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I will not do a tech interview

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Re: I will not do a tech interview

#21

Post by kevingibbon »

hvs wrote: post #7
tocomment wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only there were some way an employee could learn about btree's after taking a job...

I don't want my employees to have to learn everything just-in-time. By that logic, the people you hire wouldn't need to know anything. In addition, they don't know what they don't know, so they may not even know that they need a btree index.

This is a popular opinion which still makes hiring an art. The best people I have ever worked with are the people who are fast to learn, have amazing problem solving skills and are socially intelligent. That's it. No knowledge of btree required.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#22

Post by chollida1 »

> I politely suggest that a short contract job might be the best option for a company to evaluate a senior developer

I like the twist of doing the contract off site on the developers own time.

Every time I see someone on hacker news saying, "we've solved the interview problem. We just require every new hire to give up their old job and contract with us for a week to see if they are a good fit", I often wonder about the quality of the people they hire as I have yet to run into a talented dev who would quit their current job to do this one week contract for hire option.

Doing contract work via take home seems like a nice balance here as even people with kids have 2-3 hours free after kids go to bed. Done over a few nights in a week makes much more sense.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#23

Post by toomuchtodo »

chaostheory wrote: post #5

well you better have something to show then such as a public github repo.

Pass. I spend enough time at the office writing code that I can't show to the world because my employer owns it. I don't need to justify my six figure salary to my next employer by writing even more code on my off time just to prove I can write said code.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#24

Post by lewispollard »

My current job hired me roughly the same way - short, informal with a very basic coding test just to make sure I wasn't bullshitting. Then I was given a couple of weeks to recreate a game they'd recently finished - didn't have to be perfect, just a prototype and an example of the kind of code style I write. Got paid to do it, spent a couple of hours at home a night working on it, came back in to present it, and voila, job offer. So far it's worked out great!

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#25

Post by donretag »

Not quite the same, but I once had a no name company (getglue) tell me that I need to do a 3-hour programming assignment before I can interview with them. I have too much self-respect for myself to put myself through that process. I declined the "opportunity" to interview with them.

The interview process is broken and many of the interviewing techniques either do not correctly judge a candidate, or place too much burden on them. I guess the reasoning is that a false negative is better than a false positive.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#26

Post by falcolas »

tocomment wrote: post #6
TeeWEE wrote: post #4

Well, I need to interview candidates because I need to know if they are up for the job when systems breaks. If a table query fails because it needs a btree index due to range searches, I want the candidate to know how a btree index works and why it fixes the issue. Also If somebody cant tell me the difference between http udp and tcp, its a no hire for me. So for me, I really want to interview somebody before he can…

If only there were some way an employee could learn about btree's after taking a job...

On the job training? Heresy! Shun the unbeliever, shun!

In my own current position, I would not have gotten the job if they had interviewed me then like they interview new hires now.

Don't know how to find and recover active but deleted files? Goodbye. Don't know how to follow strace around a distributed environment? See ya. No idea how the elevator works? Why are you even applying?

I know how to do all of those things now, because I asked questions of my colleagues and the internet. I'm now the lead developer, not because I knew everything coming in, but because I am able to learn.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#27

Post by 300bps »

misiti3780 wrote: post #16

I have passed a bunch of job interviews in the past - but I feel the exact same away and hire this way these days. I really do not see the point of brainteasers or white board coding questions if you have a budget where you can just pay out a contract like this. Also, I believe there was an article posted here a few weeks back that indicated Google's brainteasers did not lead to quality candidates - I know I am cherr…

I guess I do not see how you can lose if you take the contract-to-hire approach

I agree with most of what you said, but one way you can lose if you insist on contract-to-hire is that you are filtering out a portion of the highest quality candidates who are only interested in immediate full time hiring.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#29

Post by joyeuse6701 »

I agree with that sentiment, I don't do well under the pressure of someone leering over me as nice and comfortable as they make it. Sounds like a good startup idea. Someone (maybe I will) make a site that formalizes the contract work concept. Instead of setting up and doing a project for someone, maybe a pair programming exercise on the fly over some days that neither the interviewer or interviewee is prepared for? 'Program Tic-Tac-Toe in x language', 'find the minimum value of this array given these properties of the array'. Could make it fun. Almost like a mini-mini hackathon. I'd much rather do that for 4 hours than random probes of knowledge from 4 people over almost pure academia.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#30

Post by lumens »

What about just setting the interviewer's expectations up front?

"Hey, as I'm sure you may understand, these sorts of on-the-spot interviews are a significant departure from the day-to-day environment under which I normally perform these sorts of tasks. I know this stuff well, but still might fumble a bit because of this atmosphere. Do you mind if I talk through this problem with you as I would if we were working on the job together?"

Short contracts can be great when you can afford them (ie, have time/are not currently otherwise engaged), but sometimes you have to work within the framework provided. Being your own salesperson is not all that complicated: manage expectations, build rapport, and under sell/over deliver.

A good recruiter can help fill in these gaps for you -- pre-setting the hiring managers expectations, coaching you up on interview strategy and tactics, and helping you understand a given company's interview process in full so you can mentally prepare. Unfortunately, most recruiters are not good and dealing with them tends to be a pain. We're building a better recruiter, online, at Mighty Spring (https://www.mightyspring.com). You control the whole process through a web interface, and simply request contact when desired. We're geared towards engineers and are currently in private beta. Will expedite invites to HN signups -- feel free to email me (address in profile).

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