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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

#201

Post by hodgesrm »

enraged_camel wrote: post #180
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)".

This comes up a lot on HN and the common objection is that the criteria you listed discriminates against talented people who have families (for example) and therefore no spare time to indulge their curiosities by learning new languages or whatever.

It's perhaps better to say, look for people who like to learn how things work. Good tech people can explain the plumbing.

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

#202

Post by pdimitar »

vmception wrote: post #112
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have personally given up on "whiteboarding people"... reminds me of waterboarding. I skim the resume, underline anything we use internally and talk to them about experiences. We've done over 300 interviews in the last expansion year (2017) because we had to build a brand new development office (+50 devs). After hiring all of these people, we've quantified this as three things: Curiosity, Ability to Learn and Abilit…

same, I stopped doing whiteboarding. I have people solve some domain knowledge exercise (like their specific platform or IDE or package manager, stuff that would actually spend the company time on a day to day basis). Most companies could get away with that, even "big tech" can because their employees leave after 2 years too, before they are even eligible to join some other teams at some companies.

I wish I met more interviewers like you.

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

#203

Post by dan-robertson »

sethhochberg wrote: post #25
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…

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…

I think I sympathise with companies hiring for a single position. It’s hard to organise timing with several candidates and recruiting is expensive. If they’re a large company, I see it as a signal that they believe the candidate has a good chance of finding a better offer elsewhere given time.

I think from the candidate’s point of view, I don’t think the question is whether an offer is acceptable so much as whether it is the best offer in their search. Just as a company might like to interview several companies looking for a good fit and make an offer to the best even when others are acceptable, a candidate might want to receive several offers and accept the best even if others are acceptable.

I think a company would be fooling itself if it told stories about selecting for passion or something. If you’re not seeing any competing offers in your hires, you should ask why they aren’t competitive? Maybe your offers are very good or so bad as to not be worth trying to negotiate. Or maybe you’re selecting for the most desperate candidates. Or maybe you’re good at finding hires who perform poorly under whatever interview conditions are most fashionable.

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

#204

Post by jcims »

ghaff wrote: post #199
jcims wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems a little odd, maybe they had some KPIs around hiring/fit or something and wanted to fluff their numbers.

I'm not going to be specific, but at a certain level, companies will hire people that execs know/have worked with and figure out the best role for them.

Oh yeah, totally, I just never saw anyone update a rec to suit. Maybe I just never paid attention. :)

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

#205

Post by ghaff »

jcims wrote: post #204
ghaff wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to be specific, but at a certain level, companies will hire people that execs know/have worked with and figure out the best role for them.

Oh yeah, totally, I just never saw anyone update a rec to suit. Maybe I just never paid attention. :)

I don't think there was a rec, or at least a published one :-)

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

#206

Post by underwater »

anon4984 wrote: post #79

I wonder - if you got an unfair[1] exploding offer, why not just accept it and keep shopping quietly? [1] A small company may have only one spot open and another candidate lined up, so that's fair enough. But larger companies likely have more than one position open so they are just bossing you around. Nothing fair about that, and you don't have to make it easy for them.

Because then you can't negotiate. Imagine you like Company A, and they've given you an exploding offer of $x, but suspect you will receive an alternative of $x+10 in a few days from Company B.

If you accept the offer from A then you've limited your options. You either accept less than you're worth or lose your opportunity to work for them.

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

#207

Post by devmunchies »

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.

> Don't make the appointment if you can't dedicate your attention

maybe the CEO is swamped and needs to hire people so he can dedicate attention.

I'm assuming the best, but if my assumptions are true, the CEO should have said upfront that they are growing fast and he may need to personally help with support during the interview.

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

#208

Post by yibg »

LaserToy wrote: post #20

Had similar marathon 8 years ago and it is draining. Now, being on the other side (hiring folks for a startup), I would argue that some of flags are a bit misleading. Examples: “Undue pressure to accept an offer letter” - interviews are not free, companies are investing eng time into evaluating each candidate and once they find great one, they really want them to join. They also do not want to be part of a bidding wa…

Also offers are not symmetric for the same role. A candidate can receive and evaluate multiple offers and pick the best one. Companies cannot send out multiple offers for the same role and pick the best candidate that responds.

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

#209

Post by aerovistae »

peruvian wrote: post #146
aerovistae wrote: post #87

I'm a little unclear how you could possibly get that many interviews in such a short time unless you're a famous "rockstar" coder. I'm not familiar with the blog author, is he a very well known person?

Once you pass 3-4 years of experience, it is not difficult to get at least a recruiter interview and phone screen in the US for a standard software engineer role. And that's with YOU applying — people get messaged by recruiters on LinkedIn all the time.

Oh, wait, are we including phone interviews in this? That changes it. I guess if this is all remote interviewing then that would make sense.

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

#210

Post by raspasov »

t0mbstone wrote: post #183
onei wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 curio…

Companies should definitely train their employees during business hours but there’s people actually wanting to spend most waking free hours learning about programming topics. Those people are usually some of the best in their field. I am not advocating for extreme narrowness of interest. A “T” shaped skillset is possibly the best.
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