4 ms·

Hopping aboard your train of thought here... I've never been asked to whiteboard anything truly heinous, and I absolutely despise interviews that are set up as

by eckza 6y ago

Hopping aboard your train of thought here... I've never been asked to whiteboard anything truly heinous, and I absolutely despise interviews that are set up as a gauntlet to be ran. But if I'm interviewing you for a senior SQL engineer position, and you can't talk me through whiteboarding a simple query with one join and one aggregate function... you're not senior material. I'm sorry. We need people that can communicate and explain themselves, and talk through their own line of reasoning, where I work. Again, I'm not defending SWE interviews... but of course people are better at expressing their skillset when they're in a controlled environment. The trouble is, the workplace isn't a controlled environment. Life isn't a controlled environment. I don't want to work with brilliant programmers that have zero social skills. If devs can't muster up the courage to answer interview questions... maybe that means that they should work on themselves a little bit?

mikelevins 6y ago
Well, I can communicate and explain things reasonably well to a room full of people. I ran a side business doing that for about seven or eight years. And I can ship products. I've done that a bunch of times--in several cases I've written most or all of the code in the shipping product. I can't interview all that well, though, and I'm absolutely terrible at whiteboard coding, or pretty much any kind of problem-solving with people watching me. Except pair programming. Pair programming with a colleague that I know well is no problem. I have two obstacles. One is anxiety. I score really high on trait neuroticism. It's one of the so-called "Big Five" personality traits. One of the things it means is that I have a lot of self doubt regardless of cause or circumstance, and a lot of anxiety to go with it. As for "working on myself a little bit," the Big Five are extremely resistant to change. Basically, the only things we know of that affect them much are psychedelic drugs and catastrophic trauma. Working on myself a little isn't going to reduce my trait neuroticism much. I've been through quite a few tech interviews, including some familiar big names. I've gotten offers. But that's never been because of my performance in coding or solving brain teasers, at which my anxiety has been uniformly awful, and so has my performance. The second obstacle I have is that I cannot combine certain classes of cognitive activity. For example, I cannot navigate and carry on a conversation at the same time. I can drive just fine--safely and competently. I just can't navigate if involved in a conversation, and will predictably get lost. It's predictable enough that when my daughter was a teenager she exploited it for laughs. "Let's see where we end up!" Another thing I cannot do is solve logic and programming problems while being watched or while carrying on conversations with strangers. The interaction with the strangers forcibly occupies 100% of my attention. I don't know if I'm representative of a vanishingly small fraction of the population. Maybe so. But maybe there are others more or less like me. Doesn't mean you need to change your hiring preferences. Probably does mean you won't hire me. Oh well. I seem to be making do. If there are others like me reading, and wondering what to do about it, one thing that has worked well for me is to do good work for people and cultivate good working relationships with them. I have more often than not been hired by someone who already knew my work, or on the recommendation of someone who knew my work.
- dpc_pw 6y ago
  I'm sorry to hear that. Every situation is different. If I were in your shoes I'd try to be open about it with recruiters and figure out / propose some alternative that work better for you - whatever that might be. Also keeping good portfolio of Open Source projects, blogposts etc. might help convince potential employers that you're worth considering and that your 'condition' (for a lack of a better word) is real and does not affect your work performance. Keeping good reputation and connections (which you already mentioned) is also very important. From my experience companies are very flexible and open minded - mostly they care about just not hiring someone that they will have to fire later.
  - mikelevins 6y ago
    No need for sorrow. Everyone is dealt some advantages and some disadvantages. We work with what we have. I seem to have done all right. My resume is long and I have good stories to tell. I can't complain. I was responding to another poster who said that "If devs can't muster up the courage to answer interview questions... maybe that means that they should work on themselves a little bit?" I mean, maybe. Maybe sometimes. Then again, maybe not. Maybe "working on themselves a little" isn't necessarily the answer. There isn't a known way to "work on myself" to affect my trait neuroticism in any significant way, for example. Maybe it's not necessarily about "courage". I mean, courage is doing something that frightens you because it needs to be done. I know what that's like. Technical interviews don't even rate. But that doesn't solve the brainteaser on the whiteboard when a stranger's watching me.
    - dpc_pw 6y ago
      In general - working on yourself is usually somewhat possible. For many people public speaking etc. is something they have to practice and they do eventually learn. In some situations though it might not be. All individual cases are different. So I wouldn't be too hard on myself, but also I wouldn't give up. From what I read, you might have already tried, so oh well, maybe you're just stuck with it. I like "We work with what we have". That's something I deeply agree with.

by eckza 6y ago

mikelevins 6y ago

Well, I can communicate and explain things reasonably well to a room full of people. I ran a side business doing that for about seven or eight years. And I can ship products. I've done that a bunch of times--in several cases I've written most or all of the code in the shipping product. I can't interview all that well, though, and I'm absolutely terrible at whiteboard coding, or pretty much any kind of problem-solving with people watching me. Except pair programming. Pair programming with a colleague that I know well is no problem. I have two obstacles. One is anxiety. I score really high on trait neuroticism. It's one of the so-called "Big Five" personality traits. One of the things it means is that I have a lot of self doubt regardless of cause or circumstance, and a lot of anxiety to go with it. As for "working on myself a little bit," the Big Five are extremely resistant to change. Basically, the only things we know of that affect them much are psychedelic drugs and catastrophic trauma. Working on myself a little isn't going to reduce my trait neuroticism much. I've been through quite a few tech interviews, including some familiar big names. I've gotten offers. But that's never been because of my performance in coding or solving brain teasers, at which my anxiety has been uniformly awful, and so has my performance. The second obstacle I have is that I cannot combine certain classes of cognitive activity. For example, I cannot navigate and carry on a conversation at the same time. I can drive just fine--safely and competently. I just can't navigate if involved in a conversation, and will predictably get lost. It's predictable enough that when my daughter was a teenager she exploited it for laughs. "Let's see where we end up!" Another thing I cannot do is solve logic and programming problems while being watched or while carrying on conversations with strangers. The interaction with the strangers forcibly occupies 100% of my attention. I don't know if I'm representative of a vanishingly small fraction of the population. Maybe so. But maybe there are others more or less like me. Doesn't mean you need to change your hiring preferences. Probably does mean you won't hire me. Oh well. I seem to be making do. If there are others like me reading, and wondering what to do about it, one thing that has worked well for me is to do good work for people and cultivate good working relationships with them. I have more often than not been hired by someone who already knew my work, or on the recommendation of someone who knew my work.

dpc_pw 6y ago
I'm sorry to hear that. Every situation is different. If I were in your shoes I'd try to be open about it with recruiters and figure out / propose some alternative that work better for you - whatever that might be. Also keeping good portfolio of Open Source projects, blogposts etc. might help convince potential employers that you're worth considering and that your 'condition' (for a lack of a better word) is real and does not affect your work performance. Keeping good reputation and connections (which you already mentioned) is also very important. From my experience companies are very flexible and open minded - mostly they care about just not hiring someone that they will have to fire later.
- mikelevins 6y ago
  No need for sorrow. Everyone is dealt some advantages and some disadvantages. We work with what we have. I seem to have done all right. My resume is long and I have good stories to tell. I can't complain. I was responding to another poster who said that "If devs can't muster up the courage to answer interview questions... maybe that means that they should work on themselves a little bit?" I mean, maybe. Maybe sometimes. Then again, maybe not. Maybe "working on themselves a little" isn't necessarily the answer. There isn't a known way to "work on myself" to affect my trait neuroticism in any significant way, for example. Maybe it's not necessarily about "courage". I mean, courage is doing something that frightens you because it needs to be done. I know what that's like. Technical interviews don't even rate. But that doesn't solve the brainteaser on the whiteboard when a stranger's watching me.
  - dpc_pw 6y ago
    In general - working on yourself is usually somewhat possible. For many people public speaking etc. is something they have to practice and they do eventually learn. In some situations though it might not be. All individual cases are different. So I wouldn't be too hard on myself, but also I wouldn't give up. From what I read, you might have already tried, so oh well, maybe you're just stuck with it. I like "We work with what we have". That's something I deeply agree with.