Oddly one impact on me from reading this is that Kapwing seems like probably a nice place to apply for a job -- simple enough application process, human review, sane and respectful take-home and no live pressure coding. I'm not affiliated in any way nor am I a FT software developer, but this seemed like a pretty sane process (which sadly the article reveals may not be sufficient to properly vet candidates).
You may want to reconsider. They have written an article criticizing the applicant while posting half of the applicant's resume online. The only hope for Kapwing is if this story turns out to be fabricated.
I am pretty sure my current employer could make an exception if you can show proof of your condition (which would benefit you either way in Germany). But we also like to see collegues in person, as this is what the interaction for many positions might look like anyways.
Demanding said proof is very illegal in multiple jurisdictions.
“Prove you’re deaf” would be a pretty rude thing to say, but you also don’t want to hire someone who’s lying about a disability. Presumably you’d do some kind of vetting before an in-person interview, and certainly before a hire.
Anyway in Germany I bet there’s a Taubenausweis (Gehöhrlosigkeitsbescheinigung?) or other form of official status marker, and the employer would expect you to show it to HR.
I keep coming back to this phrase used in this post: "it was scary". Yeah, hiring is scary. Hiring is insanely expensive on all fronts. Firing people is difficult, it's expensive and legally exposing. Hiring the wrong person, allowing them access your systems and potentially exfiltrate your IP to them is a hazardous but necessary venture. The thing is, none of these things really changed with AI. People have been lyi…
> - And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. Others have already commented on this, but do you work in tech? IME getting interviewed by directors and even VPs in t-shirts is the norm. I’ve worn jeans to work my whole career. If anything, I think people in tech have a strong prejudice against people in suits (ie “obviously this person isn’t a real software engineer, they’re wearing a suit.”) Anyway, probably not g…
I was once turned down by Microsoft (in the 1990s), because I wore a suit to the interview. They made a point of mentioning it.
Incidentally, I really-really like that they asked questions based on the person's resume. That was typical before some students got handed a lot of dotcom boom money. (And then somehow most interviews throughout the industry became based on what a CS student with no experience thought professional software development was about. Then it became about everyone playing to the bad metrics and rituals that had been insti…
At the company I work for, we are forbidden to ask questions based on resume, as it introduces biases. Reduction of bias means "ask same questions of every candidate".
Are you doing technical interviews, or manager-conversation-type interviews? This makes sense for the former (whether someone was a Senior Whatever in Googlebook or wrote CRUD apps for a bank is irrelevant if you're just seeing whether they can find a bug in a library or whatever, but it may influence the interviewer's _perception_ of their performance, thus it is strictly better than the interview doesn't know), but seems quite impractical for the latter.
From the article: > but it had been some time ago, and they never worked on any of the features It appears that the candidate might have actually worked on the daycare app, but not on what they said they worked - i.e., the ratelimiting and pagination. It appears that they might have been working on the frontend, and took the liberty of "expanding" their role - this used to be extremely common in a big sample of the r…
Well I guess if the candidate would be a little be stronger and actually trying to reason with the LLM about the decision it suggested, he would be better prepared and maybe got away with his claims. Or as current best chess player Magnus Carlson said, "if I would cheat, you would never know". Meaning very strong candidates will get away with flexing the truth with AI. But this means maybe, you shouldn't look for a p…
Yeah.. but if he didn't actually work exactly on it, but took the effort to learn from coworkers (or LLMs or google or wherever) and is able to answer my questions on what he did, and more importantly on why he decided to do something a certain way and not some other way, then he/she must have spent considerable amount of time actually learning about it and figuring things out. So I'd still hire him/her. The trouble is most people who embellish are either not competent to go deep enough to learn, or think that they can get away with some superficial knowledge of it.
Potentially important side points, since not everyone knows, and we don't want anyone to learn a mistake by example: 1. Don't use blur to redact documents. Whatever blur was used can probably be reversed. 2. Don't try to hide the identity of someone you're talking about by redacting a few details on their resume. With the prevalence of public and private resume databases, that's probably easy to match up with a name.
There’s a few red flags here on the hiring side too. I’ve given a lot of interviews, candidates will always try to come up with the best story as an answer to your question because “I can’t think of an example” is not an acceptable answer. It’s a demand you’re placing on them. Also having experience puffed up on a resume happens around 100% of the time. The point of the interview is to figure out how much real releva…
I was sharing this story and responding to various comments (here) in my conversations elsewhere on the Internet, and as part of my statements I questioned about quoting/paraphrasing the "word gets around" to determine if this is best way to reference the point, and thought I may as well share it here too. https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_c0378709-b716-48af-8996-a0e4...
While I think this view is probably apt in other situations -- and to be clear, I don't know much about the company -- all of the specific techniques mentioned on the candidate's CV and in the article are fairly "garden-variety". The pagination example seems like a perfectly reasonable thing for both sides to want to talk about, and which becomes relevant at a level of scale much smaller than Google.
imho I think the pagination example alone wouldn’t get you hired even if told correctly. In over a decade of experience my “coolest experience” related to pagination is about not using LIMIT and OFFSET because it’s not performant… but that’s 101 knowledge and doesn’t sell.
> - And yeah, you guys, it's time to buy a suit. Others have already commented on this, but do you work in tech? IME getting interviewed by directors and even VPs in t-shirts is the norm. I’ve worn jeans to work my whole career. If anything, I think people in tech have a strong prejudice against people in suits (ie “obviously this person isn’t a real software engineer, they’re wearing a suit.”) Anyway, probably not g…
I wouldn't take that advice seriously. Suit in tech would be awkward (even for most mgmt roles). Tech pioneered the concept that you don't need a suit to get the pay of a suit. You can be yourself.
It has spread to other industries and circumstances other than suits.
I now have no idea how I am supposed to dress for most things other than formal occasions like wedding, funerals, or formal dinners.
> Ahh... the age old, "just do better" position for neurodivergent people. Classic bigotry. I think you're too eager to throw personal attacks on those who raise valid points that are you feel are uncomfortable to address. You should be aware that engineering is a social activity that requires hard skills. In any project that employs more than one person, you need to be able to interact with others. This means being…
> they will of course favor those who they are able to effectively interact with. This is not bigotry, is it? If "those who they are able to effectively interact with" ends up meaning only people who look, act, or believe like them, then yes it absolutely is.
That’s an uncharitable interpretation. But if that is what it ends up meaning then i do agree, that’s bigotry.
A more charitable interpretation might mean “the candidate is able to clearly explain (through some medium: orally, typing, etc) how their code works, and why they picked that solution. They were also able to correctly answer follow up questions”. If _that_ is what is meant, then that’s not bigotry IMO.