Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews • Hacker News Board

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#241

Post by yowlingcat » Tue, Sep 15, 2020, 7:01 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #233

Galanwe wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After being on both sides of the interview situation for quite a while now, my feeling on this is more nuanced. The thing is, when you look for a job, you will often go for 5 to 10 interviews. On the other end, when I'm looking for someone to fill a position in my team, I will interview at the very least 50 candidates. That is to say, all things equal, the interviewer has most likely more incentive than the interview…

Here's the funny thing. I've worked with recruiters where the candidates they supplied needed the tech screen upfront and recruiters where the sell call upfront was useful. Honestly, the latter guys are absolutely fire to work with. I think recruiting is like security engineering: 90% of the guys doing it are total rubbish so you just assume that's what it's like. But that last 10% are super good, and the top 1% are…

> This may not be scalable at Google/FB where you're hiring commodity L3-L5s a lot.

I think that's probably more the rub than anything. I never had a happier time being an interviewer than my time at hypergrowth startups. The sheer caliber of both candidates AND resource allotment towards landing them was far higher than what I was able to see in the BigCo environment. It made things a lot more pleasant.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#242

Post by Zippogriff » Tue, Sep 15, 2020, 7:01 PM UTC

grumple wrote: post #229

edanm wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how many people saying otherwise would constitute sufficient evidence in your mind, but add me to the list of people that disagree with this sentiment. I've had candidates who couldn't code a loop. Not "did something suboptimal", I mean literally couldn't write a single line of code. I've had candidates who seemed incredibly accomplished when talking them, who showed amazing looking demos and could talk…

I've frozen in interviews and been unable to think on simple problems just due to anxiety (which I've never experienced at work; if I can't think, I just say, "let me think about it" and I get back to the person in a bit). Other interviews I've completely demolished - solving problems that were supposed to take 30 minutes in 2 minutes, for example. I think the type of problem and structure we use for interviews is ba…

I'm 100% sure I've come off in a couple interviews like one of those "phew we dodged a bullet there, guy can't code at all" stories. Meanwhile actually I can and many employers have been very happy with my ability to do so, and I've had a long and reasonably successful career.

The problem's not even that I'm bad under pressure, and in fact I've repeatedly been told the exact opposite by people who've worked with me. The problem is specifically about doing a programming performance in front of an audience, in an interview rather than co-worker context. I'm god-awful at that unless I'm heavily prepped for exactly what's going on. No tools? I'll forget basic syntax, yes even in "a language I chose". Let me use tools? I'll forget how to use them, or get self-conscious and avoid things I'm not entirely sure will work, overriding my own muscle memory. It's a very specific problem but I doubt I'm the only one who absolutely can do the job just fine, but is also entirely capable of coming off like a complete "faker" in an interview.

[EDIT] to make matters worse I can talk about programming just fine in that setting, which probably adds to the "he's some kind of social engineering genius who learned to sound exactly like a competent programmer while somehow also not learning a single thing about programming" impression. It's not usually an issue, but I'm quite sure I've reinforced some interviewers' notion that it's a good thing they do whiteboard screening because they're overwhelmed with lying applicants, and that I was one of them.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#243

Post by ptmcc » Tue, Sep 15, 2020, 7:02 PM UTC

NHQ wrote: post #33

How did they get 60 interviews? Do I really need to join LinkedIn?

Doing 60 interviews is certainly not my style of job-hunting, but I think it'd be pretty dang easy (but a ton of work) to line up that many interviews in a few month period if you are not overly selective in companies you interview with.

Yes, a good LinkedIn profile with the right resume items helps with that. Also living in (or relocating to) a tech hub.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#244

Post by chris_va » Tue, Sep 15, 2020, 7:02 PM UTC

user5994461 wrote: post #196

chris_va wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this viewpoint is common from senior engineers but not entirely merited. (FWIW, I am also a senior engineer, and I have seen this play out from both sides of the table.) Sometimes folks overestimate their value as senior engineer for certain types of companies, and under-appreciate the risk companies take in hiring an employee. Large companies, for example, generally do not need yet another L6+ that cannot ge…

L7/L8 positions are comparable to the director of a department with 100+ people underneath in a large company or the owners/executives at a smaller company. Of course people in these positions don't code, they couldn't be further away from developers. It's fine that FAANG want heads who can code AND run a department but it shouldn't come as a surprise that candidates don't match that.

There are different ladders with different hiring expectations (e.g. SWE and Eng manager). Regardless, a lot of leeway is given for code rustiness at these levels, but design skills are still important. Algorithmic skills are often still required (e.g. imagine you are hiring a senior dev into a Search Infrastructure group, do you want them to be rusty on algorithms?).

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#245

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh » Tue, Sep 15, 2020, 7:04 PM UTC

compiler-guy wrote: post #24

The "Not Enough Clarity about your Role" issue has killed Google with so many potentially outstanding employees. For years and years you wouldn't interview with your team, or even be told what team you would be joining. It is slightly better now, but you still don't interview with your specific team until very, very late in the process, if you even do. One of the worst things about interviewing at the big G.

Among the bigger companies, Google is by far the friendliest when it comes to intra-company transfers. All you need is the manager of the destination team to accept you. If the team is in a different country, the immigration teams will do what needs to be done.

You don't need permission from your current manager.

Maybe you don't care about this, but many would consider this a huge 'perk', that justifies Google's focus on hiring good generalist SWEs who are not too wedded to a specific team.

It's a very strong part of Google culture, and it manifests itself in every aspect of Google life, such as general openness wrt code and documentation across the whole company, internal job boards etc. which make it easy to take a call about what team you want to work on next.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#246

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh » Tue, Sep 15, 2020, 7:04 PM UTC

dddbbb wrote: post #117

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of that is because of the expectation at Google that you will just move around. You don't really hire specifically into a given team, and that could be disconcerting, for sure. But you are also given enough respect by the company to assume that as a competent SWE you should be able to move around fairly easily to almost any team in the company. When I started (9 years ago) it was stated during onboarding that yo…

Doesn't that put off a lot of very high-quality candidates though? If someone joins because they want to work in an interesting machine learning team, they probably don't want to be potentially moved on to a legacy Java CRUD app. Or is transferring determined more by what the employee wants?

1 point by kinkrtyavimoodh 0 minutes ago | edit | delete [–]

Among the bigger companies, Google is by far the friendliest when it comes to intra-company transfers. All you need is the manager of the destination team to accept you. If the team is in a different country, the immigration teams will do what needs to be done. You don't need permission from your current manager.

Maybe you don't care about this, but many would consider this a huge 'perk', that justifies Google's focus on hiring good generalist SWEs who are not too wedded to a specific team.

It's a very strong part of Google culture, and it manifests itself in every aspect of Google life, such as general openness wrt code and documentation across the whole company, internal job boards etc. which make it easy to take a call about what team you want to work on next.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#247

Post by pnw_hazor » Tue, Sep 15, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

nickff wrote: post #161

pnw_hazor wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always accept the time critical offer and continue interviewing and then jump if a better one comes through. There is no reason to be nice or considerate to companies, they will drop you in hot second if it is convenient for them.

Accepting an offer without an intent to follow through is fraud. If you think your counter-party is dishonest or ill-intentioned, then you should refuse to enter into any agreement with them.

I have never been offered a contract when hired anywhere in the US -- well except for the Army. An offer letter is not a contract, often it says so in the offer letter near where it says you are an at-will employee that they can fire for any reason at any time.

I had a guy leave after a few months because the big company he really wanted to work at finally came through with an offer. I wished him well and was happy for him.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#248

Post by TT3351 » Tue, Sep 15, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

shuntress wrote: post #47

StillBored wrote: post #23

Role clarity is a huge one in my book. I've turned down numerous offers because when I asked what the specifics of my day to day job were going to be, the answers weren't clear. From the secret FAANG that likes to pretend what they are doing is defense contractor level top secret, and even after your hired you might not know what your actually working on, to the big companies where its clear the hiring manager only h…

I get that Microsoft is a huge company but the inconsistency in quality is something I find quite comical. To pile on to the Windows control panel for a minute: If you open the start menu and search updates, you bring up the settings menu for updates. Likewise for network settings or any other section of the control panel successor. But if you open network settings from the start menu while you already have updates o…

It seems every update that the Sound control panel is harder to get to quickly, yet that panel still has functionality I need on a day-to-day basis. I'm willing to bet that the person who created that control panel no longer works with the company...

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#249

Post by mywittyname » Tue, Sep 15, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #110

mywittyname wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be a side-effect of how separations of concerns are handled vis-a-vis interviews at the company. I do technical interviews for other teams within my company. I may not know much detail about the role, beyond just generally knowing with the team in question is responsible for and the topics they asked me to cover during the interview. I wouldn't ever think to ask for more details about the role because I as…

If companies want to hire experienced senior talent, then streamlining isn't going to be a good idea. They need to recruit them, and that means not alienating them right away. The process for new grads and interns should be different from senior talent. I don't care about the division of labour. Want to hire people away from Google? Don't be a pain in the ass. People expect pain in the interview process, but not befo…

I get it. We all want to be shown respect and courtesy. And how we and our team treat candidates is a reflection on the company; regardless of how accurate it is.

But I see recruiting as a team effort. The recruiter should sell you on the company, the manager should sell you on the job, and I should sell you on the quality of the team. If companies aren't meeting your expectations, you should let everyone in the process know.

I'm sure lots of technical employees have no idea what the recruitment process is like at a company, especially if they've been there for a long time.

Re: Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews

#250

Post by Zippogriff » Tue, Sep 15, 2020, 7:15 PM UTC

seattletech wrote: post #191

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always love getting a question about "Why are you interviewing for this position?" and replying "I got an email from your internal recruiter". The follow up is usually "Why do you want to leave your current company?" replying with "I'm not, your recruiter said this was a cool place".

Yeah that just drives me nuts. If you're recruiting, you're trying to sell me on the position.

Imagine if we did this for other things.

"Why do you want to sell me this apple?"

"Be... cause... I grow apples? To sell? And you said you want one, and are holding money?"