I will not do a tech interview • Hacker News Board

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#541

Post by jonotime » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 12:29 AM UTC

ikeellis wrote: post #402

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/…

For a well done interview, the problem is definitely mine. I wish I could reliably do the right thing and show a quality thought process as I iterate towards a good answer. However, I need to be away from the pressure to speak in order to solve problems. Sometimes this only takes a few minutes, but that silence in an interview ruins my composure. This problem doesn't happen to me when I'm delivering a product pitch,…

Thanks for this blog entry. I happen to be going through this problem right now. I'm a developer who just moved to SF. There are tons of jobs, but I freeze up during tech interviews. In the past I have landed jobs at small companies with a looser interview structure where I can basically distract them with interesting nerdy stuff so the time runs out before they can get to the programming questions.

I am wondering 2 things: 1. How do you phrase it to a potential employer that you would prefer a take home project? Do you say you do bad under pressure? Do you say you think your abilities would shine though on a larger thought through assignment instead? 2. Do people have other strategies for dealing with such issues? Perhaps using a head hunter who knows the hiring process of each company, and can pass you along to ones with a less rigerous tech interview component.

Maybe I should just find smaller companies that have not figured out their interview process yet and hope they wont drill me.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#542

Post by luckydude » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 5:02 AM UTC

I'll probably take some crap for this but I go on gut instinct a lot. I've got a guy working for me who is awesome, we got on the phone in the interview process and 30 seconds into it I was saying "You're hired, I want to work with you". My COO overheard that and was running at me waving his hands no-no-no.

That was 2004 or 2005. He's still here. Great hire.

Sometimes you can just tell right away.

All that rambling aside, I'm with the people who dislike the techy interviews. I was #4 at Google and I don't think there is a chance in hell that I could pass their interview questions today. But I've done good work, created good stuff, they ping me from time to time to come back. So perhaps I should be hired but I wouldn't pass the interview process so far as I can tell.

What's wrong with the contract idea in the original article? As a manager, I love the idea of someone who is willing to demonstrate their skills in a contract. If I were out looking for a job I'd offer that up, it's try before you buy, what's the downside?

Can other managers tell me what is wrong with that approach?

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#543

Post by lizdresher » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 5:08 AM UTC

tmoertel wrote: post #274

clavalle wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True. But it's not nearly so asymmetrical as most people seem to believe. Most interviewers aren't great at interviewing and know it. They're usually open – surprisingly open – to changes that will help them conduct a more reliable interview.

So true! Employers are investing so much time in the preliminary recruiting, filtering, and scheduling- by the time a face-to-face interview comes around you can guarantee they are interested in you. Candidates can make their job much easier (and perhaps land the gig) simply by anticipating their questions and concerns. Come prepared, ready to prove your qualifications and all their questions just might go out the window anyway.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#544

Post by wbillingsley » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 5:12 AM UTC

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…

Good companies should care about their false negative rate, as if they're smart they will realise that unlike Harvard their pool of potential candidates does not completely refresh each year. As you yourself exemplify, Google are now seeing many candidates who have applied before. While there are more than enough fresh bright young people growing up each year to fill Harvard's interviewing pipeline with first-time-candidates, there clearly aren't enough new top-rate computer scientists (who are interested in working for Google) coming into the field each year to fill Google's interviewing pipeline with only first time applicants.

And if you are reliant on the false negatives coming back, and not being put off by the process, to keep your pipeline full of high-quality candidates, surely that has to be a risky approach longer-term. As Google loses its fast-growing-exciting-upstart reputation, and competition for engineers gets tougher, -- it's gradually going to get harder and harder to convince the best of the false negatives to come back into the process again.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#545

Post by rjurney » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 5:44 AM UTC

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #299

rohansingh wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 document actually says that YOU own everything you do outside of work, so long as it doesn't use company resources or is directly related to your work at company.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#546

Post by snapoutofit » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 6:45 AM UTC

I completely agree with this, to the extent that I enforce this in every place I plan to work with/in. Work in with a small contract, get to know the people/business. Keeps options open for both sides without losing out on time/momentum.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#547

Post by troels » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 7:38 AM UTC

gregors wrote: post #241

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…

"I was asked to code a singleton" This interview is over!

Also, could you do a loop with an off-by-one bug, please?

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#548

Post by phaemon » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 9:21 AM UTC

thedufer wrote: post #235

justincormack wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Interviews are an unnatural situation. I have hired people who did not interview well but were great at the work.

But have you also hired people who did not interview well and weren't great at the work? The goal of interviewing is to avoid false positives, not to avoid false negatives.

Then you're asking the wrong question. If you want to test a theory, you try to disprove it, not look for evidence to support it.

To avoid false positives you should ask, "Have you hired people who did interview well and weren't great at the work?"

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#549

Post by lsc » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 9:35 AM UTC

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #528

lsc wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"all jobs are sales jobs." some jobs... more than others. If an employer can find a programmer or sysadmin who can't get a job elsewhere because of poor sales skills, well, it sounds like they could either pay less or get someone with better technical skills than they could otherwise. (That and my personal feeling? the guys who are 'always selling' are hard to deal with. I can handle maybe one day a week, if that, d…

>Quite often it makes sense to take a hit on social skills if it gets you someone who is better technically. Yes and no. If it's just about being socially awkward, that's something that can be dealt with. But at the same time that socially awkward kid can potentially cause conflicts on the team. But what I see far more often is someone who has poor communication skills. If I tell someone to do XYZ and they come back…

>I guess I have yet to meet the perfect introvert with poor social skills who can understand everything that I ask him (or her) to do, who gets the work done quickly.

Well, if you are looking for perfect anything, you are bound to find much disappointment.

I suggest that your inability to communicate with introverts has as much to do with your own communication style and abilities than with theirs.

Personally, I have the opposite problem. I can handle introverts; interacting with extroverts is where I screw it up, usually. I'm not terrible at it, by the standards of my people, but I'm not good at it. (I am terrible at it by the standards of a normal person.)

Obviously, the manager needs to be able to communicate with the programmers, so yeah, if you can't deal with introverts, you probably shouldn't be managing them. But recognize that you will be paying a lot more money, usually, for a lot less programming skill, if you go for a more extroverted and confident looking programmer.

>The moral of the story is that it's valuable to learn how to talk to people. And how to get dates.

Nobody is arguing with that. my social skills massively inflates my bill rate. Even very rough social skills and very rough confidence can dramatically increase your salary. If you can level up in that arena, it will benefit you greatly.

I'm just saying, on the manager side? with effort, you can get people who are dramatically better than me, technically speaking, for dramatically less than you'd pay for me, if you are willing to work around their communications and confidence issues. The pay and skill difference is sometimes quite dramatic, so just like most programmers can do well to learn how to deal with extroverts, most managers would do well to learn how to deal with introverts.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#550

Post by thedufer » Fri, Aug 23, 2013, 6:51 PM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #520

thedufer wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rectifying a false positive is very expensive (cost of time they're not producing but drawing a salary, eating dev time for training, etc. + cost of firing), and firing people is a morale issue as well. Maybe this is from the perspective of a company that has no shortage of applications, but rejecting an applicant that would've been good costs basically nothing (dev time + travel if they got through phone screens). I…

I really want to address this in more detail than I have time at the moment to do so. I am a dissenter on this topic, though, so I would like to ask you to elaborate on your view of the trade-offs. > cost of time they're not producing but drawing a salary How many false positives do you know of who didn't produce anything? What is the actual chance that someone is going to be a net drag if they don't work out? Of cou…

> How many false positives do you know of who didn't produce anything?

Well, none. We haven't had any false positives since I started (and this is my first full-time job).

Depending on how quickly you catch the mistake, I would stand by my statement or call it an exaggeration. If they're still in training when you catch it, they've probably produced nothing. If it takes longer than that, then they've probably produced something (although if they're contributing enough bugs, it is entirely possible for them to have negative net productivity). But even at best, they're producing less than their salary (why else are you firing them?), so you've lost something.

> This, I feel, is highly dependent on company and codebase.

No arguments here.

> I would like to know what the issues are for a smaller company

From a US perspective, most of the cost is lawyers. It is very easy to say something wrong and end up with a wrongful termination suit, so you end up being very careful, which is expensive in both money and time.

> It seems like the employers and managers here speak of the difficulty in actually getting rid of people, while most of the individual contributors I know are worried about losing their jobs at the drop of a hat.

My experience is that people are worried about being laid off, not fired. Maybe I'm out of the loop, in which case I don't really have an answer to this one.

> if your company is also one of those that complains about how hard it is to find "qualified" people

We're not. We're pretty happy with our current growth rate (recently it's a bit high, if anything).

Maybe this reverses if you're having trouble finding as many people as you want to hire. I would understand accepting more false positives if that's your situation.