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We only hire the trendiest

danluu.com

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Re: We only hire the trendiest

#711

Post by jholman »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #697
jholman wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that both this question, and beachstartup's question about speeding up a website, are totally decent interview questions, for a intermediate-to-senior web developer. But if anyone thinks that either of these questions is testing "critical thinking skills", or "problem solving", then I would like to hear in what way. Both of those seem to me to be pretty much archetypal "verbatim-recall questions". Experience…

True. It takes all kinds of questions to get a good impression. But I'd just like to protest, my answer was not 'brute-force recall'. It was simple experience. See, I've written code at all of those levels. None of it was booklearning.

I'll start by noting that this sequence of comments is just nit-picking, and if that bores anyone, stop reading. That disclaimer disclaimed...

I don't honestly care if it was booklearning or not, and I don't see what it has to do with my kvetch. I'm happy to believe you that it was learned from experience.

What does "brute-force recall" mean to you? To me it means that you are only repeating things that you knew before the question was asked, as opposed to dynamically generating new knowledge during the time that you answer. Whether you originally got that knowledge from books, or from experience, or from Mr Spock doing a mind meld, it's still memory, as distinct from problem-solving or critical thinking or perhaps more generically we might name "wit" as the counterpart of memory.

Again, I'm absolutely not knocking this form of knowledge; memory without wit is perhaps inflexible, but wit without memory is impotent. Memory is a good thing. Memory makes up the much greater half of expertise; this is why seniors get paid more than juniors (would you rather hire an IQ180 noob who knows nothing about the problem, or an IQ120 worker with 20 years of relevant experience?).

But I'm getting pedantically wound up about this minor nit: both you and beachstartup gave examples of interview questions that are tests of memory, and framed them as tests of problem-solving. If problem-solving is the thing you want to test, those are terrible interview questions for that particular purpose.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#712

Post by aprdm »

grandalf wrote: post #448
aprdm wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you said, interviewing itself is a very stressful environment. I've been asked a time I've failed by one of the HR person and I talked about it. Was basically sending emails to real people from my test environment... I talked about it openly but he kept pushing. In the end my feedback was that my "time I've made an error" was not very impressive. Like... wtf? I find these questions very weird. I never know what th…

Imagine you start a job painting houses. You would not paint them the same way on your first day as you would after a year of experience or 5 years of experience. What have you learned? How do you work smarter/better now than in the past. What experiences triggered that learning process, or did you just take orders from someone else with a more problem-solving oriented worldview. The same applies to technical work. W…

I don't get how that relates to the question asked to me? I mean, it was a time I had a problem / failed that impacted production environment. That was the only one I had in mind, the guy looks like he was expecting a time I've put the servers on fire. It simply didn't happen.

Another thing is that my current environment IS very CTO pushy taking order and doing his view. Why stating this counts against me? It's not like everyone can take leadership in the tech stack / implementation.

I am a 100% sure that I would get into his (big) company and just follow orders as well. Of course having my implementation and my personal touch every now and then but still I wouldn't get to make architectural decisions or choose the tech stack.

Unless you're working in a 100% microservice architecture with hundreds of small people team deploying separated stuff I don't see how that can happen.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#713

Post by bryanrasmussen »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #349
beachstartup wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

instead of asking them stupid, verbatim-recall questions, i give them a problem and ask them how they would solve it. i.e., "a customer reports his website is running too slow. describe how you would identify and solve the problem." it's a good sign when they start asking you follow-up questions, like "is it load balanced? is there a database?". it's a bad sign when they say, "just restart the server".

I got asked "what happens when you hit return in the browser?" After I had traced from the keyboard driver through libraries and runtimes to the browser event system, then back down thru the network layers to sockets, then thru IP events to land a packet on the remote router, they called a halt. Apparently nobody had actually answered the question before. IMO Its a good exercise for problem-solving, and plumbs experi…

I would have a hard time not to say "what's return doing in the browser? Last I looked it was on the keyboard".

I guess that's why I get hired by sarcastic people a lot.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#714

Post by nullstring »

grandalf wrote: post #345

I've found that the best predictors of a good hire are indications of the following characteristics during the interview/vetting process: - adaptability -- can this person deal with situations that are spontaneous and unplanned without losing his/her cool. - openness -- is this person instinctively scornful of new concepts/ideas or energized by the chance to be exposed to something potentially interesting. - resource…

How do you test for these in an interview ?

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#715

Post by Flenser »

tptacek wrote: post #380
dpritchett wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the 0% turnover due to great teammates, great projects, or above-market comp? I've never seen 0%!

We paid the market median to new hires; we definitely didn't buy our way to that turnover (NCC pays better than a lot of early stage startups, but not better than late-stage ones). No, I attribute the turnover to the recruiting mechanism. We found great people who were sorely mispriced by the market, and we took advantage of that to create a win-win scenario: people without the resume to get a similar job at a compet…

You were also recruiting for a "cool" sector where people would be learning marketable skills. Do you have any evidence that the same technique would work for more "boring" companies? (I ask because I'd like to convince my manager that creating a work-sample test wouldn't be a waste of time)

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#716

Post by Flenser »

tptacek wrote: post #383
cp9 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except this is on top of that. nobody does a phone screen, checks a sample of code and says "tada, you're hired" we were going to get together in a room anyways.

It shouldn't be on top of that! It wasn't for our process. Of course: we did in-person interviews. And in-person interviews are disruptive no matter what you do. But: * Our in-person interviews were shorter than typical in-person interviews because they weren't tasked with fully teching candidates out. * Because they didn't try to tech candidates out, they weren't as stressful, and so were less draining and unpleasan…

> our in-person interviews were entirely scripted

Could I have a copy of that script?

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#717

Post by eliang »

peeters wrote: post #621
epalmer wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in an organization where we used behavioral interviewing techniques to get to the core of how someone operates. "Tell me about a time in which you..." works very well. If they resist answering the made mistakes questions we prompted them to understand that an honest answer is important. If they could not do that then they were not considered. These were not developer roles but most were very technical / anal…

> "Tell me about a time in which you..." works very well. These types of questions probably cause me more stress than any other. Being asked to think of a situation where you felt a certain emotion or had a certain mental experience is not actually that easy for everyone. My memory is terrible at that kind of thing. It's like my memory lacks a necessary index for what you are asking. I can start going through every m…

Exactly, same here !!

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#718

Post by rmc »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #709
rmc wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes! Asking about what they've learned as a parent is walking yourself into a nice big lawsuit. Don't do it! There is essentially no way to you can ask or solicit for information about their family status. Don't even go there.

Not only a lawsuit it's just totally inappropriate, invasive, and rude.

That's true. But companies tend to listen when you say "If you do that, the person will sue you and win!"

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#719

Post by mcv »

peeters wrote: post #621
epalmer wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in an organization where we used behavioral interviewing techniques to get to the core of how someone operates. "Tell me about a time in which you..." works very well. If they resist answering the made mistakes questions we prompted them to understand that an honest answer is important. If they could not do that then they were not considered. These were not developer roles but most were very technical / anal…

> "Tell me about a time in which you..." works very well. These types of questions probably cause me more stress than any other. Being asked to think of a situation where you felt a certain emotion or had a certain mental experience is not actually that easy for everyone. My memory is terrible at that kind of thing. It's like my memory lacks a necessary index for what you are asking. I can start going through every m…

I've got one particular project that usually fits these questions. And if it doesn't, I can tell enough interesting stuff about it to satisfy the interviewer anyway.

Re: We only hire the trendiest

#720

Post by droidist2 »

rmc wrote: post #657
mikehollinger wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: poker face - I would reword this to "communication style" - does this person communicate in a style that I (and my team) can understand? Being open may depend on cultural norms, more than a "poker face." It's definitely a warning sign that Bad Things might happen in the future.

And how open to be is also cultural. Americans appear excessively cheery and excited all the time to Irish/British people. It sounds so extreme, that it sounds forced and fake. Everything in America is awesome , people are super excited to work with you, etc. British people might say "cheers" to say good bye in a shop, but Americans wish each other "have a great day!".

It might be because the US is such a spread out country, we're sometimes deprived of interaction with people and not just cars on the highway. When we meet other humans, especially those with similar interests we're genuinely excited.
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