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It sounds like you're misevaluating your technical interview performance. You can feel like you're "bombing" an interview, while still performing above expecta

It sounds like you're misevaluating your technical interview performance. You can feel like you're "bombing" an interview, while still performing above expectation. Some interviewers ask hard technical questions, don't expect most candidates to complete them within the allotted time, and give "hire" recommendations for some (but of course not all) that don't.

antihero 4y ago
I think a good interview puts you in a position where you are struggling and out of your expertise - being able to demonstrate you have a solution for a bunch of stuff is less important than being able to demonstrate how you do when you don’t know and have to figure it out.
- FabHK 4y ago
  As a rule, when interviewing, I want to get to the boundary of a candidate's knowledge quickly. Questions they ace provide not much information (once it is established that they ace them), questions where they're totally out of their depth neither. A bit provides maximum information when the chances for 0/1 are fifty/fifty. So, agree with the sentiment > a good interview puts you in a position where you are struggling and out of your expertise as long as you are still at the boundary of your expertise, and have a realistic chance to make some progress.
  - Ntrails 4y ago
    > Questions they ace provide not much information (once it is established that they ace them), questions where they're totally out of their depth neither. Agreed. The aim, for me, is to watch someone (try to) solve a problem and communicate about it. Ideally I'd like the question to rely on some previously unknown concept to see them pick up a new idea and run with it.
- sylens 4y ago
  One of the best interview questions I ever had started with the interviewer asking me a fairly routine technical question, to which I gave a standard and acceptable answer. He then said, "Okay but what if I took away your ability to do X, Y, and Z - how would that change things?" He did that a few more times in different variations to really see how my answers would change especially as the tools/processes I would be forced to use started to stray from what I knew well.
- mikelevins 4y ago
  In the general case, maybe you're right. In my specific case, "struggling" and "out of your expertise" doesn't describe it. It doesn't matter whether your question deals with my expertise or not; if it's technical and it requires me to actually think about it, I will be unable to answer in an interview setting. My mind will be completely blank. Now, that's just me. Maybe I'm completely unique. Maybe there aren't any other programmers like me, and maybe nobody has to care about my individual quirks. I don't have to care about them, either, because there seem to be enough people in the world who want to hire me. The only attention I need to pay to it is avoiding technical interviews to the extent that I can.
mikelevins 4y ago
I can see why it sounds that way. Let me supply some context. I cannot answer any question in conversation with a stranger unless the answer is something I happen to know off the top of my head, or the question is about what I can see or feel or remember in the moment. It's related to a general sort of cognitive disability I have that shows up in several other ways. For example, if I'm driving and you engage me in conversation, we will get lost. Every time. If I'm playing a multiplayer game with voice chat, and people are talking to me, I will lose. There are just certain cognitive activities that I cannot combine successfully. The presence of a stranger in conversation forcibly occupies all of my attention. I am unable to think about anything other than interpreting the stranger's utterances and preparing my own. If I try to, for example, answer questions about FizzBuzz that require me to actually think about how things work, my mind goes completely blank. "I'm trying to think, but nothing happens." I presume that in each case where I received an offer, it was because the team had information from other channels that made me attractive. I know it for a fact in a couple of cases. So in recent years I've mostly relied on those other channels, and just skipped the so-called technical interview. All it's going to tell you about me is that I can't do what you want me to in a technical interview.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- benreesman 4y ago
  This is the best argument I’ve heard against whiteboard / leetcode interviews. A lot of people have trouble talking and coding at the same time, it doesn’t make them less smart.
  - corrral 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure choking is behind most of the "LOL I caught a faker" stories from interviewers. I think it's far more common than people who've somehow been employed multiple places and can "talk the talk" but can't actually handle a for-loop. Most of them are just choking, under a very particular kind of pressure that's pretty much only ever encountered in interviews[0] and certain academic situations. Like, there's the trope of the kid being called to the blackboard and not being able to solve some trivial problem even though they're not an idiot—and it's based in reality. IDK why we assume that reaction must be rare among adults. [0] In certain kinds of tech interviews, to be specific. Somehow most of the rest of the white-collar and professional world gets by just fine without these kinds of hazing rituals.

antihero 4y ago

I think a good interview puts you in a position where you are struggling and out of your expertise - being able to demonstrate you have a solution for a bunch of stuff is less important than being able to demonstrate how you do when you don’t know and have to figure it out.

FabHK 4y ago
As a rule, when interviewing, I want to get to the boundary of a candidate's knowledge quickly. Questions they ace provide not much information (once it is established that they ace them), questions where they're totally out of their depth neither. A bit provides maximum information when the chances for 0/1 are fifty/fifty. So, agree with the sentiment > a good interview puts you in a position where you are struggling and out of your expertise as long as you are still at the boundary of your expertise, and have a realistic chance to make some progress.
- Ntrails 4y ago
  > Questions they ace provide not much information (once it is established that they ace them), questions where they're totally out of their depth neither. Agreed. The aim, for me, is to watch someone (try to) solve a problem and communicate about it. Ideally I'd like the question to rely on some previously unknown concept to see them pick up a new idea and run with it.
sylens 4y ago
One of the best interview questions I ever had started with the interviewer asking me a fairly routine technical question, to which I gave a standard and acceptable answer. He then said, "Okay but what if I took away your ability to do X, Y, and Z - how would that change things?" He did that a few more times in different variations to really see how my answers would change especially as the tools/processes I would be forced to use started to stray from what I knew well.
mikelevins 4y ago
In the general case, maybe you're right. In my specific case, "struggling" and "out of your expertise" doesn't describe it. It doesn't matter whether your question deals with my expertise or not; if it's technical and it requires me to actually think about it, I will be unable to answer in an interview setting. My mind will be completely blank. Now, that's just me. Maybe I'm completely unique. Maybe there aren't any other programmers like me, and maybe nobody has to care about my individual quirks. I don't have to care about them, either, because there seem to be enough people in the world who want to hire me. The only attention I need to pay to it is avoiding technical interviews to the extent that I can.

mikelevins 4y ago

I can see why it sounds that way. Let me supply some context. I cannot answer any question in conversation with a stranger unless the answer is something I happen to know off the top of my head, or the question is about what I can see or feel or remember in the moment. It's related to a general sort of cognitive disability I have that shows up in several other ways. For example, if I'm driving and you engage me in conversation, we will get lost. Every time. If I'm playing a multiplayer game with voice chat, and people are talking to me, I will lose. There are just certain cognitive activities that I cannot combine successfully. The presence of a stranger in conversation forcibly occupies all of my attention. I am unable to think about anything other than interpreting the stranger's utterances and preparing my own. If I try to, for example, answer questions about FizzBuzz that require me to actually think about how things work, my mind goes completely blank. "I'm trying to think, but nothing happens." I presume that in each case where I received an offer, it was because the team had information from other channels that made me attractive. I know it for a fact in a couple of cases. So in recent years I've mostly relied on those other channels, and just skipped the so-called technical interview. All it's going to tell you about me is that I can't do what you want me to in a technical interview.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
benreesman 4y ago
This is the best argument I’ve heard against whiteboard / leetcode interviews. A lot of people have trouble talking and coding at the same time, it doesn’t make them less smart.
- corrral 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure choking is behind most of the "LOL I caught a faker" stories from interviewers. I think it's far more common than people who've somehow been employed multiple places and can "talk the talk" but can't actually handle a for-loop. Most of them are just choking, under a very particular kind of pressure that's pretty much only ever encountered in interviews[0] and certain academic situations. Like, there's the trope of the kid being called to the blackboard and not being able to solve some trivial problem even though they're not an idiot—and it's based in reality. IDK why we assume that reaction must be rare among adults. [0] In certain kinds of tech interviews, to be specific. Somehow most of the rest of the white-collar and professional world gets by just fine without these kinds of hazing rituals.