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Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

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Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#81

Post by eckza »

dpc_pw wrote: post #36

That experiment assumes that SWE job is exclusively about solving technical problems, so we can just "lock the candidate in a private room and let them solve it". In reality human to human interactions, sometimes stressful, are part of the job. Customer & PM requirements, technical debates, giving feedback, explaining your technical solutions, etc. are common. Maybe part of the problem is the education that does not…

Hopping aboard your train of thought here... I've never been asked to whiteboard anything truly heinous, and I absolutely despise interviews that are set up as a gauntlet to be ran.

But if I'm interviewing you for a senior SQL engineer position, and you can't talk me through whiteboarding a simple query with one join and one aggregate function... you're not senior material. I'm sorry. We need people that can communicate and explain themselves, and talk through their own line of reasoning, where I work.

Again, I'm not defending SWE interviews... but of course people are better at expressing their skillset when they're in a controlled environment. The trouble is, the workplace isn't a controlled environment. Life isn't a controlled environment.

I don't want to work with brilliant programmers that have zero social skills. If devs can't muster up the courage to answer interview questions... maybe that means that they should work on themselves a little bit?

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#82

Post by robgibbons »

Bad interviews make for bad hires. Bad hires can cost a company more than not hiring at all.

Whenever I've conducted interviews in the past, I've gone out of my way to help the candidates relax. Need to use Google? Go ahead, I do literally all the time. Need some advice, something explained? Just ask, that's why we have peers. Nobody writes code on a whiteboard, with no docs, with three people watching, silently taking notes.

Interviews should reflect the environment within which the job is actually done, and allow the candidate to demonstrate what they're good at, instead of treating them like a circus animal jumping through hoops, giving them performance anxiety.

For my most recent job, they circumvented my interview entirely and just did a few days of contract work instead. That way the company gets usable work, the candidate gets paid, and it filters out those who can interview really well but may not be a good company fit.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#83

Post by variaga »

kube-system wrote: post #28

I find it interesting that academia often points out that skills interviews have a soft-skills bias, but rarely do I see them consider that this may be a feature and not a bug. > “Our study suggests that a lot of well-qualified job candidates are being eliminated because they’re not used to working on a whiteboard in front of an audience.” This is a common daily task at any company I've ever written software at. Peop…

Right? At least pre-covid, I would say I spent at least an hour (sometimes many hours) every working day "explaining things on a whiteboard in front of an audience". It's a huge part of my job.

(Post Covid, I do the same thing, but have to do it over chat)

IMO: "Do you have a clear understanding of your area of expertise, and can you communicate that understanding on to others?" is a far more useful predictor of success than "Can you find the right answer to the kind of problem that can be solved on a whiteboard in 45 minutes, or in 5 minutes by searching for an answer on stackoverflow?"

That said, I agree that generally interviews are terrible. But the (implicit) screening for soft skills isn't the terrible part.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#84

Post by alkibiades »

goostavos wrote: post #74
decafninja wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel in the tech industry, networking and knowing people only gets you so far - typically just to the whiteboard interview. Then you have to solve the leetcode problems just like everyone else. Especially so in larger companies. FWIW, all of my friends who somehow managed to get into FAANG or other top tech companies swear that were they to go through the interview again, odds are they would fail. This despite all…

I'm actually a little scared to leave my current FAANG gig for that exact reason tbh. I'm fairly certain I wouldn't make it back in the door without more leetcode grinding + repeated loops than I'm willing to do at this point in my career. Plus, stack on top of that, I've seen how the sausage is made. I've done 90+ interviews on the other side. At the end of the day, it comes down to how lucky you got in the loop. I'…

idk if it’s just luck. i’ve had loops in college where i failed them. but then later in my career i had times where i got every company i interviewed at. Excessive preparation was the key difference. I do think luck plays a big part but i don’t think it’s the only factor, or even the biggest. (maybe 2nd biggest)

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#85

Post by nosefrog »

ironman1478 wrote: post #30

Its really funny. I was interviewing at a large company recently and the way they do interviews is weird. Each team that is interested in you does their own on-site. The first one I bombed b/c I was so anxious but after I experienced it once, I aced all the other teams I interviewed with. Nerves definitely play a role, its cool to see that it is being quantified.

Sounds like Apple. Same thing happened to me :)

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#86

Post by some-guy »

I have extreme performance anxiety when it comes to interviews. Recently I had a very good experience interviewing with Netflix, where the take-home assignment allowed me to show what I was capable of doing. All the technical interviews after that were talking about the take-home at a high-level. The experience felt more accurate to how actual work is (receive an issue ticket, do work, then a code-review).

I was rejected in the end, and I believe I either a) wasn't a culture fit or b) they found someone with more experience (I'm 6 years in at my first tech job). What was nice about it though was that I was very calm and collected throughout.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#87

Post by ralmidani »

I'm susceptible to stuttering and/or rambling when I'm extremely anxious, sometimes without even being fully aware of it. I made it to final interviews for tech jobs twice, and I got the offer both times.

In retrospect, I was extremely anxious the first time, but the company was about to enter a high-growth phase and didn't seem to have fully-developed hiring practices (I got a tentative, very informal verbal offer on-the-spot, and a phone call to confirm I had the job about 24 hours later).

The second time, I was interviewing with a big US bank so I assume they had a better eye for details. Maybe I'm getting better at not showing my anxiety.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#88

Post by zelly »

I fear there's a movement to get rid of leetcode interviews and I'm against it. What's the alternative? We go back to "you have to look the part", nepotism, credentialism, and other such BS in other industries. A data structures and algorithms test is fair and objective. You can objectively get all the challenges correct and then there's little reason to not hire you. Compare that to interviewing for, say, an investment banking position where you're judged on stuff like what frat you were a member of and how charismatic you are.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#89

Post by ipnon »

twicetwice wrote: post #46

Interesting. I usually do pretty well in interviews and I've always attributed that to my four years on the debate team in high school. This tells me it might be even more true than I previously thought. Even when I'm nervous as hell, when you put me in front of a judge (interviewer), I click into "performance mode" where I project confidence even if I know what I'm saying is BS, let alone just a bit unsure. This is…

Rhetoric was the most respected skill in Ancient Athens.[0] I think we would do well to stop thinking of rhetoric, debating, and public speaking as hobbies for some high school students. They are essential skills for wealth creation and advancement in society.

[0] https://liberalarts.online/trivium-and-quadrivium/

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#90

Post by Aunche »

whatever1 wrote: post #21
erentz wrote: post #11

It was made the clearest to me when I interviewed a colleague who had left to another company and two years later was interviewing to return. I knew he knew everything and had the skills for the job because, well, I know him, I’d worked with him before. He’d done this very job previously. Yet he still performed terribly in the interview and (rightly or wrongly) I had to base my evaluation on my knowledge of him rathe…

Having multiple respectable people that can vouch for you is a much better performance predictor than a 1-day interview. Same reason that recommendation letters are more important than GRE tests for the ones seeking PhD studies.

Hiring primarily based on references almost guarantees bias. White engineers will tend to know more white engineers. Asian engineers will tend to know more Asian engineers.
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