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She seems mad by the end. > Just imagine what companies would look like if their hiring processes filtered out this kind of charlatan instead of looking for wh

She seems mad by the end. > Just imagine what companies would look like if their hiring processes filtered out this kind of charlatan instead of looking for whether they could do some dumb coding card trick in a 45 minute interview block. I think they'd look very different, and a whole bunch of people would have to find another industry to prey upon. I would caution against hoping for a personality test that could weed out the phonies, though. "Behavioral interviews" are strange enough already, in my opinion, even if their goal might be admirable (e.g. identify the assholes). Anywhere there is money and prestige to be had, you can either keep things small or inevitably suffer the phonies.

wmf 5y ago
It seems like a leap from "person who wants to build X" to "charlatan".
- markus_zhang 5y ago
  One probably spent too much time debugging someone's shit mountain code base, the original author got to enjoy bog bonuses and bragging about X in conferences and getting hired by similar companies to build another X.
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  > I will now point out that whether X makes it to production can become disconnected from the notion of whether X actually belongs in production. In one outcome, it's brilliantly executed and things grow. But, this is about the downsides, and in that scenario, it's a stinking pile of garbage and needs to be thrown out, but it gets forced in, anyway. [emphasis added] She's left the positive case out for the charlatan comment, they wouldn't be charlatans (in this instance at least).
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    The guy building X isn't a charlatan in any case. The charlatan is the guy selling X, which is presumably the guy who hired the guy who builds it. If you tell me to build you a system you don't need, and I do, and you insist on using it against everyone else's better judgment, how did I become a charlatan?
    - lazyasciiart 5y ago
      Because if you're the expert on X, you can either stand up and agree with everyone that building X is not the right decision, or you can smile and nod and say yea, we should totally build our own X, it's a great idea. If you say no, it won't happen.
      - em-bee 5y ago
        and they loose the job they were just hired for. because the more likely situation is that the newly hired expert on X is the only one realizing that X is wrong for this case.
        ed_elliott_asc 5y ago
        If you know you were being hired for one specific task shouldn’t you have talked about the fit before you start? I would say that is reasonable.
        dgb23 5y ago
        It's not always reasonable, because in the general case you don't know until later right? You discover the issues at some point when already working. Also you're implying that there is no economic dependence which is not always the case.
        lazyasciiart 5y ago
        The ones who lie to keep their job are the ones who get called 'charlatan'. Seems fair.
        em-bee 5y ago
        except they are most likely only being asked if they can build X (which they can) and not if X is appropriate here. so at the most they are lying by omission, but more realistically they are opting not to become a whistleblower.
      - 5y ago
- ThrowawayR2 5y ago
  We're not talking about some ordinary rank-and-file engineer here. The situation Rachel is talking about where the person is usually well-known among a significant fraction of their industry for their expertise in X. That level of seniority (principal level or beyond) is supposed to imply that they also know when -not- to use X and the responsibility to speak up, but sometimes either their belief in X is too strong ("When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.") or, in some cases I suspect, the monetary and career-enhancing incentives are high enough to overcome any unease they may have misapplying X. Then you get this situation where a mandate comes down for X is used where X is not really the appropriate thing to do.
  - jldugger 5y ago
    > The situation Rachel is talking about where the person is well-known among a significant fraction of their industry for their expertise in X. I don't know the specifics of Rachel's parable, if any. But by and large, the people who are most well known in industry for 'expertise in X' are the devrel / tech evangelists whose job it is to go on stage and be an expert, for one hour at a time (and perhaps a few extra hours on the show floor surrounding the conference). Well, the on-stage demos they execute only have to live as long as the lecture, and you don't have to fix bugs so much as rework the preso to avoid them. It's a long march from a proof of concept to production readiness, and I've seen one or two stories on HN about people who got burned hiring high profile devrels to lead an infra buildout. > sometimes either their belief in X is too strong ... or, ... the monetary and career-enhancing incentives are high enough to overcome any unease they may have One scenario I've seen play out: you hire a core maintainer for a product you depend on, but should probably be transitioning away from. The maintainer you typically don't have comparable expertise in anything else, so they might as well apply for unemployment before telling your boss you recommend against it. Which I suppose is covered in 'monetary incentives' but with tinge of regret about the whole thing, especially if hired away from some a more stable role.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      You also have those whose consulting career is fully based on being 'experts in X', being on stage doing talks on X, is the mean to sell themselves as 'experts in X', alongside writting books about how cool X happens to be no matter what.
- fuzzfactor 5y ago
  It doesn't have to be a malicious charlatan to pounce on value that has already been built, without them having actual consideration for future value that should be more rewarding and more sensibly worth working toward instead. The corporate-climber-who-can't-build can often do this and nothing else, and they can sometimes even subconsciously exhibit some of the behaviors that end up with the same outcome, and it often can actually be unintentional.
deanCommie 5y ago
Honestly, I don't think it's that hard. I assume we're talking about fairly senior candidates here. "Tell me about the most complicated projects you contributed a significant part of the design, implementation to, or ideally both." Start with the problem they aimed to solve. Probe for how they chose the solution, and what alternatives they considered. Get into the details of specifically what artifacts they produced, and if part of a team what role they played. Get them to describe the solution in technical detail. Probe into trade-offs they had to make or compromises. Ask what aspects they found novel or innovative. Once they finish describing the system, ask if it was successful, and how they measured it. If they were around after launch, how did they operate it, monitor it, what unexpected challenges they encountered that they didn't foresee. By the way, all along it doesn't matter if the domain or technology they are describing to you is totally different from your own experience. A senior+ engineer should be able to explain their domain to someone equally technical in a different domain with some competency. Finally, since you now understand the problem space and the solution yourself, ask them "How would you scale this out to 10-100X" (by some metric). Altogether, this is a dense 40-45 minutes extremely well spent. And it weeds out the phonies and charlatans. Some yellow flags that individually aren't a problem but when you start seeing multiple of them turn into a red flag: * Someone who didn't question the requirements and just accepted them from upstream. * Someone that wrote a lot of code on the project, but didn't make any of the tough decisions. * Someone that avoids talking about what they did, and focuses too much on "we" * Someone who did all the initial decisions but did none of the actual implementation work. * Someone who describes how X solved the problem, but you realize that's the only option they really considered * Someone who left before the project finished, or immediately after. * Someone who isn't sure if the project was a success or didn't see it their responsibility to find out.
- cbsks 5y ago
  As someone who just went through a dozen interviews, this line of questioning is by far my most favorite one to receive.
- pstuart 5y ago
  This cannot be upvoted enough.
pm90 5y ago
Filtering out the assholes is an accepted policy today but it didn’t just happen. Assholes were accepted and that sort of attitude wasn’t discouraged, until people started speaking up about it and others realized they probably had seen that dynamic. I see this article as a step in extending the anti-asshole policy to people who engage in this sort of behavior. Can I tell you a perfect personality test that will always work and never fail? Absolutely not. Even the anti asshole processes don’t always work. But it seems a good thing that this sort of behavior is at least being described and reported on.
- taurath 5y ago
  Every company that I’ve been in that had an anti asshole policy has meant that they don’t tolerate assholes at the line engineer level, since that’s reserved for management, especially director and up. I guess it’s better, but the proof is in what the management team looks like.
JeremyNT 5y ago
> She seems mad by the end. You'll see this sort of things a lot from Rachel's writing, but I tend to write it off as a stylistic choice. She kind of channels the BOFH [0] sometimes, I think :) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_Operator_From_Hell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_Operator_From_Hell

wmf 5y ago

It seems like a leap from "person who wants to build X" to "charlatan".

markus_zhang 5y ago
One probably spent too much time debugging someone's shit mountain code base, the original author got to enjoy bog bonuses and bragging about X in conferences and getting hired by similar companies to build another X.
Jtsummers 5y ago
> I will now point out that whether X makes it to production can become disconnected from the notion of whether X actually belongs in production. In one outcome, it's brilliantly executed and things grow. But, this is about the downsides, and in that scenario, it's a stinking pile of garbage and needs to be thrown out, but it gets forced in, anyway. [emphasis added] She's left the positive case out for the charlatan comment, they wouldn't be charlatans (in this instance at least).
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  The guy building X isn't a charlatan in any case. The charlatan is the guy selling X, which is presumably the guy who hired the guy who builds it. If you tell me to build you a system you don't need, and I do, and you insist on using it against everyone else's better judgment, how did I become a charlatan?
  - lazyasciiart 5y ago
    Because if you're the expert on X, you can either stand up and agree with everyone that building X is not the right decision, or you can smile and nod and say yea, we should totally build our own X, it's a great idea. If you say no, it won't happen.
    - em-bee 5y ago
      and they loose the job they were just hired for. because the more likely situation is that the newly hired expert on X is the only one realizing that X is wrong for this case.
      - ed_elliott_asc 5y ago
        If you know you were being hired for one specific task shouldn’t you have talked about the fit before you start? I would say that is reasonable.
        dgb23 5y ago
        It's not always reasonable, because in the general case you don't know until later right? You discover the issues at some point when already working. Also you're implying that there is no economic dependence which is not always the case.
      - lazyasciiart 5y ago
        The ones who lie to keep their job are the ones who get called 'charlatan'. Seems fair.
        em-bee 5y ago
        except they are most likely only being asked if they can build X (which they can) and not if X is appropriate here. so at the most they are lying by omission, but more realistically they are opting not to become a whistleblower.
    - 5y ago
ThrowawayR2 5y ago
We're not talking about some ordinary rank-and-file engineer here. The situation Rachel is talking about where the person is usually well-known among a significant fraction of their industry for their expertise in X. That level of seniority (principal level or beyond) is supposed to imply that they also know when -not- to use X and the responsibility to speak up, but sometimes either their belief in X is too strong ("When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.") or, in some cases I suspect, the monetary and career-enhancing incentives are high enough to overcome any unease they may have misapplying X. Then you get this situation where a mandate comes down for X is used where X is not really the appropriate thing to do.
- jldugger 5y ago
  > The situation Rachel is talking about where the person is well-known among a significant fraction of their industry for their expertise in X. I don't know the specifics of Rachel's parable, if any. But by and large, the people who are most well known in industry for 'expertise in X' are the devrel / tech evangelists whose job it is to go on stage and be an expert, for one hour at a time (and perhaps a few extra hours on the show floor surrounding the conference). Well, the on-stage demos they execute only have to live as long as the lecture, and you don't have to fix bugs so much as rework the preso to avoid them. It's a long march from a proof of concept to production readiness, and I've seen one or two stories on HN about people who got burned hiring high profile devrels to lead an infra buildout. > sometimes either their belief in X is too strong ... or, ... the monetary and career-enhancing incentives are high enough to overcome any unease they may have One scenario I've seen play out: you hire a core maintainer for a product you depend on, but should probably be transitioning away from. The maintainer you typically don't have comparable expertise in anything else, so they might as well apply for unemployment before telling your boss you recommend against it. Which I suppose is covered in 'monetary incentives' but with tinge of regret about the whole thing, especially if hired away from some a more stable role.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    You also have those whose consulting career is fully based on being 'experts in X', being on stage doing talks on X, is the mean to sell themselves as 'experts in X', alongside writting books about how cool X happens to be no matter what.
fuzzfactor 5y ago
It doesn't have to be a malicious charlatan to pounce on value that has already been built, without them having actual consideration for future value that should be more rewarding and more sensibly worth working toward instead. The corporate-climber-who-can't-build can often do this and nothing else, and they can sometimes even subconsciously exhibit some of the behaviors that end up with the same outcome, and it often can actually be unintentional.

deanCommie 5y ago

Honestly, I don't think it's that hard. I assume we're talking about fairly senior candidates here. "Tell me about the most complicated projects you contributed a significant part of the design, implementation to, or ideally both." Start with the problem they aimed to solve. Probe for how they chose the solution, and what alternatives they considered. Get into the details of specifically what artifacts they produced, and if part of a team what role they played. Get them to describe the solution in technical detail. Probe into trade-offs they had to make or compromises. Ask what aspects they found novel or innovative. Once they finish describing the system, ask if it was successful, and how they measured it. If they were around after launch, how did they operate it, monitor it, what unexpected challenges they encountered that they didn't foresee. By the way, all along it doesn't matter if the domain or technology they are describing to you is totally different from your own experience. A senior+ engineer should be able to explain their domain to someone equally technical in a different domain with some competency. Finally, since you now understand the problem space and the solution yourself, ask them "How would you scale this out to 10-100X" (by some metric). Altogether, this is a dense 40-45 minutes extremely well spent. And it weeds out the phonies and charlatans. Some yellow flags that individually aren't a problem but when you start seeing multiple of them turn into a red flag: * Someone who didn't question the requirements and just accepted them from upstream. * Someone that wrote a lot of code on the project, but didn't make any of the tough decisions. * Someone that avoids talking about what they did, and focuses too much on "we" * Someone who did all the initial decisions but did none of the actual implementation work. * Someone who describes how X solved the problem, but you realize that's the only option they really considered * Someone who left before the project finished, or immediately after. * Someone who isn't sure if the project was a success or didn't see it their responsibility to find out.

cbsks 5y ago
As someone who just went through a dozen interviews, this line of questioning is by far my most favorite one to receive.
pstuart 5y ago
This cannot be upvoted enough.

pm90 5y ago

Filtering out the assholes is an accepted policy today but it didn’t just happen. Assholes were accepted and that sort of attitude wasn’t discouraged, until people started speaking up about it and others realized they probably had seen that dynamic. I see this article as a step in extending the anti-asshole policy to people who engage in this sort of behavior. Can I tell you a perfect personality test that will always work and never fail? Absolutely not. Even the anti asshole processes don’t always work. But it seems a good thing that this sort of behavior is at least being described and reported on.

taurath 5y ago
Every company that I’ve been in that had an anti asshole policy has meant that they don’t tolerate assholes at the line engineer level, since that’s reserved for management, especially director and up. I guess it’s better, but the proof is in what the management team looks like.

JeremyNT 5y ago

> She seems mad by the end. You'll see this sort of things a lot from Rachel's writing, but I tend to write it off as a stylistic choice. She kind of channels the BOFH [0] sometimes, I think :) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_Operator_From_Hell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_Operator_From_Hell