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Don’t do interviews, do discussions

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Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#91

Post by geoduck14 »

CalRobert wrote: post #26

I've finally reached a point in my career where I have a great paying job and like it well enough, and really don't give a shit what interviewers think. Paradoxically, I think I interview a lot better. I can steer conversation towards stuff I care about, and if they insist on being annoying, just thank them for their time and leave. Though this might just be a result of being pickier about who I interview with. If no…

>I've finally reached a point in my career where I have a great paying job and like it well enough, and really don't give a shit what interviewers think.

I've interviewed people who have resched this point. It makes for a chill interview. In some cases, the interviewee is overly "chill" and is bored with the challenges described in the job. I prefer to hire people who are EXCITED about the challenges they will face in the job.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#92

Post by cema »

kube-system wrote: post #42
jstx1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm kind of stiff in conversations with strangers but decent at programming, does that mean that your company doesn't have a place for me?

Not the OP, but I have a similar experience. Being “stiff in conversations” is not really enough detail to answer the question. I don’t care about whether people are social butterflies. I care about whether they can accomplish the work as a part of a team. I know that sounds cliche but it’s the truth. I just want people who are accepting to feedback, don’t act unprofessionally, and can effectively work in a team.

Accepting feedback, but also providing feedback, also asking for it. So being able to initiate a conversation when needed is an important skill.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#93

Post by osrec »

xyzelement wrote: post #79
osrec wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can steer conversation towards stuff I care about, and if they insist on being annoying, just thank them for their time and leave. I like this approach. Stops you from being painted into a corner, and if you are, you can still leave with your dignity. Some interviewers can be on such a power trip, which can make things feel pretty horrible for the interviewee.

> Stops you from being painted into a corner, and if you are, you can still leave with your dignity. Talk about wasting time. You are bothering to do the interview because for one reason or another you're interested in the job. It's weird to feel good leaving the interview where you somehow saved face for yourself by not answering any of the questions. You just guaranteed that you neither get the job nor learn anythi…

Not quite. Confidence is a big part of interviewing, and having someone turn the screw on you on some esoteric topic doesn't really help build your knowledge or your confidence.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#94

Post by charles_f »

Every few weeks someone comes back with the one true way of interviewing, or the X things wrong with how interviews are led. I have conducted a few hundred of these by now, and the most I know about it is that there's no good way, because you try to figure someone out in just a few hours based on stuff they tell you. The format that seems to work the least worse for me is when you get them to tell you about actual stuff from their experience, which tends to prevent getting completely pointless people. I have been forced to do coding exercises for a while but I replaced by a general discussion on some tech they have been using recently, just to get a feeling of whether they understand what they're doing.

Recently I have been looking for another team internally to my company. An interesting fit is that I went through 3 interviews. I'm an engineering manager. Two interviews were focused on system design, one was coding. The only non coding question I received was around how I coach people. The three persons who interviewed me I asked: "what does the team need to do better", and they all answered a variation of "it takes a while to get stuff to prod once it's built. We need someone who can help get better at that". Yet not a single question for that. I guess the lesson learnt is that if you are looking for a particular skilk, maybe focus on that as well.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#95

Post by mikesabbagh »

Best interview questions are open ended general questions. What is your opinion on software security? How would you improve your efficiency?

This usually is a great discussion where everyone feels good at the end, but tell a lot about the sophistication of the person being interviewed.

After this, pass a small test to make sure the person can do some real work.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#96

Post by xyzelement »

jen20 wrote: post #81
xyzelement wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "honestly I'm really happy where I am, but every man has his price, what can you offer?" does wonders. I would be very surprised if you say literally this and get results. No self-respecting company or manager is going to invest in talking to you if you describe yourself so overtly mercenary. Obviously, when you're happy where you are, money is part of the equation to get you to move, but making it seem like the o…

> culture-centric companies (which are the good ones) This depends on what you are looking for.

> This depends on what you are looking for.

I am open to learning other sides here because this is so foreign to me. What are the cases where you don't want to work in a place where people care about the mission and culture and want coworkers who do as well?

What are the cases where you're happy working for the company whose attitude is "we don't care who you are and what you value, as long as you have the basic skills and are willing to take what we pay, welcome aboard?" Do such companies become great places to work and if so how?

I am asking genuinely curious because I've always looked for high culture high mission companies because that's what I am like.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#97

Post by User23 »

xyzelement wrote: post #74
CalRobert wrote: post #26

I've finally reached a point in my career where I have a great paying job and like it well enough, and really don't give a shit what interviewers think. Paradoxically, I think I interview a lot better. I can steer conversation towards stuff I care about, and if they insist on being annoying, just thank them for their time and leave. Though this might just be a result of being pickier about who I interview with. If no…

>> "honestly I'm really happy where I am, but every man has his price, what can you offer?" does wonders. I would be very surprised if you say literally this and get results. No self-respecting company or manager is going to invest in talking to you if you describe yourself so overtly mercenary. Obviously, when you're happy where you are, money is part of the equation to get you to move, but making it seem like the o…

This is total loserthink. Saying literally that will assuredly get results.

Mature managers and owners are well aware that hiring is a commercial act and that commercial acts are about money. Signaling that you’re willing to walk from the negotiation is key to getting good compensation. Strategically, you wait until they’ve already invested thousands of dollars in labor costs interviewing you first.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#98

Post by LASR »

foobiekr wrote: post #86
CalRobert wrote: post #26

I've finally reached a point in my career where I have a great paying job and like it well enough, and really don't give a shit what interviewers think. Paradoxically, I think I interview a lot better. I can steer conversation towards stuff I care about, and if they insist on being annoying, just thank them for their time and leave. Though this might just be a result of being pickier about who I interview with. If no…

This is my experience as well. I no longer interview for things, I interview people who want to hire me. At this point in my career, as an engineering IC, my initial conversations are with the VP/GMs of business units. Younger me would have been very surprised how much i actually enjoy these conversations with manager types. In my experience, _most_ of the VP GM and CEO types are much broader and more interesting tha…

Above a certain level of expertise, ICs are far harder to hire than management-like positions.

This is definitely surprising to younger ICs in the industry - who seem to want to become engineering managers any way they can.

The ceiling of genius you can possibly spike to as an engineer is far higher. I’ve seen single engineers at smaller startups perform the work of entire teams at big companies. And these folks get paid maybe 3x-4x the standard engineer salary. Huge savings. But hard to hire these folks.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#99

Post by brailsafe »

version_five wrote: post #80
ab_testing wrote: post #67

I think the author has not really interviewed in the past couple of months / years. Now-a-days I see interviewers skipping the pleasantries and straight jumping on to LC style questions. In fact, in a lot of companies, the first couple of rounds are online assessments where you try to pound on LC mediums or hards without even talking to anybody else

Do you think this is a response to tech salaries getting higher, and more unqualified people who interview well applying for jobs? A couple years ago we were hiring data scientists, and started with a chat with the hiring manager, and then at some point a technical evaluation. We attracted business grads and others for the position (in addition to cs folks), and a lot of them talked a good game but couldn't do basic…

I think it's a result of the cost of technical testing reducing to a negligible amount, and then as you say, an unhealthy relationship with risk aversion. If any company can open a funnel to the entire timezone or world and put everyone through a HackerRank test they bought off the shelf, they have sunk no real cost by the time they interview someone and potentially no shortage of people who'll go through with it. This is proven out by how little of a signal these cost-of-entry tests apparently provide, because they go on to do other tests anyway, and inevitably reject candidates who passed all of them for any reason they can come up with.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#100

Post by austincheney »

rsj_hn wrote: post #55
austincheney wrote: post #45

The biggest challenge with software interviews is that you don’t know when to lie. The process is maximally biased and so you have maximum incentive to lie. The only reason to not lie is reputation damage in the highly unlikely case you are caught. In the end you are either hired for more money or you are just wasting your time as a candidate. Most of us really want to be as honest as possible, not just because we ar…

> So, just lie. I think this is bad advice. I have never lied in an interview. I've also never had a job not offered to me if I made it to the in person interview part. This isn't to say that I have magical job-getting powers, but only that not lying has not hurt my chances. In one job I applied for, I didn't have a lot of domain knowledge, but I had knowledge in an adjacent domain and wanted to to jump over to this…

Think about it like this. The goals are attain employment and maximize compensation. That’s it.

That said you are probably best off training machine learning to do this for you. It won’t suffer the nonverbal faults associated with dishonesty, because truth to a machine is how effectively it completes the assigned goal.

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