5 ms·

Do you have an example of a question or interview process that you think fits your description? I think a standard tech-company interview has a lot of time pres

Do you have an example of a question or interview process that you think fits your description? I think a standard tech-company interview has a lot of time pressure, and providing more time would help many candidates considerably.

a1369209993 5y ago
> I think a standard tech-company interview has a lot of time pressure, and providing more time would help many candidates considerably. ... and? A office that's accessable only by ladder has a lot of leg pressure, and providing wheelchair ramps would help many employees considerably too, regardless of whether they're wheelchair-bound.
- dolni 5y ago
  That's a ridiculous comparison. Time pressure is directly tied to performance. Sometimes, stuff breaks and wouldn't it be great if it got fixed in half an hour instead of four hours? Projects sometimes have deadlines. You are not talking about an accommodation made for something unrelated to the job, here. This is some gold-level mental gymnastics.
  - adolph 5y ago
    Well, internal deadlines can be adjusted and accommodations can be requested for external deadlines, right? It would be kinda unfair if one's own workplace had to absorb any negative externalities of one's accommodations. That doesn't make sense. Customers aren't immune to the ADA.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Deadlines across hours or days are very different than deadlines across minutes. Many strategies like going for a walk can help you solve difficult problems, but that’s not an option on a 1 minute per question interview. Which means tight interview deadlines artificially constrain your applicant pool, forcing you to pay higher wages. Beyond legal requirements, that’s why it’s a good idea to only care about what matters for the actual job.
    - dolni 5y ago
      > that’s not an option on a 1 minute per question interview. Why do you assume that all interviews are structured that way? They aren't. I have interviewed with Google and that was not how most of my interview process was conducted.
      - Retric 5y ago
        It doesn’t matter the percentage of time devoted to short term problem solving. If it’s a requirement for applicants to go through that process successfully then it’s a requirement to get the job. The core argument is really simple. Ideal teams don’t consist of 10 identical clones of the ideal worker allowing the team to work 10x as fast. They consist of multiple different skills that allow teams to finish complex tasks more than 10x as efficiently as any one person on the team could. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
  - bawolff 5y ago
    > Sometimes, stuff breaks and wouldn't it be great if it got fixed in half an hour instead of four hours? If that's happening constantly, you should find a new job. That's a major red flag. Incidents should be rare at any well run org. Sure sometimes incidents happen and someone has to deal with them. At most companies that is a pretty rare occurance (unless you're on some incident team). When it does happen, different team members have different skills dealing with them - and that's ok for a rare part of the job. Additionally, for longer incidents, often the person with a slow ramp up but better understanding is more useful than the person who jumps right in without understanding. A sure way to make things worse is to panic and try to fix things without understanding what happened well enough. (Speaking as someone who has been involved in incident response in various jobs)
user-the-name 5y ago
There is time pressure, but you are also not expected to come up with a perfect, flawless solution. That is often not even interesting. The point of a good interview question is to see how a candidate works through a problem, not to see if they know the answer to an arbitrary quiz question. Giving more time doesn't give you an advantage, because the correct answer isn't what gets you points.
avianlyric 5y ago
I don't know why you would want to make time pressure a feature in your interview process. Normally it only happens because there's a fixed number of questions that people want to ask, but they're unprepared to allocate more an a hour to do so. I fail to see how creating artificial time pressure makes your interview process better at finding good candidates. It results in an environment that isn't even vaguely like actual work conditions.
- Jabbles 5y ago
  If I allocate more time to each interview question, then how am I supposed to judge between a candidate that completes it in half the allotted time vs one that completes it using all the time? Whether the time pressure is explicitly mentioned, it is clear (to me) that there is an implicit expectation that the faster you answer the question, the better, all other things being equal. I don't want to give the impression that I think the current standard of software engineering interviews are perfect, so if you think it can be improved, please tell me how.
  - xboxnolifes 5y ago
    If you want to use speed as a measure, then you can't avoid time pressure. But you don't need to use speed as a measure.
  - avianlyric 5y ago
    > If I allocate more time to each interview question, then how am I supposed to judge between a candidate that completes it in half the allotted time vs one that completes it using all the time? How about you judge them on the quality of their answers? Is giving a long more detailed and nuanced answer a bad thing?

a1369209993 5y ago

> I think a standard tech-company interview has a lot of time pressure, and providing more time would help many candidates considerably. ... and? A office that's accessable only by ladder has a lot of leg pressure, and providing wheelchair ramps would help many employees considerably too, regardless of whether they're wheelchair-bound.

dolni 5y ago
That's a ridiculous comparison. Time pressure is directly tied to performance. Sometimes, stuff breaks and wouldn't it be great if it got fixed in half an hour instead of four hours? Projects sometimes have deadlines. You are not talking about an accommodation made for something unrelated to the job, here. This is some gold-level mental gymnastics.
- adolph 5y ago
  Well, internal deadlines can be adjusted and accommodations can be requested for external deadlines, right? It would be kinda unfair if one's own workplace had to absorb any negative externalities of one's accommodations. That doesn't make sense. Customers aren't immune to the ADA.
- Retric 5y ago
  Deadlines across hours or days are very different than deadlines across minutes. Many strategies like going for a walk can help you solve difficult problems, but that’s not an option on a 1 minute per question interview. Which means tight interview deadlines artificially constrain your applicant pool, forcing you to pay higher wages. Beyond legal requirements, that’s why it’s a good idea to only care about what matters for the actual job.
  - dolni 5y ago
    > that’s not an option on a 1 minute per question interview. Why do you assume that all interviews are structured that way? They aren't. I have interviewed with Google and that was not how most of my interview process was conducted.
    - Retric 5y ago
      It doesn’t matter the percentage of time devoted to short term problem solving. If it’s a requirement for applicants to go through that process successfully then it’s a requirement to get the job. The core argument is really simple. Ideal teams don’t consist of 10 identical clones of the ideal worker allowing the team to work 10x as fast. They consist of multiple different skills that allow teams to finish complex tasks more than 10x as efficiently as any one person on the team could. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
- bawolff 5y ago
  > Sometimes, stuff breaks and wouldn't it be great if it got fixed in half an hour instead of four hours? If that's happening constantly, you should find a new job. That's a major red flag. Incidents should be rare at any well run org. Sure sometimes incidents happen and someone has to deal with them. At most companies that is a pretty rare occurance (unless you're on some incident team). When it does happen, different team members have different skills dealing with them - and that's ok for a rare part of the job. Additionally, for longer incidents, often the person with a slow ramp up but better understanding is more useful than the person who jumps right in without understanding. A sure way to make things worse is to panic and try to fix things without understanding what happened well enough. (Speaking as someone who has been involved in incident response in various jobs)

user-the-name 5y ago

There is time pressure, but you are also not expected to come up with a perfect, flawless solution. That is often not even interesting. The point of a good interview question is to see how a candidate works through a problem, not to see if they know the answer to an arbitrary quiz question. Giving more time doesn't give you an advantage, because the correct answer isn't what gets you points.

avianlyric 5y ago

I don't know why you would want to make time pressure a feature in your interview process. Normally it only happens because there's a fixed number of questions that people want to ask, but they're unprepared to allocate more an a hour to do so. I fail to see how creating artificial time pressure makes your interview process better at finding good candidates. It results in an environment that isn't even vaguely like actual work conditions.

Jabbles 5y ago
If I allocate more time to each interview question, then how am I supposed to judge between a candidate that completes it in half the allotted time vs one that completes it using all the time? Whether the time pressure is explicitly mentioned, it is clear (to me) that there is an implicit expectation that the faster you answer the question, the better, all other things being equal. I don't want to give the impression that I think the current standard of software engineering interviews are perfect, so if you think it can be improved, please tell me how.
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  If you want to use speed as a measure, then you can't avoid time pressure. But you don't need to use speed as a measure.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  > If I allocate more time to each interview question, then how am I supposed to judge between a candidate that completes it in half the allotted time vs one that completes it using all the time? How about you judge them on the quality of their answers? Is giving a long more detailed and nuanced answer a bad thing?