6 ms·

I've had some good experiences in hiring by having a conversation with the other person like if they were a human being. I know it's weird, but I just ask them

I've had some good experiences in hiring by having a conversation with the other person like if they were a human being. I know it's weird, but I just ask them what they're learning, if they have personal projects and just use that to see if they have experience writing software. Some people are super-excited about what they're learning, want to talk about the technology and end up making a good impression. Some people are only able to talk about what they're doing at work, the technical challenges and usually make a good impression as well. Whiteboarding is usually kept to high level concepts like normalization, data flow, logical architecture and things like that.

thechao 6y ago
This is how you end up with a team that’s 10x it’s components: why have _one_ 10x engineer, when you could have 7?
- glouwbug 6y ago
  There's a 10x Engineer achievement you can unlock by doing 300 leet code problems iirc
neilv 6y ago
I like this idea of interviewing by talking about interests and things worked on, though it's complicated, and I can't claim to have figured it all out. A few thoughts... I used to interview people by looking at their resume, and starting asking curiosity questions about things they worked on, and going from there. I didn't have anything in particular I was looking for, just a vague sense from how they talked about it. That's more complicated when organizations want to avoid the appearance of IP taint, so, it'd help if they had a side project/interest to talk about. But I'm not assuming everyone has time for that. Also, they might be slammed by work, and in project mental space they can't talk about, and temporarily skewing the impression they give about their curiosity about other things. What's really unfortunate is all the formulaic, going-through-the-motions interviews these days. We used to make fun of the practice of hiring based on firmness of handshake, how well you dressed, and ridiculous standard interview behavioral questions that might as well be shibboleths for the people who prep for them. Now most young developers are told to prep for conveying culture fit, and answering particular kinds of CS101 coding questions/hazing, which seems to be much the same thing. That said, though I think I can do better at finding great people than that, I still need to remember to add a big dose of humility, to the idea that I can get a sense of a person as an engineer, just by talking with them. I believe I can do a pretty good job of that, with some conscious uncertainty, and I'm self-aware enough not to simply hire people in my own self image. But of course I surely have more biases than I know, and there's a lot unknowns, and our practice is not science. So I should add in extra humility than I'd naturally have about this, and find the right balance between vision of what I think is needed, and being open to seeing things I didn't already see. I also need to recognize that I'll have people coming to interview, having read the "Cracking the Interviews of FAANGs and All the Other Companies Who Act Like Stodgy Fortune 500 Hiring Large Numbers of Commodity Brogrammers" prep books, and probably seen that in some/most of their other interviews. :) And if someone shows up expecting the current usual rituals, I shouldn't hold it against them, but rather, it's my responsibility to communicate that I'd like to try to do this a bit differently. One fear is that I'll explicitly tell people I'm looking to do this "genuine", and some will interpret that as an empty platitude or conceit, in interview prep book behavioral right answer terms. :)
- pantaloony 6y ago
  > it's my responsibility to communicate that I'd like to try to do this a bit differently. Yes, and please, to all interviewers, tell candidates WTF they’ll be expected to do/talk about in the interview, in the greatest detail possible, as early as possible. If FAANG can basically publish study guides you can give more than “here are the people you’ll be talking to, and when.” What about? Will there be exercises. Leetcode? Easy, medium, hard? One of these or is it like half the day? You’ll want to chat about networking? JavaScript trivia most people don’t remember because they use patterns that avoid those parts of the language, and have for years? Again, if FAANG can give the kinds of guidance they do then Bob’s Mobile Dev Agency can give candidates something about what they should expect without ruining the process. Like, it doesn’t all need to be scripted but most employers seem to think it’s fun to make candidates come in with no idea whether they’ll be white boarding all day or sitting around singing Kumbaya in rounds
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- invalidOrTaken 6y ago
  >I also need to recognize that I'll have people coming to interview, having read the "Cracking the Interviews of FAANGs and All the Other Companies Who Act Like Stodgy Fortune 500 Hiring Large Numbers of Commodity Brogrammers" prep books, and probably seen that in some/most of their other interviews. :) And if someone shows up expecting the current usual rituals, I shouldn't hold it against them, but rather, it's my responsibility to communicate that I'd like to try to do this a bit differently. >One fear is that I'll explicitly tell people I'm looking to do this "genuine", and some will interpret that as an empty platitude or conceit, in interview prep book behavioral right answer terms. :) This seems like a good problem to think about. I don't have a solution, but I think it's a good thread to pull.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  > when organizations want to avoid the appearance of IP taint So we usually try to talk about what they're learning on their spare time, any personal projects, any cool technology they're looking to learn... then follow it up with what have you done so far to start on this, any small toy projects on this new technology. It's a weird organization because aside from COVID-19, we've had very little turnover (most people are with us 3+ year with an average of 7 years) so we've kinda changed up hiring a little bit over time.
JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
I like this idea. But it doesn't objectively scale in a repeatable manner. Whether or not the candidate's answer was interesting to you is subjective. It could also lean on implicit biases where you end up saying, "hey, I like that guy, let's hire him". But it's reasonable enough for small scale engineering organizations (<100 people).
- invalidOrTaken 6y ago
  >I like this idea. But it doesn't objectively scale in a repeatable manner. I've come to the conclusion that nothing does, and that the place to think about scaling and repeatability is in training, not hiring.
Google234 6y ago
The issue with this is that you would be surprised at how some people are good at “talking” but when it comes to doing something simple with code aren’t able to backup their supposed skills
- siscia 6y ago
  After working for several years in reputable organisation, how bad can somebody be at coding? Yes there is still a tiny possibly that it is just a talker, but such possibility seems much smaller than the possibility that it pass a coding interview on a whiteboard and then he is not that good.
  - Google234 6y ago
    Well, this interview process seem to select for the best talker which I don’t think is the optimal signal for a dev. I know many super competent engineers that aren’t the best English speakers
    - siscia 6y ago
      I believe you are (intentionally) missreading and misinterpretating what the comment and myself are stating.
  - SamReidHughes 6y ago
    That depends on what you mean by reputable organization. It also depends on what your bar is. Some companies could use "was a Google employee" as a sufficient qualifier, but for others, that wouldn't be enough.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    Depends on what you consider "reputable"; I've worked with people at a large bank doing some great apps and the like, but they were incompetent. The college project thing applies to the workspace as well; in a team or a project there's always going to be only a few or one that does the most and best work, and a lot of hangers-on. That is actually a source of impostor syndrome for me, because if I look at my CV there's a lot of really interesting and varied stuff on there, but it was always me as part of a team. How much of what I contributed was original thought vs just copy / pasting someone else's work and changing some values? That's said impostor syndrome speaking of course, I know I'm a competent developer and ATM I'm working solo on a project. Slowly.
musicale 6y ago
> having a conversation with the other person like if they were a human being Sorry, that's against company policy.
- taneq 6y ago
  It'd be awesome if all interviews could be done with an informal chat where an expert will assess the interviewee's skills and make a judgement. Unfortunately, 1) You want your experts to be spending their time solving problems, not interviewing people. 2) As the size of the organisation grows and it becomes a more attractive target for lawsuits (fair and otherwise) it becomes crucial to make all of your decisions in a defensible way. 'The tech lead doesn't like this candidate' will get you sued for discrimination if it's the only thing you can say when accused of prejudice.
  - kls 6y ago
    on #1 and expert that can identify other experts is a force enabler and they offer more value by expanding the field of expertise laterally. While saying that, just because one is an expert does not mean they are an expert at identifying other experts. It is it a skill set in it's own right.
    - taneq 6y ago
      Yeah, personally I think companies are better off using their best people in the hiring process; the old "A players hire A players" thing may or may not be true, but "B players hire C players" certainly is.
      - kls 6y ago
        Yes, I remember reading someones arm chair theory that less intelligent people cannot gauge when they are in the presence of more intelligent people, but more intelligent people certainly know when they are surrounded by idiots. It was this persons add on to the Dunning-Kruger Effect and there may be something to it.
emiliobumachar 6y ago
What were the rejected candidates like?
teddyh 6y ago
There are two quite large problems with this: 1. Asking them to talk to you as if they know you is implicitly asking them to reveal quite a lot about their personal life; a life which you, as a prospective employer, has absolutely no business poking your big nose into. Don’t ask about their personal life. 2. As “JMTQp8lwXL” pointed out in another reply, this also opens your selection up to selection bias to prefer your personal preferences, not what would be good for the role. This kind of thing is, unfortunately, rampant, and leads to enormous monocultures where everybody who works at a certain place seems to be the same person; they all dress the same, like the same things, talk the same, and look the same. This is the very opposite of diversity.
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  Where is this asking "quite a lot about their personal life" ?
  - teddyh 6y ago
    I did say that it was implicit, but “having a conversation with the other person like if they were a human being” seems to imply that they are having an informal conversation as in simply shooting the breeze. In such a conversation as an interviewee, it is hard to remain professional and separate your personal and workplace activities, and this seemed to be what the interviewer was aiming for, in order to get to know them better.
    - brailsafe 6y ago
      This all seems reasonable to me. If you're worling with other ppl, why not have them be people you might vibe with?
    - C1sc0cat 6y ago
      I think they meant not reading algorithmic questions of a list in a robotic way.
    - jschwartzi 6y ago
      GP seems like someone who interviews like I interview. I never ask candidates to talk about their personal life. I ask them to tell stories, and I try to understand whether they can reflect on their experiences and form a narrative. I’ve found that technical ability alone isn’t a great predictor of success. What matters is more that the candidate can communicate their thoughts fluently and that they give some consideration to their goals and how to work with others to achieve them. So I ask behavioral questions. And I ask questions and prompt people because I want to make sure I got a good story out of them. Some people don’t immediately trust you with a good story so I try to establish trust first. I do that by actually telling them what they’d be doing and why and what my employer is about first. I’d rather hire for those skills plus code reading ability because I’ve honestly never used a single “algorithm” in my entire working life.

thechao 6y ago

This is how you end up with a team that’s 10x it’s components: why have _one_ 10x engineer, when you could have 7?

glouwbug 6y ago
There's a 10x Engineer achievement you can unlock by doing 300 leet code problems iirc

neilv 6y ago

I like this idea of interviewing by talking about interests and things worked on, though it's complicated, and I can't claim to have figured it all out. A few thoughts... I used to interview people by looking at their resume, and starting asking curiosity questions about things they worked on, and going from there. I didn't have anything in particular I was looking for, just a vague sense from how they talked about it. That's more complicated when organizations want to avoid the appearance of IP taint, so, it'd help if they had a side project/interest to talk about. But I'm not assuming everyone has time for that. Also, they might be slammed by work, and in project mental space they can't talk about, and temporarily skewing the impression they give about their curiosity about other things. What's really unfortunate is all the formulaic, going-through-the-motions interviews these days. We used to make fun of the practice of hiring based on firmness of handshake, how well you dressed, and ridiculous standard interview behavioral questions that might as well be shibboleths for the people who prep for them. Now most young developers are told to prep for conveying culture fit, and answering particular kinds of CS101 coding questions/hazing, which seems to be much the same thing. That said, though I think I can do better at finding great people than that, I still need to remember to add a big dose of humility, to the idea that I can get a sense of a person as an engineer, just by talking with them. I believe I can do a pretty good job of that, with some conscious uncertainty, and I'm self-aware enough not to simply hire people in my own self image. But of course I surely have more biases than I know, and there's a lot unknowns, and our practice is not science. So I should add in extra humility than I'd naturally have about this, and find the right balance between vision of what I think is needed, and being open to seeing things I didn't already see. I also need to recognize that I'll have people coming to interview, having read the "Cracking the Interviews of FAANGs and All the Other Companies Who Act Like Stodgy Fortune 500 Hiring Large Numbers of Commodity Brogrammers" prep books, and probably seen that in some/most of their other interviews. :) And if someone shows up expecting the current usual rituals, I shouldn't hold it against them, but rather, it's my responsibility to communicate that I'd like to try to do this a bit differently. One fear is that I'll explicitly tell people I'm looking to do this "genuine", and some will interpret that as an empty platitude or conceit, in interview prep book behavioral right answer terms. :)

pantaloony 6y ago
> it's my responsibility to communicate that I'd like to try to do this a bit differently. Yes, and please, to all interviewers, tell candidates WTF they’ll be expected to do/talk about in the interview, in the greatest detail possible, as early as possible. If FAANG can basically publish study guides you can give more than “here are the people you’ll be talking to, and when.” What about? Will there be exercises. Leetcode? Easy, medium, hard? One of these or is it like half the day? You’ll want to chat about networking? JavaScript trivia most people don’t remember because they use patterns that avoid those parts of the language, and have for years? Again, if FAANG can give the kinds of guidance they do then Bob’s Mobile Dev Agency can give candidates something about what they should expect without ruining the process. Like, it doesn’t all need to be scripted but most employers seem to think it’s fun to make candidates come in with no idea whether they’ll be white boarding all day or sitting around singing Kumbaya in rounds
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
invalidOrTaken 6y ago
>I also need to recognize that I'll have people coming to interview, having read the "Cracking the Interviews of FAANGs and All the Other Companies Who Act Like Stodgy Fortune 500 Hiring Large Numbers of Commodity Brogrammers" prep books, and probably seen that in some/most of their other interviews. :) And if someone shows up expecting the current usual rituals, I shouldn't hold it against them, but rather, it's my responsibility to communicate that I'd like to try to do this a bit differently. >One fear is that I'll explicitly tell people I'm looking to do this "genuine", and some will interpret that as an empty platitude or conceit, in interview prep book behavioral right answer terms. :) This seems like a good problem to think about. I don't have a solution, but I think it's a good thread to pull.
WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
> when organizations want to avoid the appearance of IP taint So we usually try to talk about what they're learning on their spare time, any personal projects, any cool technology they're looking to learn... then follow it up with what have you done so far to start on this, any small toy projects on this new technology. It's a weird organization because aside from COVID-19, we've had very little turnover (most people are with us 3+ year with an average of 7 years) so we've kinda changed up hiring a little bit over time.

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago

I like this idea. But it doesn't objectively scale in a repeatable manner. Whether or not the candidate's answer was interesting to you is subjective. It could also lean on implicit biases where you end up saying, "hey, I like that guy, let's hire him". But it's reasonable enough for small scale engineering organizations (<100 people).

invalidOrTaken 6y ago
>I like this idea. But it doesn't objectively scale in a repeatable manner. I've come to the conclusion that nothing does, and that the place to think about scaling and repeatability is in training, not hiring.

Google234 6y ago

The issue with this is that you would be surprised at how some people are good at “talking” but when it comes to doing something simple with code aren’t able to backup their supposed skills

siscia 6y ago
After working for several years in reputable organisation, how bad can somebody be at coding? Yes there is still a tiny possibly that it is just a talker, but such possibility seems much smaller than the possibility that it pass a coding interview on a whiteboard and then he is not that good.
- Google234 6y ago
  Well, this interview process seem to select for the best talker which I don’t think is the optimal signal for a dev. I know many super competent engineers that aren’t the best English speakers
  - siscia 6y ago
    I believe you are (intentionally) missreading and misinterpretating what the comment and myself are stating.
- SamReidHughes 6y ago
  That depends on what you mean by reputable organization. It also depends on what your bar is. Some companies could use "was a Google employee" as a sufficient qualifier, but for others, that wouldn't be enough.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Depends on what you consider "reputable"; I've worked with people at a large bank doing some great apps and the like, but they were incompetent. The college project thing applies to the workspace as well; in a team or a project there's always going to be only a few or one that does the most and best work, and a lot of hangers-on. That is actually a source of impostor syndrome for me, because if I look at my CV there's a lot of really interesting and varied stuff on there, but it was always me as part of a team. How much of what I contributed was original thought vs just copy / pasting someone else's work and changing some values? That's said impostor syndrome speaking of course, I know I'm a competent developer and ATM I'm working solo on a project. Slowly.

musicale 6y ago

> having a conversation with the other person like if they were a human being Sorry, that's against company policy.

taneq 6y ago
It'd be awesome if all interviews could be done with an informal chat where an expert will assess the interviewee's skills and make a judgement. Unfortunately, 1) You want your experts to be spending their time solving problems, not interviewing people. 2) As the size of the organisation grows and it becomes a more attractive target for lawsuits (fair and otherwise) it becomes crucial to make all of your decisions in a defensible way. 'The tech lead doesn't like this candidate' will get you sued for discrimination if it's the only thing you can say when accused of prejudice.
- kls 6y ago
  on #1 and expert that can identify other experts is a force enabler and they offer more value by expanding the field of expertise laterally. While saying that, just because one is an expert does not mean they are an expert at identifying other experts. It is it a skill set in it's own right.
  - taneq 6y ago
    Yeah, personally I think companies are better off using their best people in the hiring process; the old "A players hire A players" thing may or may not be true, but "B players hire C players" certainly is.
    - kls 6y ago
      Yes, I remember reading someones arm chair theory that less intelligent people cannot gauge when they are in the presence of more intelligent people, but more intelligent people certainly know when they are surrounded by idiots. It was this persons add on to the Dunning-Kruger Effect and there may be something to it.

emiliobumachar 6y ago

What were the rejected candidates like?

teddyh 6y ago

There are two quite large problems with this: 1. Asking them to talk to you as if they know you is implicitly asking them to reveal quite a lot about their personal life; a life which you, as a prospective employer, has absolutely no business poking your big nose into. Don’t ask about their personal life. 2. As “JMTQp8lwXL” pointed out in another reply, this also opens your selection up to selection bias to prefer your personal preferences, not what would be good for the role. This kind of thing is, unfortunately, rampant, and leads to enormous monocultures where everybody who works at a certain place seems to be the same person; they all dress the same, like the same things, talk the same, and look the same. This is the very opposite of diversity.

C1sc0cat 6y ago
Where is this asking "quite a lot about their personal life" ?
- teddyh 6y ago
  I did say that it was implicit, but “having a conversation with the other person like if they were a human being” seems to imply that they are having an informal conversation as in simply shooting the breeze. In such a conversation as an interviewee, it is hard to remain professional and separate your personal and workplace activities, and this seemed to be what the interviewer was aiming for, in order to get to know them better.
  - brailsafe 6y ago
    This all seems reasonable to me. If you're worling with other ppl, why not have them be people you might vibe with?
  - C1sc0cat 6y ago
    I think they meant not reading algorithmic questions of a list in a robotic way.
  - jschwartzi 6y ago
    GP seems like someone who interviews like I interview. I never ask candidates to talk about their personal life. I ask them to tell stories, and I try to understand whether they can reflect on their experiences and form a narrative. I’ve found that technical ability alone isn’t a great predictor of success. What matters is more that the candidate can communicate their thoughts fluently and that they give some consideration to their goals and how to work with others to achieve them. So I ask behavioral questions. And I ask questions and prompt people because I want to make sure I got a good story out of them. Some people don’t immediately trust you with a good story so I try to establish trust first. I do that by actually telling them what they’d be doing and why and what my employer is about first. I’d rather hire for those skills plus code reading ability because I’ve honestly never used a single “algorithm” in my entire working life.