Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

Some companies who did feel strict during the interviews actually were really good companies.

The opposite is true, I interviewed a company that seemed open minded and fun.

The interview in appearance was quite enjoyable, but with huge red flags. The CTO was always talking (super fast) and just wouldn't let me speak. I could ask only one question (during 1h) and was rudely interrupted in the end because he had no more time.

The CTO also said something like "If you join this company you will work with very competent engineers, smarter than you". To which I humorously answered while defending my pride, but probably ended up looking like someone full of himself.

Clearly this is not someone I would enjoy working with on a daily basis.

> A fizzbuzz with fewer false-positive rejections might be something like "implement multiplication without using the multiplication operator".

While possibly a fair question, this is a whole order of magnitude more difficult than FizzBuzz. It requires more domain knowledge as well (lots of people have forgotten how to multiply).

> Allows the quality candidates lots of room to shine.

But this is precisely the opposite of FizzBuzz. The goal is to weed out horrible candidates, not identify great ones.

Let me clarify first that 50 interviews include phone screening, where we don't do specific technical questions but rather just poke around what the candidate is looking for and whether they seem able to explain what they have been doing without drowning.

As for the process we use, we are a hedge fund of 30 people, we have no HR, so I directly deal with head hunters. That means the numbers I gave are "raw".

I see a lot of comments arguing whether it's even possible to assess technical skills during an interview, and overall spitting on whiteboard brain teasers.

For the former, really, you need to be in the front row of hiring to understand it. I'm not talking about filtering candidates that can answer library specific trivia or solve red black tree removal on a white board here. I'm talking about senior Python developers that cannot remember the syntax of a for loop, data science specialists that cannot ELI5 the intuition of a linear regression. That's the degree of "low skill level" I'm talking about. I think a lot of people here are biased toward thinking the average programmer on the market should be the same skill level of their average colleague.

This is Wrong.

You are reading hacker news, you are very likely to be passioned and dedicated about what you are doing, you are most likely working in an above average company, surrounded with above average colleagues. Your perception of the average programmer is biased toward your own surroundings.

Now I see that the whiteboard interview seems to be really dreaded. And man, do I feel you. I also used to hate them as an interviewee. But that does not mean they are all the same.

When I do a whiteboard interview, I am perfectly aware that the candidate is obviously stressed, uncomfortable, and not at 100% of his potential. That's why the questions I ask are typically not too intellectually challenging. Some variations of the fizzbuzz mainly, along with a small exercice on recursivity in case the fizzbuzz is too easy.

"Whiteboard interview" should not become a strawman for "24yo fresh grad throws B-tree inversion at you to feel superior". Really, the only thing that should be tested in these interviews is your programmer muscle memory. And from my experience, it does work.

Sorry, in my mind the input was restricted to positive integers. My fault for not making that clear.

    def mul(a, b):
        accum = 0
        while b > 0:
            accum = accum + a
            b -= 1
        return accum

> But this is precisely the opposite of FizzBuzz. The goal is to weed out horrible candidates, not identify great ones.

This accomplishes both at once. That's a super set, not an opposite.

It is important when thinking about social issues that the VAST majority of the population have very much the opposite experience - they might have to apply to 20 jobs to get one interview and if they get an offer they have to take it or they won't be able to make rent. The knock on effects on that on their work life are enormous.