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Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
281–290 of 693 posts
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#282I am a VP at a medium size company and I do plenty of interviews. I usually talk about what people are interested in and then ask one question:
"You are in front of PC/Mac/Mobile screen, type www.cnn.com into browser, and press enter. A fraction of a second images show up on the screen... How? What happened? Tell me all you can from key press interrupts to underwater fiber cables".
This question never failed me. It always shows how deep does one go in their computer science adventures.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#283After reading author's post I've a feeling that its not the programming skills that the author has issues with, but instead the attitude, stress durability, expectations to the world around him. True, hiring can be broken, it often is, but as with everything, the persistence usually allows us to find the proper company with proper hiring process. He's getting frustrated pretty quickly, complains when is asked to perf…
Indeed. You would think that someone who is smart, capable, and clearly determined early on (as in pre-Google interview) that many potential employers would ask algorithm questions.... Would, you know, study up on some algorithms? It probably isn't the "right" way for programming interviews, but once you identify the rules of the game, it behooves you to play the game accordingly, no?
Author sees the game and decides it is rigged, there is more than a paragraph on this.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#284When I hired a plumber for my heating firm, I put her through a hazing interview, tested her knowledge of Maxwell relations and thermodynamic equations. Oh wait, no I didn't. As she has been a plumber for years, so we recognised her skill and experience and cut to the chase. When I hired a programmer for our doomed to die VC life support funded fart of a project, we put her through numerous rounds of comp sci bingo a…
A plumber, sure. What about the guys who design your water heater? Should they just google the thermodynamics as they go as well? My point being, it depends on the role, and the expectations you have for the future of a candidate in your company. Are you hiring a guy to bugfix or implement a couple of features on your web app? Or a guy to design and implement from scratch a app that should have some hope of scaling i…
>A plumber, sure. What about the guys who design your water heater? Should they just google the thermodynamics as they go as well?
Honestly, regularly referring to the reference material as you need it rather than trying to remember or derive every single pressure equation off the top of your head sounds like a good idea when designing a potentially explosive boiler.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#285When I hired a plumber for my heating firm, I put her through a hazing interview, tested her knowledge of Maxwell relations and thermodynamic equations. Oh wait, no I didn't. As she has been a plumber for years, so we recognised her skill and experience and cut to the chase. When I hired a programmer for our doomed to die VC life support funded fart of a project, we put her through numerous rounds of comp sci bingo a…
As she has been a plumber for years, so we recognised her skill Because being a programmer for years doesn't guarantee the person will have any skill. I met a programmer who had been working for 10 years, and couldn't write a program to swap two variables. I don't know why, but for some reason experience is not equal to skill in the programming industry.
It's really a question of what kind of experience you've got. Many programmers with "10 yrs of experience" really just have 10x1year of experience; they've just done the same thing over and over again for a decade without pushing out of their comfort zone.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#286After reading author's post I've a feeling that its not the programming skills that the author has issues with, but instead the attitude, stress durability, expectations to the world around him. True, hiring can be broken, it often is, but as with everything, the persistence usually allows us to find the proper company with proper hiring process. He's getting frustrated pretty quickly, complains when is asked to perf…
the author has issues with, but instead the attitude, stress durability, expectations to the world around him. That seems like a reasonable interpretation, emphasized by when he got through all the programming questions without a problem, and still didn't get the job. One thing I've found when I'm interviewing, I try to be enthusiastic and act like I really want to work at the company, even when it's a boring company…
Do you have any idea how easy it is to tell when someone's doing that? Or going even further, how exhausting this is for someone who's not good at it? Why not just be genuine?
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#287I recently wrote a post on designing better tech interview questions. [1] But one thing i never see interviewees do is outright ask, "Wait, what does this question actually tell you about me?" I find myself asking it in nearly every interview i go to. If you ask and your interviewer gets glassy-eyed or gives you the laughably generic "it shows how well you think algorithmically" you know that you are being interviewe…
>But one thing i never see interviewees do is outright ask, "Wait, what does this question actually tell you about me?"
That seems like a pretty quick way to end an interview. Although if they are asking dumb questions, they probably won't be a huge loss.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#288Yep, the interview process is pretty broken. It took me 5 Google phone screens before I got invited to an on-site (although one of those phone screens had the technical phone interview waived due to the team's familiarity with my skills, but I still got rejected amusingly) - the only reason I made it was because I failed & learned from each of the previous phone screens enough to pass.
This is an absolutely awful way to interview. However, the author should learn some patience & attack the problem. You deal with the cards you're given - it took me 2 1/2 years of applying to jobs before I lucked into get a job in the tech industry after grad school, and lots of wtfs in many interviews after I entered tech. Learning how to take it on the chin and keep going is an important skill for success - he could learn something from sales in that respect.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
If interviews weren't scheduled at the drop of a hat and employers actually took the time to decide whether to bring someone in for an onsite interview, then this wouldn't be a problem as big as it is. Fact is, when someone needs to take a day off of work, or to do schedule gymnastics for every one of their interviews of course your attitude's going to get screwed up in the process. It's exhausting, often humiliating…
Flew to Ireland from the UK for a interview (at my own expense). Did a decent interview, never got a call/email back. People can be assholes.
Did they not agree to expense your trip? Back when I was job searching and looking to move cities I would never have agreed to pay for a flight to an interview out of my own pocket, and never had a company request for me to do such a thing.
Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry
#290One possible reason is that the brony thing on his github might be a legit turnoff for employers. It's silly, but it's possible. The two people I talk to more than anyone else in this world are bronies (to the extent of going to conventions and whatnot) and have similar issues. Hell, I still don't understand it and find myself irrationally judging them for it, and that's even after daily exposure to it.