Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by mgkimsal » Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 9:25 PM UTC

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #142

d2ncal wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you probe for these skills? Are there any questions that help you to identify them?

You can get a feel for it... ask about personal projects, then follow-up on why. The best candidates will cop to "I wanted to check out the new tech (curiosity)", "I wanted to learn the new programming language (learning)".

How do you deal with "I don't want to learn new language X"?

I do investigate some time with new languages/tech to a degree, but to the extent I have time to learn, I tend to want to go deeper in the things I have competence in already. There's generally always more to learn (between the language itself evolving and the ecosystem developing) such that taking time away from those areas to 'explore' some hot new thing tends to not have very useful ROI.

I've done 'learn new language X' for... way too many years already, and prefer to get better at what I know. That doesn't mean I never learn new things or new tech, but it's generally in service of a defined goal as opposed to "oooh that looks neat...".

I've been doing this as a hobby for 40 years, and professionally for around 26. I have the feeling some places would look at 'the old guy' (like me) as 'the stick in the mud who never learns the new tech', yet in some cases I've been 'learning new tech' since before they were born.

Some of the original question was rhetorical - I already know how some places react to the "I don't spend time learning multiple new languages/stacks every few months" line. But... keep it in mind that there may be other ways to measure that curiosity besides just looking at 'time with new language'. ;)

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

#182

Post by Sodman » Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

tmpz22 wrote: post #29

sethhochberg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the hiring side, a (reasonable) expiration on the offer helps be fair to the other people who are interviewing, too. If I have a single position open and multiple people interviewing, as a hiring manager I really need to know whether my top choice is serious once we're having a discussion about signing a contract - because if they aren't, or are still trying to land better offers from other places because they h…

From a candidate perspective its very hard to evaluate what your compensation should be without first pooling multiple offers. Its also very hard to schedule many interviews in a short period such that the offer letters can be compared side by side. For this reason I generally indicate a 1-2 week response time to an offer letter. I almost always come in before that, maybe around 2-3 days, but I find it absolutely ess…

Having multiple offers on the table certainly helps - but I feel a lot of people know what they're looking for in terms of comp range when they're going into the interview process. Recruiters will usually ask you up-front what your target comp range is before even submitting your resume to a company. At engineer salary levels in the US, +/- $5-10k isn't going to be a life changing amount of money (especially after taxes), and is likely within the realms of negotiations anyway. The main reason for big jumps in comp are if you're applying to vastly different types of companies with wide levels of stock options on the table, eg FANG vs seed-stage startup.

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

#183

Post by t0mbstone » Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

onei wrote: post #153

beforeolives wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't really quantify attributes like curiosity, ability to learn and ability to listen so it's difficult to interview for them without having all kinds of biases sneak in. How do you deal with this in your process?

Quantifying it is hard for sure, but some sample questions I've used in the past: 1. (Curiosity) How do you keep up to date with tech? Then explore something recent they started playing with and how they found it. 2. (Ability to learn) Ask about past failures, what they thought went wrong and what they'd do next time. If that's a bit harsh, ask what they'd change about their last major project. 3. (Ability to listen)…

"Curiosity" is a weird trait to gauge, because the person might be completely exhausted and fatigued by the ever-shifting quicksand of the tech world, but still be extremely curious about things outside of their job, such as their hobbies.

For example, I have recently started doing a lot of cooking and bread baking, and I've watched hundreds of youtube videos about those topics (which I could argue demonstrates curiosity), but I still haven't bothered to learn React or Angular because I barely have to deal with javascript in my current job, and where I do, jQuery usually works just fine for my limited needs.

When employers say they want someone who is "curious", what they are really saying is they want someone who is willing to spend all their personal time self-educating on programming topics, effectively making themselves more valuable from an employment perspective. The employer, of course, is rarely eager to actually allocate "learning time" during normal business hours, and is rarely willing to give you a meaningful raise when you actually have self-educated on your own time.

I really wish more companies actually TRAINED their employees DURING BUSINESS HOURS instead of just trying to hire "curious" people.

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

#184

Post by corytheboyd » Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #138

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...

I really should have just left the call and moved on, saving the remaining two hours of my life.

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

#185

Post by Espressosaurus » Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 9:44 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #175

Espressosaurus wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

72 hours is quick. A week is more reasonable. I had one company try to pull a 48 hour decision on me and I straight up told them I was declining the offer if they didn't give me more time to consider it. They backed down. This is a decision that will impact my career trajectory, and I may have other offers coming. So yes, I want enough time to consider all options before making a decision with ramifications that will…

I'm not sure it's so much time to consider as time to tell any others companies you're also through some part of the process with (especially if you're already through interviews) that they need to make a formal offer to you now or you're going elsewhere. Maybe it's just me but if you just have one offer letter in hand and have probably already thought about what it would take to take an offer, I can almost certainly…

You'll also want enough time to give the other companies a chance to counteroffer. You have more leverage with an offer in hand.

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

#186

Post by setgree » Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

bob33212 wrote: post #40

setgree wrote: post #19

I once got stood up for a round of interviews — I showed up, waited, emailed them multiple times to let them know I was there, and then 30 minutes later they wrote to me to ask if I could come in another day (rather than meeting me at the front desk where I was sitting). At the time I was just annoyed that they had wasted my time, but in retrospect, the real red flag there was that no one took responsibility — “there…

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.

I would call this an ambiguous signal, a lot of CEOs are just like this; but you might know about yourself that this style wouldn’t work for you in a manager. It would not work for me.

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

#187

Post by ghaff » Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 9:47 PM UTC

vishnugupta wrote: post #35

jcims wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not enough clarity about your role This is true at large organizations as well, it's not like there is some jigsaw puzzle waiting for the candidate that's a perfect fit.

To add to that, role clarity is inversely proportional to the seniority.

I got hired on for a position once where the job description was retroactively written for me after I came in for an interview. I suppose in retrospect that means it was written in a way that it probably wasn't a good fit for most people.

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

#188

Post by nancy99 » Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #55

> Not enough clarity about your role I experienced this one to the extreme. Not only would the recruiter not tell me what the scope of the job was, neither would the interviewing engineers nor the hiring manager. I went to the on-site interview with the promise that I would be working on "world-changing technology". The location of the interview was a nondescript building in the Bay area with an off-limits engineerin…

That is very common in the world of government contracts. The just want breathing bodies.

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

#189

Post by ghaff » Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

wyldfire wrote: post #145

devmunchies wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't make the appointment if you can't dedicate your attention. If the CEO is too busy, they shouldn't be a part of the interview. If something comes up, find a new host or give the candidate a mid-session break.

I had forgotten about this but my first professional job something like this happened with one of my interviewers a few time--not customers but fires of various types. It was a pretty good job for a few years though.

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

#190

Post by DoofusOfDeath » Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 9:50 PM UTC

kevinskii wrote: post #156

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're getting better, but sometimes there are legitimate reasons for things like delays and ghosting that can't be disclosed to the candidate. Can you elaborate? I'm having trouble imagining a legitimate reason to ghost a candidate, other than a court order or National Security Letter.

We make medical devices. They are surprisingly complicated things, and many peoples' lives depend on them. There's also a lot of ways in which they might potentially fail, and these failures can manifest years after the product has been in the field. When there's even the slightest hint of a potential safety issue, it quickly becomes the top priority for a whole bunch of people. Most issues turn out to be false alarm…

> "Sally really enjoyed talking to you but she's unexpectedly tied up in something" can be market-moving information if you find Sally's role on LinkedIn and tie it to recent news about the company.

I'm curious if this level of caution is truly required to meet an SEC rule. I've never heard of another company feeling the need to be this secretive for market reasons.