We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
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Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#2Obviously interviewing isn't 100% accurate. Almost nothing is. You definitely can't tell in 60 minutes whether someone will be a success at your company.
But you often can tell, with very very nearly 100% confidence if someone will not be a success. And that is the purpose of the interview. To filter out the "definitely not"s — the programmers who can't write fizzbuzz. And yes, I have seen plenty of these.
And interview is not the be-all and end-all of recruiting: of course it isn't. But I'm seeing a pendulum swinging a long way in the other direction now, and a lot of people talking as though interviews are worthless. They're really not.
Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#3It's better to let good/great people slip away then to get a bad apple onto the team. Or worse, a mediocre one who never does anything wrong but also isn't contributing positively either.
Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#4Obviously interviewing isn't 100% accurate. Almost nothing is. You definitely can't tell in 60 minutes whether someone will be a success at your company. But you often can tell, with very very nearly 100% confidence if someone will not be a success. And that is the purpose of the interview. To filter out the "definitely not"s — the programmers who can't write fizzbuzz. And yes, I have seen plenty of these. And interv…
Except for extreme outliers it is not clear that it's possible to tell with much confidence in either case. Why do you think it's possible to have such high confidence in one case but not the other?
Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#5Still relevant: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hiring
Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#6Obviously interviewing isn't 100% accurate. Almost nothing is. You definitely can't tell in 60 minutes whether someone will be a success at your company. But you often can tell, with very very nearly 100% confidence if someone will not be a success. And that is the purpose of the interview. To filter out the "definitely not"s — the programmers who can't write fizzbuzz. And yes, I have seen plenty of these. And interv…
Except for extreme outliers it is not clear that it's possible to tell with much confidence in either case. Why do you think it's possible to have such high confidence in one case but not the other?
Because if you can't FizzBuzz, you definitely aren't going to be able to pick up the codebase in a satisfactorily short amount of time.
If you come in in gross clothes and swear, you're not going to fit the company culture.
If you're rude to your interviewer, you're not likely to be less rude to your other coworkers.
etc.
Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except for extreme outliers it is not clear that it's possible to tell with much confidence in either case. Why do you think it's possible to have such high confidence in one case but not the other?
Because if you can't FizzBuzz, you definitely aren't going to be able to pick up the codebase in a satisfactorily short amount of time. If you come in in gross clothes and swear, you're not going to fit the company culture. If you're rude to your interviewer, you're not likely to be less rude to your other coworkers. etc.
Two of those things is not like the other.
Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#8Obviously interviewing isn't 100% accurate. Almost nothing is. You definitely can't tell in 60 minutes whether someone will be a success at your company. But you often can tell, with very very nearly 100% confidence if someone will not be a success. And that is the purpose of the interview. To filter out the "definitely not"s — the programmers who can't write fizzbuzz. And yes, I have seen plenty of these. And interv…
And yet the discussions on the candidate post-hiring interviews mostly revolves around whether they confirm to the company/tech/what-have-you 'culture' which, imo, is simply a euphemism for ageism, in-group bias, prejudice, hubris, and one-upmanship more often than not. The world would be a better place if people started accepting the fact for what it is: There wouldn't be so much despair around the tech interview process if not everything was broken, surely?
Refs:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9166501 (On Secretly Terrible Engineers).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19541617 (How Not to Hire a Software Engineer).
Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#9No worries. There's always that probationary period in which either party can recognise it's not a match and either do something about it, or just give it up. How long will it take you to decide? A week? Two weeks? A month?
Re: We can't judge another programmer's abilities in a 60 minute interview
#10It's better to let good/great people slip away then to get a bad apple onto the team. Or worse, a mediocre one who never does anything wrong but also isn't contributing positively either.
Hyperbolic much? How can being "mediocre" be something bad? That's litterary litterary an ordinary programmer.