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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

#281

Post by cmrdporcupine »

88840-8855 wrote: post #266
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 think you are arrogant.

It's possible. I try not to be. Arrogant people piss me off.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#282

Post by watwut »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #124
opportune wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My issue with the two “PM”s I interact with the most: Project managers basically do something that the devs, especially dev manager, can handle themselves. It seems like a leftover process for when software contracting was more common. There’s no reason a developer can’t just manage the Kanban board and write a quick report. Product managers can be really good but in a lot of cases they just devolve into stakeholder…

project manager are there to free devs mind from various distractions. I'm glad I can delegate them the reasoning about which task is more urgent, and them acting as buffer to clients frees me from a lot of time trying to understand what they want, how they want it and all the back and forth about how much they want to pay for it. good project managers, that aren't just bossing internal people around but working with…

I think the issue is that we call it project/product manager, but what we actually want is secretary.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#283

Post by ryandrake »

subsubzero wrote: post #109

Some of my hall of shame interviewers: - Everyone I interviewed on my would-be team felt like they were attending a funeral, never met a more depressed unenthusiastic bunch. - One of the interviewers wondering why I wanted this job as it was terrible, he stated he was looking to leave and warned me about the company. - Meeting room of interview room(conference room) reeked of sweat(when no one was there), it was disg…

Hah! I have witnessed both #1 and #2 at a very electrifying company that gets a lot of mileage on HN. Big shout-out and thank-you to my interviewers who saved me from a potentially big mistake!

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#284

Post by 3np »

101008 wrote: post #78
kempbellt wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sa…

While it's a great perk to be able to work on what one is most passionate about, while on the clock your focus should be to apply your skills, and learning time, to bring the most value to your employer.

Embrace the devops engineering for now - at least until you change jobs, if that's what it comes down to.

See it as a great learning opportunity.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#285

Post by 0xffff2 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #116
Throysksk282 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, I've been interviewing people with supposedly 15+ years of experience using simple whiteboard questions for a while and I've seen too many people fail miserably at writing basic for loops (a very slightly more involved problem than fizzbuzz, really) for me to simply trust that spending time selling you on the company is useful. Lying on a resume is easy, and even truthful resumes can be misleading.…

I'd fail fizzbuzz on your whiteboard. And I'd be proud of it. Working in this industry for 25 years and almost 10 at Google has not trained me to write fizzbuzz.

I'm not sure I even believe you. Maybe you would refuse to do it because you don't want to, but you've spent 25 years as a successful developer and you can't write out fizzbuzz on a whiteboard?

I haven't been a professional developer for anywhere near 25 years, but I could write fizzbuzz while blindfolded, on a wet bar napkin after a couple of drinks, in any one of at least half a dozen languages.

If someone asked you to write down the answer to 3+5 would you struggle with that as well? To me, fizzbuzz is barely a set up in terms of complexity.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#286

Post by stack_underflow »

shuntress wrote: post #47
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…

I get that Microsoft is a huge company but the inconsistency in quality is something I find quite comical. To pile on to the Windows control panel for a minute: If you open the start menu and search updates, you bring up the settings menu for updates. Likewise for network settings or any other section of the control panel successor. But if you open network settings from the start menu while you already have updates o…

I've resorted to trying to figure out the shortcut names I can just type into the win+r prompt to get to a certain submenu.

e.g.:

  win+r:
    desk.cpl -> monitor resolution/refresh rate settings
    main.cpl -> mouse/keyboard settings
    mmsys.cpl -> audio device settings
    ms-settings: -> new Settings page (the : is required)
I recall being able to access a sub-page by adding something after 'ms-settings:' but I haven't yet figured out how to discover the names of the pages.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#288

Post by johnward »

claudeganon wrote: post #223
edanm wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!).

7 was at a large enterprise software company. I don’t remember exactly how many phone screenings they did, but it was less than 20. I still thought it was too many. Like I said, I think if you have to interview that many, your filtering process is really broken further up the pipeline. You don’t know what you want, what the job really is, the or application process isn’t properly structured. Interviewing large number…

> You don’t know what you want, what the job really is, the or application process isn’t properly structured.

I interviewed at Google. The position description versus what I was interviewed on were two worlds apart. Like the position mentioned front end CSS and HTML. I was grilled on SQL in two of the 4 interviews. This wasn't a SWE position, it was more of a client support role, but I was given a coding test. I did poorly on the test, but I still consider it difficult for a role that was not a SWE.

It didn't even seem like Google knew what role they were hiring for they just wanted "someone technical" to do something. I left this process feeling pretty confused and turned-off at their hiring process and questioning if I really wanted to work at a place like that.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#289

Post by cmrdporcupine »

0xffff2 wrote: post #285
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd fail fizzbuzz on your whiteboard. And I'd be proud of it. Working in this industry for 25 years and almost 10 at Google has not trained me to write fizzbuzz.

I'm not sure I even believe you. Maybe you would refuse to do it because you don't want to, but you've spent 25 years as a successful developer and you can't write out fizzbuzz on a whiteboard? I haven't been a professional developer for anywhere near 25 years, but I could write fizzbuzz while blindfolded, on a wet bar napkin after a couple of drinks, in any one of at least half a dozen languages. If someone asked yo…

You shouldn't believe me, I was being flamey, and yes, I would probably refuse to because I wouldn't want to without being properly told why it was worth my time, which was the point of my original comment.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#290

Post by nullsense »

Zippogriff wrote: post #242
grumple wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've frozen in interviews and been unable to think on simple problems just due to anxiety (which I've never experienced at work; if I can't think, I just say, "let me think about it" and I get back to the person in a bit). Other interviews I've completely demolished - solving problems that were supposed to take 30 minutes in 2 minutes, for example. I think the type of problem and structure we use for interviews is ba…

I'm 100% sure I've come off in a couple interviews like one of those "phew we dodged a bullet there, guy can't code at all" stories. Meanwhile actually I can and many employers have been very happy with my ability to do so, and I've had a long and reasonably successful career. The problem's not even that I'm bad under pressure, and in fact I've repeatedly been told the exact opposite by people who've worked with me.…

Exactly. Yet if you listen to HN you get the impression 80% of the industry can't even do their job. Yet, if that were the case how the hell are they hiding that from their current employer??????

I've met one developer who couldn't do their job, and he moved into a pre-sales role shortly thereafter.

Everyone else was fine and did a good job but send them unprepared to a random interview on any given day of the week and I'm sure it'd be another one of those "well we dodged a bullet there".

The signal to noise ratio is Garbage.

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