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Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

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Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#131

Post by duxup »

kmonsen wrote: post #95
duxup wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a previous large company more than once I had to explain that the interview process 'is HR's show'...but once the job starts it is now 'our show' and they don't have to worry about that song and dance anymore. It's frustrating that it is that way, but the hiring at that company was a whole other song and dance that took very little input from anyone about the hiring process.

That’s not how it works at all. First of all interviews are a two way interview. Your company will be judged based on it. Also people come in touch with hr later, and usually in high pressure situations. If HR was difficult during the interview that’s a big red flag for later on in case you have to deal with them.

That's totally how it can work, if it should or not is another story.

I don't doubt people judged the company based on their interactions with HR, but that's HR's responsibility IMO. I gave my feedback on a few occasions, but they didn't take any action based on it. At that point their failures are 'not my job'.

As for any other HR interactions most folks interacted with them as little as possible. At big companies (and many others..) I find HR is there for the company to manage risk, not help, I expect very little from that kind of department.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#132

Post by ProZsolt »

Dystopian wrote: post #93

> 1. Your interviewer is only open to solving the problem ONE way This may have also been the interviewer wanting to guage how the candidate would react to being asked to do a task in another method which was dictated vs. their preferred method. A lot of development is a team sport, and quite a bit of it is subjective and opinionated - you're not always going to get to do it your way all the time. I don't actually se…

If you say it upfront, that's fine. If you say it once I solved the problem it's not.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#133

Post by jowdones »

devmunchies wrote: post #116
bob33212 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a second round with the CEO of a small startup on zoom. 5 times in a 45 minute interview he said "Sorry hold that thought, just responding to a customer email real quick" It was tempting to tell him that we should just wrap this up if he had more important things to do.

if he was personally trying to guarantee quick response times to customers, then that sounds like his priorities are right. Especially at a "small startup", this is a good sign. Makes me think there was more work than employees which is why the CEO was interviewing and doing customer support.

Meh, it's disrespectful and rude.

I had a friend, haven't seen him in a while then met for a coffee and a chat. 10 times in 20 minutes he would pick up a call in the middle of the conversation and "hold that thought".

Made a huge effort not to tell him to go f himself at the end but that concluded our "friendship".

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#134

Post by ghaff »

bluGill wrote: post #119
david38 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hypocrisy is that to even get to the point where you have a 24 / 48 hour exploding offer, you (the candidate) had to often wait weeks to get a response to the application, phone screen, on-site, decision. So I don’t buy this fairness argument. If we’re talking about fairness, the process would be super quick, and then I would get a week to think about a decision that will affect YEARS of my life. To say nothing o…

Quick can be bad - if someone submits a resume on day one that is good should we hire them or wait a week for someone else to discover the position? If you don't know you want to work for the company until by random chance is shows up in one of your searches as hiring your type of person then you need the time to discover us. As a results policy is we can't interview anyone until the position has been posted for a we…

Also if you're at a level where senior people are interviewing you, it can just take a while to make everything happen. (This is particularly true if you're interviewing with people who travel a lot.) I have at least some reason to believe that being hired for my current position (which I've had for over ten years) wasn't controversial but it still took a couple months for it to happen.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#135

Post by convolvatron »

irrational wrote: post #77
neilv wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. If people in a company don't know what they're doing, yet (it appears) have a deathgrip belief in the equivalent of something they found on StackOverflow or in a blog post... doesn't that reflect something about the compan…

I've been working in the industry for 25 years. I've never received even 5 minutes of training on how to interview people, yet I've been asked to interview people dozens of times. This is everywhere from small companies up to huge Fortune 100 companies. The skill set to be an effective programmer and to be an effective interviewer are not the same. But, I don't do interviewing often enough that I've felt the need to…

This seems wrong, generally my groups try to strategize a little as we are getting together to discuss the candidate. making sure we actually covered the important stuff, how to press on soft spots, etc.

It’s group work just like everything else. slowly mix in junior people to train them, but make sure there are enough senior interviewers to make sure we make a decent evaluation.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#136

Post by aynsof »

irrational wrote: post #77
neilv wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. If people in a company don't know what they're doing, yet (it appears) have a deathgrip belief in the equivalent of something they found on StackOverflow or in a blog post... doesn't that reflect something about the compan…

I've been working in the industry for 25 years. I've never received even 5 minutes of training on how to interview people, yet I've been asked to interview people dozens of times. This is everywhere from small companies up to huge Fortune 100 companies. The skill set to be an effective programmer and to be an effective interviewer are not the same. But, I don't do interviewing often enough that I've felt the need to…

Before you're allowed to interview candidates at Amazon, you have to complete a full-day course on how to interview. It covers the kinds of questions you should be asking, potential pitfalls, and what contributes to a hire/no hire decision.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#137

Post by temp667 »

vmception wrote: post #21

>I turned down the [exploding] offer because the experience got me thinking about the company’s work culture. Were the methods employed by the company to get me to accept the offer indicative of their work culture? I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. Small/not…

>I turned down the [exploding] offer because the experience got me thinking about the company’s work culture. Were the methods employed by the company to get me to accept the offer indicative of their work culture?

What I line - I would never hire this person. There are people who see big deals when much more obvious reasons exist, they just can't see beyond themselves.

In this case, orgs I work with our small, we almost always have a #2 and #3 candidate ready to go. It's rude to drag this out more than it needs to be for everyone, and it tells you how interested someone is if they want to sit on an offer. 2 days, let us know. If you are not interested, fine.

Note, I've normally already talked through comp packages and ranges early and asked them if this is in the range or what they are looking for. If they have been straight at this stage I normally get offers signed within hours. That's a good sign for everyone.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#138

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

corytheboyd wrote: post #117

> Consistent lack of interest or low morale from interviewers This one in particular pisses me off, especially if it’s late in the interviewing cycle. I interviewed with a certain YC startup recently and it was a long form programming exercise with two observers watching me work without really interacting much, where one of them was not even paying attention at all for their time (I know because they told me they wer…

You should have pulled your phone out part way through the interview exercise and pretended to remote in to your Single Dev Start-up Environment and pretended to hot fix a bug or deploy more resources...

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#139

Post by ghaff »

bluGill wrote: post #128
vmception wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exploding offers are bluffs. We all know the team wanted someone that could hit the ground running yesterday for the last 6 months.

Right, so if you can't hit the ground running in two weeks or less (2 weeks notice to leave your previous job) we will move on. The job market is hot, but we do have other candidates. I've been in the situation where we liked person A best, but person B was almost as good and would have got an offer if we had 2 positions open, so if you can't accept fast we want to get your offer to person B before they find a differ…

>if you can't hit the ground running in two weeks or less (2 weeks notice to leave your previous job) we will move on

That seems unreasonable in a lot of situations. In my current position, yes, they did want me to start right away but I really did want to take a real vacation before I started so I negotiated it out to a month or something like that. No, it's not reasonable to offer to start in six months. It's pretty reasonable IMO to offer to start in a month. (I did accept the same day. No brainer. It was a good offer. It was my first choice company. I really needed to move on.)

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#140

Post by temp667 »

kelnos wrote: post #106
vmception wrote: post #21

>I turned down the [exploding] offer because the experience got me thinking about the company’s work culture. Were the methods employed by the company to get me to accept the offer indicative of their work culture? I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. Small/not…

I don't think what you're talking about applies to the particular criticism leveled in the post. The company gave him 72 hours to accept an offer. To me, that's a red flag right there. And then they started pestering him (well before the 72 hour time limit) to accept the offer. If this had just been HR or the recruiter, I'd find it annoying, but perhaps not a big red flag. But the VP and hiring manager were calling h…

72 hours is not a quick timeline. I've routinely set shorter (48 - 36)... Just say no if you don't like offer so company can move on.
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