Good advice. My first (sometimes only) question when I interview people is: Tell me about your favorite project.
This is a good question if your goal is to hire people who can talk a good talk about an unverified favorite project. It also assumes that someone has a clear favorite project ready to discuss. People who do not are put at a disadvantage. (Though I do understand this question is well-intentioned.) The article doesn't really justify the process people go through as a good one. People who think they have a good approac…
How to talk about yourself in a developer interview
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Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview
#22I 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" to "display: inline-block"..'
Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a good question if your goal is to hire people who can talk a good talk about an unverified favorite project. It also assumes that someone has a clear favorite project ready to discuss. People who do not are put at a disadvantage. (Though I do understand this question is well-intentioned.) The article doesn't really justify the process people go through as a good one. People who think they have a good approac…
Having done many interviews, mentored interns and full employees, I'd argue storytelling is a _key aspect_ of performing our job in a larger team. Perhaps I'm being too liberal in my definitions, but I see substantial overlap between "talk about your last project" (and then digging into pitfalls, hacks, workarounds, conflicts; and mind you, I don't mean just PASSION projects, literally any work prior one can speak fl…
A major difference is that some people have deficiencies in autobiographical memory. This can make telling the story of a past project vastly more difficult than talking about a subject of current focus. An extreme case was recently described in Wired [1], but the ability is generally more of a spectrum.
[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/04/susie-mckinnon-autobiographica...
Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview
#24Google has published some of their data on this and behavioral questions about teamwork (e.g. handling disagreements) are reasonable and can be valuable. Software development is usually a team activity. The rest of this post is a useful, if anecdotally sourced, guide to answering the more technical class of behavioral questions. It should include a block on follow up questions. Good behavioral interviewers, like you…
Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview
#25> 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 more likely that the story isn’t entirely true.
I have a friend who - bless his heart, I adore him, but can't get a quick story out to save his life. Every point he makes he reserves the punchline for last, and he starts by going on a back-story tangent first which usually forks into multiple back-stories. I've been trying to nudge him to turn it around and give away the punchline first, but he's deeply convinced that good stories are like movies and need to have a backstory followed by a narrative arc that doesn't make it's final point until most of the way through act 3.
Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a good question if your goal is to hire people who can talk a good talk about an unverified favorite project. It also assumes that someone has a clear favorite project ready to discuss. People who do not are put at a disadvantage. (Though I do understand this question is well-intentioned.) The article doesn't really justify the process people go through as a good one. People who think they have a good approac…
Having done many interviews, mentored interns and full employees, I'd argue storytelling is a _key aspect_ of performing our job in a larger team. Perhaps I'm being too liberal in my definitions, but I see substantial overlap between "talk about your last project" (and then digging into pitfalls, hacks, workarounds, conflicts; and mind you, I don't mean just PASSION projects, literally any work prior one can speak fl…
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 up a coherent response to a post on Hacker News, but it doesn't make me more qualified for your position.
It fails because it assumes that the candidate has a single defined favorite project. If you try to make the question more broad, then it becomes so open-ended that it is hard to equally compare candidates on it. It becomes random chance that a candidate discusses a project in a way conducive to doing the job. Where if more precise or structured, it might weed out people who can talk passionately about a personal project from those who can constructively explain to a manager the challenges of a project.
It also starts stretching it into saying that everything is story-telling so as to make the term meaningless. I agree it is to some degree, but it's important to try to stick with meaningful mental models that can make predictive assessments about candidates.
The huge problem is there are people without the skills who can tell a good story. This process let's these people through, while ignoring good candidates who may not perform well on this interview question.
Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview
#27> 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…
Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview
#28> 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…
Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview
#29> 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…
Re: How to talk about yourself in a developer interview
#30> 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…
You example of changing block to inline-block can very well take time and effort depending on the issue at hands. So yeah - this is very vague question in my opinion.