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I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

triplebyte.com

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Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#221

Post by groestl »

qaq wrote: post #170
groestl wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This person probably wanted you to say that there might be a performance problem in filtering a result set using HAVING, instead if selecting rows using WHERE, if the query optimizer fails to see the equivalence. And the only reason why they knew was because they fixed that very same problem one week before, after debugging it for three days, as it is often the case with bad interview questions. Edit: shouldn't assum…

Have you ever seen anyone using having in place of where honestly?

I have definitely seen people confuse them, although not in production code.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#222

Post by giancarlostoro »

dsajames wrote: post #188
mrkurt wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Can't understand their accent" _is_ discriminatory. Please don't ever recommend against a candidate for that. Companies are definitely taking the easy way out. The reality is that most of them don't have a good hiring process, aren't consistent about hiring decisions, and tend to choose based on factors that have nothing to do with the job they're hiring for.

Good communication is a requirement of the job. If you can't communicate, you aren't likely to be efficient. Take some time to take classes and learn the language better. Try working in a Spanish-only environment as a pure English speaker and see how far you get. This doesn't mean "he has an accent", just that they couldn't understand it.

As a person who learned English as a second language and who has plenty of family who sometimes struggle with English I can't deny that it is harder to work with someone you cannot understand. Even if English is the only language they speak if I can't understand what they're saying I'm going to not be able to work with them. My relatives have indeed taken classes to improve their English skills. Its just something you have to do.

There is discrimination and then there's being unable to communicate. If you cannot communicate you cannot work together. I think if your English is terrible you just might not be qualified for jobs where your language barrier might ruin productivity and in other cases be a risk to your safety and the safety of others.

It's a hard cake to slice through at the end of the day since there's so many different factors to be considered.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#223

Post by dunpeal »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #201
dunpeal wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most engineering interviewees fail to advance because of cultural/personality/communication issues and not technical competence. Not my experience. At least when hiring for programming positions, the typical fatal issue is that the candidate's coding is weak. In my first role as a hiring manager, I didn't stress coding tests for candidates with long work history on their resume. Since then, I learned better. I've s…

I personally don't care that much on how well a candidate can code, as measuring that is itself quite hard (in my opinion). What I like to interview for is someone who really likes to code. I look for things that demonstrate recent personal growth, ability to explain & teach something they do know, a tendency to avoid claiming they are good at anything, open mindedness on trying new things, etc. In my experience, som…

> In my experience, someone who really wants to code and shows a minimum viable capacity for doing so is the person I want to hire.

My comment referred specifically to candidates with at least one year of full-time hands-on development experience under their belt. The typical candidate I interviewed had 3+ years of experience.

If you want to code, then you should have ample opportunity to do so during a year or more of full-time employment.

If you were working in a full-time programming position for over 3 years yet you can't write even a trivial amount of working code during the interview, then clearly you either lack the capacity or the will to develop your programming skills.

Programming nowadays is easy - everyone has a powerful laptop and internet access. It's not like you need privileged access to some $100k time sharing machine using punchcards, and learn machine-language from obscure mail-ordered manuals.

What excuse does anyone claiming to "want to code" have for not coding already?

I'd be quite suspicious of anyone waxing poetic about their genuine heartfelt love for coding who somehow couldn't demonstrate any coding ability.

Would you believe someone who swears they "love long-distance running", but collapses after 50 yards and says they just didn't have the opportunity to put this great love to practice?

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#224

Post by dunpeal »

irq11 wrote: post #197
dunpeal wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most engineering interviewees fail to advance because of cultural/personality/communication issues and not technical competence. Not my experience. At least when hiring for programming positions, the typical fatal issue is that the candidate's coding is weak. In my first role as a hiring manager, I didn't stress coding tests for candidates with long work history on their resume. Since then, I learned better. I've s…

”I've seen candidates with anything between 1 and 15 years of full time coding work on their resumes fail to answer basic fizz-buzz level coding questions.” I haven’t seen this. I have, however, seen lots of junior interviewers ask idiotic questions and wash candidates out for bad reasons, and then turn around and claim the candidate ”failed at fizzbuzz”, just to cover their own ass (or because they think TopCoder me…

> I have, however, seen lots of junior interviewers ask idiotic questions and wash candidates out for bad reasons

Why are "juniors" interviewing candidates? Let alone juniors asking "idiotic questions", and having decision-making capacity?

> then turn around and claim the candidate ”failed at fizzbuzz”, just to cover their own ass

Coding questions are among the most quantifiable and objective questions there are. If you know of something even more objective, let me know because I'd love to try it.

They are repeatable and have well-defined success criteria. Ideally you have two interviewers in the same room, and it's very clear if the candidate did or did not solve the problem. You can't really fudge it, even as a single interviewer, unless you're willing to outright lie that the candidate didn't write a working solution when he did.

> I’ve never interviewed a senior person who couldn’t code at all. Not after the phone screen, anyway.

Yes, if you do a coding phone screen, then obviously you're screening out those who can't code. I'm sure you saw some impressive resumes fail that screen, though.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#225

Post by silverlake »

btilly wrote: post #141

I believe that the article is fundamentally wrong. The bulk of the article is true. But companies are not lying when they say that legal risk is a reason not to send feedback. Triplebyte is in the unusual position of being able to say, "Everyone who has enough technical skill gets through the interview." And that fact is sufficient to defuse their risk. But real companies don't have the luxury of ignoring non-technic…

Facebook gives feedback. I interviewed twice and didn’t pass. They read the feedback report right off their screen to me.

So that makes me question the legal liability reason. Facebook is a bigger target than most for lawsuits. I think it’s just uncomfortable to tell people why you didn’t hire them.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#226

Post by irq11 »

dunpeal wrote: post #224
irq11 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

”I've seen candidates with anything between 1 and 15 years of full time coding work on their resumes fail to answer basic fizz-buzz level coding questions.” I haven’t seen this. I have, however, seen lots of junior interviewers ask idiotic questions and wash candidates out for bad reasons, and then turn around and claim the candidate ”failed at fizzbuzz”, just to cover their own ass (or because they think TopCoder me…

> I have, however, seen lots of junior interviewers ask idiotic questions and wash candidates out for bad reasons Why are "juniors" interviewing candidates? Let alone juniors asking "idiotic questions", and having decision-making capacity? > then turn around and claim the candidate ”failed at fizzbuzz”, just to cover their own ass Coding questions are among the most quantifiable and objective questions there are. If…

”Why are "juniors" interviewing candidates?”

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but the average age of programmers these days is just slightly above “right out of undergrad”.

If you wait for the senior people to interview everyone, you’re going to be waiting a while.

”Coding questions are among the most quantifiable and objective questions there are.”

Bullshit. Coding questions feel objective, and programmers love to pretend they’re objective, but like any other human evaluation process, they’re subjective. It’s not like you automatically get the job if you get the answer right.

Unless you’re verifying that your team is generating consistent, reproducible outcomes, I can pretty much guarantee that they’re not.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#227

Post by btilly »

mrkurt wrote: post #194
wildmusings wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why I said it’s unfortunate. I intended to capture the logic of why things are what they are. And as much as it’s great to help someone out with some feedback, it’s not so great to risk the livelihood of your employees—you know, the people who actually depend on you to provide for their families—and the survival of your company for it. Sometimes doing the right thing requires you to have some perspective and b…

I think you're way overblowing this, but it's possible you know more than I do. What makes you think "either willfully or accidentally mis-interpreting rejection feedback" is a meaningful threat to any company? Have there been cases where companies were wrongfully sued for such a thing that I'm not aware of? And have they gone out of business as a result? I've read an awful lot of employment case coverage and don't r…

Given how few companies give interview feedback, I would predicted very little in the way of lawsuits involving that. People can't "willfully or accidentally mis-interpret" what you don't say.

The real question is, "If people gave interview feedback, would they get sued for it?" I think so. Doubly so if the feedback was at odds with the candidate's self-image or if it is written. (It is a lot easier to file a lawsuit based on what was written to you than your memory of what was said.)

More importantly HR departments universally say so. And as long as HR departments say so, managers will follow their advice and not give interview feedback.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#228

Post by Retra »

sdegutis wrote: post #213
btilly wrote: post #141

I believe that the article is fundamentally wrong. The bulk of the article is true. But companies are not lying when they say that legal risk is a reason not to send feedback. Triplebyte is in the unusual position of being able to say, "Everyone who has enough technical skill gets through the interview." And that fact is sufficient to defuse their risk. But real companies don't have the luxury of ignoring non-technic…

This is absolutely correct. Companies can and should discriminate against anyone who wouldn't be a good culture fit for any number of reasons. I don't fault anyone who has ever refused to hire me for personal reasons. At the end of the day, a company is a group of people working together toward a common goal. Company is Latin for those you break bread with, and although companies aren't usually that close-knit (moder…

You are a team, but you should still attempt to be objective enough in your evaluation to determine whether a new person will allow you to be a functional team. But when you say "culture fit", the implication is that the team would prefer not to change at all, not that it would accept changing into a different-yet-comparably-productive team.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#229

Post by dunpeal »

irq11 wrote: post #226
dunpeal wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have, however, seen lots of junior interviewers ask idiotic questions and wash candidates out for bad reasons Why are "juniors" interviewing candidates? Let alone juniors asking "idiotic questions", and having decision-making capacity? > then turn around and claim the candidate ”failed at fizzbuzz”, just to cover their own ass Coding questions are among the most quantifiable and objective questions there are. If…

”Why are "juniors" interviewing candidates?” I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but the average age of programmers these days is just slightly above “right out of undergrad”. If you wait for the senior people to interview everyone, you’re going to be waiting a while. ”Coding questions are among the most quantifiable and objective questions there are.” Bullshit. Coding questions feel objective, and programmers love…

OK, I suppose lack of seniors is a legitimate constraint.

Still, interviewing is so important, that I typically give it a high priority. Even when I had only one other senior engineer, I made sure each candidate spent a long time with each of us.

Typically, I'd go in with a junior developer, and he'd go in with some other junior developer. I'd even see the same candidate twice rather than have two juniors interview him.

I've been on the other side of that kind of interview and I know how badly it can get messed up.

> Coding questions feel objective, and programmers love to pretend they’re objective, but like any other human evaluation process, they’re subjective.

I don't see a reason to swear, as this is a friendly discussion. Either way, we'll have to agree to disagree.

Coding questions ideally yield an answer that can compile and run and return correct output for at least some valid sets of input. That's about as objective as it gets.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#230

Post by tptacek »

michaelt wrote: post #217
tptacek wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you insist on doing the interview in person, why not just tell them ahead of time what their environment needs to do when they get there? Give people instructions and a script (formal or just a numbered list of steps) that determines they're ready to go. Better yet, just don't make people do that stuff in your office. Why bother videorecording interviews at all? I'd have problems writing a line of code with someon…

Why bother videorecording interviews at all? We don't record interviews. By "remote video interviews" I meant "remote interviews by videoconferencing such as Skype or Google Hangouts" which I assumed was what you meant when you proposed candidates use their own office or couch. why not just tell them ahead of time what their environment needs to do when they get there? We did this, including a github test project the…

Maybe I'm being unclear. I'm asking: why does there need to be video or telephonic oversight of any sort for a work-sample challenge? Why are you assigning yourself that problem? We've never done that and never had a problem.
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