

Post by hirundo »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #114
Galanwe wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After being on both sides of the interview situation for quite a while now, my feeling on this is more nuanced. The thing is, when you look for a job, you will often go for 5 to 10 interviews. On the other end, when I'm looking for someone to fill a position in my team, I will interview at the very least 50 candidates. That is to say, all things equal, the interviewer has most likely more incentive than the interview…

Honestly, I question most interviewers ability to evaluate someone as low or high skill. I honestly don't think the testing works most of the time.

Sometimes it's easy. We had a candidate who looked good on paper and sounded good in person. When it was time to start the screening test he asked to go to the bathroom. And never came back. We took that as a red flag.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#208

Post by duderific »

victor9000 wrote: post #169
jnwatson wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been the recruiter in this position. I think it is unethical to string your runners-up along in this situation. You're essentially taking up their (and your) valuable time with little chance at success. Exploding offers are the least bad solution. Give them 48-72 hours, with a small extension if they are currently talking to someone else.

If you don't like being a runner-up then you should negotiate with the candidate so that your company ends up in a more competitive position.

It's extremely hard for smaller companies to compete with the likes of Google and Facebook, who (I've heard) offer 25% more than everyone else. Which is why they end up with all the talent. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#209

Post by edanm »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #149
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really believe so, then I think you are failing to grasp how low "low skill" truly happens to be.

Nope, I think lots of people perform 'low skill' in a whiteboard scenario that are not. And the arrogance of their interviewers gets them on HN making very bold claims about other people's skill levels without consideration for the scenarios involved. Don't get me wrong-- I've worked with very incompetent people. Many of them would have passed a coding interview though.

I don't know how many people saying otherwise would constitute sufficient evidence in your mind, but add me to the list of people that disagree with this sentiment. I've had candidates who couldn't code a loop. Not "did something suboptimal", I mean literally couldn't write a single line of code.

I've had candidates who seemed incredibly accomplished when talking them, who showed amazing looking demos and could talk at length about them. But when given a task to do on the computer, given 2 hours alone to sit and code, couldn't do even the first part of the exercise - despite it being something you could literally copy and paste from the documentation that we gave them a link to!

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#210

Post by user5994461 »

nickff wrote: post #161
pnw_hazor wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always accept the time critical offer and continue interviewing and then jump if a better one comes through. There is no reason to be nice or considerate to companies, they will drop you in hot second if it is convenient for them.

Accepting an offer without an intent to follow through is fraud. If you think your counter-party is dishonest or ill-intentioned, then you should refuse to enter into any agreement with them.

If you want to play the legal game, the contract is void because it was signed under duress. Forcing the employee to sign in 24h qualifies as consent under duress, not free consent.
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