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I will not do a tech interview

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Re: I will not do a tech interview

#341

Post by woodchuck64 »

tyree732 wrote: post #190
Fishkins wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the interview has always been way more stressful than anything I've had to do on the job. I think lots of people feel the same way (partially based on what I've seen performing interviews myself).

I'm sorry to hear about how stressed you get during interviews, but unfortunately the stress you demonstrate during technical interviews is a useful heuristic when determining whether or not a candidate would be a good fit for a company. Is a good signal all of the time? No. Is it a good signal most of the time? Probably.

Probably not a good signal because company interviews tend to slip naturally into the human tradition of group initiation rites, unconsciously testing things like social hierarchy, fitness, dominance, loyalty, in addition to the stuff that really matters like problem solving. Technical jobs today simply don't require the strong social interaction and group selection that hunting for food and fending off wild animals did.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#342

Post by RougeFemme »

blah32497 wrote: post #262
RougeFemme wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience has been that with a client, the universe of potential questions is much smaller than the universe of potential questions in an interview. An interviewer can go almost anywhere. . .that's not usually the case with the client. As you said, the client is asking about the software you are developing, not - typically - details about how you would handle their business need in a different language or on a di…

I've had the polar opposite experience. I guess we have very different clients. Clients generally ask questions that don't make a lot of sense or that show a fundamental misunderstanding of how the system works. They may introduce new constraints and requirements on the fly that you've never heard of before. It's generally a lot more difficult. The "universe of potential questions" is basically limitless. Interviewer…

I admit I've never experienced what you describe with a client - at least not to that degree. On the other hand, as another poster stated, with a client you've already established some level of authority and can bring them back down to earth or tap a teammate for help/clarification (unless you are working solo) or give a general response and say you will need to get back to them with more specifics. (Of course, with a prospective client, you are, in fact, interviewing and may not want to do that.)

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#343

Post by nkuttler »

j_baker wrote: post #314
nkuttler wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh well, if you think that everybody who doesn't freeze up in a job interview is automatically overconfident this discussion can't go anywhere.

It seems like you're focusing on the specifics of what I said without getting the general idea of what I said. The key phrase in my original comment was "or having similar problems". I'm not saying that you must freeze up to be hired by me. All I'm saying is that I consider it to be a good thing if a candidate shows some signs of inconfidence (one of which may be freezing up). That means they're taking the interview…

No, I don't focus on the freezing part, but you just confirmed it, you favor a lack of confidence. Out of curiosity, what do you consider similar to freezing up? A weak handshake? Avoiding eye contact?

Freezing up is a problem, not the opposite of overconfidence, or just the lack of confidence. Some not so confident behaviors are irrelevant, that's why I'd like to know what you mean.

Are you in a hiring position?

Edit: If you are in a hiring position and manage a team I understand your point of view and that you want a team that works well together.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#344

Post by adanto6840 »

tiglionabbit wrote: post #338
tmoertel wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I offer you some advice? An interview is a negotiation. The rules aren't fixed. If you're asked to do something that won't give a reliable measurement of your ability, say so and offer the interviewer a better option. You'll probably get what you want. In the scenario you described, I might try something like this: "I think I see what you're trying to measure by asking that question, but it assumes a working styl…

I've tried that. The response is always, "This is how we do our interviews. If we changed it for you, it would be hard to compare you to our other applicants".

That's likely to be someone you do not want to work for...

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#345

Post by dworin »

clavalle wrote: post #267
tmoertel wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I offer you some advice? An interview is a negotiation. The rules aren't fixed. If you're asked to do something that won't give a reliable measurement of your ability, say so and offer the interviewer a better option. You'll probably get what you want. In the scenario you described, I might try something like this: "I think I see what you're trying to measure by asking that question, but it assumes a working styl…

It may be a negotiation but it is a very asymmetrical one. That by itself might be the root cause of a lot of the anxiety.

It is asymmetrical in a way that disadvantages both parties. For every candidate thinking "I hope they give me a job" there as an interviewer thinking "I hope we can hire this guy." For every candidate hoping they don't have to dig too deep into why they left their last job, there's a company hoping nobody asks too many questions about why the last guy quit.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#346

Post by cheald »

bobbbinsIII wrote: post #178
bqe wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic computer science knowledge (and yes, B-Trees qualifies) cannot be learned in 20 seconds. Most of this knowledge is actually a prerequisite to being able to search Google properly.

how often does a normal software developer find himself in a situation where he has to know about B-Trees in depth?

Database indexes are very frequently btrees; understanding how a btree works can inform how you structure and query data, resulting in substantially better software. They're also a generalization of the binary search pattern, which every programmer should be able to describe and utilize.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#347

Post by rexreed »

Love this article, but am I the only one wondering why this fellow is interviewing so much if he's already been hired in a number of situations? Are the companies he's working for going bust, laying him off, firing him, or he's quitting? I'd think that if interviewing is his fear, he should do less of it and find a great employer and stay there?

It sounds like contracting might be what the OP wants to do more than employment if he's so good at selling that and not interviewing, but also not keeping those jobs long enough.

Or maybe I misread it? Sounded like he was hired a number of times for jobs, but went back to interviewing not long after anyways.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#348

Post by cheald »

crazygringo wrote: post #62

Granted, there are a lot of bad tech interviews out there (asking about algorithms that nobody ever uses) ... but I do not understand this. Imagine someone's being hired for a front-end position, and we don't have months to get them up to speed. I'm going to ask them to explain how a closure works. How they deal with AJAX. What they think about "!important". Things to be careful about with floats. How CSS precedence/…

The level of position being interviewed for matters a lot, too. When I hire a "senior developer", part of what I'm hiring is someone with the experience and ability to teach junior developers. Someone who is unable to articulate basic concepts in a conversational context is not that developer.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#349

Post by thestoic »

fieldforceapp wrote: post #321
chollida1 wrote: post #22

> I politely suggest that a short contract job might be the best option for a company to evaluate a senior developer I like the twist of doing the contract off site on the developers own time. Every time I see someone on hacker news saying, "we've solved the interview problem. We just require every new hire to give up their old job and contract with us for a week to see if they are a good fit", I often wonder about t…

Left a comment above, but thought I'd ask again... anyone have any experience with GroupTalent [1] which seems to enable this type of small-contract-as-an-interview process? [1] https://grouptalent.com/welcome/

Hi - I am the founder of GroupTalent. Mahmoud above has had experience on the hiring side of our platform. I can put you in contact with other devs (with their approval of course) who are doing try-outs and they will relate their experience directly.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#350

Post by scrabble »

BrandonM wrote: post #259
scrabble wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the way the company I work for currently does it. They provide the candidate with a piece of terrible code, ask for a code review of as many issues as the candidate can find, and also for a refactored copy of the code. Both of which are completed remotely on the dev's own time. This is before even meeting the candidate in person. Once we meet in person for the first time, another terrible piece of code is pro…

I think that a lot of companies forget that they are also being interviewed during their interviews. Were I to interview at your company, I would think that your employees spend most of their time performing code review. I would probably walk out, too.

I can understand that take on it.

Our take is more that if you can recognize what is wrong with the code on multiple levels then you can most likely write good code.

This is easier to check on non-trivial code when done through a code review then by getting the interviewee to write the same kind of code that every other interview looks for. The submitted code sample does this as well.

I'd also want people on my team to be able to successfully refactor legacy code just by looking at it and being able to identify where things can be better cleaned up and tested.

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