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I will not do a tech interview

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Re: I will not do a tech interview

#461

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

lsc wrote: post #442
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…

>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 changes that would improve the user experience, for example. If you are using…

I meant "sales" in the sense that "all jobs are sales jobs." Selling your team on a particular technical approach. Selling your boss on a raise. Heck, even selling a member of the appropriate gender on hooking up is "sales"; you're just the product you're selling in that case.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#463

Post by michaelwww »

jaegerpicker wrote: post #360
WalterSear wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I'm working, I'm looking stuff up all the time. And, everyone I've ever paired with has been looking stuff up on a constant basis. It's not that I'm crap, it's that the tools I'm using are always changing. HTML -> CSS? Sure, I won't look that up. CSS -> SASS? Sure, I probably won't look that up. Ask me to use LESS, I'll be on much looser footing. And, what's coming next? Do I have to have the new ES6 specificati…

I never ever hold it against someone if they say they need to look something up. No one should nor can memorize all the things we developers need to remember.

“Never memorize something that you can look up.”

― Albert Einstein

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#464

Post by michaelwww »

clavalle wrote: post #277
imsofuture wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But it is different stress. Stress in a job situation is like building a fortress over many months and getting invaded. You know the layout of the terrain like the back of your hand and you can focus on the problem. Stress in an interview is like being air dropped into an enemy fortress. It is hard to know where to turn and you spend as much energy trying to suss out the layout of your new environment as you do react…

Right, you can't assume a friendly environment. You may be interviewed by a friend of another employee who the company is looking to replace, perhaps by you. It's a war zone out there sometimes.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#465

Post by ballard »

a_c_s wrote: post #298
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…

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 b…

I would never interview you this way. It's counter-productive. Besides, good people can be shy and talented intelligent people maybe anxious by nature. Hazing people might be good for "team dynamics," but there's other more fun ways that don't just brutalize people by not giving them a fair shot at performing.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#466

Post by RogerL »

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…

Things have been a little weird at work with how interviews are going so I haven't done this in the last few interviews, but usually I tell the interviewee that I am just trying to figure out their skills, that I want to hire somebody, and if you don't like a question, or have a different way to present your skills to me, please change the course of the interview. Unfortunately it is somewhat rare for people to do so - usually senior people are far more likely to turn it into a conversation and demonstration than a junior person.

I also like the idea of asking the person to give a presentation. Give them an amount of time, to include questions, and they choose the topic. I don't think that works with everybody, so I'd never mandate it, but a lot of people really thrive in that situation. You get to talk about something you know, demonstrate your passion, and so on. The down side is that it can entail a big time commitment from the person.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#467

Post by kamaal »

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/…

'Do x in y seconds or you die', is totally different than 'Do x and we shall review it later' by your friends.

The biggest problem with testing knowledge than checking their work is, you ultimately end up hiring a lots of people who know(or atleast act that way) everything but can do nothing.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#468

Post by ballard »

randallsquared wrote: post #395
mcv wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real problem is in your head: your anxiety about job interviews is sabotaging something you're otherwise perfectly good at. You need to be more zen about this. More laid back, relaxed, confident, or something like that. You've probably been raised with the idea that job interviews are Very Important. Let go of that idea. It's just a chat with another programmer who's equally ill at ease with the situation…

Telling a person they need to just be different is easy; being different is hard, and maybe objectionable for other reasons. For one, actually becoming more relaxed in confrontations is not something that has been achievable merely by asserting that I want to be -- instead, the only thing that seems to work is being in confrontations enough more often to reduce the stress level of such an environment. While this work…

Agreed. Thanks for defending civility.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#469

Post by RogerL »

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.

Do not ignore empirical evidence - reality will always crush theory (in the collequial sense).

And empirically, we endlessly observe very nervous people at interviews that do not exhibit nervousness in meetings (after getting the job).

We know that people behave differently in interviews; I suggest using that behavior to predict behavior in non-interview situations is noisy at best, and probably entirely random.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#470

Post by RogerL »

Swannie wrote: post #319
geebee wrote: post #150

One good thing about reading/browsing HN is that you can get an impression of the ideas that are starting to emerge. One thing that seems to be emerging now is that people are rethinking the grueling technical interview process. There was a huge emphasis on avoiding false positives in the interview process - largely because a single bad hire can do great damage to a software development team. But people seem to be le…

HN has its fashionable topics. Interview bashing is popular at the moment. It's also a suggestion to me that maybe there are more people looking for work right now. That's not a particularly good sign. Either the benefits to job swapping are too great to ignore, or there are too many failed startups, and companies failing to retain their staff. Edit: Or it could be that "school's out for summer", and there are a fres…

Well, don't forget that all of us are just not interviewing to get jobs, but interviewing people to bring into our companies. It's important to get right, and passion about the topic is encouraging, don't you think?
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