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Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

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Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#141

Post by unprepare »

dspillett wrote: post #118
unprepare wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IT (By IT I'm talking about my industry, I'm an IT administrator, not programming) hiring is based a lot on certifications, certifications which are abundantly easy to scam. You can find full exams with answers of CCNA and every Microsoft cert imaginable, I've worked for companies that incentivise certifications, and i watched coworkers use these 'tools' en masse to gain easy pay bumps and pad their resumes. I've had…

>* being hired because they passed a test they cheated on* The certificate shouldn't matter in the interview itself - it is just a way to pair down the choices of who you interview when you have many candidates. If you have knowledgeable people in the interview process (i.e. at least have a dev present for a dev interview, not just managers or HR people) then you should be able to catch those that don't really have t…

>The certificate shouldn't matter in the interview itself

Have you had many IT interviews? I have, they are vastly non-technical interviews.

Unless you count "have you ever used #CommonSoftware? how about #SlightlylessCommonSoftware?" as a technical interview.

I'm an IT administrator, not a programmer, so i'm speaking to my experience in that field, I am not trying to make any claims about how programming interviews work.

I've never had a whiteboard in an interview, I have in two interviews ever been asked to walk through a diagnostic process for problems, or asked any infrastructure or network design/architecture questions.

Its worth noting I work and live in Detroit Michigan, so I'm not exactly interviewing with major technology companies regularly. But I have worked for MSPs which glossed over technical interviews in favor of culture fit as well. (MSPs are especially incentivised to have employees with certs, they get discounts and kickbacks)

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#142

Post by cwilkes »

joesmo wrote: post #32
malbs wrote: post #14

Just went through this process from the POV of employer. The risk of choosing the wrong person is so great, that it's often better to not choose anyone. If there is any doubt what-so-ever, it's better to not make a a hire, it can be too damaging to a team, manager, company. I've tried so many different "coding interview" scenarios. But I found the best one was a real task that a real staff member would be expected to…

"The risk of choosing the wrong person is so great" I assume you don't live in the US or if you do, please elaborate because in the US there are virtually no such risks with at-will employment. It's so incredibly easy to fire people in the US that such an idea is actually ridiculous, yet people keep bringing it up all the time as if it's real.

I don't think he's talking about legal risks:

1 the people that interviewed / recruited that bad egg will be scorned as the people that brought that idiot in

2 often people think the bad one will get better so they invent a lot of time into making it work. Time that could be better spent elsewhere.

3 typically groups have a very limited headcount. So if you bring in a bad person you've used up that slot and won't have anything available for months (if ever)

4 have you ever worked with a negative person? It really zaps the energy out of going into work.

5 the damage that a bad hire can also be great on the code base, let alone morale. Some junk stays in the code for years

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#143

Post by pigpaws »

_clhx wrote: post #123
stocktech wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the author himself describes very positive and negative interviewing experiences, yet having no success at either, I have a hard time blaming the hiring practices.

An interview can be positive and not lead to a job. I went on a lot of interviews (maybe close to 100) before starting my own business, and I'd say at least 9/10 of them were very positive. By positive: I felt we both left the interview a bit happier than we went in. We both had a legitimate good time, and enjoyed it. It wasn't a grind, both people got to know each other. I'd say I had a 10% offer rate. The most comm…

2 hours? wow. and you stayed?

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#144

Post by unprepare »

unprepare wrote: post #90
Scea91 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring in CS / IT is massively more objective compared to most of other fields.

IT (By IT I'm talking about my industry, I'm an IT administrator, not programming) hiring is based a lot on certifications, certifications which are abundantly easy to scam. You can find full exams with answers of CCNA and every Microsoft cert imaginable, I've worked for companies that incentivise certifications, and i watched coworkers use these 'tools' en masse to gain easy pay bumps and pad their resumes. I've had…

Thanks for the downvotes on these comments, I'd love an explanation as to why - Am i not contributing to the discussion with my comments?

I guess maybe i insulted some CCNA or MCSE-ers

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#145

Post by maxxxxx »

grosbisou wrote: post #83

Ah I interviewed with some of these companies a few months ago and had the same experience. Unlike you though I didn’t find this frustating but rather hilarious. For example, Lifion interviewers who wanted me to write fibonacci couldn’t tell me what the sequence definition was, they ‘taught’ me that C++ classes default visibility was protected or that REST was a protocol, they didn’t like when I said they should use…

I had the same experience a while ago for a contracting gig. The interviewer threw all kinds of jargon at me and when I asked for clarification he couldn't provide any. And some of the stuff he talked about was incomplete or basically wrong.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#146

Post by drewg123 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #58

The OP is describing the new grad tech hiring process. It looks like an exam because it's for hiring people straight out of school. For experienced people, it's not what you know, it's who you know. You tell your connected friend that you're looking for a job, he tells you who's hiring and gives you a recommendation. You still have an interview, but it's no longer adversarial, it's a formality, it's friendly, it's ju…

That depends on the culture of where you're applying, and maybe what team is hiring you.

When I interviewed at Google after working for a small company for 13 years, it was my first "newfangled" tech interview. I didn't know anybody in the room. And it was more than a formality. I'm a fairly terrible interviewee, and although I got hired (finally, after a very long process), I was hired at least a level below where I should have been. I blame my fuzzy memories of algorithms I haven't had to implement in 20+ years. I finally got promoted to the correct level nearly 2 years later.

Contrast this with Netflix, where I found the opening via my network. I knew more than half the people who interviewed me, and the interview itself felt like it was basically a formality. Days later they made an offer that I accepted.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#147

Post by falcolas »

malbs wrote: post #14

Just went through this process from the POV of employer. The risk of choosing the wrong person is so great, that it's often better to not choose anyone. If there is any doubt what-so-ever, it's better to not make a a hire, it can be too damaging to a team, manager, company. I've tried so many different "coding interview" scenarios. But I found the best one was a real task that a real staff member would be expected to…

> The risk of choosing the wrong person is so great, that it's often better to not choose anyone.

This is a great way to hire "People Like You". Look around at your team. How much diversity is there in age, race, gender, hobbies, college education, or even favorite TV shows? How many would be willing to tell you that you're wrong, and stick to it in the face of a (to you) completely logical explanation of why you are right?

What you qualify as a wrong hire is not necessarily the wrong person to hire. If you're so afraid to hire the wrong person that you will never hire someone you don't instantly like, you and your company will suffer for the lack of different views.

Even that "asshole" can make you think about things in a different light.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#148

Post by odonnellryan »

pigpaws wrote: post #143
_clhx wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interview can be positive and not lead to a job. I went on a lot of interviews (maybe close to 100) before starting my own business, and I'd say at least 9/10 of them were very positive. By positive: I felt we both left the interview a bit happier than we went in. We both had a legitimate good time, and enjoyed it. It wasn't a grind, both people got to know each other. I'd say I had a 10% offer rate. The most comm…

2 hours? wow. and you stayed?

I had already took the day off, and they did update me every 20 minutes or so. They also gave me water and snacks before I even knew to wait, and I had my laptop.

It wasn't that big a deal, but they didn't have a good reason to make it not a deal breaker.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#149

Post by unprepare »

odonnellryan wrote: post #128
Scea91 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the employees I would consider working for gives f k about certifications. I agree with you that certifications are crap but I haven't encountered a single good company that cares about them.

It's not true. Some companies legitimately care about them: if you are an MSP it is very useful to have people with Cisco, MS, and other certs. Sometimes it is almost required (see MS certs) to be competitive. So, they only care because it's a business thing (not a qualification thing) but they do care.

I've worked for several MSPs this is my experience.

They are very keen on getting employees with existing certs or getting current employees to actively be getting more certs.

There are specific incentives from microsoft based on how many employees have certain levels of microsoft certification. it comes with discounts and marketing materials/privileges (Who doesnt want to say they are a Microsoft certified Gold support partner?)

As such, it is conveniently ignored that the guy with an MCSE isnt going to get fired because their gold level partnership lapses if they dont keep X number of MCSEs on staff

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#150

Post by ckozlowski »

49531 wrote: post #80

Technical interviews became 10x easier when I realized that most companies aren't necessarily looking for the right answer as much as they are trying to look into your mind. As a self taught programmer things like binary search trees and linked lists are a foreign concepts (especially as a self taught frontend developer). When I am asked to solve a problem in a way I've never encountered before, people are pretty ope…

>Technical interviews became 10x easier when I realized that most companies aren't necessarily looking for the right answer as much as they are trying to look into your mind.

This is a great, great point.

I'd like to add one more: Admitting when you don't know the answer. I've been in a number of recent phonescreens where we'd ask a technical question of a simple "good/bad" sort. My advise to those reading: If you don't know, just say so. "I'm really not sure." or "I knew at one point, but I'd have to go look it up again." Perfectly acceptable. No one's a walking encyclopedia, and to say you don't know show's humility. I'm much more comfortable with someone who says they don't know and will go look for the correct answer than someone who might stand in front of the customer and try to poker face.

To those reading this and taking notes for an interview, I'd say instances like these are a good opportunity to discuss. If you don't know, ask what the correct answer was. Ask why. See if you can build off the answer, sometimes you might get asked a question you couldn't recall the answer for, but once given, you can expand upon and demonstrate your knowledge in other ways.

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