6 ms·

Storytelling Tips for Technical Interviews

113 points by stanete 6y ago

pcmaffey 6y ago
Here's one of my favorite examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDoH15ylAeo&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDoH15ylAeo&feature=youtu.be
- suyash 6y ago
  haha, this was fun!
  - diN0bot 6y ago
    i lol'd. hey, if anyone wants to practice answering behavioral questions for real on my youtube, let me know. it's a nice way to practice and help others learn from what you do well and can improve. it's meant to be earnest and lighthearted, not intentionally comedic, though making an interviewer chuckle is not a bad way to connect ;-p https://www.youtube.com/CandidatePlanet https://www.youtube.com/CandidatePlanet
jowdones 6y ago
And in today's interviews environment, telling the greatest stories along the greatest CV, training for months and months on leetcode problems and being able to convincingly act like you never seen them before during the interview, generally bending over backwards and taking it into your ^H^H^H or what else, all that that will dramatically raise your chances of getting hired from 0.1 to 0.2%.
- Benjammer 6y ago
  Also it will have zero bearing on your starting place among the organization you’re joining. No matter how well you excel at the interview or how applicable your past experience is, you’ll be dumped on one of the fringe, “new features” teams with a first time EM, and a PM right out of college or MBA with no relevant experience.
- asimpletune 6y ago
  I think if you actually did all that then you’d almost certainly get the job. I wonder why there’s that disconnect?
  - lowiqengineer 6y ago
    I've done all of that, and the best job I got was Amazon :/ It seems like this industry only works if you're just naturally intelligent (or lucky)
    - boyobo 6y ago
      What are you aiming for instead of Amazon? (I am an outsider to the industry and I am curious).
    - ABeeSea 6y ago
      “The only job I got is one of the statistically highest-paying companies for engineers in the country that can be leveraged to move to any company I want in a couple years.” It’s hard not to cringe at the amount of entitlement in being upset that your only job was Amazon.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - TomMarius 6y ago
        They surely must have meant in the warehouse?
        lowiqengineer 6y ago
        No I’m an SWE
      - Apocryphon 6y ago
        Don't they have a notoriously austere work environment compared to the other tech giants?
- khalilravanna 6y ago
  If you’re doing all of these things I think the reason for not getting hired is because of the pretty negative attitude encapsulated in this comment. I wouldn’t strongly advocate for a candidate who views interviewing as a fabricated system with the deck stacked against them. Nevermind someone who would lie about being exposed to problems they’ve seen before. Interviews should be a collaborative, albeit stressful, experience. The interviewers would be much happier to hire someone than to say No and have to interview another 10 people or whatever. My advice to any candidate: stay positive, focus on what you can control, and try to have fun with it if possible. Any negativity you bring into an interview will be picked up by interviewers. But the opposite is also true! If you go in with a smile, ready to meet some new people, and ready for a challenge, interviewers will take notice and appreciate it.
  - hellisothers 6y ago
    I think this is a nice theoretical fiction. In my experience and colleagues I’ve talked to about it, those that go into it knowing the system to be a nonsensical game and train defensively for it interview at 10 places and get 9 offers. Those that approach it organically, casually, get no offers and eventually after months go back and train aggressively and try again. Interviewing isn’t fun, if you find it fun then you probably find casually engaging in leetcode competitions fun, which is totally fine, great even that you enjoy that. But let’s not pretend that it’s not a game with particular rules.
    - khalilravanna 6y ago
      To be clear, I'm not saying one shouldn't prepare for these interviews and that there aren't very clear things that interviewers are evaluating on. There is an optimal solution and you should prepare for it. What I'm saying is that your mindset is another differentiator. If you go in with the mindset that the interview is a waste of time and that your interviewer is trying to trip you up, you've walked into an interview with a toxic mindset. I'd be willing to guarantee no one anywhere wants to hire someone with a toxic mindset.
itronitron 6y ago
Taleb makes the observation in his latest book Skin in the Game that the best storytellers are necessarily also bullshit artists.
- aspaceman 6y ago
  Hard disagree. A bullshit artist is a good storyteller because they tell you exactly what you want to hear. The best storytellers can change your mind.
  - Wistar 6y ago
    I've seen both. I had a manager who was a mesmerizing storyteller but was really full of bullshit and I have watched the even more mesmerizing Brian Greene who is not full of bullshit.
- TheCowboy 6y ago
  Does he provide any evidence for this assertion in his book or is this just an opinion? Because he frequently plays the role of bullshit artist on Twitter where it's hard to take him as a credible intellectual anymore.
hackernewsn00b 6y ago
What does "^H^H^H" mean? Is that code for "ass"?
codeformore 6y ago
Being interesting is generally more important than being right: https://codeformore.com/technical-interviews-interesting-is-normally-more-important-than-right/ https://codeformore.com/technical-interviews-interesting-is-...
- es7 6y ago
  This is true for life in general, but I'm not sure it works for technical interviews. I've seen many candidates derail themselves by trying to tell interesting stories without realizing that the interviewer doesn't care. Many companies treat technical interviews as a test and have strict rubrics that are specific to the question. If I ask a candidate: "Okay, but how would you replace that XMLHttpRequest with fetch?" all I want is a straightforward answer that shows you know the answer to the question, or an explanation of why you don't, ex: "Oh, I would Google that. I exclusively used Axios in my prior job but I could learn fetch in an hour or two" I know you want to feel heard and I will listen if you want to tell me how you fought your boss and won in a quest to replace all of your homegrown internal tooling with jQuery, but pay attention to your interviewer's body language and responses. In general, my advice for an interview is never talk more than 1-2 minutes without getting active encouragement from your interviewer to continue on the current thread of conversation.
eatbitseveryday 6y ago
> You can read this post in Spanish here. Just a small comment: isn’t this better written in Spanish? Just this sentence. Non-English speakers won’t know what this says to click it. The Spanish version has this, too: > Puedes leer este post en inglés aquí. I wouldn’t know this means the same for reading the post in English.

113 points by stanete 6y ago

Here's one of my favorite examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDoH15ylAeo&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDoH15ylAeo&feature=youtu.be

suyash 6y ago
haha, this was fun!
- diN0bot 6y ago
  i lol'd. hey, if anyone wants to practice answering behavioral questions for real on my youtube, let me know. it's a nice way to practice and help others learn from what you do well and can improve. it's meant to be earnest and lighthearted, not intentionally comedic, though making an interviewer chuckle is not a bad way to connect ;-p https://www.youtube.com/CandidatePlanet https://www.youtube.com/CandidatePlanet

jowdones 6y ago

And in today's interviews environment, telling the greatest stories along the greatest CV, training for months and months on leetcode problems and being able to convincingly act like you never seen them before during the interview, generally bending over backwards and taking it into your ^H^H^H or what else, all that that will dramatically raise your chances of getting hired from 0.1 to 0.2%.

Benjammer 6y ago
Also it will have zero bearing on your starting place among the organization you’re joining. No matter how well you excel at the interview or how applicable your past experience is, you’ll be dumped on one of the fringe, “new features” teams with a first time EM, and a PM right out of college or MBA with no relevant experience.
asimpletune 6y ago
I think if you actually did all that then you’d almost certainly get the job. I wonder why there’s that disconnect?
- lowiqengineer 6y ago
  I've done all of that, and the best job I got was Amazon :/ It seems like this industry only works if you're just naturally intelligent (or lucky)
  - boyobo 6y ago
    What are you aiming for instead of Amazon? (I am an outsider to the industry and I am curious).
  - ABeeSea 6y ago
    “The only job I got is one of the statistically highest-paying companies for engineers in the country that can be leveraged to move to any company I want in a couple years.” It’s hard not to cringe at the amount of entitlement in being upset that your only job was Amazon.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - TomMarius 6y ago
      They surely must have meant in the warehouse?
      - lowiqengineer 6y ago
        No I’m an SWE
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      Don't they have a notoriously austere work environment compared to the other tech giants?
khalilravanna 6y ago
If you’re doing all of these things I think the reason for not getting hired is because of the pretty negative attitude encapsulated in this comment. I wouldn’t strongly advocate for a candidate who views interviewing as a fabricated system with the deck stacked against them. Nevermind someone who would lie about being exposed to problems they’ve seen before. Interviews should be a collaborative, albeit stressful, experience. The interviewers would be much happier to hire someone than to say No and have to interview another 10 people or whatever. My advice to any candidate: stay positive, focus on what you can control, and try to have fun with it if possible. Any negativity you bring into an interview will be picked up by interviewers. But the opposite is also true! If you go in with a smile, ready to meet some new people, and ready for a challenge, interviewers will take notice and appreciate it.
- hellisothers 6y ago
  I think this is a nice theoretical fiction. In my experience and colleagues I’ve talked to about it, those that go into it knowing the system to be a nonsensical game and train defensively for it interview at 10 places and get 9 offers. Those that approach it organically, casually, get no offers and eventually after months go back and train aggressively and try again. Interviewing isn’t fun, if you find it fun then you probably find casually engaging in leetcode competitions fun, which is totally fine, great even that you enjoy that. But let’s not pretend that it’s not a game with particular rules.
  - khalilravanna 6y ago
    To be clear, I'm not saying one shouldn't prepare for these interviews and that there aren't very clear things that interviewers are evaluating on. There is an optimal solution and you should prepare for it. What I'm saying is that your mindset is another differentiator. If you go in with the mindset that the interview is a waste of time and that your interviewer is trying to trip you up, you've walked into an interview with a toxic mindset. I'd be willing to guarantee no one anywhere wants to hire someone with a toxic mindset.

itronitron 6y ago

Taleb makes the observation in his latest book Skin in the Game that the best storytellers are necessarily also bullshit artists.

aspaceman 6y ago
Hard disagree. A bullshit artist is a good storyteller because they tell you exactly what you want to hear. The best storytellers can change your mind.
- Wistar 6y ago
  I've seen both. I had a manager who was a mesmerizing storyteller but was really full of bullshit and I have watched the even more mesmerizing Brian Greene who is not full of bullshit.
TheCowboy 6y ago
Does he provide any evidence for this assertion in his book or is this just an opinion? Because he frequently plays the role of bullshit artist on Twitter where it's hard to take him as a credible intellectual anymore.

hackernewsn00b 6y ago

What does "^H^H^H" mean? Is that code for "ass"?

codeformore 6y ago

Being interesting is generally more important than being right: https://codeformore.com/technical-interviews-interesting-is-normally-more-important-than-right/ https://codeformore.com/technical-interviews-interesting-is-...

es7 6y ago
This is true for life in general, but I'm not sure it works for technical interviews. I've seen many candidates derail themselves by trying to tell interesting stories without realizing that the interviewer doesn't care. Many companies treat technical interviews as a test and have strict rubrics that are specific to the question. If I ask a candidate: "Okay, but how would you replace that XMLHttpRequest with fetch?" all I want is a straightforward answer that shows you know the answer to the question, or an explanation of why you don't, ex: "Oh, I would Google that. I exclusively used Axios in my prior job but I could learn fetch in an hour or two" I know you want to feel heard and I will listen if you want to tell me how you fought your boss and won in a quest to replace all of your homegrown internal tooling with jQuery, but pay attention to your interviewer's body language and responses. In general, my advice for an interview is never talk more than 1-2 minutes without getting active encouragement from your interviewer to continue on the current thread of conversation.

eatbitseveryday 6y ago

> You can read this post in Spanish here. Just a small comment: isn’t this better written in Spanish? Just this sentence. Non-English speakers won’t know what this says to click it. The Spanish version has this, too: > Puedes leer este post en inglés aquí. I wouldn’t know this means the same for reading the post in English.