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Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

meekg33k.dev

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Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#82

>I turned down the [exploding] offer because the experience got me thinking about the company’s work culture. Were the methods employed by the company to get me to accept the offer indicative of their work culture? I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. Small/not…

I completely agree. I work for a big company. I've been here for 18 years. It is a fantastic place to work. The people, the pay, the flexibility, the meaningful work, all are great. No place is perfect, but I haven't yet found anywhere I'd rather be. However, our hiring process is sometimes shameful. You name it, we've probably done it. We've ghosted candidates that did really well in their interview. We've taken wee…

> We're getting better, but sometimes there are legitimate reasons for things like delays and ghosting that can't be disclosed to the candidate.

Can you elaborate? I'm having trouble imagining a legitimate reason to ghost a candidate, other than a court order or National Security Letter.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#83
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. If people in a company don't know what they're doing, yet (it appears) have a deathgrip belief in the equivalent of something they found on StackOverflow or in a blog post... doesn't that reflect something about the compan…

I've been working in the industry for 25 years. I've never received even 5 minutes of training on how to interview people, yet I've been asked to interview people dozens of times. This is everywhere from small companies up to huge Fortune 100 companies. The skill set to be an effective programmer and to be an effective interviewer are not the same. But, I don't do interviewing often enough that I've felt the need to…

When I worked at BT in the UK you had to do a 2.5 day residential course and pass it before you where allowed to interview people.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#84
post #65

>I turned down the [exploding] offer because the experience got me thinking about the company’s work culture. Were the methods employed by the company to get me to accept the offer indicative of their work culture? I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. Small/not…

At a previous large company more than once I had to explain that the interview process 'is HR's show'...but once the job starts it is now 'our show' and they don't have to worry about that song and dance anymore. It's frustrating that it is that way, but the hiring at that company was a whole other song and dance that took very little input from anyone about the hiring process.

> but the hiring at that company was a whole other song and dance that took very little input from anyone about the hiring process.

That doesn't sound healthy to me.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#85

>I turned down the [exploding] offer because the experience got me thinking about the company’s work culture. Were the methods employed by the company to get me to accept the offer indicative of their work culture? I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. Small/not…

I have personally given up on "whiteboarding people"... reminds me of waterboarding.

I skim the resume, underline anything we use internally and talk to them about experiences.

We've done over 300 interviews in the last expansion year (2017) because we had to build a brand new development office (+50 devs).

After hiring all of these people, we've quantified this as three things: Curiosity, Ability to Learn and Ability to Listen. 2 out of 3 is good, but 3 is best. Almost every person we've hired who has been a success has had some of these, they're willing to be curious about new technologies and how things work, they are capable of learning (desiring isn't the same thing, they are capable of it), and listening is a good trait for enabling communication.

It is still possible that we chose these traits yet rejected other traits which are far more successful, and there is a chance we also rejected good people who would have also succeeded.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exploding offers are bluffs. We all know the team wanted someone that could hit the ground running yesterday for the last 6 months.

That is my experience as well. Every time I got an "exploding offer", I said "Thank you, but I need more time because I'm interviewing with other companies." This was always met with an "of course". That said, I never got an offer from something like SV startup or a FAANG, so I can imagine it's totally different over there.

> That said, I never got an offer from something like SV startup or a FAANG, so I can imagine it's totally different over there.

It's not.

They can choose to be dicks about it or not, but the way they use their leverage isn't any worse. Competition for employees is fiercer than other markets. You yourself can get away with being a dick to them.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was asked this question point blank and it took me by surprise. Then they asked me to name the comp for me to accept their offer and when I did they still exceeded it

It's good that they exceeded it. IIUC, generally accepted negotiation theory says that the first person to name a number loses.

Yeah, if I name a number and you exceed it that shows you want me. If you force me to name a number and you still come in below that is going to be a no even though I might have accepted it if you didn’t force me to give a number.

I just had a 3 month interview experience with Apple and the recruiter was the worst ever, kept lowballing and giving small improvements and the hiring manager accused her of lying to him. It was a role that i care a lot about but after that interaction there was no way I could say yes.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#89
post #10

My biggest annoyance is late interviewers who then try to rush you through a question. I’ve had multiple interviews in the past where they are around 10 min late when you’ve taken time from your day and they barely acknowledge it, then clearly rush for time. I guarantee they also write down in many cases that they didn’t get enough data points, not noting that a big part of that is their own time management problem (…

This is tricky. On one hand, as an interviewer you want to leave room for interviewees to express themselves as fully as possible. On the other hand, the purpose of the interview is for both parties to gain as much information as possible about whether both want to work together - and this is often not optimized by having each question point go its full length, but rather by getting just a bit of information on each topic and then moving to the next.

Re: Red Flags I Saw While Doing 60 Technical Interviews in 30 Days

#90
post #33

>I turned down the [exploding] offer because the experience got me thinking about the company’s work culture. Were the methods employed by the company to get me to accept the offer indicative of their work culture? I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. Small/not…

> I've never found the interview process to be reflective of the company. I find the interview process to be a random hodgepodge across the entire industry because nobody knows what they are doing. If people in a company don't know what they're doing, yet (it appears) have a deathgrip belief in the equivalent of something they found on StackOverflow or in a blog post... doesn't that reflect something about the compan…

I think part of the problem is interviewers at companies are (a) not properly trained to be interviewers, just pulled from their jobs and asked to interview some candidate on short notice (b) funneled into a certain way of interviewing that isn't optimal.

Large companies have almost always given me the traditional "coding a whiteboard" interview and nitpicked for the whole hour at things that would be irrelevant for the job. Many interviewers approached me with an attitude of "I'm smarter than you and I need to figure out at what point I can outsmart you" rather than trying to discover "How are your abilities complimentary and useful to the team" i.e. "What do you do well that my colleagues and I don't do well, or could use help on".

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