Nobody gets promoted for simplicity • Hacker News Board

Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

#441

Post by maccard » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 9:17 PM UTC

Quarrelsome wrote: post #367

maccard wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve interviewed a few hundred people. Probably approaching a thousand, if not already. An interview is a scenario, and if you aren’t willing to engage in the scenario that we all agreed to partake in, that’s a huge warning sign that you’re going to be difficult later down the line. The point of the question is to have something remotely understandable for both sides to talk about, that’s it.

but also maybe its a green flag in that this employee might see the wood for the trees and save the company a lot of money later down the line. In my experience, a lot of engineers can waste a lot of time dicking around re-inventing wheels and whatnot. While you consider it a huge warning sign, have you ever employed someone who would answer that way or are you assuming that you're not capable of making hiring mistak…

> While you consider it a huge warning sign, have you ever employed someone who would answer that way or are you assuming that you're not capable of making hiring mistakes? I can't help but think this "huge warning sign" might simply be a cognative bias where the interviewer is misdirecting their frustration in the poor design of their own process at the candidate

Yes, I did. More than once. I always regretted it. Sure it could be a cognitive bias, but the entire interview process is essentially trying to figure out “can I work with this person”.

> I think both answers are fine and both perspectives are equally valid

I disagree - refusing to engage with the interview because you don’t like the question is perfectly valid to do, but don’t expect me to want to work with you over it. We’ve only got an hour, maximum, so any scenario we come up with is going to be contrived and simplified - if you can’t accept that then I’m going to make my decision based on that.

Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

#442

Post by geoduck14 » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 9:17 PM UTC

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #305

01284a7e wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree, how much training does anyone get as an interviewer? I spent 10+ years doing interviews at all sorts of orgs (including Fortune 500s, government, etc.) without a single hour of interviewer training. Now that I think about it, none of those organizations ever trained me at anything at all. Huh.

Yeah, I had no training on being an interviewer before I started doing interviews. My manager gave me some tips, and I came up with two security bug-hunt exercises (was hiring AppSec engineers), but that was it. Now, I wonder if I had rejected earlier candidates that I would have passed if I was a better interviewer.

The best advice I've had on interviewing is: Find an actual problem that your team is actually working through and ask the candidate how they would approach it.

Then to jazz it up: simplify the proble. To get to the root stuff that needs to be covered (e.g. ignore creating Jira tickets and focus on connecting to a database with cross-refion replication). You also want it to be simple enough that it can be solved in <30 minutes

Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

#443

Post by maccard » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

Quarrelsome wrote: post #438

rat9988 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you answer ""Well I would probably go home and work on my resume because that's a fool's errand." You probably are missing the wood and the trees.

and if you hire only based on solely on employee compliance then you are also probably missing the wood for the trees. I've worked in such orgs and they're extremely vulnerable to cargo culting.

I’m not hiring on compliance. I’ve accepted that his answer is correct but asked for the purposes of the exercise if he can put that to a side so we can talk about it. I’ve worked with and hired people like this and they tend to turn every molehill into a mountain, which is just killer on a small team.

Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

#444

Post by wpietri » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

maccard wrote: post #356

SteveNuts wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "now what if we wanted to build it in-house?" "Well I would probably go home and work on my resume because that's a fool's errand." I hate going to work and reinventing wheels all day because the company I work for thinks it's so special that every business function needs a 100% tailored solution to solved problems. I much prefer working somewhere that's able to tailor business processes to conform to existing stan…

I’ve interviewed a few hundred people. Probably approaching a thousand, if not already. An interview is a scenario, and if you aren’t willing to engage in the scenario that we all agreed to partake in, that’s a huge warning sign that you’re going to be difficult later down the line. The point of the question is to have something remotely understandable for both sides to talk about, that’s it.

I'd call it an interviewer failure, not an interviewee failure.

I absolutely want people I hire to be "difficult" when the moment calls for it. If the scenario is one where the right business/user choice is "let them keep using Google Sheets", then the answer I want is "Google Sheets seems fine to me", no matter what people with more power start out wanting. Too many developers have been encouraged to be minions, not professionals.

Ditto for ones who act like everything is a nail for their coding hammer. A developer who can save a company a couple hundred thousand dollars by not turning something simple into a big coding project is a rare and precious commodity. Or should be, at least.

The thing to do isn't to give demerits for "being difficult". The thing to do is to then add something to the scenario where they get into the thing you want them to get to. "For this, we need better access control than Google Sheets allows us." Or, "We need this to be more closely integrated with our accounting system."

Unless, of course, what you're hiring for is the willingness to roll over for unreasonable requests from people with more power. Which, honestly, a lot of places are.

Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

#445

Post by maccard » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

Quarrelsome wrote: post #436

pibaker wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the point in GP's post. Not all organizations optimize for problem solving. Some organizations prefer subordinates who follow orders (or better, is able to read the mind of the boss to decipher what order he is actually making) than those who breaks out of the box and says ”just use gsuite, boss."

sure but if its not a privately held business then using gsuite is better for the shareholders. Ultimately its the bosses choice, but for the board to fire them its worth knowing they were aware of being able to use gsuite instead of pissing away resource on a needless project.

The question isn’t should we use gsuite, it’s can we talk about a tech problem. If you don’t understand that you’ve failed the interview.

Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

#446

Post by wpietri » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 9:22 PM UTC

tyre wrote: post #91

bilsbie wrote: post #73

I had an interview question. What would you do if two different people were emailing a spreadsheet back and forth to track something? I said I’d move them to google sheets. There was about five minutes of awkwardness after that as I was interviewing for software developer. I was supposed to talk about what kind of tool I’d build. I found it kind of eye opening but I’m still not sure what the right lesson to learn was…

So my cofounder was talking to Stripe about an acquihire (this was after I’d left.) As part of it, he had to do a systems design interview. He got the prompt, asked questions about throughput requirements (etc.), and said, “okay, I’d put it all in Postgres.” He was correct! Postgres could more than handle the load. He gets a call from Patrick Collison saying that he failed the interview and asking what happened. He e…

> yes you might be right but you also understand what the point of the interview is

To make the interviewer feel smart and powerful? To hire people who will do the thing the boss wants whether or not it makes sense? To find people who will overdesign things to maximize resume impact and the ability of their bosses to talk about what sophisticated systems they're running and for which they therefore need a much bigger budget?

Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

#447

Post by wpietri » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 9:27 PM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #133

Folcon wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like if that's the thought process, that should be stated up front There's a ton of incredibly talented neurodivergent people in our ecosystem who would trip up on that question just because of how it's framed Because how is the interviewee to know if you're testing for the technically sophisticated answer no one in their right mind would ever write or the pragmatic one?

Or just add a couple zeros to all the requirements until postgres is a worse solution than whatever the interviewer envisions. Isn't that the point of stating throughput requirements?

Right? I'll often structure interview questions like this. I give a basic problem, hoping for a basic answer. Then I add complexity, seeing how they respond.

In my experience, it's much easier to train somebody on how to scale a basic system up in response to need than it is to get somebody who favors complexity to cut it back.

Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

#448

Post by bhk » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 9:29 PM UTC

tyre wrote: post #91

bilsbie wrote: post #73

I had an interview question. What would you do if two different people were emailing a spreadsheet back and forth to track something? I said I’d move them to google sheets. There was about five minutes of awkwardness after that as I was interviewing for software developer. I was supposed to talk about what kind of tool I’d build. I found it kind of eye opening but I’m still not sure what the right lesson to learn was…

So my cofounder was talking to Stripe about an acquihire (this was after I’d left.) As part of it, he had to do a systems design interview. He got the prompt, asked questions about throughput requirements (etc.), and said, “okay, I’d put it all in Postgres.” He was correct! Postgres could more than handle the load. He gets a call from Patrick Collison saying that he failed the interview and asking what happened. He e…

Let me guess: the point of the interview was to see if he was a "team player".

Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

#449

Post by bhk » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 9:35 PM UTC

Ah, but it's worse than this. The truly ambitious ladder climber creates not just unnecessarily complicated abstractions, but organizations. Processes for people to follow. Infrastructure for people to maintain. Committees to vet changes. Standing meetings.

Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

#450

Post by baobabKoodaa » Wed, Mar 04, 2026, 9:41 PM UTC

coldtrait wrote: post #237

Gooblebrai wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They made him do it again and he passed I'd assume that if he got a call from Patrick himself and a second opportunity to get interviewed, that's already a cue for interviewers to pass him regardless of what he says?

That was what I felt too. Why even need an interview for an acquihire when you have a direct link with the founder/CEO?

To maintain the illusion of meritocracy