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Three questions to turn the table during technical interviews

bellmar.medium.com

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Re: Three questions to turn the table during technical interviews

#31

Post by tdb7893 »

neilv wrote: post #27

Treating the interview as two-way is good, and how it should be. A couple points: > When people struggle to answer it you still reap the rewards of letting them know that you’re not just looking for a job, you care about being successful at their company. If you publicize that in a Medium post targeting HN-like audience, aren't you just increasing the number of people will ask that question just to "reap the rewards"…

The article is paywalled but I'm not a fan of suggesting particular questions in general. Unless it's relevant to the team I'm on or the candidate is genuinely knowledgeable and interested in the field then it comes across as not genuine. I've never actually mentioned that sort of thing in interview feedback but I would prefer a candidate asks what they are actually interested in knowing.

Re: Three questions to turn the table during technical interviews

#32

Post by calmbonsai »

This is one of those few “social engineering” pay-walled click-bait articles that I’m very happy IS pay-walled to reduce its cogent thought pollution.

This is not wisdom. This is over-fitting industry/era/role-specific individual experience to generic candidate advice.

Do none of these things.

Re: Three questions to turn the table during technical interviews

#33

Post by bluGill »

bdw5204 wrote: post #29
greenthrow wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have any interest why do you want to work at that organization? You just want a check? That's not a good way to spend half your waking hours during the work week.

If you aren't already wealthy, you're probably working because "you just want a check". Even if the job you want is to own your own company, you still have to work until you have enough savings. This is how the world has always worked for most of the population in every human society that has ever existed.

Anyone who says anything else is probably lieing. If they are telling the truth they are a fanatic in a bad way so you don't want them.

sure you want to make sure the company isn't really bad but mostly you need a check-

Re: Three questions to turn the table during technical interviews

#34

Post by charlie0 »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #24

“There’s an IC sitting out there who just had an amazing idea for a new feature/product. What happens?” Sounds like a good question, but the answer doesn't really matter, because it depends on whether the business actually wants to implement the idea. And if they do, it needs to sound like it's coming from an executive, because if it's not, they'll be embarrassed and try to crush the idea. So if the dev really wants…

I agree with your first and last answer. This is why most people can't make an impact. Even if you _could_ make one, too many layers of permission often kills the potential, or just as worse, the idea is greenlit and some other engineer with seniority leads the project; robbing you of the chance to make an impact.

Re: Three questions to turn the table during technical interviews

#35

Post by icedchai »

ang_cire wrote: post #15
evilfred wrote: post #4

“There’s an IC sitting out there who just had an amazing idea for a new feature/product. What happens?” in a company with more than 10 staff, they should talk to a product manager, sorry. you can't build a sustainable company by adding new features willy nilly whenever some dev has a Great Idea.

10? If I am the 12th hire at a company and there's already a dedicated PM there, I'm out. 100, understandable.

I've seen companies where there are almost as many PMs as engineers. It's totally dysfunctional.

Re: Three questions to turn the table during technical interviews

#36

Post by lolinder »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #24

“There’s an IC sitting out there who just had an amazing idea for a new feature/product. What happens?” Sounds like a good question, but the answer doesn't really matter, because it depends on whether the business actually wants to implement the idea. And if they do, it needs to sound like it's coming from an executive, because if it's not, they'll be embarrassed and try to crush the idea. So if the dev really wants…

> Sounds like a good question, but the answer doesn't really matter, because it depends on whether the business actually wants to implement the idea. And if they do, it needs to sound like it's coming from an executive, because if it's not, they'll be embarrassed and try to crush the idea. So if the dev really wants the idea to get into product, they should be funneling the idea through their manager or through a product or sales back-channel.

Isn't this exactly the kind of answer that the question is meant to tease out, so that the candidate can know ahead of time that the company is more interested in executives' status than in innovating?

I'm trying to figure out why you're framing this as a reason to not use the question instead of a great example of its utility.

Re: Three questions to turn the table during technical interviews

#37

Post by faizshah »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #24

“There’s an IC sitting out there who just had an amazing idea for a new feature/product. What happens?” Sounds like a good question, but the answer doesn't really matter, because it depends on whether the business actually wants to implement the idea. And if they do, it needs to sound like it's coming from an executive, because if it's not, they'll be embarrassed and try to crush the idea. So if the dev really wants…

Yea these questions aren’t great but if you want to ask these type of questions a better version would be:

- “Can you tell me about the last time an IC on your team turned an idea into a feature/product? What was the process?”

This can pinpoint whether the manager has a record of helping their directs get their own ideas into the product.

- “Tell me about the challenges you ran into in your last major migration, how did you decide what technical debt falls below the line?”

All migrations end up being late due to unknown unknowns, but you probably want to learn a little bit about how they managed the situation and how they decided to cut scope to still meet the new deadline. Or you could go with something like “tell me about the first 6 months of your most recent hire.”

The “6 months have gone by, what’s different?” Is just a bad question. If what you’re trying to figure out is how you’ll transition from onboarding to full team member why not just ask about that directly?

Also if you wanna social engineer the interview with this type of strategy, you probably should ask questions that are less focused on what they will do for you and more focused on how you can impact the organization.

Re: Three questions to turn the table during technical interviews

#38

Post by austin-cheney »

The first question is absolutely spot on, but I don't like the second two. Those last two tend to generate answers that are purely administrative and without substance, such as: We will perform your first mid-year review!. WTF, so what?

Here are some better questions (repeating the first one from the article first):

1. “There’s an IC sitting out there who just had an amazing idea for a new feature/product. What happens?”

That question is solid because it indicates they actually give a damn about employee contributions beyond what they populate on a Jira board. Its a telling sign if they are hostile to initiative.

2. "How do you measure things related to your product and what do you measure?"

The answer to that questions addresses multiple concerns. Everybody claims to value product quality, but most places I have worked at really don't give a shit, because its just too much effort. If they aren't measuring things they have no idea how slow their product is, what kind of user engagement they achieve, their defect trajectory, and on and on and on. On a more primitive level if they aren't currently measuring things it also provides an indication of whether or not they actually want to, but maybe don't know how. The point here is you can use questions like that to cut through their bullshit and determine their level of current capability and also their level of honest versus conservatism.

3. "What is your average build time?" or "How do you perform test automation?"

Most places care more about their tech stack than actually writing software. That should send all kinds of warning flags. When developers just waste time all day staring at the ceiling while software goes through a bunch of build nonsense that indicates developer time just isn't as valuable testing alternatives. its great to have 90 minute builds when the business is healthy and you can go out and go bowling, or whatever, but the moment the employer becomes unhealthy those undervalued developers will find themselves unemployed.

As a bonus if you ask tough questions during the interview and the challenge makes the hiring manager uncomfortable consider they will remain as uncomfortable if you end up working there. That is really bad, because shit rolls down hill and their discomfort eventually becomes your problem.

Re: Three questions to turn the table during technical interviews

#39

Post by faizshah »

kevinventullo wrote: post #14
bdw5204 wrote: post #7

> In every round, the interviewer should leave with the impression that you answered their questions as honestly as possible because you’re looking for the right fit, not just a job. This is precisely what I despise about "job interviews". What you ask in the "Do you have any questions?" section of the interview should be irrelevant. I don't want to have to ask questions when I don't care about the answers just becau…

FWIW at the big tech companies I’ve worked at, that part of the interview does not have any impact on hiring decisions.

In theory it’s irrelevant in practice although companies try to make the process quantitative it is ultimately qualitative because it’s a human rating on a qualitative rubric. The impression you leave on the interviewer always makes a difference in how they represent you in their feedback and panels.

It’s like in school every TA uses the same rubric yet they all grade differently.

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