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As others point out, some of these are quite naive. (E.g. at many companies you have a large monorepo, so the "git clone" comment is silly, etc.) What really g
by t8sr 4y ago
As others point out, some of these are quite naive. (E.g. at many companies you have a large monorepo, so the "git clone" comment is silly, etc.)
What really gets me, though, is the tone. There's a nice way to probe for organizational problems like too much bureaucracy without coming across like a jerk. If someone showed this lack of self-awareness and basic social skills in an interview, I can promise they'd be a strong no hire.
- civilized 4y agoI agree that the way the answers are evaluated is too narrow and simplistic. That said, > coming across like a jerk... lack of self-awareness and basic social skills I see things very similarly, but from the other side of the table. If an organization is uncomfortable with me asking direct-but-polite questions about potentially negative aspects of working there, and asking such questions gets me labeled as a jerk, that organization is too culturally dysfunctional for me to work for.
- t8sr 4y agoThe issue is not with being direct, but with instructing the interviewer to "please list the exact steps and time estimates for each." It smacks of self-importance and arrogance, and the way it's phrased strongly suggests the author thinks they are the smartest and always right. By the way, I looked this guy up, and his experience looks like it's extremely limited to basically a couple of SMBs and some consulting. I have no idea where he gets the confidence to comment on the industry, having basically never worked in it.
- yibg 4y agoI've had this type of person on my team before. Reading through the questions and rationales I can just picture that person asking the same questions and expecting the same answers. Technically capable and a pain to work with. Everything was their way only, no compromises. If you don't agree, then you're just too dumb or inexperienced. The cost to the rest of the team is simply too high.
- civilized 4y agoI appreciate both this and the sister comment. I think it's perfectly valid to come to a new job with strong opinions, but they should be open to challenge and a discovery of limitations and context-dependence. In my line of work, people with strong opinions are very rarely encountered. The tendency is overwhelmingly towards unquestioning conformity to the status quo. As a result, foundational decisions are etched in stone and impossible to revisit, no matter how much downstream pain they cause. Personally, then, I welcome any suggestion that a person has a thoughtful preference after reflecting on alternatives. But maybe it is not that useful if it is just another form of mindless rigidity.
- saiya-jin 4y agoYeah the tone has some arrogance thats for sure. Maybe it would be a wet dream of some startup CTO but in some bigger, more stable and older corporations this would just trigger Next! response. The author is clearly experienced in very narrow set of IT reality and not much more, he would fall into promising junior category if he would skip the arrogant part. For each question, I would point out our massive set of existing rigid processes and give back immediately: how would you improve on that while still being compliant on them? Companies are not there to baby sit juniors with big egos, they have products to deliver that mostly uses IT just as part of the overall process. They like improvements, but only those that keep things working seamlessly, on budget and time.