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Don’t do interviews, do discussions

thinkingthrough.substack.com

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Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#161

Post by 01100011 »

01100011 wrote: post #157
brailsafe wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you transition between the previous state you describe and when you found success getting into your current role, in terms of prepping to do that sort of testing, as well as motivation? I'm very close to 30 now, and have been burnt out enough times that it's a struggle to imagine how I could care about tech enough to attempt to re-transition into almost only caring about sort of climbing that ladder.

I got divorced, lost almost everything, and had to do it or accept living on sustenance net pay for the rest of my life. I really didn't want to do this. I had a cozy gig in my past life, but I couldn't make it on the engineering salary in my town. I don't come from a CS background. I'm a EE. I just happened to get an embedded job right out of college and kept getting more and more software work. The only algorithms…

I'll also add that the first couple of years of my code reviews were a bloody mess. It's frustrating to have people who constantly out-think you and provide better ways of doing nearly everything you come up with. I was lucky to get my foot in the door and then built my skills up even more with a lot of pain and extra hours put it to get things right. I'm a better programmer now than I ever was, but I still have so, so much to learn and practice.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#162

Post by jen20 »

xyzelement wrote: post #96
jen20 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 skil…

There are plenty of people in this boat 1 the so-called “dark matter” developers. There are lots of people who find their fulfillment via means other than work, and work is a necessary evil that pays the rent. I personally couldn’t stand that kind of place, but understand why others are fine with it.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#165

Post by kube-system »

austincheney wrote: post #85
kube-system wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this works in big companies, but many small companies that I’ve worked at, you’d be caught, even lying on silly little things. The people reading your resume are the same ones you’re going to be working beside, and they’ll absolutely ask you about things you said you knew. And once they find out that you lied about your volunteering experience at your local little league team, your whole resume goes under the m…

There is a couple of problems with that. More than half the time I have interviewed nobody reads resumes. They know your name and kind of how long you have been employed. Second, you control what appears on your resume. You can spin it how you want by the facts you include and omit. You list the great selling points about yourself and none of the bad. Don’t lie on a resume because its already under your control and i…

When I interview, I don't spend much time reading the resume beforehand, but I'll ask a few specific questions about it during the interview.

If one assumes nobody reads their resume, however, then what benefit would they get from lying?

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#166

Post by joshgachnang »

kube-system wrote: post #47
mattnewton wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much "interviewing" is really testing the kind of performance anxiety that people without other good offers yet have. I experience this too as I not just as I progressed in my career, but even within one batch of interviewing. I've always tried to batch as many interviews as I can. By the third interview I am feeling much less anxious and just perform much better and by the fourth or fifth I am nailing t…

I interview and I explicitly adjust for this in my interviews. Anxiety is not too hard to pick up on, especially if you know family and friends who have it, and I’ll give people the benefit of the doubt in the case that I do notice it. Many people with social anxiety are excellent writers and I make sure we always have a written portion of our evaluation to give them.

This is really interesting! What kind of questions do you ask in the written portion?

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#167

Post by benatkin »

asdfman123 wrote: post #164

I think this is pretty much the opposite of what the evidence suggests: that unstructured interviews are pretty much worthless. Conversations gives both parties more fuzzy feelings, but are they actually better or just easier and less awkward?

Both interviews and discussions are conversations. I know lots of interviews are too formal in some ways. I think it might be useful to start formal, get informal but still stick to rules like not asking discriminatory questions, and then get formal again for the end of the interview. Sort of like a feedback sandwich.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#168

Post by throwaway984393 »

123pie123 wrote: post #18

Depending on the interview I always try to make it light hearted and a discussion One of the best times this happened is when I was being interviewed by the future manager and he said after 5 minutes you clearly know more than me and we started talking about the best places to go for a drink in the area. I got the job and he was a fantastic manager and good friend

Same! In a few situations I didn't ask a single technical question, it was just obvious they knew what they were doing and showed great insights.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#169

Post by brailsafe »

01100011 wrote: post #161
01100011 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got divorced, lost almost everything, and had to do it or accept living on sustenance net pay for the rest of my life. I really didn't want to do this. I had a cozy gig in my past life, but I couldn't make it on the engineering salary in my town. I don't come from a CS background. I'm a EE. I just happened to get an embedded job right out of college and kept getting more and more software work. The only algorithms…

I'll also add that the first couple of years of my code reviews were a bloody mess. It's frustrating to have people who constantly out-think you and provide better ways of doing nearly everything you come up with. I was lucky to get my foot in the door and then built my skills up even more with a lot of pain and extra hours put it to get things right. I'm a better programmer now than I ever was, but I still have so,…

Thanks for your reply. I'm sorry you had to go through that, truly, divorce is a traumatic experience unlike any other, but it does bring some solace to know I'm not the only one who's either been in or is in some sticky situations. Unfortunately I haven't been as lucky in finding something early on to build on. I was about a year and a half into my first position after diploma, and was laid-off, then terminated from my next 3 months in, then again, then again, then again. The only light in that dark being a decent python oriented thing in a research department. Reflecting on that, I might have been in over my head, too cocky as well, with really nothing to base it on other than a passing capability with programming and intense motivation to produce good results. But I was also in the wrong places that I wasn't well-suited for; a constant learning process that has taught me a bit about myself. Looking at the future seems rather bleak, as I'm sure you've felt many times, and I'm pretty much just counting on getting lucky at some point.

I am curious though, what were the more mechanical aspects of how you made that transition? Did you have a plan to practice algorithms in a certain way and then wait till you were contacted by the right recruiter? How did you go about it? Did you more simply just try and do 1 problem a day and then build that up, or did you find useful projects to apply more obscure algorithms to, that might be more interesting and motivating?

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#170

Post by kube-system »

joshgachnang wrote: post #166
kube-system wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interview and I explicitly adjust for this in my interviews. Anxiety is not too hard to pick up on, especially if you know family and friends who have it, and I’ll give people the benefit of the doubt in the case that I do notice it. Many people with social anxiety are excellent writers and I make sure we always have a written portion of our evaluation to give them.

This is really interesting! What kind of questions do you ask in the written portion?

The written portion is part of our take-home coding test. We have the candidate do a short and simple coding exercise, and at the end, there's a couple open-ended questions about their approach, what they could have done better, etc.

I find it really insightful to give people a simple exercise to complete and then ask them to talk about it. The answers to the questions are almost more telling than the code itself. You can easily see who is struggling to understand the concepts, versus someone who just didn't have much time to complete it, just by reading their responses.

Even for the same exact code, someone might answer "I completed all of the requirements", and another person might answer "I wrote this in a hurry and it doesn't meet requirement [x] all of the time, but to handle circumstances like [y], I'd implement [z]". The latter person is always a better engineer.

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