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Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

kevin.burke.dev

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Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#261

Post by adamzerner »

questiondev wrote: post #88

yeah and if you are an anxious person like me, (i may be on the spectrum, i have some social issues), writing code in front of people makes me very anxious, it takes me back to my childhood when my dad would scream at me for being dyslexic, i got my b’s and d’s mixed up. i know that is not what is happening during an interview but, it’s how i feel. and this prevents me from getting ahead in an industry i am madly pas…

I'm really sorry to hear about those traumas and your current difficulty. Shoot me an email, maybe I can help: adamzerner@protonmail.com. https://adamzerner.bearblog.dev/ if you want to internet-stalk me first.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#262

Post by ip26 »

WalterBright wrote: post #111
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #6

One 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…

> he claimed to be a cypress expert so we asked him to set cypress up in a dummy react repo and he floundered the entire time If I was floundering because the interviewer found a hole in my knowledge (and there are many holes in Albert Hall) I'd proactively state that and say where the holes weren't and ask for a question about that. For example, I've implemented a complete C compiler, front to back, so at one point…

The interviewee doesn’t know what the day to day job will look like, so they may wind up talking about entirely the wrong parts of their skills & experience. The interviewer has a much better idea what they need to learn about the candidate.

Perhaps this is less of a big deal for a generic position that’s the same at every company, but if you are matching someone to a very different role than they’ve held before, you may be interested in only certain pieces of their resume.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#263

Post by more_corn »

GiorgioG wrote: post #202
zcw100 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's really great is if you can get the interviewer talking about themselves. If you're lucky you'll spend the entire interview nodding and saying things like, "wow", "that's really cool. How did you come up with that?". At the end, if it's the kind of interviewer that will talk about themselves for an hour straight they're going to love you, just sat there and let them be the center of attention. The problem is do…

This is how I got a job with a bunch of really smart folks in the early 2000s (they were all MIT grads and I was a graduate of a state liberal arts college in NY.) It was several rounds of interviews and a couple of the folks interviewing me (who clearly liked me) warned me that the interview at the end would be the hardest because the interviewer was an old non-nonsense engineer (MIT CS degree and MIT MBA.) It was i…

His feedback read like this: “Good culture fit, good soft skills. I really liked them. They seemed to understand and appreciate difficult and interesting topics.”

I assure you there are worse ways to behave in an interview. I’ve passed on people who were smart as a whip but nobody wanted to work with. And nobody wants a dead fish who just sits there waiting for the next problem to solve.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#264

Post by rmah »

afarrell wrote: post #201
mrfusion wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incompetent until proven competent. Most industries don’t have to deal with that attitude but it’s prevalent for us. Imagine asking a doctor basic biology questions or what an antibiotic is used for in an interview.

For example: The idea that there are many programmers who cannot even write fizzbuzz sounds like a very strong claim. It seems far more likely that there are many programmers who have socially-induced anxiety.

I have screened or interviewed hundreds of people over the past three decades. That is not a strong claim, it is simple truth. There is a large minority of so-called "professional" software developers who literally don't know what they're doing and can't anything but the dead simplest code.

They may only represent 2% of the population, but they are a much larger % of candidates searching for jobs. If you think about it a bit, you'll see why.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#265

Post by mikelevins »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #7
Justsignedup wrote: post #4

I have 15 years of experience, and seem to woo teams every time we do screening calls. Could be how he describes the problem. Most of the time during code screens they don't want you to perfectly solve it. Talk it out. Someone who feels that perfect or bust is the only way to go will fail most of the time. Idk feels like something is missing. He's right, feedback loops suck. Question is... Can he practice doing a pho…

> Talk it out I personally hate this approach. Solving programming problems requires my full focus and vocalizing while trying to think is a challenge (partially due to my stutter). I can either focus on communicating clearly and professionally or I can stfu and code, not both. I’m happy to solve a problem silently and talk about it after I’m done, but I won’t do a phone screen that asks me to word vomit in the middl…

I'm with you.

I can solve programming problems OR carry on a conversation. I cannot do both at the same time.

It isn't just coding. The same quirk shows up in other ways. For example, I also cannot carry on a conversation and navigate. I can drive safely while conversing, but I cannot navigate. When my daughter was a teenager she exploited this quirk for laughs: get in the car with Dad; start for destination; bring up interesting topic; wait to see what random place we end up going; profit!

I can explain my thinking after the fact. I just can't do the thinking while conversing.

I've been working as a consultant for a while now. Communication is a big part of the job. My current client is one that has come back repeatedly, and that pretty much lets me set the terms I want, and gives me broad discretion to decide how things are to be done. I presume that means they're happy with the results so far and want more of the same.

I do have to communicate effectively in that job. I collaborate with a VP to set directions, vet R&D proposals, choose implementation strategies, pick tools, guide other contributors, and so on. So I have to be able to communicate effectively.

I also write the majority of working code in the current set of projects we're working on.

What I don't have to do is write code while carrying on conversations. It's a good thing I don't have to do that, because I can't.

I can pair program, as long as my collaborator understands that when I need to really think about a problem, I have to leave the session to do it. I can rejoin once I've figured out what I'm thinking about, and I can explain what I thought of. The collaborators I'm working with now are used to it by now, and it's a normal part of our collaborative cadence.

I can hunt bugs in a pair session, similar to the way that I can drive just fine while conversing; I just can't navigate, or do involved creative problem solving. I'm not exactly sure what the difference is; just that there's a certain kind of thinking I need to do that gets blocked by conversation.

"I'm trying to think, but nothing happens."

I'm useless in tech-interview coding, so I just don't do it anymore. I've told several companies that wanted me to go through their coding interviews that they should just give me the lowest possible score on that part of the interview, and if they still wanted to talk to me about the job, I'd be happy to talk to them. Nobody has taken me up on that specific proposal, but I have gotten nice offers a couple of times after I thoroughly bombed coding interviews. Those experiences made me question how seriously those companies took their own processes.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#266

Post by MathYouF »

mrfusion wrote: post #243
MathYouF wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking a doctor who had completed their 12 years of medical school and residency basic biology questions would be a bit absurd. Asking someone who claims to be a doctor of natural medicine the same might yield you more than half unable to answer. Since there is no 12 year stringent accreditation process for being a software engineer, I'm not sure why this is a good comparison. There are many people who don't know so…

On the other hand we all deserve to be treated with dignity.

Some people avoid the dilemma by only interviewing candidates from prestigious CS programs and with previous employment at famous companies, locking out those without the "right" credentials.

If you're going to demand that you be treated as an honest estimator of your own abilities beyond doubt don't be surprised if that ends up eliminating opportunities for people who are trying to break into the field without those credentials that put their abilities at a near certainty.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#267

Post by justsaying9 »

chiph wrote: post #230
aigo wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could substitute it for child, another group of people who are broadly less likely to know where the setting is, and it wouldn't be offensive that way either.

As someone who was born before the moon landing and saw one of the last IMPs get installed on the ARPANET, yeah that was offensive. You should apologize. Knowing to silence your phone in meetings is a matter of having manners, not age.

> 'As someone who was born before the moon landing'

That would include any and all of us in this thread. No man has ever come anywhere near the moon.

Unless, of course, you happen to know of some kind of magical (presumably still classified) rocket nozzle tech that would somehow avoid leaving a crater in the soft 'lunar dirt' as the 1960s tin can touched down on the 'lunar surface.' Not to mention an actual solution to various other hard technological problems of space travel, like radiation shielding, heat rejection (no, space isn't 'cold'), battery power, lack of any visible stars, workings of a camera in a high radiation environment, etc, etc. And how about that lunar module 'computer'? Anyone ever replicated that 1960s technological wonder? Oh, the schematics and tech were all 'lost'. Someone accidentally recorded over the original telemetry tapes with Gilligan's Island reruns. I see. What a terrible accident.

Not to detract from your main point, of course; tye interviewer was terribly rude. Selfish. Just like the liars who faked the 'moon landing' in the Nevada desert, near Indian Springs.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#268

Post by justsaying9 »

aigo wrote: post #233
chiph wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was born before the moon landing and saw one of the last IMPs get installed on the ARPANET, yeah that was offensive. You should apologize. Knowing to silence your phone in meetings is a matter of having manners, not age.

Just as no-one would begrudge a dominated race from poking fun at the dominant race, I don't see why you are so on your high horse about the dominant age group getting the same. 'Punching up' is fair game where I come from. I'm afraid I just don't get your outrage at an innocent comment poking fun at the most dominant section of society. But, as you're the second person to have taken offence, I'm going to delete it a…

> 'I'm afraid I just don't get it.'

Personally, I'm not afraid of your lack of tact or humility, just disgusted by it.

I'm a Millenial, btw.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#269

Post by vanusa »

nijave wrote: post #188
vanusa wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the receiving end it weeded out a huge number of bad candidates. Along with (as was the main point of the original blog post) probably quite a few false negatives, Like the author of that post, for example. Meanwhile, you can achieve the same filtering benefit by far less obnoxious and more accurate means (a cursory glance at their repo, fore example).

A lot of candidates don't have public repos and you need an equal comparison across all candidates (you can introduce a lot of bias trying to gauge two candidates against different sets of criteria)

A lot of candidates don't have public repos

It doesn't have to be a public repo of course. They can just send zip file.

You need an equal comparison across all candidates.

"We'd like to see a code sample -- something we can build and compile, that you feel is representative of your skill level."

Sounds pretty straightforward and egalitarian to me.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#270

Post by Mezzie »

sokoloff wrote: post #244
Jach wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this because I agree 100%. I accepted the idea that they were "out there" but only really internalized it after I interviewed someone with a Masters in physics who couldn't make any progress on my simple problem. (The problem does assume you can understand the concept of a geometric line, but I give the two line equations most people first run into in junior high, among other things, I'm not testing recall.) E…

On the “we can take a chance here” front, I’ve sometimes struggled with hiring someone out of a stable situation and putting them into a role where they might earn a termination. If someone’s already unemployed and that happens, they’re no worse off (and likely better off). If it happens that they resigned a stable job and that happens, they’re made worse off. As a hiring manager or interviewer, I’m not their fiducia…

Could you indicate it through your choice of interview questions?

Things like, "How do you feel about stretching your skills in the work force?" "What do you do when you make a mistake at work?" "How do you handle a situation where you feel out of your depth?" Etc.?

I know I would take that as a signal not to go for it if I wanted to retain stability in my life.

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