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I will not do a tech interview

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Re: I will not do a tech interview

#351

Post by thestoic »

fieldforceapp wrote: post #315

Perhaps it's already been mentioned, but GroupTalent [1] has set up a business to offer this type of 'small project as an interview,' or what they call "Date a Company" to help guide primarily freelancers to full-time employment: They did a pivot after acquiring Kyle's TinyProj [2] customer base, which included us. Wondering if anyone has any good experience with GroupTalent? [1] https://grouptalent.com/welcome/ [2]…

Hi this is Manny, CEO of GroupTalent. I wanted to add context to the pivot comment. More than a pivot, we expanded our offerings to include try outs and full time opportunities. It turns out that there is demand for all, and someone may do freelancing for a while until they find the right fit. We strive to provide all the options for the entire career life-cycle. We still connect developers with contracts and short term projects - however we see the majority of the demand on both ends for try outs at the moment

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#352

Post by melindajb »

very smart approach. it's never wrong to approach a job interview as a negotiation from the beginning. If you KNOW you don't do your best in a given situation, you get a chance to see if the company sucks by seeing how they respond to your questions. Employers who don't get this miss the point entirely. It's a two way street, especially when hiring quality developers.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#354

Post by melindajb »

very smart approach. it's never wrong to approach a job interview as a negotiation from the beginning. If you KNOW you don't do your best in a given situation, you get a chance to see if the company sucks by seeing how they respond to your questions. Employers who don't get this miss the point entirely. It's a two way street, especially when hiring quality developers.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#355

Post by rhizome »

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 certainly begs the question about which aspects of the process are even quantifiable.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#357

Post by MartinCron »

Nursie wrote: post #300
MartinCron wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you freeze up in interviews, are you also going to freeze up in developer meetings? Are you really saying that your developer meetings are as high-stakes as job interviews?

Are job interviews really that high-stakes? There are always more jobs for skilled tech people.

People have been told for their entire lives that job interviews are high-stakes situations. Even if it's a job-seeker's market, it's usually a stressful situation. You're in someone else's office, generally outnumbered, and most of the interactions are the kind that make introverts sweat.

I don't fault developers who come across as nervous when I interview them.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#358

Post by tyree732 »

integraton wrote: post #316
tyree732 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies are chock full of asymmetric negotiations. Aside from obvious things like discussions with your manager, companies have all sorts of structured and unstructured power asymmetries.

If employees are continuously forced to justify their employment through impractical challenges with failure resulting in summary dismissal, that would be a toxic work environment. The power dynamics are not the same, and it's disingenuous to equate them.

So getting to the first principles of your response, you believe that any interview where someone attempts to ascertain your technical abilities is a series of impractical challenges, regardless of the contents of that interview. That in itself seems a bit absurd, as it implies that a company looking to hire an engineer is being impractical if it any way attempts to learn the knowledge that engineer has by speaking to him or her.

You also believe that the power dynamics of an interview are different than the power dynamics of a company, as in an interview making a mistake can mean the difference between being hired and not. I don't disagree with you here, as ultimately making a mistake in an asymmetric negotiation at a company won't always get you fired. In this case, what I was providing a response to my parent comment, that if asymmetric negotiations are a problem for a person then a company will never work for them. These two things are not exactly the same, though I wouldn't fault someone for taking difficulty handling one to imply difficulty handling the other.

Re: I will not do a tech interview

#360

Post by jaegerpicker »

WalterSear wrote: post #208
blah32497 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on the industry/clientèle, but meetings are fundamentally very similar. You are worried about what "they" will ask and if you will be able to answer the questions. With a client, it's about the software you're developing, with a interviewer, it's about software architecture or coding principles. In your example about HTML -> CSS I think you missed the point. It wasn't so much to check that you have…

When I'm working, I'm looking stuff up all the time. And, everyone I've ever paired with has been looking stuff up on a constant basis. It's not that I'm crap, it's that the tools I'm using are always changing. HTML -> CSS? Sure, I won't look that up. CSS -> SASS? Sure, I probably won't look that up. Ask me to use LESS, I'll be on much looser footing. And, what's coming next? Do I have to have the new ES6 specificati…

I never ever hold it against someone if they say they need to look something up. No one should nor can memorize all the things we developers need to remember.
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