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To me the really bizarre thing is that I so rarely talk about things I have actually done in interviews. Even for system design ones, I am often repeating infor

To me the really bizarre thing is that I so rarely talk about things I have actually done in interviews. Even for system design ones, I am often repeating information out of a book that I read as that is the correct theoretical answer. I suspect you could teach someone to pass a lot of tech interviews without them ever building a production system.

guitarbill 6y ago
You can teach that. You can even pass most tech interviews without having ever touched version control or knowing how to use it. Maybe that's an easy thing for candidates to pick up once hired, but then so are algos you never need in day-to-day programming (like sorting), because you can simply look them up should you ever need to implement that. It's all a bit broken. Best method I've seen so far is to sit down with candidates and pair on some code, and it's still got issues.
- ionwake 6y ago
  I have nearly 2 decades of experience and when I was asked to write a console log hello world app by a teenager and the CEO , who stared at me silently - well - I just couldnt bring myself to do it, fear of failure at such a simple task in such an OTT scenario mean I quit the interview on the spot as I did not want to know what the judgement could be. Im not saying its right, just that it didnt come naturally to me to be in that situation.
  - mixedCase 6y ago
    You should not be taking an interview so seriously that you freeze under such a situation. If you feel it's out of your control, it could've just been a bad day, but you may be suffering from something like generalized anxiety or a similar problem, you might want to look into that with a health professional.
    - ionwake 6y ago
      It wasn't anxiety as much as knowing that if I faltered even a little that this particularly interviewer would say no. I had not written fizz buzz in a few years and decided that the fact I thought about it for a few seconds meant I had already thrown the interview away. Im just saying its thanks to my instinct that I have been so successful in my life, and I have never lost anything by refusing fizz buzz, yet have attained good things. Maybe its survivorship bias. It goes against my rules to proceed in interviews I think don't lend themselves to the situation.
ertian 6y ago
Talking about past projects selects for people who are comfortable talking at length in florid language about relatively little substance, and who are maybe comfortable exaggerating or stretching the truth. The most substantial and complex projects I've worked on can end up sounding simple and boring when I describe them. It's not that I can't discuss the details, it's just that I'm not good at _selling_ them. I tend to stick to facts and give a simple overview of the project, and I'm never sure how to approach the gritty details. And honestly, the right choice at the time was likely "Pair a MySQL db with a cron job" or something, and that sounds really underwhelming in an interview. On the other hand, I've heard people describe projects they worked on, and you'd have thought they were leading the charge on the reinvention of Internet. But when you do the math on their resume, they were two months out of university at the time. Those types of interviews basically and inevitably end up being "tell me a good story". Non-fiction is preferred, but interesting fiction will win out over boring reality.
- k_sze 6y ago
  At my last interview (which happened less than a month ago), I said I used to do "stupid stuff with Raspberry Pis" (my exact words) and I got hired. Maybe I was just lucky, but I think you don't have to be all "florid", just show enthusiasm when talking about what you did, and it doesn't have to come from the vocabulary; people can tell whether you're enthusiastic from your tone.
- jlangemeier 6y ago
  Focusing on the business need filled and results seems to be the best tactic here; we all hype ourselves, but if we were honest most of our work is boring "plumbing" to solve a business need. I mean, that's what we're hired to do, that's why we get paid; if we're not producing value for who we're working for, that relationship has broken down. Most day-to-day "programming" can be broken down into that "Pair a datastore with a processor" idea, or "know enough about the problem to google/SO a fix or solution," so I don't think being honest about the mundane is a bad quality. Honestly, I think it's important enough, to make it at least a few of my questions on any formal interview, something akin to "what was a project that you thought would be simple but turned into something bigger, and how did you handle communication and management of it from that point forward?"

guitarbill 6y ago

You can teach that. You can even pass most tech interviews without having ever touched version control or knowing how to use it. Maybe that's an easy thing for candidates to pick up once hired, but then so are algos you never need in day-to-day programming (like sorting), because you can simply look them up should you ever need to implement that. It's all a bit broken. Best method I've seen so far is to sit down with candidates and pair on some code, and it's still got issues.

ionwake 6y ago
I have nearly 2 decades of experience and when I was asked to write a console log hello world app by a teenager and the CEO , who stared at me silently - well - I just couldnt bring myself to do it, fear of failure at such a simple task in such an OTT scenario mean I quit the interview on the spot as I did not want to know what the judgement could be. Im not saying its right, just that it didnt come naturally to me to be in that situation.
- mixedCase 6y ago
  You should not be taking an interview so seriously that you freeze under such a situation. If you feel it's out of your control, it could've just been a bad day, but you may be suffering from something like generalized anxiety or a similar problem, you might want to look into that with a health professional.
  - ionwake 6y ago
    It wasn't anxiety as much as knowing that if I faltered even a little that this particularly interviewer would say no. I had not written fizz buzz in a few years and decided that the fact I thought about it for a few seconds meant I had already thrown the interview away. Im just saying its thanks to my instinct that I have been so successful in my life, and I have never lost anything by refusing fizz buzz, yet have attained good things. Maybe its survivorship bias. It goes against my rules to proceed in interviews I think don't lend themselves to the situation.

ertian 6y ago

Talking about past projects selects for people who are comfortable talking at length in florid language about relatively little substance, and who are maybe comfortable exaggerating or stretching the truth. The most substantial and complex projects I've worked on can end up sounding simple and boring when I describe them. It's not that I can't discuss the details, it's just that I'm not good at _selling_ them. I tend to stick to facts and give a simple overview of the project, and I'm never sure how to approach the gritty details. And honestly, the right choice at the time was likely "Pair a MySQL db with a cron job" or something, and that sounds really underwhelming in an interview. On the other hand, I've heard people describe projects they worked on, and you'd have thought they were leading the charge on the reinvention of Internet. But when you do the math on their resume, they were two months out of university at the time. Those types of interviews basically and inevitably end up being "tell me a good story". Non-fiction is preferred, but interesting fiction will win out over boring reality.

k_sze 6y ago
At my last interview (which happened less than a month ago), I said I used to do "stupid stuff with Raspberry Pis" (my exact words) and I got hired. Maybe I was just lucky, but I think you don't have to be all "florid", just show enthusiasm when talking about what you did, and it doesn't have to come from the vocabulary; people can tell whether you're enthusiastic from your tone.
jlangemeier 6y ago
Focusing on the business need filled and results seems to be the best tactic here; we all hype ourselves, but if we were honest most of our work is boring "plumbing" to solve a business need. I mean, that's what we're hired to do, that's why we get paid; if we're not producing value for who we're working for, that relationship has broken down. Most day-to-day "programming" can be broken down into that "Pair a datastore with a processor" idea, or "know enough about the problem to google/SO a fix or solution," so I don't think being honest about the mundane is a bad quality. Honestly, I think it's important enough, to make it at least a few of my questions on any formal interview, something akin to "what was a project that you thought would be simple but turned into something bigger, and how did you handle communication and management of it from that point forward?"