You're probably just "not a good fit" and lay the blame on a technical interview.
Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens
151–160 of 340 posts
Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
You wouldn't know if they are bad candidates because you didn't hire them.
We do code submission instead of LC. Believe me, most candidate are complete, utter shit. And that's without even hiring them.
Sounds like many competent candidates are dodging a bullet by not being hired by you. What's the turnover rate on your team like?
Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It'd be like saying only the farmer who can do everything by hand without any tools increasing their productivity is a real one. Or an accountant refusing to use Excel/calcuators/ERPs and writing everything on paper. You're trying to map manual work onto engineering. And absolutely I'd rather work with accountnant who can write me on paper without Excel/calculator/ERP his logic. It's like you're being obtuse just f…
When one of the mediums actively helps and avoids small human errors, I'd prefer the person knowing using it instead of sticking an old and imperfect method out of pride.
> When one of the mediums actively helps and avoids small human errors
How does it actively helps and avoids small human errors in reasoning.
> I'd prefer the person knowing using it instead of sticking an old and imperfect method out of pride.
What does even pride have to do with this?
Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that staying employed as a software developer for 10+ years is a good indication of skill, far better than any random coding assignment. Put another way, if someone has 10+ years of experience, in an ideal world there isn't much point in quizzing them on algorithms or giving them homework. They've done all of that before, passed, were promoted, etc. You can see that on their resume, and you can verify that wi…
> I think that staying employed as a software developer for 10+ years is a good indication of skill, far better than any random coding assignment. As someone who has been doing interviews for as long as 2 years, wrong . I've seen at least 15 candidates that had 5-15 years of experience and we're complete shit. As in no redeemable qualities in terms of tech assignment.
Survivorship bias, Goodhart's Law, etc.
Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't this why there are trial periods ( no idea if it's a thing in the US with the "right to work" thing)?. Over here in the EU a work contract can't be terminated from the company just like that, there needs to be a specific reason ( like downsizing, or a serious error), and you can't quit just like that a mandatory notice period is required ( of course negotiable depending on the situation), usually in the 1-3 mon…
> So if someone lied their way through interviews, in the first couple of months you should be able to detect that and terminate their trial period. Managers hates firing people, it is really uncomfortable. So instead of firing this person to look for a new, they keep the person and say they need even more headcount and hope the next one is better.
Totally, it's like admitting that you don't know how to hire. And it's worse if HR is involved.
Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
We do code submission instead of LC. Believe me, most candidate are complete, utter shit. And that's without even hiring them.
Sounds like many competent candidates are dodging a bullet by not being hired by you. What's the turnover rate on your team like?
> Sounds like many competent candidates are dodging a bullet by not being hired by you
How so?
> turnover rate on your team like?
2 years since I joined, hired one dev recently, no one left so far.
Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens
#157One thing I realized recently while interviewing candidates at my company is that it’s one of the few opportunities that individual contributors like myself have to exert significant power over someone else, and not everyone is prepared to handle it well. Recently, we had a candidate come through that wasn’t a good fit for us (he claimed to be a cypress expert so we asked him to set cypress up in a dummy react repo a…
I recall voicing an opinion that we should record interviews we give candidates and re-review it during the hiring committee, much like we do code reviews. Have the interviewer justify certain beliefs about the candidate with hard timestamps rather than platitudes ("not confident", "wanted to see how they react under pressure", etc. etc.). My comment always gets pushback. Privacy, respect for interviewer ("If I work…
Large companies have a fairly rigid process with strict rubrics for interviewers. In general the goal as I see it is to remove as much individual decision making as possible. Doesn't stop these issues as the comments here show.
You also then encode a single group's biases (the rubric) rather than a mix of everyone's biases. In my experience that doesn't actually make things better overall just slightly more consistently bad.
Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think that staying employed as a software developer for 10+ years is a good indication of skill, far better than any random coding assignment. As someone who has been doing interviews for as long as 2 years, wrong . I've seen at least 15 candidates that had 5-15 years of experience and we're complete shit. As in no redeemable qualities in terms of tech assignment.
Survivorship bias, Goodhart's Law, etc.
?
Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd rather filter out good candidate than let bad in. It's a domino effect. You let one bad, he will hire more in the future.
Isn't this why there are trial periods ( no idea if it's a thing in the US with the "right to work" thing)?. Over here in the EU a work contract can't be terminated from the company just like that, there needs to be a specific reason ( like downsizing, or a serious error), and you can't quit just like that a mandatory notice period is required ( of course negotiable depending on the situation), usually in the 1-3 mon…
In the US you are always on a trial period. The problem is that firing people is annoying and bad for team morale. More importantly even dealing with a bad coworker is really bad for team morale. No one wants to join a company that is likely to fire them in 3 months because the company f-ed up their own hiring process. No one wants to recommend their connections join a company where that is likely to happen. Made worse due to a lot of compensation is tied to staying a year at a company so leaving early is basically getting paid 50% for that time.
Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd rather filter out good candidate than let bad in. It's a domino effect. You let one bad, he will hire more in the future.
> You let one bad, he will hire more in the future. When your organization can recognize a poor investment but cannot act on it, you have an organizational problem. Why would someone get to hire more "bad" (for whatever that means) if you can recognize it? Even if you're doing all the hiring yourself, it's unlikely you'll have a 100% record over time.
Most companies have organizational problems. So a system that only works if you don't will fail for the majority of companies.