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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

#291

Post by [deleted] »

GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #205
umeshunni wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#292

Post by cmrdporcupine »

Zippogriff wrote: post #203
megiddo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yep, I agree with you 100% and as I said before I think companies looking to hire are doing themselves a disservice by not paying attention to this more. A grueling day long interview to get into Google is/was worth it at least from a monetary compensation POV.

But frankly most shops out there are not worth it, but if they are, let's talk about how. Many very smart people I know would willingly leave their high-salaried FAANG job for a more rewarding or interesting job even with a steep compensation cut -- and there are many places that would benefit from that talent -- they just need to learn how to recruit it.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#293

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

grumple wrote: post #217
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…

If you're interviewing 50 candidates, your process is horrifically broken. As soon as you find an acceptable candidate, hire them. They don't have to be perfect; no hire will be, no matter how much time you spend. You're wasting company time and money.

In case you're interested, there's a bit of mathematics related to this. It's called "The secretary problem" [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#294

Post by xtracto »

twinkletwinkle_ wrote: post #227
user5994461 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the first thing I thought reading your sentence, cron cannot do seconds granularity (I think the lowest was 1 hour on the last OS I was working with). Why would you ask questions which you know are impossible? That's setting up the candidate to fail.

It's not "impossible", just not natively obvious. The solution I remember using is 0 * * * * foo() 0 * * * * sleep 30; foo() It's not the prettiest but is a reasonable imitation of a 30 second cron.

You got it! the main idea is for it to be a "solve the problem" thing with certain framework.

I've got guys that just google it, others that do a script and sleep within the script, and the guy that suggested the while. All of them are "right" answers for me... I don't really care about how they do it, but the process perform while doing it.

Fact is, during the life of a DevOps, they will need to solve things that they don't know how to, so they'll need to be able to at least Google-fu themselves out of the problem.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#295

Post by noodle »

bitL wrote: post #166
noodle wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Same, from FAANG companies. The feel that I get is more like, FAANG companies don't even know what you're going to do. They just want to hire top talent and figure out what you're working on later. They want someone "smart" who can ultimately work on any team, since whatever tea…

> They just want to hire top talent and figure out what you're working on later FB reached out to me twice with a specific project and position proposal (SWeng/lead). YMMV

Without getting into specifics, I've had two higher up referrals at FAANG companies, for people asking me to join their specific teams. Both companies are ones who tout the ability to move laterally very easily. Both times, I went through the generic tech hiring process (as in, it had little to do with what I was being asked to do as a member of these teams), and both times, the end result was that I was unable to join the team I was referred to join.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#296

Post by redisman »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #129
jacquesm wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic. I had a similar thing happen a while ago. US based company - not named to protect the guilty - wanted me to move to the United States to do some pretty specific work for them. I'm not open to such offers but they went out of their way to make the invitation, offered to fly me out there and a whole pile of other buttering up bits and pieces. So I said if they wanted me that badly, could we do this remote? You…

I always love getting a question about "Why are you interviewing for this position?" and replying "I got an email from your internal recruiter". The follow up is usually "Why do you want to leave your current company?" replying with "I'm not, your recruiter said this was a cool place".

From my experience that answer also means you won't be going forwards so it's just a waste of everyones time. I guess you're supposed to feign immense interest in this cold-call interview.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#297

Post by pnw_hazor »

nickff wrote: post #274
pnw_hazor wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a lie to accept a later offered better deal. The better offer might never come through. Would you really begrudge someone who left for an opportunity that is better for them? You are mixing up loyalty with persons with loyalty to companies. The former is important the latter is foolhardy.

What would you think if a company regularly retracted offers upon finding better candidates? Opposite side of the same coin.

Companies do. It happens all the time with usually no recourse for the candidate.

One time a startup hired me and a buddy as contractors (expensive contractors) to help with their push to release. They had hired a bunch of junior (it seemed) marketing/sales/bizdevs types around the same time too. Two weeks later just about everyone was fired except the two expensive contractors (me and my buddy). I found out because I could hear some of the outgoing employees crying at their desk. One day they are eagerly working overtime to prep for a trade show, next day they are packing their stuff.

Soon thereafter, my project was canceled and I was reassigned to other work for a few weeks while I looked for somewhere else to work.

It's a Great Day at Hall Kinion was awesome on that gig too. I asked my handler to find me a new position, instead she setup an ambush meeting with me and the CTO to discuss why I wanted to leave. I couldn't believe it.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#298

Post by site-packages1 »

This is a really good list, and I don’t think I can add much to the discussion already here. But the article introduces the author as “passionate about architecting and building scalable software systems.“ Is _anyone_ passionate about this, or is this just marketing speak. It’s like introducing someone as “passionate about customer service,” give me a break.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#299

Post by site-packages1 »

sumtechguy wrote: post #195
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…

This is really why I use the 'easy' type questions (some variation of fizbuzz or something simple). A senior guy will crank it out in 5-10 mins. I then ask a question or two on how to improve it and a mini walk through of what they did and why. I also make it clear I sometimes get people who just can not do it but have the resume chops for it. I then usually spend the rest of the time digging on previous techs they h…

This is true. I interviewed someone for a senior eng role the other day and when asked a couple basic CS questions that were not simply trivia, the candidate fell apart totally. Like asking basic DB questions to a DBA candidate, or asking basic web/css/html questions to a frontend developer. They immediately went to the back of the line.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#300

Post by ImaCake »

greyhair wrote: post #141
fragmede wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way Apple manages to do this is that, to a larger degree than others , the company is run as a collection of different companies. This has pros AND cons but one of the pros in this context is that their hiring is less "work at Apple", and more "work for THIS team at Apple". Hands-down unbeatable for the specific question of role clarity, but it's naive to pretend there aren't downsides to the practice.

This is how Bell Labs was back prior to divestiture, up until the mid 1990s. There really wasn't one huge Bell Labs, there were literally hundreds of hundred person teams run as if they were little companies, but with a huge bureaucracy providing funding, guidance, and all sharing a knowledge pool. If you changed teams, you could find a completely different team culture using completely different tools. And like biol…

This sounds an awful lot like research at a university. It definitely has it's strenths and weaknesses. Some labs collaborate more than others. Some feel like islands in the ocean, while others feel like a townhouse in the city. Some labs are poor and a few are incredibly wealthy. All of them seem to filled with hard working interesting people.
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