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I will not do a tech interview

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Re: I will not do a tech interview

#261

Post by gregors »

bobbbinsIII wrote: post #187
pja wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google recently revealed that going back over the data they kept about past hires demonstrated that an individual's GPA was completely independent of the quality of their future contributions to the company. Why should Oracle be any different?

google are a notoriously selective employer, so it's hardly surprising that GPA has limited predictive power within the sample of people who were successful applicants.

Actually I really like the way Google gets their best employees -- they get them in acquisition after they've build something useful

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#262

Post by blah32497 »

RougeFemme wrote: post #197
blah32497 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on the industry/clientèle, but meetings are fundamentally very similar. You are worried about what "they" will ask and if you will be able to answer the questions. With a client, it's about the software you're developing, with a interviewer, it's about software architecture or coding principles. In your example about HTML -> CSS I think you missed the point. It wasn't so much to check that you have…

My experience has been that with a client, the universe of potential questions is much smaller than the universe of potential questions in an interview. An interviewer can go almost anywhere. . .that's not usually the case with the client. As you said, the client is asking about the software you are developing, not - typically - details about how you would handle their business need in a different language or on a di…

I've had the polar opposite experience. I guess we have very different clients. Clients generally ask questions that don't make a lot of sense or that show a fundamental misunderstanding of how the system works. They may introduce new constraints and requirements on the fly that you've never heard of before. It's generally a lot more difficult. The "universe of potential questions" is basically limitless.

Interviewers aren't going to ask you nonsensical questions about the STL or to use algorithms in contexts that make no sense. The "universe of potential questions" is limited to the reasonable.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#263

Post by mikevm »

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…

> So don't feel bad, people who interview applicants a lot know this.

They do, and they will count it against you. (A few people in this thread have actually said this)

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#264

Post by at-fates-hands »

ataggart wrote: post #144
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…

In my experience, these take home projects are woefully underspecified. Do they know this and expect me to email them with "good questions"? Or want me to not email them and "fill in the blanks" on my own? Do they want something that "just works"? Or something that is "reusable"? And so on. There's a reason we don't write production code by just throwing a document over the wall.

>>>>In my experience, these take home projects are woefully underspecified.

Completely agree.

I'm still not sure what these "challenges" even prove. If you're a developer, you should have reams of examples of code, a github account with work, and plenty of other avenues for people to check if you can do basic coding from scratch. Even a junior developer will/should have several examples of work they've done while in school.

I've been in a lot of "technical" interviews and once they start asking coding questions, I usually ask them if they've looked at my online portfolio, or the examples on my github account. 95% of the time, I'm able to pull an example which deals directly with that they're asking.

Doing this has two effects. One, it proves I can do what they're asking. And two, it puts the responsibility back on the interviewer. It's like asking, "Did you do your due diligence, or are you wasting my time asking me this question?"

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#265

Post by bogardon »

the point of technical interviews is to see how you think about problems, getting it correct isn't even that important. i can understand why people really hate this stuff if they did not come from a cs background, but it is a knowledge gap that they should look to bridge eventually...

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#266

Post by consultant23522 »

This sort of reminded me of the old adage about people who "aren't good at tests." "Oh, I see. You're not dumb, you're just not very good at the part where we find out what you know." Software development is already full of anti-social and/or introverted people. I know, I'm one of them. If you're tipping off my "too much anxiety" scale then you're really up there.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#267

Post by clavalle »

tmoertel wrote: post #240
untog wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can I offer you some advice? An interview is a negotiation. The rules aren't fixed. If you're asked to do something that won't give a reliable measurement of your ability, say so and offer the interviewer a better option. You'll probably get what you want. In the scenario you described, I might try something like this: "I think I see what you're trying to measure by asking that question, but it assumes a working styl…

It may be a negotiation but it is a very asymmetrical one. That by itself might be the root cause of a lot of the anxiety.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#268

Post by caw »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #181
peeters wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It seems to me that software engineering is one of the only fields with people arrogant enough to assume that employers should hire folks without being able to see what they've actually accomplished. A "portfolio" does not have to, and should not , consist of side projects. Don't have any real code that you are allowed to share? Obviously, many employers won't hire engineers without reviewing existing code or having…

> A "portfolio" does not have to, and should not, consist of side projects.

I agree with this

> If you have absolutely nothing that you can share (code, screenshots, a URL, a "case study") with a prospective employer, it's not the prospective employer that has a problem.

I disagree with this. If you require this to be true, you've instantly excluded everyone's experience in either government (particularly defense), or industry when you work on internal services. There's a huge number of enterprise developers at my current company who will never be able to show you their work because they're all internal applications. Maybe a "case study" would work, but you have to be real careful of not to cover anything that doesn't fall into the trade secret category.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#269

Post by mtdewcmu »

imsofuture wrote: post #149
btilly wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sorry, but a negative reinforcement cycle of tensing up in a medium stress situation is exactly the kind of characteristic that I'm trying to screen out in an interview. Stressful situations happen a lot more than never in the real world (and sometimes they even involve talking to people, like customers) -- I don't want to have coworkers who can't handle that.

I have trouble with interviews, but I've had a much easier time interacting with clients. With a client, I don't feel like I'm defending myself, I feel like I'm helping somebody solve a problem of mutual interest. It's a totally different mindset.

Freezing up in interviews would probably be a red flag for a job where you're doing cold calls or something like that. I wouldn't accept that kind of job, let alone interview.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#270

Post by WalterBright »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #105
pnathan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I couldn't agree more. I think far too many candidates fail to make an effort to demonstrate what they have achieved in the past, which is generally a pretty good indicator of what they're capable of delivering going forward. Although portfolios are a must for designers, I'm always amazed that more developers don't put something similar together to showcase their work.

Early in my career, I decided to transition away from mechanical engineering and applied for programming jobs. Many companies refused to even talk to me. But for one that did set up an interview, I brought in listings of software I'd written. I basically ran the interview, bringing out the listings and explaining what I did, and I got the job.

I've interviewed many candidates, and it surprised me that pretty much none of them would take the initiative and sell me on what they could do. They'd passively wait for questions and then answer the questions.

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