I will not do a tech interview • Hacker News Board

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#91

Post by jlees » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:14 PM UTC

anonymoushn wrote: post #71

jlees wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen companies do a "challenge" style interview, where it's less of a contract and more of a "take this problem home, code something up to solve it, push to github and let us know when you're done". Then the interview portion is discussing the solution. It means you can calibrate across candidates better, but I think the advantage of an onsite contract job is the two-way feedback, especially in a smaller company…

My current company does this. It seems to work pretty well, but it has some of the same problems as other methods. In particular, the standards applied to the solution vary greatly from "Does it work and run at most 40x slower than expected?" to "It heap-allocates things that could be stack-allocated, so we should pass".

Hmm, how about applying the same standards to the solution as you would to internally-committed code (peer reviews, etc)?

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#92

Post by 10098 » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:16 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #78

edent wrote: post #70

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.

There is a common theme but an interview and a crisis situation are not the same. Its like attending an exam, its not the same getting work done in the real world. >>Learning how to be interviewed is as useful a skill as learning how to code. No, learning how to build is a useful skill. Learning how to be interviewed is mastering the art of being the best rat in the rat race. The whole point is even if you win, you s…

> Its like attending an exam, its not the same getting work done in the real world.

Of course it's not. Real world is much more stressful than an interview. During an interview you chat with another developer in a room with a whiteboard. In the real world you are woken up by a phone call at 4 AM to fix a critical system, knowing that if you screw up even slightly, you'll lose a very important customer. I've experienced both and I can confidently say that I prefer the former.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#93

Post by thedufer » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:17 PM UTC

ig1 wrote: post #65

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).

This is the root of the problem with contract-as-interview, as far as I can tell. It wouldn't be completely unreasonable for someone to take a few days off from their job to interview (although I wouldn't do it). But both of the points you mention are standard for creatives, at least in the US, so I don't know how many people you'd legally be able to interview.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#94

Post by AznHisoka » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:18 PM UTC

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…

Perhaps the solution is for the interviewer to tell you upfront "I don't know the answer to this as well, let's try and find a solution, together, but you start first"?

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#95

Post by peeters » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:18 PM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #54

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've become a real believer in the "portfolio". I make the assumption that any person with a github (bitbucket/etc) site with a track record is someone worth looking at; if their portfolio demonstrates quality work and the resume looks all right, I'll recommend them. Yes, false negatives, people with horrible IP agreements get screwed, etc. False positives are much worse than false negatives in the common business wi…

It seems to me like software engineering is one of the only fields with people arrogant enough to assume that every good and passionate programmer should also be doing programming as a hobby.

I loved software engineering so much that I decided to turn it into a career, so that I could do it every day. But now you want me to do it every day and every night? No. My work during the day is fulfilling. My hobbies provide variety and an opportunity to pursue other interests.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#96

Post by joeblau » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:19 PM UTC

I've noticed that when doing interviews with younger developers, you run into the problem of "They only know about the projects that they've worked on at fill-in-school" and they have no real world experience to base an interview on. I've even experienced this with interviewees that at companies I've worked for. I'm definitely a proponent of contract-to-hire because you can figure out if you really gel with the team. Plus there may be some things that the interviewee never thought of that you're really good at.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#97

Post by comrade_ogilvy » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:19 PM UTC

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…

"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."

I wonder that, too. The very best people usually have a job that they like well enough, but might change jobs for a real offer.

"Quit your job and we will probably hire you" is not so attractive to experience people, who are usually no longer in their 20s. Even if a developer were inclined to give it a go on his or her vacation time, most employment contracts require notification for taking on additional employment -- it is rather awkward and annoying to the candidate to jump around these hoops.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#98

Post by SonicSoul » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:20 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #62

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/…

i've forgotten the most elementary stuff in interviews.. half the time if someone asks me what object oriented programming is, i can't remember basic tenets (encapsulation, polymorphism) yet i have no problem coding up a dependency graph pattern.

whoever breezes through such technical interview, has either just had 20 interviews with similar questions and it's fresh on their mind, or studied specifically to become good at technical interviewing.. The latter is what i figured out that i had to do to stop being rejected from jobs i was clearly qualified for, just because i couldn't articulate something i never really had to articulate in the past.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#99

Post by wglb » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:20 PM UTC

Every job I actually got was because a friend made sure that it happened.

I like this approach. In fact, something similar has happened to me in several of my job acquisitions. Networking trumps pretty much anything else.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#100

Post by maxk42 » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:20 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #62

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/…

Just replying to state my shock at how many people are defending poor interview performance.

If you freeze up during interviews because it's "high stress" then maybe you need to practice going on more interviews until it doesn't bug you any more.

When you're a developer -- especially at a senior level -- you need to be able to work well under stress. Hell -- you need to be able to do that for nearly any job in the world.