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I will not do a tech interview

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Re: I will not do a tech interview

#111

Post by mikeash »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #77
chaostheory wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then how am I going to figure out whether or not you can code? The only thing I can think of is an expensive two week trial period which doesn't make sense since I feel that most programmers will either submit work or submit to a pop quiz.

Good developers cost, what, $120K-150K/year? If a two week trial period is "expensive" to you, you don't have the budget for someone in that pay range.

It's expensive in other ways though.

A programmers who is currently employed but thinking about moving on probably won't agree to a two-week trial period because of the substantial risk that they get rejected afterwards and end up unemployed. That makes the trial period expensive to him. In turn, it makes it expensive to the employer as well, because you'll filter out good people.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#112

Post by j_baker »

maxk42 wrote: post #100
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 wo…

True. Sr developers need to be able to handle stress. However, I don't think an interview accurately measures a person's ability to handle under stress.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#113

Post by mattmaroon »

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/…

The freezing up is a factor of anxiety, and anxiety can have any combination of triggers. What usually happens in an instance like this (I'm assuming it's similar to test anxiety) is that somewhere along the way, they froze during an interview, and the memory of that compounded the problem for the next interview, and so on and so forth. So the anxiety could be tied solely to tech interviews.

There are plenty of students who are very bright, do outstanding jobs on their projects and homework, and otherwise get fantastic grades who then freeze up and get a C (or worse) on every test. Thankfully most real life situations don't mirror test taking, so often they're still high achievers.

Most job activity doesn't resemble a tech interview, so it's quite possible for this person to not freeze up ever after you hired him.

That said I'd still never hire this guy on the no false positives principle. I have neither the time nor inclination to contract with everyone who gets to that stage. But I rarely have projects for which a short term contractor could make much of a contribution. I suppose that's probably not the case for a lot of startups.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#115

Post by nrivadeneira »

16s wrote: post #73

Lot's of very skilled people interview poorly. Nervousness, social stress, anxiety etc. So don't feel bad, people who interview applicants a lot know this. It's not a mark against you. If they are interested in you, they'll find a way to learn if you have the knowledge/skills they require for the job. If I don't know the answer to a question or if it is ambiguious, I tell them. For example, I was once asked to descri…

In the case of startups, you get people interviewing that have very little interview experience.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#116

Post by MartinCron »

Tichy wrote: post #14
hvs wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except that in my experience, software development is mostly about learning things just-in-time. Most projects pose new challenges, or you want to use new technologies, and so on. Imagine you hired some Cobol developers some decades ago, and therefore you would still be stuck using Cobol on your projects.

No, you would just fire all of the Cobol developers to bring in the experienced Pascal developers.

How does one become an experienced Pascal developer? That's somebody else's problem.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#117

Post by jaegerpicker »

untog wrote: post #72
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/…

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? Of course not. Interview situations are very, very different than the others. Meetings and code reviews are with co-workers, whom you know and trust. Meetings with clients could be nerve-wracking for other reasons, but the…

That's the issue, it's much less important to ask someone to produce the code then it is to ask them how would they produce it. Being a Sr. Developer is less about what you know and more about how you work and think.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#118

Post by acuozzo »

chaostheory wrote: post #50
toomuchtodo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well then how am I going to figure out whether or not you can code? The only thing I can think of is an expensive two week trial period which doesn't make sense since I feel that most programmers will either submit work or submit to a pop quiz.

> Well then how am I going to figure out whether or not you can code?

Provide the candidate with a PC representative of what you'd give to him/her during the course of his/her's employment and assign an ~one-hour-long programming assignment to complete while you sit nearby.

If the candidate needs a particular program (e.g., "I don't like Vim. I prefer to write my code in VILE!"), then give it to 'em.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#119

Post by lfuller »

VladRussian2 wrote: post #63
jnbiche wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

I realize that it can be hard to understand without having experienced interview anxiety yourself, but it is an entirely different environment.

I suffer from interview anxiety to the same extent as the author of this blog post. Though I am a very skilled developer, I completely freeze in these situations (I even failed a fizz buzz test once). This doesn't translate to difficulty with on-the-job stressful situations however, as my anxiety is only present in interviews.

Most of the anxiety stems from me running through negative thoughts in my head ("I'd REALLY like this job - I'd better not screw up.", "I did poorly on my last interview. I'll probably do poorly this time", "The interviewer can probably see that I'm anxious.", "Does my voice sound shaky?", etc.) to the point where they trigger a fight-or-flight response.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#120

Post by justincormack »

maxk42 wrote: post #100
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 wo…

Why? Interviews are an unnatural situation. I have hired people who did not interview well but were great at the work.
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