4 ms·

What kinds of things do you ask? I’ve interviewed and worked at FAANGs. I’ve done mostly coding and design interviews. I don’t doubt your ability but help me un

What kinds of things do you ask? I’ve interviewed and worked at FAANGs. I’ve done mostly coding and design interviews. I don’t doubt your ability but help me understand your model. Is it more open ended (tell me about your previous projects... candidate can speak to the problem domain, design, implementation choices, trade offs, or dive deeper into “Oh yeah we had to instrument events to feed into data processing pipelines for personalization...and XYZ failed so I had to do ABC.”) or is there something more critical?

malvosenior 7y ago
I start pretty open ended, then ask specific questions about their choices. I almost always ask them to describe some of the schema of the db or how pieces of their project were communicating with each other... I also ask them what they like about their language of choice and why. I keep the questions specific to their projects and experience though. I should add that I strongly favor candidate with open source experience, so most of the time I'll have also looked at their code myself and may have some questions about it. The number one thing I look for is: can this person ship software? I'll ask a lot about the project lifecycle, what they did to get it across the finish line, how they supported and enhanced it... I try to do this in a non-leading way.
- soneca 7y ago
  > "I should add that I strongly favor candidate with open source experience, so most of the time I'll have also looked at their code myself and may have some questions about it." So, that's the most important part missing from your original comment. From that, I would assume that you never hired a developer without looking at their code before/after an interview. Is that right to assume? Basically open sourced code (and not the interview) act as a substitute for coding tests in your process
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    No, I've hired plenty of people who haven't had open source contributions. It just makes the conversation easier when I can see their code beforehand. I also find that the really good people tend to do open source or personal projects, so there's a high overlap there.
    - soneca 7y ago
      So you so hired plenty of people without never looking on code they wrote? How that variable affects the outcome? Is your hiring process any better/worse comparing when you can read their code and when you cannot read their code?

malvosenior 7y ago

I start pretty open ended, then ask specific questions about their choices. I almost always ask them to describe some of the schema of the db or how pieces of their project were communicating with each other... I also ask them what they like about their language of choice and why. I keep the questions specific to their projects and experience though. I should add that I strongly favor candidate with open source experience, so most of the time I'll have also looked at their code myself and may have some questions about it. The number one thing I look for is: can this person ship software? I'll ask a lot about the project lifecycle, what they did to get it across the finish line, how they supported and enhanced it... I try to do this in a non-leading way.

soneca 7y ago
> "I should add that I strongly favor candidate with open source experience, so most of the time I'll have also looked at their code myself and may have some questions about it." So, that's the most important part missing from your original comment. From that, I would assume that you never hired a developer without looking at their code before/after an interview. Is that right to assume? Basically open sourced code (and not the interview) act as a substitute for coding tests in your process
- malvosenior 7y ago
  No, I've hired plenty of people who haven't had open source contributions. It just makes the conversation easier when I can see their code beforehand. I also find that the really good people tend to do open source or personal projects, so there's a high overlap there.
  - soneca 7y ago
    So you so hired plenty of people without never looking on code they wrote? How that variable affects the outcome? Is your hiring process any better/worse comparing when you can read their code and when you cannot read their code?