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I will not do a tech interview

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Re: I will not do a tech interview

#371

Post by jasonlotito »

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.

> 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.

Then you are doing it wrong. There are different types of stress. Holding up well under "stress" is a misnomer, as someone can hold up well under one type of stress, and completely fall apart in another situation entirely.

What you are testing for is the ability to handle the stress of interviewing. If anything, you are hiring for people who can more easily leave.

While it's appropriate to test for situations where stress is a factor, it's equally important to realize that talking to a customer and doing pre-sales and an interview are about as far apart as possible on the stress meter. One hardly equates with the other.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#372

Post by elbear »

Nursie wrote: post #297
dgesang wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Well, your experience is different from that of a lot of other people.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#373

Post by tmoertel »

untog wrote: post #361
tmoertel wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. Regardless of the circumstances in which an interview takes place, you can ask for changes. And usually get them. The only way to be guaranteed not to get the changes you want is not to ask. So, if you ever find yourself in an interview about to go the wrong way, ask.

Sure, but it's still an indicator. If I have to negotiate to get an interview on terms I think are acceptable, how much am I going to have to negotiate every day if I work there?

It's a weakly predictive indicator. Yes, it tells you something, but not much. Extrapolate at your peril.

Look at it this way: Most of the people interviewing you are other programmers – the exact opposite of skilled interviewers. Predicting the day-to-day reality of working with them based on their default interviewing style is just as unreliable as them judging you based on your performance at solving silly brain teasers under stress.

Despite how screwed up this all is, most people are going to end up in many interviews throughout their lives, probably on both sides of the table. So it's best to realize up front that the situation is screwed up but changeable so that when you end up in an interview you'll know to ask for changes.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#374

Post by thestoic »

nappy-doo wrote: post #257

Counterpoint: This is a recipe for only finding unemployed people, and in my opinion, the best people already have jobs. I have been offered to interview with YC startups that wanted me to fly out, spend a week writing code with them, and _then_ they'd offer me a job. I'm already employed, by an employer that legally owns all my code. I can't take a week off, write your code, and then _possibly_ get an offer. I don't…

Ideally the time you spend writing code is both compensated and under a Work For Hire of the company trying you out. Your current employer owns the IP of whatever you do during work ours and using their equipment not what you do on your own time.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#375

Post by thestoic »

moubarak wrote: post #40

i remember getting rejected at the screening stage because i was not able to explain how an sql index works (i'm not a database guy although many people would think this is general knowledge). The next job i got was to build an r-tree for goespatial querying purposes into a database engine. i knew exactly what r-trees and b-trees were, i was exceptionally good with algorithms, but i had no idea what an sql index was.…

We have seen this situation crop up with employers who refuse to do try outs. these great devs then get picked up by employers who try devs out PS I work for GroupTalent so I am biased

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#376

Post by acomar »

sghill wrote: post #222
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> 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. What positions would require you to prove the technical capability of your company at this level? I've been working for a consultancy for a few years now. I can't recall a time when a client asked me to describe a clo…

My GF had to go through a round of technical interviews with clients after opting to accept a job with a contracting firm. The firm fills the various contracts they receive with employees, but the clients want to greenlight the employee before they start work.

That might just be contracting with the government though.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#377

Post by sybhn »

Being good at tech interview is an art, that few masters, and many are good at while being poor developers. I have countless tales of wow-thumbs-up-interview guys that turn out to be just good at that: interviews. Also, very anecdotal, but my best hires in 15 years have been poor interview performers.

So what's the answer? no, not contract to hire. Although good in theory, in practice many companies won't support or approve contract to hire for full time position. Call it HR inertia, a.k.a 1 of the 4 horsemen of death in bigger more established tech businesses.

So where am i going with all this? Well, that's why networking is important. Get the people you worked with to bring you in places. You don't have to impress anyone on a white board (who codes on whiteboards anyway) but put the emphasis on culture fit since you already pretty much have been tech screened by your old pals.

In conclusion, be nice to your peers. Especially the smart ones you work well with.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#378

Post by barrkel »

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.

Frankly, talking to customers isn't nearly as stressful as interviews.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#379

Post by rralian »

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'm not sure you and OP are talking about the same thing. What you're describing as a a tech interview (as I understand at least) sounds like a delight to me. I enjoy talking tech and am happy to wax poetic on any of those topics. But the tech interviews I've recently done (for web developer positions) have been more focused on com-sci concepts and whiteboarding exercises (sometimes in front of 3-4 people on a video line) on arbitrary things like solving mazes according to special rules or building a donkey kong clone in javascript. Generally nothing that you would do as a web developer. I'm a fairly accomplished developer, but it's easy for me to look stupid in front of even a junior developer when I'm writing code on a whiteboard. I use google a lot while I work (without shame... until I'm at a whiteboard) and I reference other parts of the codebase for context. The best offer I got was from a company that did exactly as OP suggested... gave me a short contract job and evaluated on the code and my interactions during the job. That's also how I've hired developers for my own startups, and the results were excellent... they've all gone on to top-tier companies.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#380

Post by chetanahuja »

ngoel36 wrote: post #239
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 used to work at Google. I saw a lot of good candidates get rejected. I myself was rejected multiple times before I got an offer. I was talking to my manager who was on the Hiring Committee about this dilemma, and at the end of the day the fact is that good companies don't give a shit about their false negative rate - only their net positives. By having an efficient technical interview process, yes, you let good can…

Given that google has recently publicly denounced their own hiring methodology (that they've been using for years), I wouldn't use them as a shining example.

Also consider the fact that most companies are not google and don't have the same unlimited streams of top candidates coming in the door (is that even true for google any longer ?). A smaller operation (ie. the typical hn population) needs to work much harder to avoid false negatives. One way of doing that is to optimize the hiring process to allow a good candidate to shine vs the Google way of putting the candidate through endless abuse (I know what I speak of).

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