4 ms·

We ask the "where do you see yourself in 5 years" question as part of our standard interview. We don't put very much weight on it, but it adds color to the cand

We ask the "where do you see yourself in 5 years" question as part of our standard interview. We don't put very much weight on it, but it adds color to the candidates ambitions. Most engineers say they would try to stay as engineers, some say maybe product/project/people management; these are all fine answers. Then we have the candidates that just blank or give a response like "I just want to make money". Not dealbreakers, but not great answers. But I've also gotten a surprising amount of really terrible answers, like "at Google" and "ideally I finally paid off all my student debt so I can finally be a comedian". These are the people we don't hire.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> But I've also gotten a surprising amount of really terrible answers, like "at Google" and "ideally I finally paid off all my student debt so I can finally be a comedian". These are the people we don't hire. I wonder why? Those are the most, if not the only, honest answers you got. In current state of software industry, unless the candidate happens to believe in your mission, anyone answering they'll want to still work for you is either lying or naïve.
- kenhwang 8y ago
  I don't have a reason to believe our candidates are lying when they say they want to continue doing engineering work or move into management. None of that implies they're set on working with us, and that's OK, they're interviewing and know very little about us, so its understandable that they don't know whether it'll work out with us. So by saying they want to continue working as an engineer, we know that as long as they're working with us, we'll have an engineer. With product/project/people managers, we know to maybe keep an open head for a potential internal lateral movement from engineering. When they say "at Google", that's at least as bad as saying "working for you"; they know nothing about what working at Google is like any more than they know what working with us will be like. Plus, it implies "I don't want to work for you"; would you hire anyone that says that?
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Fair enough, wrt. working as an engineer, and not putting too much stock in "working with us" part. Early sign that a person wants to stay on the engineer track, or transition towards management, is useful. > When they say "at Google", that's at least as bad as saying "working for you"; they know nothing about what working at Google is like any more than they know what working with us will be like. They do know enough. They know that Google is "hot". Pays well, gives a lot of street cred, opens a lot of doors. Unless you're one of FAANG, they can assume with high confidence that working for Google will be better than working for you. What they may not be confident about is whether they'd pass an interview there. > Plus, it implies "I don't want to work for you"; would you hire anyone that says that? IMO the very fact they showed up implies they do want to work for you now. But maybe not in 5 years. For a typical programming job, I don't see a problem. It's unlikely the person will stay with you for 5 years anyway, so why not treat this simply as exchanging professional services for money?
    - kenhwang 8y ago
      > They do know enough. They know that Google is "hot". Pays well, gives a lot of street cred, opens a lot of doors. Unless you're one of FAANG, they can assume with high confidence that working for Google will be better than working for you. What they may not be confident about is whether they'd pass an interview there. All valid things to want, but very little of it benefits us. Being a better engineer or manager benefits the company and would convince me to hire. Saying you want to work elsewhere eventually, but not being able to say why doesn't tell me why I should hire. > IMO the very fact they showed up implies they do want to work for you now. But maybe not in 5 years. For a typical programming job, I don't see a problem. It's unlikely the person will stay with you for 5 years anyway, so why not treat this simply as exchanging professional services for money? Sure, but they've just raised the bar a lot higher for themselves since now they have to convince us that they can hit the ground running and require minimal onboarding and investment. Very very few candidates can do that, and those that can have no problem getting a job at FAANG. Usually the ones that meet that higher bar are extended an offer, but so far all have declined in favor of a FAANG.
- pixl97 8y ago
  Who wants honesty... "If they are willing to lie to us, they are willing to lie for us" Apparently, is the paradigm business runs on these days.
jfarmer 8y ago
All the research into interviewing and cognitive biases says that asking questions for "color" reduces interviewer's ability to predict outcomes while simultaneously increasing their confidence that they've gleaned information from the interview. There are experiments where interviewers are given some diagnostic information (e.g., hard facts about background) and conduct closed-form interviews (yes/no, this/that questions) with the interviewees responding randomly. They'll still believe they've "learned more" about the candidate than they did from the candidates who they had biographical information alone. See the Dilution Effect (https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/social-cognition/dilution-effect/ https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/social...) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking. Here's a fun paper: http://journal.sjdm.org/12/121130a/jdm121130a.html http://journal.sjdm.org/12/121130a/jdm121130a.html A good interview process reduces an interviewer's exposure to non-diagnostic information and directs their attention so they only evaluate diagnostic information (and do so in a consistent way). This is the basis for the "structured interview".
- kenhwang 8y ago
  I would imagine questions about career goals would fall under "diagnostic information" in the context of a job interview. It's not like we're asking for their favorite sandwich.
  - jfarmer 8y ago
    Why 5 years? Why not 1? Why not 10? 2? 4? How might those numbers change the answers you receive? Are you even testing to see how people's responses change as a function of that number? Are you even coding the responses in a way that would be able to detect how their responses change in response to that number? Is the variance in the responses small enough that you can even come up with a way to code them? For example, if the interviewee is startup savvy and you ask the 5-year question then they understand the vesting cliffs are at play. Suddenly you're taking into account how savvy the interviewee is about the way vesting works. Was that the intention? If not then you're measuring something without even realizing it Either way: more variance! Is it clear what the question is trying to get at? Do all candidates understand what it's trying to get at? Could candidate misinterpret the intent of the question given the fact that they're in an interview? Could different interviewers interpret the same response differently? It's a "bad" question because it controls for very little and therefore inherently produces non-diagnostic information (such is the nature of humans). The level of variance in all the components of this question is exactly the surface area on which cognitive biases become the determining factor. And the nature of cognitive biases is that you become more confident when they're operational, not less. You can ask questions about career goals without going at it sideways. Here's some off the top of my head. I haven't thought them through from the above perspective, but as a first pass they control for more, are likely to get higher-signal responses that are easier to evaluate in a consistent, interpretable way. - At your last job, what career goals did you have when you joined? Did you achieve them? How? - Imagine you've been working here for 18 months. What would need to happen between now and then for you to not feel disappointed you joined? - Think back to a manager who helped you define and achieve a professional goal (big or small). What was that goal? How did they help you achieve it? Why did that work?
Ihatebeingtrack 8y ago
You know, this is why I more and more hate interviewing. I have enough passive income that I don't need to work. This year I have decided that every cent (after taxes) I make is going to charity. It was a promise I made myself a while ago and want to follow up on it. Tomorrow I am going (after talking with them) spend about 5 grand buying things a local association needs. If you ask me where I want to be in 5 years I will only say to make more money than I do now. Much more. I don't have goals in my job. I don't want to be a PM or whatever the fuck I should say. I don't need this job. I am trying to do as much good as I can. For a while I was in the top 5% earners in my country (maybe even 3% but data is hard to get by). Now the only reason I work is to give my 'sacrifice' a meaning. When I stopped working because I didn't need to, I started to drink and be a lazy slob, I was drunk pretty much every day, so I use work to keep me in track, but I give every penny away. I don't care about work. I am a fucking amazing developer. I had offers from top companies I refused as it didn't match my lifestyle (lets say 2 or 3 of the FAANG brotherhood). I just don't care anymore. If you pay me, I do my job, amazingly well. But stop asking this bullshit question and try to infer meaning from the answers. Anyone can read a blog and say 'to grow as an X and be maybe a Team lead/management/suck CEO dick instead of lower management dick'. It is all bullshit and you and me (and the rest of the fucking HN) crowd knows it
- kenhwang 8y ago
  FWIW, I think that's a fine answer. Maybe the tone can be less cynical and bitter, but the intent and content is fine. I have someone on my team that literally said, I'm an amazing engineer. I don't need the money, I just don't want very much managerial responsibility, I want time and location flexibility to raise my kid and fair market pay for my work. You bet your ass we hired her. She's still an amazing engineer and wonderful addition to our team. That's why we ask these type of open ended soft questions, people are different and have different wants and needs; we want to have that conversation before hiring to raise the probability that it'll work out.
  - Ihatebeingtrack 8y ago
    Sorry if I sounded cynical and bitter. I was, and probably still am. This time of the year really does make me like that. I just hate this whole huppflah about hiring when I have seen companies miss amazing candidates because of these questions, and hire shittier ones because they 'studied' the right books/blogs. (I work with various startups here and help them with interviewing and building teams) I will be honest, I am pretty bitter and is probably one of the reasons I am doing what I am doing now, but I do feel my reply to you was very 'directed' and I was venting more in general about the process and 'focusing' on you in particular. I am sorry for that.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

> But I've also gotten a surprising amount of really terrible answers, like "at Google" and "ideally I finally paid off all my student debt so I can finally be a comedian". These are the people we don't hire. I wonder why? Those are the most, if not the only, honest answers you got. In current state of software industry, unless the candidate happens to believe in your mission, anyone answering they'll want to still work for you is either lying or naïve.

kenhwang 8y ago
I don't have a reason to believe our candidates are lying when they say they want to continue doing engineering work or move into management. None of that implies they're set on working with us, and that's OK, they're interviewing and know very little about us, so its understandable that they don't know whether it'll work out with us. So by saying they want to continue working as an engineer, we know that as long as they're working with us, we'll have an engineer. With product/project/people managers, we know to maybe keep an open head for a potential internal lateral movement from engineering. When they say "at Google", that's at least as bad as saying "working for you"; they know nothing about what working at Google is like any more than they know what working with us will be like. Plus, it implies "I don't want to work for you"; would you hire anyone that says that?
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Fair enough, wrt. working as an engineer, and not putting too much stock in "working with us" part. Early sign that a person wants to stay on the engineer track, or transition towards management, is useful. > When they say "at Google", that's at least as bad as saying "working for you"; they know nothing about what working at Google is like any more than they know what working with us will be like. They do know enough. They know that Google is "hot". Pays well, gives a lot of street cred, opens a lot of doors. Unless you're one of FAANG, they can assume with high confidence that working for Google will be better than working for you. What they may not be confident about is whether they'd pass an interview there. > Plus, it implies "I don't want to work for you"; would you hire anyone that says that? IMO the very fact they showed up implies they do want to work for you now. But maybe not in 5 years. For a typical programming job, I don't see a problem. It's unlikely the person will stay with you for 5 years anyway, so why not treat this simply as exchanging professional services for money?
  - kenhwang 8y ago
    > They do know enough. They know that Google is "hot". Pays well, gives a lot of street cred, opens a lot of doors. Unless you're one of FAANG, they can assume with high confidence that working for Google will be better than working for you. What they may not be confident about is whether they'd pass an interview there. All valid things to want, but very little of it benefits us. Being a better engineer or manager benefits the company and would convince me to hire. Saying you want to work elsewhere eventually, but not being able to say why doesn't tell me why I should hire. > IMO the very fact they showed up implies they do want to work for you now. But maybe not in 5 years. For a typical programming job, I don't see a problem. It's unlikely the person will stay with you for 5 years anyway, so why not treat this simply as exchanging professional services for money? Sure, but they've just raised the bar a lot higher for themselves since now they have to convince us that they can hit the ground running and require minimal onboarding and investment. Very very few candidates can do that, and those that can have no problem getting a job at FAANG. Usually the ones that meet that higher bar are extended an offer, but so far all have declined in favor of a FAANG.
pixl97 8y ago
Who wants honesty... "If they are willing to lie to us, they are willing to lie for us" Apparently, is the paradigm business runs on these days.

jfarmer 8y ago

All the research into interviewing and cognitive biases says that asking questions for "color" reduces interviewer's ability to predict outcomes while simultaneously increasing their confidence that they've gleaned information from the interview. There are experiments where interviewers are given some diagnostic information (e.g., hard facts about background) and conduct closed-form interviews (yes/no, this/that questions) with the interviewees responding randomly. They'll still believe they've "learned more" about the candidate than they did from the candidates who they had biographical information alone. See the Dilution Effect (https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/social-cognition/dilution-effect/ https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/social...) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking. Here's a fun paper: http://journal.sjdm.org/12/121130a/jdm121130a.html http://journal.sjdm.org/12/121130a/jdm121130a.html A good interview process reduces an interviewer's exposure to non-diagnostic information and directs their attention so they only evaluate diagnostic information (and do so in a consistent way). This is the basis for the "structured interview".

kenhwang 8y ago
I would imagine questions about career goals would fall under "diagnostic information" in the context of a job interview. It's not like we're asking for their favorite sandwich.
- jfarmer 8y ago
  Why 5 years? Why not 1? Why not 10? 2? 4? How might those numbers change the answers you receive? Are you even testing to see how people's responses change as a function of that number? Are you even coding the responses in a way that would be able to detect how their responses change in response to that number? Is the variance in the responses small enough that you can even come up with a way to code them? For example, if the interviewee is startup savvy and you ask the 5-year question then they understand the vesting cliffs are at play. Suddenly you're taking into account how savvy the interviewee is about the way vesting works. Was that the intention? If not then you're measuring something without even realizing it Either way: more variance! Is it clear what the question is trying to get at? Do all candidates understand what it's trying to get at? Could candidate misinterpret the intent of the question given the fact that they're in an interview? Could different interviewers interpret the same response differently? It's a "bad" question because it controls for very little and therefore inherently produces non-diagnostic information (such is the nature of humans). The level of variance in all the components of this question is exactly the surface area on which cognitive biases become the determining factor. And the nature of cognitive biases is that you become more confident when they're operational, not less. You can ask questions about career goals without going at it sideways. Here's some off the top of my head. I haven't thought them through from the above perspective, but as a first pass they control for more, are likely to get higher-signal responses that are easier to evaluate in a consistent, interpretable way. - At your last job, what career goals did you have when you joined? Did you achieve them? How? - Imagine you've been working here for 18 months. What would need to happen between now and then for you to not feel disappointed you joined? - Think back to a manager who helped you define and achieve a professional goal (big or small). What was that goal? How did they help you achieve it? Why did that work?

Ihatebeingtrack 8y ago

You know, this is why I more and more hate interviewing. I have enough passive income that I don't need to work. This year I have decided that every cent (after taxes) I make is going to charity. It was a promise I made myself a while ago and want to follow up on it. Tomorrow I am going (after talking with them) spend about 5 grand buying things a local association needs. If you ask me where I want to be in 5 years I will only say to make more money than I do now. Much more. I don't have goals in my job. I don't want to be a PM or whatever the fuck I should say. I don't need this job. I am trying to do as much good as I can. For a while I was in the top 5% earners in my country (maybe even 3% but data is hard to get by). Now the only reason I work is to give my 'sacrifice' a meaning. When I stopped working because I didn't need to, I started to drink and be a lazy slob, I was drunk pretty much every day, so I use work to keep me in track, but I give every penny away. I don't care about work. I am a fucking amazing developer. I had offers from top companies I refused as it didn't match my lifestyle (lets say 2 or 3 of the FAANG brotherhood). I just don't care anymore. If you pay me, I do my job, amazingly well. But stop asking this bullshit question and try to infer meaning from the answers. Anyone can read a blog and say 'to grow as an X and be maybe a Team lead/management/suck CEO dick instead of lower management dick'. It is all bullshit and you and me (and the rest of the fucking HN) crowd knows it

kenhwang 8y ago
FWIW, I think that's a fine answer. Maybe the tone can be less cynical and bitter, but the intent and content is fine. I have someone on my team that literally said, I'm an amazing engineer. I don't need the money, I just don't want very much managerial responsibility, I want time and location flexibility to raise my kid and fair market pay for my work. You bet your ass we hired her. She's still an amazing engineer and wonderful addition to our team. That's why we ask these type of open ended soft questions, people are different and have different wants and needs; we want to have that conversation before hiring to raise the probability that it'll work out.
- Ihatebeingtrack 8y ago
  Sorry if I sounded cynical and bitter. I was, and probably still am. This time of the year really does make me like that. I just hate this whole huppflah about hiring when I have seen companies miss amazing candidates because of these questions, and hire shittier ones because they 'studied' the right books/blogs. (I work with various startups here and help them with interviewing and building teams) I will be honest, I am pretty bitter and is probably one of the reasons I am doing what I am doing now, but I do feel my reply to you was very 'directed' and I was venting more in general about the process and 'focusing' on you in particular. I am sorry for that.