I will not do a tech interview • Hacker News Board

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#121

Post by potatolicious » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:27 PM UTC

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…

This seems false to me. Interview stress isn't deadline stress isn't code review stress.

This is like saying "all drivers need to be able to drive well under stress, so let's test them while blaring a foghorn in their ear". Context is important.

I don't want to hire someone who is good at interviewing, I want to hire someone who is good at what I need them to do. While it may behoove the individual to train themselves on being better at interviews, as an employer it is a negative to wash someone out simply because they don't interview well.

Personally I rock at interviews, I've done easily 100+ interviews in my life at this point and I actually relax when I get into the room. This doesn't make me a better coder and it doesn't make me more qualified than the next guy who comes in with sweaty palms, and an employer whose heuristic uses interview-skill as a proxy for engineering-skill would be very misguided.

The entire problem with tech recruiting comes down to stupid proxies. We went through a phase where the top tech companies replaced real questions with logic brain teasers, as if that was a suitable proxy for real engineering ability. Now some startups are doing stupid shit like requiring extensive side projects, as if that is a suitable proxy for real engineering ability.

I'm not sure how many more years it will take for tech as an industry to realize that the best way to know someone is good at X, is to get them to do X.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#122

Post by hvs » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:27 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #19

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.

I hire people based on their ability to learn, not what they know. If you're asking interview questions that can be googled in 20-30 seconds, you're wasting your time and theirs.

You have a pretty low opinion of our field if you think everything that you need to know about our field can be googled in 20-30 seconds. I'm not arguing about minutia questions, but if you can't be bothered to understand how and why to optimize a database or the difference between TCP and UDP (really?) and that's what the job requires, then I don't want to hire you.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#123

Post by 10098 » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:27 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #85

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 problem is that interviews are high stress affairs. Stress produces adrenaline. One of adrenaline's known effects is to prepare us for "fight or flight", meaning that higher order logic is shut off, digestion is shut off, our senses sharpen, reactions improve. This is great when you've got to climb a tree to get away from a tiger. This is horrible if you are trying to demonstrate your ability to function mentally…

Well, jobs are high stress affairs too. We often have to maintain production systems that fail in cryptic ways at the most inconvenient times. I postulate that such situations are more stressful than solving some binary search tree problem on a whiteboard.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#124

Post by nagrom » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:30 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #85

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 problem is that interviews are high stress affairs. Stress produces adrenaline. One of adrenaline's known effects is to prepare us for "fight or flight", meaning that higher order logic is shut off, digestion is shut off, our senses sharpen, reactions improve. This is great when you've got to climb a tree to get away from a tiger. This is horrible if you are trying to demonstrate your ability to function mentally…

I think that there are other problems here though; if you are going to be a part of an environment where you may experience adrenaline surges, you need to work through them. Skipping that part of an interview means that you won't be able to evaluate that response. One solution may be to include a high-stress part of the interview, but to weight it in the overall evaluation appropriately.

[>>>This is great when you've got to climb a tree to get away from a tiger. This is horrible if you are trying to demonstrate your ability to function mentally.

Climbing a tree won't get you away from a tiger; it's a cat.]

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#125

Post by vosper » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:30 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #88

Ike, I understand your reasoning and admire the stand you've taken, but please don't do this. You're hurting yourself and the rest of us, too. Let me explain... I may be one of the most contrary programmers here on HN when it comes to this subject. I have never shared code or given references before a job offer and I never will. I believe that reviewing code that's already been written has far too much risk for any b…

I completely agree with this; I understand and have sympathy for Ike's position but like you I cannot proceed if I can't establish that you can code. The technical interview is currently the tool I use for that.

Having said that, I think that an at-home project prior to the interview is useful both for pre-screening but also as a sanity check on the conclusions of the technical interview - if someone blitzes the project but flunks the interview that would make think that maybe the issue was the interview (or the interviewer) and not the interviewee.

Lastly, I think that if someone is aware that they do not do well at technical interviews then the best way to deal with this is be up-front with the interviewer, and try to bolster your case by having some code (perhaps on Github) for them to review. No-one I know likes an awkward or failed interview - we want people to succeed - and if you're honest with me about the issues I'll take that into account.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#126

Post by j_baker » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:30 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/…

Truthfully, I'm not certain I'd trust someone who can go through an interview without freezing up or having any similar problems. Confidence is a valuable thing, but only in moderation.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#127

Post by justincormack » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:30 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…

Given the average success rate of interviews is relatively low this is probably a complete waste of time. If I am expected to do projects like that I am going to do some open source code I care about not stupid interview questions extended to a week...

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#128

Post by jnbiche » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:31 PM UTC

AznHisoka wrote: post #94

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…

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"?

Hmm. That might work. But I'm skeptical, for the following reason: the main problem seems to be that most people who have done tech interviews and who don't excel at them have already been "traumatized" by prior interviews that their adrenaline is pumping and almost no amount of sane approaches can lower that tension in an hour or two. Maybe if you spent a half-day doing non-stressful activities and meeting people, and established some modicum of trust, that approach might work. But in an hour or two, there's no way for a stressed candidate to dial-down their anxiety.

It's funny, for years, I was always the one who relaxed and excelled at interviews, because in my current profession, interviews are fundamentally social affairs where you talk about your accomplishments, publications, etc. So as you can imagine, I went into my first tech interview entirely unprepared for the confrontational puzzle-fest that was to ensue. I found the whole experience so jarring that I still am hesitating to pick up the phone and try to schedule an interview for a company I know I would enjoy working for, and for whom I could do great work. I think I require some sort of Zen experience that rids me of my ego entirely before I can approach an interview with the same equanimity that I used to have.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#129

Post by pdovy » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:32 PM UTC

donretag wrote: post #25

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 bur…

I'm curious, is this a money issue, i.e., you refuse because it feels like working for free? Or is it just a principal thing?

I doesn't seem unreasonable to me to ask even a senior developer to do a small coding assignment as part of the interview process unless they can show a good, relevant coding sample.

If we're going to agree that whiteboard coding isn't a great way to evaluate someone, and we can't ask you to do an assignment on your own, what else is left? Talking about past experience is great and an important part of an interview, but I think most people want to (rightly so) see some code at some point before extending an offer.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#130

Post by bqe » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 5:32 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #19

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.

I hire people based on their ability to learn, not what they know. If you're asking interview questions that can be googled in 20-30 seconds, you're wasting your time and theirs.

Basic computer science knowledge (and yes, B-Trees qualifies) cannot be learned in 20 seconds. Most of this knowledge is actually a prerequisite to being able to search Google properly.