5 ms·

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 contribute

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.
LMYahooTFY 5y ago
What would you say to someone who's starting their career and feels they would tick most if not all of those yellow flags? I have to say this is an awesome thing to be reading as within a couple of months I'll be taking on my first major project at my new employer. Valuable insight to consider as I proceed.
- ThrowawayR2 5y ago
  > "What would you say to someone who's starting their career and feels they would tick most if not all of those yellow flags?" Nothing, that's expected for a junior developer. The items on the list only become a problem when a "senior" developer does them. One of the parts of transitioning from junior to senior and beyond is learning to understand the business (or other) context you perform your craft in and shaping what you do to help the business succeed. [EDIT] When I say "help the business succeed", that may sound like management claptrap (even if it happens to be true) so I'll also point out that even if you don't give a flying hoot about the business or its goals, you still do care about understanding whether it's succeeding and profitable/effective at its goals, lest you get blindsided by a layoff or cancellation of your project.
  - LMYahooTFY 5y ago
    Thank you for your advice. I've taken it seriously. Cheers.
- deanCommie 5y ago
  None of those are yellow flags if you are starting out in your career, in fact it would be totally expected! It's only a yellow flag for a senior engineer - which in the framing of the original posting was being discussed. Someone with 7-10 years of experience, I'm imagining.
diggs 5y ago
“Someone that avoids talking about what they did, and focuses too much on "we"” This is very interesting. I naturally use “we” when discussing past products and achievements. I do this in recognition of the fact that things are very rarely designed and built in true isolation. Even principal engineers socialize their designs and thinking with colleagues, making small tweaks here and there or gaining additional confidence to move forward. “We” is absolutely not a red flag for me.
- Ma8ee 5y ago
  I agree. Maybe it's a cultural thing, but if someone talked about a big multiyear project only in terms of I, I would see that as a red flag. Either they actually did all the work themselves in isolation, but that must be because they are hard to work with, or they are taking all the credit for work done by a quite a few people in a team.
- mastazi 5y ago
  Yeah for me as well, it's just a way of recognising teamwork. If anything I would say it's the opposite, excessive "I..me..myself" can become a red flag in some cases.
- wastedhours 5y ago
  It depends on the context - but each time I've interviewed someone, the "we" is important, but the "I" is important-er. It's almost implicit that everyone works in a team to achieve big goals, but the reason I'm talking to that candidate is to hear what they did as part of that team as that's what makes a difference to the hiring.
- ThrowawayR2 5y ago
  > "Even principal engineers socialize their designs and thinking with colleagues, making small tweaks here and there or gaining additional confidence to move forward." Principal engineers know that there are appropriate times to say "we did..." and appropriate times to lean heavily into saying "I specifically did..." (while crediting others for their part, of course, but as briefly as possible) and they also know which one an interview is. "We" may not be a red flag (I appreciate a measure of humility and recognition of teamwork as well) but it must always followed up by a question about the details of what the interviewee did.
j7ake 5y ago
In science these types of questions are part of the interview (either implicit or explicit), with maybe more added emphasis on future work and vision depending on the rank of the scientist.
dockd 5y ago
* Someone who left before the project finished, or immediately after. In my experience, people leave just after the big project ships. They've been focused on a task, working hard and are usually left with "now what?". It's interesting psychology.

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.

LMYahooTFY 5y ago

What would you say to someone who's starting their career and feels they would tick most if not all of those yellow flags? I have to say this is an awesome thing to be reading as within a couple of months I'll be taking on my first major project at my new employer. Valuable insight to consider as I proceed.

ThrowawayR2 5y ago
> "What would you say to someone who's starting their career and feels they would tick most if not all of those yellow flags?" Nothing, that's expected for a junior developer. The items on the list only become a problem when a "senior" developer does them. One of the parts of transitioning from junior to senior and beyond is learning to understand the business (or other) context you perform your craft in and shaping what you do to help the business succeed. [EDIT] When I say "help the business succeed", that may sound like management claptrap (even if it happens to be true) so I'll also point out that even if you don't give a flying hoot about the business or its goals, you still do care about understanding whether it's succeeding and profitable/effective at its goals, lest you get blindsided by a layoff or cancellation of your project.
- LMYahooTFY 5y ago
  Thank you for your advice. I've taken it seriously. Cheers.
deanCommie 5y ago
None of those are yellow flags if you are starting out in your career, in fact it would be totally expected! It's only a yellow flag for a senior engineer - which in the framing of the original posting was being discussed. Someone with 7-10 years of experience, I'm imagining.

diggs 5y ago

“Someone that avoids talking about what they did, and focuses too much on "we"” This is very interesting. I naturally use “we” when discussing past products and achievements. I do this in recognition of the fact that things are very rarely designed and built in true isolation. Even principal engineers socialize their designs and thinking with colleagues, making small tweaks here and there or gaining additional confidence to move forward. “We” is absolutely not a red flag for me.

Ma8ee 5y ago
I agree. Maybe it's a cultural thing, but if someone talked about a big multiyear project only in terms of I, I would see that as a red flag. Either they actually did all the work themselves in isolation, but that must be because they are hard to work with, or they are taking all the credit for work done by a quite a few people in a team.
mastazi 5y ago
Yeah for me as well, it's just a way of recognising teamwork. If anything I would say it's the opposite, excessive "I..me..myself" can become a red flag in some cases.
wastedhours 5y ago
It depends on the context - but each time I've interviewed someone, the "we" is important, but the "I" is important-er. It's almost implicit that everyone works in a team to achieve big goals, but the reason I'm talking to that candidate is to hear what they did as part of that team as that's what makes a difference to the hiring.
ThrowawayR2 5y ago
> "Even principal engineers socialize their designs and thinking with colleagues, making small tweaks here and there or gaining additional confidence to move forward." Principal engineers know that there are appropriate times to say "we did..." and appropriate times to lean heavily into saying "I specifically did..." (while crediting others for their part, of course, but as briefly as possible) and they also know which one an interview is. "We" may not be a red flag (I appreciate a measure of humility and recognition of teamwork as well) but it must always followed up by a question about the details of what the interviewee did.

j7ake 5y ago

In science these types of questions are part of the interview (either implicit or explicit), with maybe more added emphasis on future work and vision depending on the rank of the scientist.

dockd 5y ago

* Someone who left before the project finished, or immediately after. In my experience, people leave just after the big project ships. They've been focused on a task, working hard and are usually left with "now what?". It's interesting psychology.