I will not do a tech interview • Hacker News Board

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#291

Post by Bartweiss » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:25 PM UTC

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…

This is very true, and I think it's worth noting that there are few circumstances where you have less basis for confidence than an interview. You're inherently conforming to someone else's workflow and being asked to respond to significantly unexpected, low-context questions.

A code review or client meeting involves defending decisions that you or people working at your company have made, and explaining things for a code base you ought to have at least some familiarity with. That's a far different beast than being asked with no warning to come up with a way to complete someone else's task in a way that they consider "suitable".

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#292

Post by lhnz » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:29 PM UTC

Some very opinionated people in this thread. My two cents...

I've had similar experiences to the guy who wrote the article. Something about interviews seems to make my heart race and I can stumble on very simple code. This is in strong contrast to how I am in normal social situations where I am highly confident and my personality is often infectious and passionate. I think it's a case of high anxiety in authoritarian/test conditions. Those that imply their working conditions are similar to interview conditions make a good point, however if that is the case I would prefer somewhere less confrontational and more forgiving.

Generally I prefer proper timed tests [0] without anybody watching. This is how I normally work.

I'm also one of those people that has to constantly look things up; actually I have a broad range of experience but I often find myself delving deeply into things I have only cursory knowledge in - imagine a librarian that remembers the locations of the books in a library and the analogy to knowing high-level concepts that allow thinking on your feet when used together with the correct reference materials.

Of course I believe that it's better to be good at making do with limited information. Understanding things from scratch is what I have been doing all my life. Like a chameleon when I look at some code that I did not write, it becomes my syntax and I quickly understand the contents. However different organisations and cultures sometimes prefer different kinds of engineers: there is either a preference towards robustness or flexibility [1].

[0] http://codility.com

[1] A test I would excel on would be being passed code in an unfamiliar language, domain, library or ecosystem and being told to quickly get to grips with it and add features/fixes (aka. flexible knowledge: unfamiliar territory which requires me to pull together a broad range of skills.) This is opposed to being passed a piece of code in a familiar language, domain, library and ecosystem and being told to quickly and robustly add a feature or fix to it (aka. robust knowledge: familiar territory which requires only a very specific set of skills.)

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#293

Post by VladRussian2 » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:30 PM UTC

jnbiche wrote: post #75

VladRussian2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 hear what you're saying, and to a certain extent I agree. However, maybe that's the other benefit of doing these kind of pre-hiring contract jobs. They let me see what kind of an organization I would be working with. In any case, what are you doing now, having left your company because of the environment that you see as plaguing software engineering? Did you change professions, start up your own company, or find a…

droning at a BigCo. with guys we go some way back.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#294

Post by Bartweiss » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:30 PM UTC

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #193

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…

>Of course not. Interview situations are very, very different than the others. Really? I disagree. There even exist situations (in the case of some positions) where you will be talking to a client of the company you're working for, effectively interviewing with the client, representing the company. And interviewing is a subset of "sales", which is important for working on many teams -- including selling management on…

>Seems like a poor choice of filter

I'm not convinced that this is true. Poor hiring doesn't mean that the company does other things wrong, but hiring determines what kind of people work at the company. Running into a hiring process that you believe won't select good coworkers can be a major problem.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#295

Post by yannyu » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:30 PM UTC

clavalle wrote: post #267

tmoertel wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I feel like focusing on the asymmetry of it is a large part of the problem. If you're not walking into the interview prepared to disqualify these people as potential employers, that is doing a disservice to yourself.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#296

Post by tyree732 » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:31 PM UTC

clavalle wrote: post #267

tmoertel wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Companies are chock full of asymmetric negotiations. Aside from obvious things like discussions with your manager, companies have all sorts of structured and unstructured power asymmetries.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#297

Post by Nursie » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:31 PM UTC

dgesang wrote: post #184

imsofuture wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I am a very vehement opponent of quizzy, obscure-knowledge or high-pressure tech interviews. That said, I think a good tech interview is irreplaceable. I like to work through a complex problem with the candidate, oftentimes I don't know the answer, nor do I expect them to be able to finish the problem (this is made very clear) -- I do expect them to sink their teeth in and think out loud with me. I would nev…

> relatively low-stress interview Is there such thing? I doubt it, unless you're interviewed by someone you already know well.

Nearly all interviews with technical staff are low stress in my experience.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#298

Post by a_c_s » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:31 PM UTC

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #193

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…

>Of course not. Interview situations are very, very different than the others. Really? I disagree. There even exist situations (in the case of some positions) where you will be talking to a client of the company you're working for, effectively interviewing with the client, representing the company. And interviewing is a subset of "sales", which is important for working on many teams -- including selling management on…

Nope! If we rank stress from 0 = sleeping to 10 = getting diagnosed with cancer, the amount of stress I feel in a meeting (including important ones I lead or that include bigwigs) is in the 1 to 3 range, with maybe the occasional 4.

My level of stress in a technical programming interview is usually in the 6 to 8 range. Even recently negotiating with my boss for a raise (which I know he was positively predisposed to because he is the one who brought it up) was a 5, which is significantly more than any regular meeting.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#299

Post by SomeCallMeTim » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:33 PM UTC

rohansingh wrote: post #202

ig1 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Do you have a source for this claim? None of my contracts in the US have ever had something like this. It's in fact illegal in most jurisdictions, including California.

>It's in fact illegal in most jurisdictions, including California.

IANAL, but AFAIK it's absolutely not illegal in California; what's illegal is preventing you from working for a competitor AFTER you quit.

I've never had a salary employment contract in California that DIDN'T say they owned everything I did in my off time, at least if I was working on something in a similar domain. The best contracts explicitly state that I can get an exemption, or that I can work on unrelated projects, but all have the clause.

If it's illegal, a lot of companies are breaking the law.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#300

Post by Nursie » Wed, Aug 21, 2013, 7:33 PM UTC

MartinCron wrote: post #107

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/…

if you freeze up in interviews, are you also going to freeze up in developer meetings? Are you really saying that your developer meetings are as high-stakes as job interviews?

Are job interviews really that high-stakes? There are always more jobs for skilled tech people.