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The challenge with this approach as that many very competent people are not allowed to discuss their prior work in that level of detail. More practical variants

The challenge with this approach as that many very competent people are not allowed to discuss their prior work in that level of detail. More practical variants of this approach use a straw man software design problem to talk to that will exercise diverse areas of experience.

swiftcoder 5y ago
Yep, 100% this. Particularly if you've worked for big firms in the past, those NDAs do not mess around.
twic 5y ago
I do experience-based interviewing, and i have never encountered this problem. The great majority of the time, people are able to talk about anything. Sometimes, there are sensitive parts of prior work, but a candidate can just talk around those bits and focus on the rest. Even if someone had been working somewhere super-secret, if they aren't a junior, they have other experience to talk about. If all your career experience so far has been at the NSA, yeah, you might want to do a side project before looking for work.
- nostrebored 5y ago
  I’ve worked at some large companies and would say this is wrong. I can’t talk about most of my best examples because they’re still roadmap items.
  - ctvo 5y ago
    You can’t remove the identifying details and talk about the technical challenge and usage in a generic sense? Your system or software is that specific? Can you give a now public example?
    - nostrebored 5y ago
      I can, and that’s usually what I do, but there are identifying details about the very specific domain which AWS only has a single product in. So I can talk about architecting a system, about customer feedback and redesigns, but I can’t talk about work I did that will span another three years. I think at FAANG it’s usually fine — most people have good enough examples even without their full repertoire. But at mid enterprise or F500 companies I could see this being a bit impactful.
      - ctvo 5y ago
        > I can, and that’s usually what I do, but there are identifying details about the very specific domain which AWS only has a single product in. Sorry, to be clear, I mean can you give an example of something you couldn't use as an example, but is now public. I've worked at GAMMA, and agree, it's very doable to turn my work generic and talk about it in-depth, compare it to alternatives, etc. so that was the main driver in asking for an example.
  - b20000 5y ago
    it is not less wrong than timed leetcode BS interviews
- scottLobster 5y ago
  As someone who's done classified work, the general guidance we got is that we can speak in generalities. So I can't say what the code specifically does or who it's for, but I can talk about how I worked on a c++ engine wrapped in a Java server that was responsible for coordinating a large group of non-homogeneous assets, as well as various architectural details (what libraries did we use, database, messaging setup, etc). So it's not like I have nothing to talk about in an interview, plus the fact that I can't get too specific adds mystique. It's kinda fun, because in my experience there's an assumption most engineers/engineering managers make about what I've worked on from that first statement, particularly if they know where I work, and it's actually not that. :)
- kirso 5y ago
  Also, I would find it weird if a person never worked on any side projects or tinkering in the free time to discuss the things above.
b20000 5y ago
yeah, and some very competent people have no time or interest in timed coding tests and know that great software is not built that way. if you have been through a CS program you have worked on probably at least 10 projects. and then there are your personal projects. if you have any experience you can talk about at least some of these apart from the stuff under NDA. so, this approach is much better than timed coding interviews and is a much more fair system as it rewards and takes into account experience.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  if you have been through a CS program you have worked on probably at least 10 projects That's fine for a new graduate, but many of us are decades out of college. What we did then has almost zero relevance to jobs we might seek today.
  - b20000 5y ago
    the same goes for leetcode interviews. the key difference is that you don’t need to prepare to talk about your own projects. or at least much less. and you are probably working on stuff after hours anyway.
FigurativeVoid 5y ago
This follows what I think of as the best technical interview I ever had. It was for a more junior role, but it was pretty good. Here's a basic straw man rails controller. There are a few things wrong with it. Apply suggestions. It was nice.

swiftcoder 5y ago

Yep, 100% this. Particularly if you've worked for big firms in the past, those NDAs do not mess around.

twic 5y ago

I do experience-based interviewing, and i have never encountered this problem. The great majority of the time, people are able to talk about anything. Sometimes, there are sensitive parts of prior work, but a candidate can just talk around those bits and focus on the rest. Even if someone had been working somewhere super-secret, if they aren't a junior, they have other experience to talk about. If all your career experience so far has been at the NSA, yeah, you might want to do a side project before looking for work.

nostrebored 5y ago
I’ve worked at some large companies and would say this is wrong. I can’t talk about most of my best examples because they’re still roadmap items.
- ctvo 5y ago
  You can’t remove the identifying details and talk about the technical challenge and usage in a generic sense? Your system or software is that specific? Can you give a now public example?
  - nostrebored 5y ago
    I can, and that’s usually what I do, but there are identifying details about the very specific domain which AWS only has a single product in. So I can talk about architecting a system, about customer feedback and redesigns, but I can’t talk about work I did that will span another three years. I think at FAANG it’s usually fine — most people have good enough examples even without their full repertoire. But at mid enterprise or F500 companies I could see this being a bit impactful.
    - ctvo 5y ago
      > I can, and that’s usually what I do, but there are identifying details about the very specific domain which AWS only has a single product in. Sorry, to be clear, I mean can you give an example of something you couldn't use as an example, but is now public. I've worked at GAMMA, and agree, it's very doable to turn my work generic and talk about it in-depth, compare it to alternatives, etc. so that was the main driver in asking for an example.
- b20000 5y ago
  it is not less wrong than timed leetcode BS interviews
scottLobster 5y ago
As someone who's done classified work, the general guidance we got is that we can speak in generalities. So I can't say what the code specifically does or who it's for, but I can talk about how I worked on a c++ engine wrapped in a Java server that was responsible for coordinating a large group of non-homogeneous assets, as well as various architectural details (what libraries did we use, database, messaging setup, etc). So it's not like I have nothing to talk about in an interview, plus the fact that I can't get too specific adds mystique. It's kinda fun, because in my experience there's an assumption most engineers/engineering managers make about what I've worked on from that first statement, particularly if they know where I work, and it's actually not that. :)
kirso 5y ago
Also, I would find it weird if a person never worked on any side projects or tinkering in the free time to discuss the things above.

b20000 5y ago

yeah, and some very competent people have no time or interest in timed coding tests and know that great software is not built that way. if you have been through a CS program you have worked on probably at least 10 projects. and then there are your personal projects. if you have any experience you can talk about at least some of these apart from the stuff under NDA. so, this approach is much better than timed coding interviews and is a much more fair system as it rewards and takes into account experience.

alistairSH 5y ago
if you have been through a CS program you have worked on probably at least 10 projects That's fine for a new graduate, but many of us are decades out of college. What we did then has almost zero relevance to jobs we might seek today.
- b20000 5y ago
  the same goes for leetcode interviews. the key difference is that you don’t need to prepare to talk about your own projects. or at least much less. and you are probably working on stuff after hours anyway.

FigurativeVoid 5y ago

This follows what I think of as the best technical interview I ever had. It was for a more junior role, but it was pretty good. Here's a basic straw man rails controller. There are a few things wrong with it. Apply suggestions. It was nice.