6 ms·

Some common ones: - Lack of self awareness and introspection. Not being able to give specific examples of times you've made a mistake and how you learned from

by hobls 10y ago

Some common ones: - Lack of self awareness and introspection. Not being able to give specific examples of times you've made a mistake and how you learned from it. - Shit talking old coworkers, general attitude that you're great and nothing is your fault. - Being unable to talk about YOUR specific contributions; "we did this, we did that, the project made money..." Okay, what did YOU do? Surprising amount of people fail on that one. - Not being able to give context about the "why" of what you worked on, what other options you considered, etc. - Not thinking about the end user; "I used this technology because it sounded cool" instead of "I wanted this result for my customers." Tell us about the situation and why you made the right or wrong choices. - Interrupting the interviewer and not asking questions. This is a weird one. We want you to do well, so sometimes if you're going down the wrong path we'll try to help. I've had candidates talk over me and just barge ahead down a totally incorrect path. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Obviously most weaknesses can be overlooked if there are serious strengths. I've done a lot of interviewing, happy to answer questions.

muyuu 10y ago
>- Lack of self awareness and introspection. Not being able to give specific examples of times you've made a mistake and how you learned from it. >- Shit talking old coworkers, general attitude that you're great and nothing is your fault. These are fair enough, although you did say above that the other coworkers in your old scrappy startups were much worse. > - Being unable to talk about YOUR specific contributions; "we did this, we did that, the project made money..." Okay, what did YOU do? Surprising amount of people fail on that one. Some people will struggle to take credit because of politeness. Isn't taking credit trivial to do? Especially when the interviewer cannot possibly check up on that. I'm absolutely not convinced about this one, although I do make a point to talk about my contributions when I interview (which frankly doesn't happen much at all, since I tend to stay in the same job for long periods if possible and try to make things better there). >- Not thinking about the end user; "I used this technology because it sounded cool" instead of "I wanted this result for my customers." Tell us about the situation and why you made the right or wrong choices. This sounds like bullshit too, to be honest. Most people don't get to decide the general point of what they do unless they are the CTO. However I do realise that this is absolutely the kind of stuff interviewers look at and you need to prepare for it. >- Interrupting the interviewer and not asking questions. This is a weird one. We want you to do well, so sometimes if you're going down the wrong path we'll try to help. I've had candidates talk over me and just barge ahead down a totally incorrect path. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Fair. >Obviously most weaknesses can be overlooked if there are serious strengths. Which you really won't know until months later. >I've done a lot of interviewing, happy to answer questions. I know people who'd do badly on several of these accounts and are completely brilliant at getting the job done. The problem is that you cannot possibly know how well would the ones you rejected would have done. If you can have a probation period of 3 months or so, that should be the main yardstick. Of course someone's attitude can become shittier over time but no interviewing process can reliably catch that.
- hobls 10y ago
  > These are fair enough, although you did say above that the other coworkers in your old scrappy startups were much worse. Nope, I said the engineers I work with now are consistently better. "My current team is very good" is MUCH different from "my last team was very bad." (And I'm not in a job interview.) > Some people will struggle to take credit because of politeness. Isn't taking credit trivial to do? No, it's not so much about credit, it's about specificity and the ability to talk about the different parts of the project. A lot of people get stuck on, "We made a project that sold widgets." I want something more along the lines of, "In our widget selling application, I worked on backend services for payment processing and fraud detection." Some people get really stuck on generalities and won't dive into specifics. It just makes it impossible to evaluate your contribution. Maybe you didn't do anything. I have no idea, you're just not generating useful information for me. > Most people don't get to decide the general point of what they do unless they are the CTO. I totally disagree. So many tiny choices that engineers make from day to day have a tangible impact on customers. Even if you're a junior engineer, you have an impact on the latency of service calls you're responsible for, as an example. Do you pick the lightweight framework that loads quickly, or do you need the features of the bigger one? It's that kind of tradeoff that people should consider, and "I saw something shiny" is not a good answer. > The problem is that you cannot possibly know how well would the ones you rejected would have done. Yep, for sure. I'm positive that I've rejected good candidates. That's the side you want to err on though, especially if you have lots of good candidates.
  - cableshaft 10y ago
    > No, it's not so much about credit, it's about specificity and the ability to talk about the different parts of the project..."In our widget selling application, I worked on backend services for payment processing and fraud detection." If that line is as detailed as you're looking for, then that's reasonable. Although I've seen people get annoyed that I don't remember the specifics of exactly what I implemented and why and a list of the various decisions made on projects that are 2+ years in the past. At my current company I've worked on 300 tasks over the course of 2 years, across 30+ projects, ranging from simple bug fixes to implementing large swaths of new software for Fortune 100 clients. There are some similar items in there, but most of them were different. I don't have an amazing memory, so a lot of the old stuff I worked on becomes very vague. Hell, it can take me time to remember what I need to do to work on something I haven't done in the past six months at my current company. I know those old projects in broad strokes but if you want me to talk about a specific project in detail that happened years ago, then I will struggle to dig up those memories, even after reading a document I made that refreshes things a bit before interviews.
pdimitar 10y ago
> - Shit talking old coworkers, general attitude that you're great and nothing is your fault. There's a gulf between "nothing is my fault" and "some of my old coworkers were shit and they deserve the shit-talk they get from me". I don't think it's fair to judge people universally on the base if they shit-talk or not. Being 100% kind and never saying anything bad about people in your past is vastly overrated. > - Not thinking about the end user; "I used this technology because it sounded cool" instead of "I wanted this result for my customers." Tell us about the situation and why you made the right or wrong choices. You're polarizing this way too much. If I go after a "cool technology", there are several things MANY interviewers don't take in consideration: (1) It's only their own interpretation I chose a "cool" technology over the customer needs. Cognitive bias and all. Not to mention most people really have no qualifications to even claim this. (2) In the senior programmer area (where I believe I belong) often times you have to make calls nobody can inspect for a while, you have to trust your experience and intelligence and make a decision quickly. If Ruby on Rails consistently fails you on a single website project of yours, it's very okay to start switching out its slowest parts with Elixir's Phoenix <-- that's a recent example in my work place. I chose both "cool tech" and "customer needs" together. (3) Many times there's no immediate benefit to your work. It's easy for a manager to blatantly reject a hard mid-term decision implemented by a tech lead as "he's after the cool tech only because he's bored" and only I know in my head that the results from that "cool tech" will start showing in a month from now (it also doesn't help at all when I tell them that and they don't believe me). > - Interrupting the interviewer and not asking questions. This is a weird one. We want you to do well, so sometimes if you're going down the wrong path we'll try to help. I've had candidates talk over me and just barge ahead down a totally incorrect path. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I admit I've been in the wrong on this one but I want to give you another perspective. I wanted to make a certain point -- 99% of the time it's the "why did I do this" or "why did I fail doing this" or "how did I succeed by doing this" -- and sometimes I digress because there are sub-points and I overdo my tries of being crystal clear. Granted, that's up to me to perfect as a communication skill but I've been extremely annoyed by interviewers who can't seem to trace my initial line of thought and try to coax me back in it. Instead they give you a smug expression along the lines of "this guy talks too much" and they form a negative impression right there and then. I can see it in their eyes and quite frankly I lose respect for them immediately as well -- they can handle such a situation much better. Interviews are a two-way process and both sides screw up in every single interview. So overall, I believe you're over-generalizing on a few points.
nol13 10y ago
"- Lack of self awareness and introspection. Not being able to give specific examples of times you've made a mistake and how you learned from it." I'd venture that not being able to answer this question and others like off the top of their head is less an indication that they are unaware of/don't learn from their mistakes than it is an indication how well they practice for bullshit interview questions and can give you a bullshit answer to your bullshit question that gets past your personal bullshit-o-meter well enough for you not to be offended. But since you're also probably trying to filter out cynical assholes like me, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- hobls 10y ago
  > not being able to answer off this question... Well it certainly shows a lack of preparation and experience. Here's how I approach those questions. I think about each project I've launched, and whether they're relevant. It's an easy thought exercise, and then you have an answer to that question forever. And seriously, time you've made a mistake should be an easy one, and it's one everyone should have ready. Over your whole career you can't think of a time you've done something that you'd do differently if you had a chance? I bet you can, and if not, it shows a serious lack of introspection. We want people trying to make themselves better. Thinking about your career and studying for interviews is part of that. > filter out cynical assholes Dude, at least 50% of the tech industry is people who would charitably be described as cynical assholes. Part of being professional is being able to turn it off. If you can't give a professional answer in an interview how can the interviewer expect you to give a professional answer in a contentious meeting?
- ashark 10y ago
  Can confirm. My work life has been smooth and fairly boring, and I have piss-poor autobiographical memory anyway, so I pretty much have to make those up to have anything worth telling. Maybe start from some half-remembered kernel of truth, but it's all BS from there, because it's all I've got. Have to rehearse them so I'm not making shit up on the fly--too much risk of tripping up, or making it too flashy, or accidentally saying something in a way that makes it seem like I'm shifting blame, or taking credit I shouldn't, or anything like that. Especially the "tell us about a time you had a conflict with someone" question. Ugh. I guess I just need to seek out some assholes to work with because I've got a big fat nothing to talk about on that one. I ought to start writing down the crap I make up for it so I don't have to do it again every time I interview.

by hobls 10y ago

muyuu 10y ago

>- Lack of self awareness and introspection. Not being able to give specific examples of times you've made a mistake and how you learned from it. >- Shit talking old coworkers, general attitude that you're great and nothing is your fault. These are fair enough, although you did say above that the other coworkers in your old scrappy startups were much worse. > - Being unable to talk about YOUR specific contributions; "we did this, we did that, the project made money..." Okay, what did YOU do? Surprising amount of people fail on that one. Some people will struggle to take credit because of politeness. Isn't taking credit trivial to do? Especially when the interviewer cannot possibly check up on that. I'm absolutely not convinced about this one, although I do make a point to talk about my contributions when I interview (which frankly doesn't happen much at all, since I tend to stay in the same job for long periods if possible and try to make things better there). >- Not thinking about the end user; "I used this technology because it sounded cool" instead of "I wanted this result for my customers." Tell us about the situation and why you made the right or wrong choices. This sounds like bullshit too, to be honest. Most people don't get to decide the general point of what they do unless they are the CTO. However I do realise that this is absolutely the kind of stuff interviewers look at and you need to prepare for it. >- Interrupting the interviewer and not asking questions. This is a weird one. We want you to do well, so sometimes if you're going down the wrong path we'll try to help. I've had candidates talk over me and just barge ahead down a totally incorrect path. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Fair. >Obviously most weaknesses can be overlooked if there are serious strengths. Which you really won't know until months later. >I've done a lot of interviewing, happy to answer questions. I know people who'd do badly on several of these accounts and are completely brilliant at getting the job done. The problem is that you cannot possibly know how well would the ones you rejected would have done. If you can have a probation period of 3 months or so, that should be the main yardstick. Of course someone's attitude can become shittier over time but no interviewing process can reliably catch that.

hobls 10y ago
> These are fair enough, although you did say above that the other coworkers in your old scrappy startups were much worse. Nope, I said the engineers I work with now are consistently better. "My current team is very good" is MUCH different from "my last team was very bad." (And I'm not in a job interview.) > Some people will struggle to take credit because of politeness. Isn't taking credit trivial to do? No, it's not so much about credit, it's about specificity and the ability to talk about the different parts of the project. A lot of people get stuck on, "We made a project that sold widgets." I want something more along the lines of, "In our widget selling application, I worked on backend services for payment processing and fraud detection." Some people get really stuck on generalities and won't dive into specifics. It just makes it impossible to evaluate your contribution. Maybe you didn't do anything. I have no idea, you're just not generating useful information for me. > Most people don't get to decide the general point of what they do unless they are the CTO. I totally disagree. So many tiny choices that engineers make from day to day have a tangible impact on customers. Even if you're a junior engineer, you have an impact on the latency of service calls you're responsible for, as an example. Do you pick the lightweight framework that loads quickly, or do you need the features of the bigger one? It's that kind of tradeoff that people should consider, and "I saw something shiny" is not a good answer. > The problem is that you cannot possibly know how well would the ones you rejected would have done. Yep, for sure. I'm positive that I've rejected good candidates. That's the side you want to err on though, especially if you have lots of good candidates.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  > No, it's not so much about credit, it's about specificity and the ability to talk about the different parts of the project..."In our widget selling application, I worked on backend services for payment processing and fraud detection." If that line is as detailed as you're looking for, then that's reasonable. Although I've seen people get annoyed that I don't remember the specifics of exactly what I implemented and why and a list of the various decisions made on projects that are 2+ years in the past. At my current company I've worked on 300 tasks over the course of 2 years, across 30+ projects, ranging from simple bug fixes to implementing large swaths of new software for Fortune 100 clients. There are some similar items in there, but most of them were different. I don't have an amazing memory, so a lot of the old stuff I worked on becomes very vague. Hell, it can take me time to remember what I need to do to work on something I haven't done in the past six months at my current company. I know those old projects in broad strokes but if you want me to talk about a specific project in detail that happened years ago, then I will struggle to dig up those memories, even after reading a document I made that refreshes things a bit before interviews.

pdimitar 10y ago

> - Shit talking old coworkers, general attitude that you're great and nothing is your fault. There's a gulf between "nothing is my fault" and "some of my old coworkers were shit and they deserve the shit-talk they get from me". I don't think it's fair to judge people universally on the base if they shit-talk or not. Being 100% kind and never saying anything bad about people in your past is vastly overrated. > - Not thinking about the end user; "I used this technology because it sounded cool" instead of "I wanted this result for my customers." Tell us about the situation and why you made the right or wrong choices. You're polarizing this way too much. If I go after a "cool technology", there are several things MANY interviewers don't take in consideration: (1) It's only their own interpretation I chose a "cool" technology over the customer needs. Cognitive bias and all. Not to mention most people really have no qualifications to even claim this. (2) In the senior programmer area (where I believe I belong) often times you have to make calls nobody can inspect for a while, you have to trust your experience and intelligence and make a decision quickly. If Ruby on Rails consistently fails you on a single website project of yours, it's very okay to start switching out its slowest parts with Elixir's Phoenix <-- that's a recent example in my work place. I chose both "cool tech" and "customer needs" together. (3) Many times there's no immediate benefit to your work. It's easy for a manager to blatantly reject a hard mid-term decision implemented by a tech lead as "he's after the cool tech only because he's bored" and only I know in my head that the results from that "cool tech" will start showing in a month from now (it also doesn't help at all when I tell them that and they don't believe me). > - Interrupting the interviewer and not asking questions. This is a weird one. We want you to do well, so sometimes if you're going down the wrong path we'll try to help. I've had candidates talk over me and just barge ahead down a totally incorrect path. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I admit I've been in the wrong on this one but I want to give you another perspective. I wanted to make a certain point -- 99% of the time it's the "why did I do this" or "why did I fail doing this" or "how did I succeed by doing this" -- and sometimes I digress because there are sub-points and I overdo my tries of being crystal clear. Granted, that's up to me to perfect as a communication skill but I've been extremely annoyed by interviewers who can't seem to trace my initial line of thought and try to coax me back in it. Instead they give you a smug expression along the lines of "this guy talks too much" and they form a negative impression right there and then. I can see it in their eyes and quite frankly I lose respect for them immediately as well -- they can handle such a situation much better. Interviews are a two-way process and both sides screw up in every single interview. So overall, I believe you're over-generalizing on a few points.

nol13 10y ago

"- Lack of self awareness and introspection. Not being able to give specific examples of times you've made a mistake and how you learned from it." I'd venture that not being able to answer this question and others like off the top of their head is less an indication that they are unaware of/don't learn from their mistakes than it is an indication how well they practice for bullshit interview questions and can give you a bullshit answer to your bullshit question that gets past your personal bullshit-o-meter well enough for you not to be offended. But since you're also probably trying to filter out cynical assholes like me, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

hobls 10y ago
> not being able to answer off this question... Well it certainly shows a lack of preparation and experience. Here's how I approach those questions. I think about each project I've launched, and whether they're relevant. It's an easy thought exercise, and then you have an answer to that question forever. And seriously, time you've made a mistake should be an easy one, and it's one everyone should have ready. Over your whole career you can't think of a time you've done something that you'd do differently if you had a chance? I bet you can, and if not, it shows a serious lack of introspection. We want people trying to make themselves better. Thinking about your career and studying for interviews is part of that. > filter out cynical assholes Dude, at least 50% of the tech industry is people who would charitably be described as cynical assholes. Part of being professional is being able to turn it off. If you can't give a professional answer in an interview how can the interviewer expect you to give a professional answer in a contentious meeting?
ashark 10y ago
Can confirm. My work life has been smooth and fairly boring, and I have piss-poor autobiographical memory anyway, so I pretty much have to make those up to have anything worth telling. Maybe start from some half-remembered kernel of truth, but it's all BS from there, because it's all I've got. Have to rehearse them so I'm not making shit up on the fly--too much risk of tripping up, or making it too flashy, or accidentally saying something in a way that makes it seem like I'm shifting blame, or taking credit I shouldn't, or anything like that. Especially the "tell us about a time you had a conflict with someone" question. Ugh. I guess I just need to seek out some assholes to work with because I've got a big fat nothing to talk about on that one. I ought to start writing down the crap I make up for it so I don't have to do it again every time I interview.