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The Only Interview Question That Matters

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Re: The Only Interview Question That Matters

#131

Post by [deleted] »

dominotw wrote: post #106
pg wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you are interviewing a kid from south-side Chicago or kid from third world who against all odds went to college? That is exactly the sort of achievement that impresses us, actually. For example, Qasar Younis started life in a house with dirt floors in a village in Pakistan. His family moved to the US, to Detroit, when he was 7. He appears to have worked his ass off from the moment they landed. We funded his s…

> His family moved to the US, to Detroit, when he was 7. This is not an example of someone who is from the third world or from a ghetto. Immigrant parents have strong work ethic which they instill in their kids ( I belong to the club, so I know). I am talking about girls from southside Chicago whose idea of 'achievement' is not getting pregnant by 15.

[deleted]

Re: The Only Interview Question That Matters

#132

Post by matdes »

300bps wrote: post #23
nawitus wrote: post #8

So what should software engineers who are "merely" doing solid and great programming on "average" and typical applications respond? It's not like programmers can pick and choose difficult projects.

I think you have hit the nail on the head regarding the purpose of the question. The question is used to find stars. That is, someone who is 50x more productive than programmers: "merely" doing solid and great programming on "average" and typical applications

that whole 10x 50x bullshit is a myth.

Re: The Only Interview Question That Matters

#133

Post by jleader »

tptacek wrote: post #79
URSpider94 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, there's a step missing here. What you need going into this interview is a solid understanding of your corporate culture -- what behaviors you value. Maybe you work for a bank, and the most important things for you are integrity and conservatism. Or, maybe you work for an early stage start-up, and calculated risk-taking and team spirit are most important. In either case, as you walk through these questions, you as…

No, asking questions in a face-to-face interview is not the best way to figure out if a person is going to do what you want them to. It is not a very effective way of doing that at all. To be meaningful at all, it requires an interviewer with many of the same skills as a psychologist, and a candidate who can represent themselves effectively in an extraordinarily hostile situation. Even if you have both, you're still…

How long does a work-sample test take? I'm typically hiring people to work on on-going projects over a period of months or years; the fact that candidate A does better on a 2-hour or 2-day task than candidate B may not give me that much information about things like how effective they will be at sharing their own knowledge with the rest of the team (or taking guidance from more senior members of the team), developing a good working rapport with their QA teammates so they can get to the root of any problems as efficiently as possible, convincing the sysadmins that the candidate's proposed deployment tool is the right way to do it (or gracefully agreeing to use the sysadmins' tool of choice, either because it's actually better, or just because the benefit of the sysadmins' familiarity with it outweighs any technical benefits of the other tool), etc. Unless I'm hiring someone to sit off in a corner developing their own solo project, I'm not convinced that "work sample" tests are that informative.

I don't agree that this question is a silver bullet, but I think it's valuable to see what sort of achievment the candidate considers significant, to ask follow-up questions about how they handled problems along the way to that achievment, etc.

The question helps reduce the power assymetry of the interview, by letting the candidate choose something they're interested in talking about and presumably familiar with. I find that people seem more relaxed when they get into the flow of describing something they're interested in, which lets me explore various aspects of their working style with as little stress to them as possible.

Job interviews do suck, but the alternatives I've seen proposed suck at least as bad, though in different ways.

Re: The Only Interview Question That Matters

#135

Post by arbuge »

It's a useful insight given his experience although more hard data backing up the claim would have been useful. A better title would have been something along the lines of how that's a great interview opener though. As the article goes on to elaborate, you need to follow up with many other questions after that first one.

Re: The Only Interview Question That Matters

#136

Post by [deleted] »

dominotw wrote: post #106
pg wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you are interviewing a kid from south-side Chicago or kid from third world who against all odds went to college? That is exactly the sort of achievement that impresses us, actually. For example, Qasar Younis started life in a house with dirt floors in a village in Pakistan. His family moved to the US, to Detroit, when he was 7. He appears to have worked his ass off from the moment they landed. We funded his s…

> His family moved to the US, to Detroit, when he was 7. This is not an example of someone who is from the third world or from a ghetto. Immigrant parents have strong work ethic which they instill in their kids ( I belong to the club, so I know). I am talking about girls from southside Chicago whose idea of 'achievement' is not getting pregnant by 15.

[deleted]

Re: The Only Interview Question That Matters

#137

Post by ecuzzillo »

pg wrote: post #101
dominotw wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is problematic and discriminatory. I hope this doesn't become a trend. What if you are interviewing a kid from south-side Chicago or kid from third world who against all odds went to college. Is smart and motivated and could be a great asset to your company but never had the exposure to great ideas. You can argue that she can just say 'Going to college was my most significant achievement' but are you in a positi…

What if you are interviewing a kid from south-side Chicago or kid from third world who against all odds went to college? That is exactly the sort of achievement that impresses us, actually. For example, Qasar Younis started life in a house with dirt floors in a village in Pakistan. His family moved to the US, to Detroit, when he was 7. He appears to have worked his ass off from the moment they landed. We funded his s…

Many people who do things professionally for many years have terrible blind spots endemic to their profession. It's obvious to those who pay attention that you are not like that, but it doesn't surprise me that many miss it.

Re: The Only Interview Question That Matters

#138

Post by _ea1k »

bennyg wrote: post #94
tptacek wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you ding candidates for lacking an ability (carrying a time-bounded conversation with a stranger who is judging them for a new job) that has nothing whatsoever to do with what they'll actually be doing on the job, and this is something you're happy to tell us? Job interviews are hostile. In fact, they're one of the most hostile experiences most of us have to deal with. I watch candidates in face-to-face interviews…

Assuming two candidates are both qualified to perform a job, and one of them gels and converses with team (aka gets along with), then that person should get the job. The best teams get the best work done, and good teams have amazing communication - also assuming that everyone on said team can actually do the work without bring the others down. A good teammate is a multiplier on total team productivity and efficiency…

It's interesting that you bring up sports and the military as examples. I suspect that neither of those emphasize team interviews to determine cultural fit to anywhere near the extent that the tech industry does.

Re: The Only Interview Question That Matters

#139

Post by tptacek »

smsm42 wrote: post #125
tptacek wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me understand you completely before I respond. Is your argument here that conventional engineering job interviews... (the sort where candidates interview with a series of engineers from the team all of whom ask different sets of questions and seek to gauge from their answers previous accomplishments, working style, technical competence, and team compatibility) ... are generally an effective way for teams to scree…

Yes, it generally is. In my experience this is proven by the fact that close to 100% of working engineers are hired that way, and tech industry didn't collapse yet. But if you have better way, that is provably more efficient - I'd be very interested to hear about it (of course, if you're interested to tell me).

Ask any developer if they've ever had the experience of hiring someone who blew them away in an interview and turned out to be either completely ineffective or, worse, slapdash and incompetent on the job. Then, ask how long that poor-fit developer managed to remain on the job before being shown the door.

Or, ask an engineer how many times over the course of their career they've worked with "worthless" teammates, or people who should never have been hired. I've worked across a decent slice of the industry these past 19 years, and from what I can tell, this story is universal.

Another strong piece of evidence on my side is software quality, or the pervasive lack thereof.

Another piece of evidence is fizzbuzz.

Another piece of evidence is the (harmful) trend of demanding that candidates work on a contract-to-permanent basis as part of the recruiting process; what is this other than an attempt at work-sample testing that also happens to exploit candidates and repel the best of them?

I agree with you that close to 100% of working engineers are hired this way. But that doesn't prove anything; it's just as likely, perhaps more likely given the evidence, that what it shows is that development teams can ship marketable software despite terrible inefficiencies.

If you think that conventional hiring does a good job of selecting effective and competent programmers to the median ISV (and note here I'm stipulating ISVs, the best-case scenario for your argument, not line-of-business software teams at F500s), fine. I don't feel like I know a lot of smart engineering managers who are comfortable with the predictive power of their interview systems.

Re: The Only Interview Question That Matters

#140

Post by CamperBob2 »

tptacek wrote: post #129
ScottBurson wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passion is critical. I wouldn't hire someone if I didn't think they were passionate about building good products. Other passions can tell me something interesting about them, but that's the one that counts since that's what I would be hiring them to do. Maturity is also critical. And passion and maturity are not at all mutually exclusive. If there are misconceptions about passion floating around the memespace, then y…

If a candidate is effective and competent, why does it matter if they're passionate?

Because the kid in the basement down the street you're competing with -- the one you don't even know exists until it's way too late -- is effective, competent, and passionate.
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