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Most hiring processes spend gigantic amounts of effort to see how a candidate works as a member of the team, without actually having the candidate... work as a
by donw 11y ago
Most hiring processes spend gigantic amounts of effort to see how a candidate works as a member of the team, without actually having the candidate... work as a member of the team.
I suspect that the reason why, is that so few engineering teams do pair programming full-time, complete with daily-or-more rotations.
Pairing gives you the ability to spin somebody up rapidly enough to see how well they do on real code, and at the same time get a good read on personal fit from multiple team members.
Pivotal is shockingly good at this. You start with an hour-long pairing exercise over the phone. If that goes well, you come in, sign an NDA, and pair on two different projects, with a block for lunch in the middle.
That's a grand total of ten hours of screening time.
This process isn't fool-proof, mind you. But it does do a good job of answering the most important question: Do I want to show up for work, tomorrow, and start working with this person?
Perhaps just as importantly, it gives the candidate enough information to answer that same question for themselves.
Nothing tells you whether or not you want to work somewhere, like actually working there.
- minikites 11y agoWhat's the compensation like for 10+ hours of work?
- coliveira 11y agoGreat answer. When I see these ideas floated around, I always think that these companies will never hire people who value their time and have at least a decent job. When a company comes to me with these great "deals" the first thing I say is thank you very much and move their emails to my spam box.
- tamana 11y agoAnd that saves them the hasle of extending an offer to someone who doesn't want the job because it doesn't offer enough life improvement. Win/Win
- aprdm 11y agoNo compensation. And worse, no feedback as well in case they don't hire you. Just a wasted day you'll never get back. source: been there, asked for feedback after received just a generic "No good luck with you career" and no response for my email..
- ska 11y agoI get the sentiment behind this, but bear in mind that interviewing is a two way street - and the company is often spending a lot more on it than you are (of course, they can better afford it). That's worth possibly negotiating the amount of time or staging earlier parts with less impact. I wouldn't say no to an interview that is going to burn a day, but I also wouldn't go to one without a pretty good feeling that I was likely to accept an offer if it came. I mostly think of interviews as at least as much of a chance for me to evaluate them as the other way around (even the way they choose to interview tells me a lot).
- cp9 11y agoyou're asking me to feel bad for a company that probably has millions in seed funding for investing a day in a new hire? hah, no, not going to happen. I (and probably most people here) already have a job that pays me for the work I do, this company can either do the same or they can walk. The one thing that's not going to happen is for me to pity them for the money they are investing.
- ska 11y agoNo, I didn't ask you to feel bad for them. I only pointed out that there is at least some symmetry in the situation. I don't know where you got the very odd idea that pity is/should be involved. There is no reason that you can't have a mature interaction with a company where you both agree to invest some time and effort in a process that could benefit both of you. If it looks like a bad risk to you, don't go. If you are doing a competent job of this, you should know what an interview process looks like before you agree to the interview. If there are aspect of it you aren't sure about, you should ask about them. If their reasoning doesn't convince you - respectfully decline the interview. The most valuable thing about an interview process is an exchange of information. Thinking about it too much as a time-for-money trade off can miss this point. Of course, if you can find a more time efficient way to exchange the same information, that's good all around.
- vdnkh 11y agoIn my experience, pairing interviews usually falls into two categories: one where you're tapping away at a problem while your interviewer is doing a work assignment (but please ask me questions), and the second is where the interviewer is grading you (and interjecting) line-by-line rather than actually participating. It's rarely the case when pairing goes as it should i.e. a collaborative work process.
- amorphid 11y agoI agree. I interviewed with Pivotal, and it was fairly distracting for me to be asked to work on a problem where the interviewer clearly knew the solution, and did all the typing. It wasn't fun.
- jacques_chester 11y agoI've done interviews and I've been guilty of "bulldozing" and I feel bad about it. It's one of the reasons we try to do two interviews and ideally, remember to tell the interviewee to ask questions.
- pnathan 11y agoI've done pairing for an interview; passed, too. It was a gigantic waste of time. Some whiteboarding would have been adequate; it would have been better, even, without all the weird keystroke errors and unwritten expectations on the codebase. While I have great appreciation for problem solving and human interaction, pairing on a non-customized computer, on a random code base, with someone you met 5 minutes ago is absolutely the wrong way to go about interviewing. I've done work sample tests: they take a lot of time (time is money), and I don't really have enough invested in this company to want to work for free. I'd much rather do a work-sample after the onsite - let's at least determine if we are comfortable around each other before I start investing hours of my after work life into this thing.
- jacques_chester 11y ago> I'd much rather do a work-sample after the onsite Pivotal Labs and Pivotal Cloud Foundry teams default to 100% pairing. What you experienced is basically the actual job. It's perfectly OK that you didn't like it, lots of people don't want to work that way once they've tried it. But it wouldn't make sense to find potential pair programmers by not pair programming.
- johnloeber 11y agoPivotal forces you to sign an NDA for an interview? Won't this discourage some substantial fraction of applicants?
- jacques_chester 11y agoIt does. However candidates for Labs will see stuff our clients consider commercially sensitive (sometimes their mere existence is commercially sensitive), sometimes candidates for Cloud Foundry will see stuff that is commercially sensitive for Pivotal. Mind you, I did a round of interviews a few years ago and everyone had an NDA at the door. I read them and none of them were silly, so I signed them.
- ionforce 11y agoSome companies and candidates don't have the bandwidth for such a lengthy interview process.
- shawn-butler 11y agoPivotal is the new Thoughtworks. Arrogant absurd process with no basis or evidence in reality. You either drink the kool-aid and march in line or you are "not with the program" Someone who will donate ten hours to an interview is someone that is "malleable" enough to be told how to think.
- mahyarm 11y agoAlmost all silicon valley interviews are a 1hr phone screen and a full day of interviewing with lunch in the middle. What they seem to be asking seems to be about the same amount of time. And TBH it's less intense sounding since it should be a mostly normal work day.
- jacques_chester 11y ago> Arrogant absurd process with no basis or evidence in reality. Do you sell t-shirts? I would like to buy one. In fairness, though, most people who decide to take an offer have self-selected. Malleability might be one reason. Another could openness to new experiences.
- shawn-butler 11y agoYes I will sell you a t-shirt. How many would you like?
- jacques_chester 11y agoOne, please. Size large.
- dasmoth 11y agoIf pairing and rotations is truly a critical part of how your company builds stuff then this isn't a bad approach. But there are plenty of productive coders who would struggle with this.