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I will not do a tech interview

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Re: I will not do a tech interview

#61

Post by pcl »

I'm a big fan of this approach, and I've used it successfully when hiring at startups. But it hasn't seemed to fit in well with the hiring culture at large companies. We can't use someone's time for free, and initiating a contracting relationship is mired in red tape, so isn't really worthwhile for a small-scale project of the sort that's appropriate in this context. And asking someone to spend a couple days working on something that is going to be thrown away seems demoralizing and possibly counter-productive, since the fact that it's "just a toy" will doubtless impact the approach the interviewee takes to the problem.

Plus, in a large company, internal transfers are common. The social dynamic of asking for an employee who works elsewhere in the same company to do work for a different part of the company seems awkward.

Does anyone have any success (or failure) stories about trying to make this sort of approach work in a large company?

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#62

Post by crazygringo »

Granted, there are a lot of bad tech interviews out there (asking about algorithms that nobody ever uses) ... but I do not understand this.

Imagine someone's being hired for a front-end position, and we don't have months to get them up to speed.

I'm going to ask them to explain how a closure works. How they deal with AJAX. What they think about "!important". Things to be careful about with floats. How CSS precedence/specificity works. Give them an example webapp idea, and ask how they might architect it.

None of these are gotchas. All of them are directly applicable to the work they'll be doing. If you can't explain how closures work, then either you don't understand them (so you shouldn't be hired except for a very junior position), or you're bad at communicating/explaining (which, on teams, can be equally bad).

The author says "Other times I just froze on topics that I know very well." Maybe somebody can explain this better to me -- but if you freeze up in interviews, are you also going to freeze up in developer meetings? During code reviews? When you're in the room with clients?

If you freeze up in interviews, then it doesn't seem like the problem is with interviews -- the problem is with you freezing up, isn't it? I mean, if you can't answer basic questions about your knowledge in a one-on-one conversation, then that's a real problem, and not just in interviewing. (Obviously, some overly aggressive or unfriendly interviewers can be off-putting, but I'm just talking about "normal" friendly interviewers.)

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#63

Post by VladRussian2 »

jnbiche wrote: post #48
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…

Can you not understand that there might be people who can complete your task easily, yet who have extreme anxiety about interviews? I actually understand this issue -- I've been trying to switch careers into programming for the past year. I've know several languages well (Python, JavaScript, some C), can use git, and have a few decently impressive projects on my Github profile. I also contribute to a pretty well-know…

>Programming interviews seem incredibly confrontational compared to my current profession. Interviewers seem to be out to trick you at something, or else to prove how much smarter they are than you.

well, welcome to software engineering. The interviews are for the reason, they let you peek into your future job. If you can't manage that environment for 4 hours of the interviews, how you're expecting to manage it for many years if/when you get into software engineering?

I'm not trying to be mean, i'm just warning that something like having a fresh out-of-college arrogant Millenial reviewing your code means - well suffice it to say that at my previous job it drove 6 out of 8 person team in 1 year, all from mid to senior engineers, me being 7th, to either change the team (3) or leave the company (4). The guy is a pest, smart, driven, high GPA from top University...

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#64

Post by epoxyhockey »

bitwize wrote: post #46

The whole point of tech interviews is to see if the candidate actually has the requisite skills for the job. Off-site contract work is NOT a solution. Hint: the candidate may not be doing the work himself; he may be farming it out to oDesk or Elance at a fraction of the price and playing WoW all day.

The whole point of tech interviews is to see if the candidate actually has the requisite skills for the job.

The point of resumes is to see if the candidate actually has the requisite skills for the job. The point of interviews is to verify what is represented on the resume is likely to be true. And, as the op is suggesting, a small contract would verify that the candidate can complete projects for the company and to their satisfaction.

he may be farming it out to oDesk or Elance at a fraction of the price

This is just plain paranoia. No one would do this and expect to be employed at a company for very long. Also, if you've ever farmed work out to oDesk/Elance, you might not want that work to represent you in an interview process (even if you were able to have it completed in a reasonable amount of time).

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#65

Post by ig1 »

chollida1 wrote: post #22

> 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 t…

It would also breach the work contract of many developers. Most work contracts tend to (1) prohibit you from taking on other paid work (2) claim copyright of the work you do while under employment (which is why the FSF & Apache foundation require employer waivers from contributors).

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#66

Post by nrubin »

This is sort of like an internship, but for people no longer in school. I've interned three times (finishing my third now) and I think it's a great way for you to get to know a company and for a company to get to know you. That is, of course, assuming the company has a bite sized piece of work that allows you to show if you've failed or succeeded.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#67

Post by kkshin »

On-site interviews are a necessary for the most part, but phone screens have always been the bane of my existence. About 50% of the time I can barely understand what the other person is saying, mostly because the person conducting the interviewer is not a native English speaker. I almost never have an issue in person with non-native English speakers because you're able to pick up so much more context from subtle physical clues. I wonder if anyone else has this problem.

Disclaimer: My parents are non-native English speakers and I can't understand a thing they say over the phone, but in person I have no trouble.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#68

Post by [deleted] »

jnbiche wrote: post #48
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…

Can you not understand that there might be people who can complete your task easily, yet who have extreme anxiety about interviews? I actually understand this issue -- I've been trying to switch careers into programming for the past year. I've know several languages well (Python, JavaScript, some C), can use git, and have a few decently impressive projects on my Github profile. I also contribute to a pretty well-know…

[deleted]

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#69

Post by moubarak »

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 once needed a job so bad and was asked to solve a Rails challenge. i never did Rails before but i learned it and solved the challenge in a week. i also thoroughly documented my learning process and decisions. However i was rejected for being too fresh which i understood, i learned a lot during that week and even though i didn't get the job i feel that i achieved something. so i also don't see how you can lose with a contract-to-hire approach.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#70

Post by edent »

If you get nervous under the pressure of an interview - how will you react when $CriticalSystem breaks during $BusyPeriod?

Do I want to hire a person who is great when things are going well but who goes to pieces under pressure?

Learning how to be interviewed is as useful a skill as learning how to code.

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