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How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

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Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#101

Post by unimpressive »

dahart wrote: post #25

I see some criticism on this point, but for me this passage is a gem. > In general, real stories are told chronologically backwards. This is why we start off with a punchline. In contrast, practiced stories are told chronologically forwards. It’s a solid indication as the interviewer that the person is reciting something they have committed to memory if they tell the story forwards, and in turn it’s significantly mor…

I'm pretty sure I tell my stories chronologically forwards. What a strange accusation.

(This is one of those things that's going to bug me for a while every time I tell a story.)

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#102

Post by itsjustjoe »

lettersdigits wrote: post #22

> What is the hardest technical problem you have run into? I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. Maybe I just almost never work on REAL hard things. So my question to you, HNers, is : What is the hardest technical problem YOU have run into? I am really interested to know what you would consider 'hardest'.. It's probably not going to be something like 'I changed the css property value from "display: block…

I ask: 'Tell me about a problem that was particularly challenging'

I'd love for someone to tell me a story about something they couldn't solve (or at least not the way they wanted to).

If they can't come up with something, which is rare, I ask them to tell me about something that was fun for them.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#103

Post by SilasX »

scryder wrote: post #91
cookiecaper wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually don't like this question. It's hard to decide. If it's something too simple, you're going to be looked down on. If it's a clever hack around someone's bug, it's hard to really be proud of something that shouldn't have had to exist in the first place. If I say something from a long time ago, I may not remember enough details to answer follow-up questions. If my job is boring (hence interviewing for a new on…

I think you may be overthinking how seriously your interlocuters take interpreting the behavioral questions. The vast majority of CS interview questions are really just one or both of two categories: 1. Say something entertaining or that makes me like you. 2. Say something that proves you're competent so if I like you it's not a hard sell to hire you. When you read this hard into a question that can in this framework…

But that reveals why it's such a bad question: they just have to prepare in advance and think of a problem scenario that sounds interesting and panders you, and recite it at that question. Even a faker can do that, but a legit programmer that needs a few minutes to get thinking (and hasn't come up with a cookie-cutter answer in advance) will stumble at.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#104

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

foo101 wrote: post #33
a3n wrote: post #6

> If you’ve been through interviews at some companies that are not as good at interviewing, then you probably had some questions on your list such as > Where do you see yourself in 5 years? Dead . > Why do you want to work here? You have money. > How do you handle disagreements with coworkers? Attempt constructive engagement, and if that doesn't work then shun them.

What are your strengths and weaknesses?

Brevity.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#105

Post by planteen »

lettersdigits wrote: post #22

> What is the hardest technical problem you have run into? I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. Maybe I just almost never work on REAL hard things. So my question to you, HNers, is : What is the hardest technical problem YOU have run into? I am really interested to know what you would consider 'hardest'.. It's probably not going to be something like 'I changed the css property value from "display: block…

I spent a couple very stressed weeks (nights, weekends) debugging a crash that would only happen every 30 minutes or so. It looked like stack corruption, so I was trying all avenues to debug it. Nothing seemed to make sense. We finally figured out that it was a signal integrity problem on the DDR memory bus. Software was fine.

Did you see that post a few days ago about "Is ECC RAM worth it?"

The answer, after my hellish debugging is an unequivocal YES! My horrible problem would have either manifested itself as a correctable ECC error or I would have gotten an uncorrectable ECC exception. I would have been able to go straight to hardware engineering with that instead of spending many miserable nights debugging an RTOS and ISRs.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#106

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

dahart wrote: post #25

I see some criticism on this point, but for me this passage is a gem. > In general, real stories are told chronologically backwards. This is why we start off with a punchline. In contrast, practiced stories are told chronologically forwards. It’s a solid indication as the interviewer that the person is reciting something they have committed to memory if they tell the story forwards, and in turn it’s significantly mor…

Seems like a questionable heuristic. It is not difficult to imagine that a person who is telling the story from scratch might start from the beginning and kinda meander around the details as they try to reach the end, precisely because they have NOT rehearsed the story beforehand.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#107

Post by user5994461 »

itsjustjoe wrote: post #102
lettersdigits wrote: post #22

> What is the hardest technical problem you have run into? I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. Maybe I just almost never work on REAL hard things. So my question to you, HNers, is : What is the hardest technical problem YOU have run into? I am really interested to know what you would consider 'hardest'.. It's probably not going to be something like 'I changed the css property value from "display: block…

I ask: 'Tell me about a problem that was particularly challenging' I'd love for someone to tell me a story about something they couldn't solve (or at least not the way they wanted to). If they can't come up with something, which is rare, I ask them to tell me about something that was fun for them.

Then the guy start describing the problem he solved in his last 6 months.

And you realize you've done about the same, fully finished and shipped, in about 3 weeks.

The rest of the interview is wondering whether you should cry or he should.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#108

Post by user5994461 »

dbcurtis wrote: post #69
lettersdigits wrote: post #22

> What is the hardest technical problem you have run into? I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. Maybe I just almost never work on REAL hard things. So my question to you, HNers, is : What is the hardest technical problem YOU have run into? I am really interested to know what you would consider 'hardest'.. It's probably not going to be something like 'I changed the css property value from "display: block…

> I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. So do what polititions do -- answer the question you wished they had asked instead of what they actually asked. In my case, at most places I've worked I end up being one of the go-to people for gnarly bugs that have stumped the regular crew. So part of my interview prep is to condense a war story into something short and coherent that illustrates why people should…

Also, politicians recycle answers from other people.

-- like the story of when you saved 187 million dollars by fixing a totally trivial bug https://thehftguy.com/2017/04/04/the-187-million-dollars-gma...

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#109

Post by TheCowboy »

BurningFrog wrote: post #95
TheCowboy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I mentioned, this is playing into the fallacy that telling a story during the interview is equivalent to the communication skills required for performing the job. It confuses story-telling performance during an interview, and the stresses of a success/fail situation, with the type required to perform real work. Mistaking "overlap" for all-encompassing. Sure, there's overlap. There's overlap in being able to type u…

Being able to discuss design is an essential skill for programmers. This question gives you a chance to display that.

This question too easily gives people a chance to NOT display that they can discuss design. But the question is not opaque if that is the goal. Look at all the responses to me from people deriving vastly different (flawed) conclusions.

The same vastly different interpretation of what you want to hear is going to happen with candidates. You're exhibiting poor communication if that is want you want to discuss.

Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview

#110

Post by newUser_istaken »

luu wrote: post #34
lettersdigits wrote: post #22

> What is the hardest technical problem you have run into? I never seem to find a quick good answer for this. Maybe I just almost never work on REAL hard things. So my question to you, HNers, is : What is the hardest technical problem YOU have run into? I am really interested to know what you would consider 'hardest'.. It's probably not going to be something like 'I changed the css property value from "display: block…

I have no idea how to answer this question. There have been some problems where someone was stuck for weeks, and I came in and coded up a solution in a day. That seems, in some sense, good evidence of being hard, but those problems never seem hard to me. The reverse happens to me too, where someone else solves a problem that was hard for me, and it's easy to them. Is that a hard problem? It was hard to me, but the pr…

You left us hanging without linking to your paper. I would be really interested in it.
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