31–40 of 133 posts
If they have an interview process that involves a take home project or something similarly time intensive. To me that screams, "I don't care about any family responsibilities you may have, I want a bunch of childless 20-twenty somethings I can burn and churn".
I've walked out of an interview when the employee doing it took a phone call in the middle of it. It was so rude and disrespectful. I once got a whiteboarding problem and proposed a solution, and the interviewer gave me a flat out "that's not the one I had in mind". I'd already asked clarifying questions and thought my proposal was reasonable in light of the constraints as I understood them. After a few minutes of tr…
Did a round of interviews for staff engineer at Catawiki that felt more like trying to guess the right words than actual problem solving.
But I get it. People get dragged into the process, usually without compensation. And it's much easier and safer to reject than to accept.
The tragedy is that everyone knows that the approach isn't working, I haven't met a single person who thinks SWE hiring is working; but we still seem unable do fix it.
Pro-tip: Too many interviewers can be threatened by incoming talent being better than them.
If they have an interview process that involves a take home project or something similarly time intensive. To me that screams, "I don't care about any family responsibilities you may have, I want a bunch of childless 20-twenty somethings I can burn and churn".
We have a take home assignment as a screening stage, but we ask candidates to time box it to 45min. Some folks refuse to do it and that's fine, but most are pretty open to it.
I know I probably would, so I'm curious.
Another time went for a code screen that said we could use any language on our own machine. When I go there the hiring manager handed me a Mac and told me I'd be using Angular to code a given problem. That's great. I had no experience with Macs, no experience with WebStorm, no experience with Angular. What a waste of time. I asked why he even brought me in if I didn't have any of this listed on my resume and the recruiter told me it'd my choice of machine and language? His response was that maybe I had the experience but just didn't list it on my resume. Fuck you too.
All of these have happened to me: - The interviewer is wearing a suit. - The interviewer asks "you've worked with [person who now works at our company] before, what do you think about them?". Bonus points if they insist after I give a diplomatic answer. - "Why are you using microservices?" "Because everyone is doing it" - Not following up. For weeks. - "Can you send us your high school diploma?" - Take home assignmen…
I've walked out of an interview when the employee doing it took a phone call in the middle of it. It was so rude and disrespectful. I once got a whiteboarding problem and proposed a solution, and the interviewer gave me a flat out "that's not the one I had in mind". I'd already asked clarifying questions and thought my proposal was reasonable in light of the constraints as I understood them. After a few minutes of tr…
So many interviewers fall into the old xkcd “communicating poorly then acting smug when you’re misunderstood is not cleverness”.
All of these have happened to me: - The interviewer is wearing a suit. - The interviewer asks "you've worked with [person who now works at our company] before, what do you think about them?". Bonus points if they insist after I give a diplomatic answer. - "Why are you using microservices?" "Because everyone is doing it" - Not following up. For weeks. - "Can you send us your high school diploma?" - Take home assignmen…
"Take home assignment with a time limit." What's your concern there? (Honest question!) I feel terrible about asking for home assignments but I feel like it's good for people like myself who are terrible about coding live. (I usually have a choice of live or homework.) I put a "limit" as a guideline about what kind of quality to expect, usually with language about things not to worry about. I don't expect/want folks…
All of these have happened to me: - The interviewer is wearing a suit. - The interviewer asks "you've worked with [person who now works at our company] before, what do you think about them?". Bonus points if they insist after I give a diplomatic answer. - "Why are you using microservices?" "Because everyone is doing it" - Not following up. For weeks. - "Can you send us your high school diploma?" - Take home assignmen…
"Take home assignment with a time limit." What's your concern there? (Honest question!) I feel terrible about asking for home assignments but I feel like it's good for people like myself who are terrible about coding live. (I usually have a choice of live or homework.) I put a "limit" as a guideline about what kind of quality to expect, usually with language about things not to worry about. I don't expect/want folks…
But a hard limit (you will get the assignment at X o'clock and you will have to turn it in within 3 hours) is just bonkers. It's totally unnecessary and artificial time pressure. Maybe I'm having a bad day and I make a silly mistake that takes time to fix - or the assignment is complicated and it takes me half an hour to even understand it and decide on an approach. Or I could implement the assignment in a maintainable way, but the time pressure requires me to do it in the most hacky way possible. Basically, I don't do my best work under time pressure, so I have no idea why you would impose it on me. In my professional experience, there's very rarely ever been any time pressure like that, so it's not like it measures something important.