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It's obviously unpopular, but the brutal reality is that the vast majority of candidates don't panic during interviews and can in fact demonstrate their skills

It's obviously unpopular, but the brutal reality is that the vast majority of candidates don't panic during interviews and can in fact demonstrate their skills when asked. I've done lots of interviewing and you aren't going to convince me or anyone else actually that breakdowns in an interview are completely irrelevant, especially when all you've been asked to do is demonstrate that you're actually qualified. It's also frankly a bit insulting to people who learned to control their emotions and work under pressure to expect that this behaviour be ignored in others who never learned to do it.

weatherlite 4y ago
> the brutal reality is that the vast majority of candidates don't panic during interviews and can in fact demonstrate their skills For a given job most candidates actually don't get hired, often because they are not a good fit but many times because they are too nervous to think straight.
- native_samples 4y ago
  I've done hundreds of interviews and that is only very rarely a problem. Normally candidates aren't nervous, but just can't program. They don't have the knowledge, they're flummoxed by basic errors from their compiler/interpreter even when they got to pick what language they used, they're asked to write something (anything) in a language they advertise knowing on their CV and then admit they don't actually know it, etc.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > Normally candidates aren't nervous, but just can't program. How do you know their level of nervousness? You can't read minds.
lapcat 4y ago
> the vast majority of candidates don't panic during interviews and can in fact demonstrate their skills when asked Is this actually true? It's been widely and frequently claimed over the years that "199 out of 200 applicants for every programming job can't write code at all. I repeat: they can't write any code whatsoever." https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ > frankly a bit insulting to people who learned to control their emotions It's frankly a bit ignorant of human psychology to think that people can just "learn" to control their emotions. We're humans, not robots. Yes, you could go to a professional therapist, if you have both the time and money; it could take a lot of both. But if many people have to go to a therapist for the sole purpose of dealing with audition-style coding interviews, then maybe there's something seriously wrong with audition-style coding interviews. It's already bizarre that candidates with many years of experience in the field have to study intensely for job interviews. > and work under pressure I explained at length in the link from my previous comment that working under pressure is entirely different from interview pressure.
- native_samples 4y ago
  By "demonstrating their skills" I meant demonstrate to what extent they have skills, not that they were all very skilled or could do the work. They were nonetheless able to prove what they did know. I've done hundreds of interviews as the interviewer. I've had people seriously panic maybe once or twice in that entire time. I've heard occasionally that the rates for other interviewers were higher (but still low), if that's the case then they just sucked at interviewing. Where did therapists come into it? I've never heard of anyone going to a therapist to pass coding interviews, that would be ridiculous. Learning to control your emotions is something people are meant to learn as children. It's a standard skill you're supposed to have to interact with others, like basic politeness. If you're having breakdowns as adults then it's expected that the situation is really intense, like the death of a loved one, breakdown in a relationship etc. Job interviewing is a normal part of life and shouldn't be as stressful as those things. "It's already bizarre that candidates with many years of experience in the field have to study intensely for job interviews." The whole "cramming leetcode" thing is way overblown, or possibly a modern feedback loop in which crammers are making it harder to detect genuine skill and experience. Again I've done a lot of interviews and nobody ever mentioned having to prepare for them. That idea seems to be a relatively recent idea (last ~10 years or so) and is probably a result of so many people competing for very highly paid jobs at a small number of firms. Normal software jobs should ask people to demonstrate their skills, but it shouldn't be something that requires exam-like prep for any working programmer.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > I've had people seriously panic maybe once or twice in that entire time. I think you're making too much of the example of the candidate crying. That is indeed an outlier case, not the norm. But the crying case is an undeniable sign that job candidates can get extremely anxious during an interview, in a way that affects their performance. The issue isn't "breakdowns" per se, the issue is that coding tests are testing anxiety level rather than skill level. Ironically, most job candidates are in fact "controlling their emotions", as you say: they may show no outward sign of breakdown or panic, but on the inside, their mind and stomach are churning heavily, and this makes it difficult to perform at their normal level. Everyone is trying to act calm and collected during an interview, but often it's merely an act, and they're actually not calm and collected at all. What you perceive from the outside as incompetence may be a whole different story on the inside for the candidate. https://www.engr.ncsu.edu/news/2020/11/11/tech-sector-job-interviews-assess-anxiety-not-software-skills-2/ https://www.engr.ncsu.edu/news/2020/11/11/tech-sector-job-in... Anxiety isn't all or nothing. There's a wide spectrum between totally calm and crying breakdown. When there's a crying breakdown, it's easy to recognize, but anxiety is not so easy to recognize if there's not a breakdown. > I've done a lot of interviews and nobody ever mentioned having to prepare for them. Why would they mention it, even if they did prepare? > That idea seems to be a relatively recent idea (last ~10 years or so) and is probably a result of so many people competing for very highly paid jobs at a small number of firms. Regardless, we're living in the present now, under current conditions, not living in the past, so for the purposes of getting a job, it doesn't really matter when the idea originated.

weatherlite 4y ago

> the brutal reality is that the vast majority of candidates don't panic during interviews and can in fact demonstrate their skills For a given job most candidates actually don't get hired, often because they are not a good fit but many times because they are too nervous to think straight.

native_samples 4y ago
I've done hundreds of interviews and that is only very rarely a problem. Normally candidates aren't nervous, but just can't program. They don't have the knowledge, they're flummoxed by basic errors from their compiler/interpreter even when they got to pick what language they used, they're asked to write something (anything) in a language they advertise knowing on their CV and then admit they don't actually know it, etc.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > Normally candidates aren't nervous, but just can't program. How do you know their level of nervousness? You can't read minds.

lapcat 4y ago

> the vast majority of candidates don't panic during interviews and can in fact demonstrate their skills when asked Is this actually true? It's been widely and frequently claimed over the years that "199 out of 200 applicants for every programming job can't write code at all. I repeat: they can't write any code whatsoever." https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ > frankly a bit insulting to people who learned to control their emotions It's frankly a bit ignorant of human psychology to think that people can just "learn" to control their emotions. We're humans, not robots. Yes, you could go to a professional therapist, if you have both the time and money; it could take a lot of both. But if many people have to go to a therapist for the sole purpose of dealing with audition-style coding interviews, then maybe there's something seriously wrong with audition-style coding interviews. It's already bizarre that candidates with many years of experience in the field have to study intensely for job interviews. > and work under pressure I explained at length in the link from my previous comment that working under pressure is entirely different from interview pressure.

native_samples 4y ago
By "demonstrating their skills" I meant demonstrate to what extent they have skills, not that they were all very skilled or could do the work. They were nonetheless able to prove what they did know. I've done hundreds of interviews as the interviewer. I've had people seriously panic maybe once or twice in that entire time. I've heard occasionally that the rates for other interviewers were higher (but still low), if that's the case then they just sucked at interviewing. Where did therapists come into it? I've never heard of anyone going to a therapist to pass coding interviews, that would be ridiculous. Learning to control your emotions is something people are meant to learn as children. It's a standard skill you're supposed to have to interact with others, like basic politeness. If you're having breakdowns as adults then it's expected that the situation is really intense, like the death of a loved one, breakdown in a relationship etc. Job interviewing is a normal part of life and shouldn't be as stressful as those things. "It's already bizarre that candidates with many years of experience in the field have to study intensely for job interviews." The whole "cramming leetcode" thing is way overblown, or possibly a modern feedback loop in which crammers are making it harder to detect genuine skill and experience. Again I've done a lot of interviews and nobody ever mentioned having to prepare for them. That idea seems to be a relatively recent idea (last ~10 years or so) and is probably a result of so many people competing for very highly paid jobs at a small number of firms. Normal software jobs should ask people to demonstrate their skills, but it shouldn't be something that requires exam-like prep for any working programmer.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > I've had people seriously panic maybe once or twice in that entire time. I think you're making too much of the example of the candidate crying. That is indeed an outlier case, not the norm. But the crying case is an undeniable sign that job candidates can get extremely anxious during an interview, in a way that affects their performance. The issue isn't "breakdowns" per se, the issue is that coding tests are testing anxiety level rather than skill level. Ironically, most job candidates are in fact "controlling their emotions", as you say: they may show no outward sign of breakdown or panic, but on the inside, their mind and stomach are churning heavily, and this makes it difficult to perform at their normal level. Everyone is trying to act calm and collected during an interview, but often it's merely an act, and they're actually not calm and collected at all. What you perceive from the outside as incompetence may be a whole different story on the inside for the candidate. https://www.engr.ncsu.edu/news/2020/11/11/tech-sector-job-interviews-assess-anxiety-not-software-skills-2/ https://www.engr.ncsu.edu/news/2020/11/11/tech-sector-job-in... Anxiety isn't all or nothing. There's a wide spectrum between totally calm and crying breakdown. When there's a crying breakdown, it's easy to recognize, but anxiety is not so easy to recognize if there's not a breakdown. > I've done a lot of interviews and nobody ever mentioned having to prepare for them. Why would they mention it, even if they did prepare? > That idea seems to be a relatively recent idea (last ~10 years or so) and is probably a result of so many people competing for very highly paid jobs at a small number of firms. Regardless, we're living in the present now, under current conditions, not living in the past, so for the purposes of getting a job, it doesn't really matter when the idea originated.