4 ms·

One of the things I learned in the classical music world is that the things we ask people to do in auditions–play the hardest parts of all the most difficult or

One of the things I learned in the classical music world is that the things we ask people to do in auditions–play the hardest parts of all the most difficult orchestral music without any context–is really creating a new problem that doesn't need to exist. And in my experience listening to auditions over the last several decades, what you have now is a bunch of musicians who can only do what's on the test. When you try to plug them into an orchestra, they are completely fucked. My experience interviewing and hiring tech people is that this is one of the worst possible approaches. Anyone who needed to could figure this out. It's not relevant. What you need to figure out in an interview is if the person is curious enough to find the answer. I don't ask for code or algos in my interviews. I ask about the person. What's your favorite programming language? Why is it your favorite? What do you not like about it? What's the project you are most proud of? What was hard about it? What made you happy? What did you find challenging about that project? These are 100% totally humane questions that tell you everything you could possibly need to know about a candidate in about a half hour. Maybe less. If you can't figure out if this person is technically competent from this set of questions then you aren't competent to interview or hire. Interviews don't have to be only about how good you are at interviews. They could be about trying to understand if the person would be good at the job and fit in well with the team.

wpietri 3y ago
I think your approach is fine, but I should mention that it will, like any interview approach, misfire with some people. Episodic recall and emotional recognition are both talents that vary across the population. If I want to do well at an interview like this, I will have to spend a bunch of time in advance refreshing my memory of various projects I have worked on so that I can simulate a neurotypical response to those questions. If I don't, I may just stare at you nervously and break out in a sweat when I realize I don't have anything filed under, "project I am most proud of". Or that pulling up the narratively engaging details of a project I haven't thought about in years is a process that will take me hours of specific effort. And it's not just me; I've hired great developers who were also terrible at "humane" interview questions but who did great when we just sat down and coded together.
- adamredwoods 3y ago
  Interviewing is a separate domain from programming, and everyone should brush up, be prepared, before interviewing. I usually have a project or two that I can speak-to in depth, to give examples of decisions made, challenges handled.
  - wpietri 3y ago
    I agree this is true, but I think that's in contradiction to the notion that one can just ask some breezy "totally humane questions" and then make optimal hiring decisions. The more separate the domain, and the more preparation helps, the more you're testing for something pretty different than the work.
    - atoav 3y ago
      You don't make "optimal" hiring decisions by just talking to someone. I would say whether your hiring decision was optimal can only be judged in hindsight. Hiring is getting a limited pool of people and filtering down to find the ones that fit the role most. In the end all you could actually do is guesstimating who would do best at the job. And sometimes the answer is: "none of the ones who showed up". If you are a good engineer or programmer yourself you can tell a lot about a person by talking to them for an hour. You can learn what is important to them in the craft, how they deal with criticism, what they aspire to, what kind of problems they tend to work on, if they are more autodidactic or more influenced by other's opinions and so on. This is all knowledge directly inpacting the question whether they are the right person for the job. And who the right person is depends on the job, so there might not be "right" answers to the questions. For a very niche database job you might actually want someone who is very accurate, very in the detail and very focused. For other jobs maybe some entirely different traits are better. Of course the problem here is that the people you hire could just be very good actors or liars who cannot do the things they say, so a little technical testing might also be needed.
      - Arch-TK 3y ago
        I think the issue is that, and I'm paraphrasing something which someone else said but which I think reflects what I've seen, nobody (at least in larger companies) wants to be responsible for a bad hiring decision. While yes, you can get someone who has a good track record of being a good judge of character to make hiring decisions. If that decision goes wrong and the blame game starts then you inevitably ask this person to explain their hiring decision. This person will then reply: well it was my opinion that X, Y and Z. In the alternative case where you just get someone to follow a rigid process you can answer: Well he scored well on this exercise and the opinion of the team was in his favour and the work history ticked the right boxes. This effectively dilutes the responsibility. You can no longer blame one person for the bad hire. Lastly there's also the diversity aspect. With companies increasingly being scrutinized for their hiring practices, "it was my opinion" just gets translated to "this person's internal biases guided the hiring process and as such it was not fair." I agree this is all making hiring much harder than it needs to be. And certainly you can still find companies where the hiring decisions are made on highly experienced and well honed gut instinct (its the only kind of interview I have been a part of) but it also makes sense how in our increasingly overcomplicated world we are developing increasingly overcomplicated hiring processes. My recommendation is if you want a sensible hiring process (with maybe a telephone screen followed up by one normal interview) you should stick to smaller and less corporate companies.
OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
From what I've seen, getting a regular job in classical music is difficulty and pressure on a level few of us can imagine. Might be easier to get tenure at Harvard than a rostered spot in an orchestra.
- zweifuss 3y ago
  You can be an excellent player with a likable personality and your chances of getting a spot in any high-profile orchestra are still less than 20%.
  - OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
    I think the odds of getting a high-profile orchestra slot are far lower than that. Source: Multiple orchestra musicians and management speaking about the audition process and the now-defunct myauditions.com website Process: Show early talent Get the right instruction Get into a preparatory program Make it into a conservatory Do well once there Get a spot in an ensemble, probably lesser-known (not easy) and establish a reputation See an audition notice with repertoire to prepare, apply Spend a few weeks or months intensively practicing (on top of other commitments) Maybe get an audition, realizing the Music Director may be promoting his buddy past these rounds Travel at your own expense to the audition Play demanding repertoire behind a screen and respond to any directions Most likely get rejected Play in any following rounds If not rejected, maybe you get a qualifying week rehearsing with your potential colleagues and playing a couple of concerts when the Music Director is in town If you beat out the couple of stellar artists who've also gotten that far, you may get an offer Or, the MD's buddy may get the offer Or, there may be a no-hire If you get and accept the offer, you are "on approval" for a couple of years at which point there's the Tenure Decision
nicbou 3y ago
Can you explain to a non-musician what playing with an orchestra entails? I'm unfamiliar with the challenge.
haspok 3y ago
I love the comparison to music auditions, and I mostly agree with the advice. I would still require the candidate however to write some code. Something rather simple, not leetcode, ok, not fizzbuzz either, and something that proves their familiarity with at least one language and platform. I should be a GM by now simply watching chess analysis videos on Youtube, learning the names of some openings etc. I can talk about it all day long. But since I don't play at all (I'm not interested) when I actually do play on occasions I revert to 500 ELO... You can easily tell a seasoned veteran from a rookie just by looking at them code for a few minutes, working on a simple task. If you can't, you have no business in interviewing others :)
bolanyo 3y ago
Aesthetic judgements, and the ability to justify and defend them, are very important, but not the only important thing IMO. Someone who can explain why they love Rust and hate Python (or vice versa) is a convincing candidate but I think you need to see a couple of other things from them. In addition, sometimes you just don't hit on the right question to get evidence of their aesthetic judgement. (Like the candidate who doesn't care about Rust vs Python, but who hates Postgres and loves MariaDB..)

wpietri 3y ago

I think your approach is fine, but I should mention that it will, like any interview approach, misfire with some people. Episodic recall and emotional recognition are both talents that vary across the population. If I want to do well at an interview like this, I will have to spend a bunch of time in advance refreshing my memory of various projects I have worked on so that I can simulate a neurotypical response to those questions. If I don't, I may just stare at you nervously and break out in a sweat when I realize I don't have anything filed under, "project I am most proud of". Or that pulling up the narratively engaging details of a project I haven't thought about in years is a process that will take me hours of specific effort. And it's not just me; I've hired great developers who were also terrible at "humane" interview questions but who did great when we just sat down and coded together.

adamredwoods 3y ago
Interviewing is a separate domain from programming, and everyone should brush up, be prepared, before interviewing. I usually have a project or two that I can speak-to in depth, to give examples of decisions made, challenges handled.
- wpietri 3y ago
  I agree this is true, but I think that's in contradiction to the notion that one can just ask some breezy "totally humane questions" and then make optimal hiring decisions. The more separate the domain, and the more preparation helps, the more you're testing for something pretty different than the work.
  - atoav 3y ago
    You don't make "optimal" hiring decisions by just talking to someone. I would say whether your hiring decision was optimal can only be judged in hindsight. Hiring is getting a limited pool of people and filtering down to find the ones that fit the role most. In the end all you could actually do is guesstimating who would do best at the job. And sometimes the answer is: "none of the ones who showed up". If you are a good engineer or programmer yourself you can tell a lot about a person by talking to them for an hour. You can learn what is important to them in the craft, how they deal with criticism, what they aspire to, what kind of problems they tend to work on, if they are more autodidactic or more influenced by other's opinions and so on. This is all knowledge directly inpacting the question whether they are the right person for the job. And who the right person is depends on the job, so there might not be "right" answers to the questions. For a very niche database job you might actually want someone who is very accurate, very in the detail and very focused. For other jobs maybe some entirely different traits are better. Of course the problem here is that the people you hire could just be very good actors or liars who cannot do the things they say, so a little technical testing might also be needed.
    - Arch-TK 3y ago
      I think the issue is that, and I'm paraphrasing something which someone else said but which I think reflects what I've seen, nobody (at least in larger companies) wants to be responsible for a bad hiring decision. While yes, you can get someone who has a good track record of being a good judge of character to make hiring decisions. If that decision goes wrong and the blame game starts then you inevitably ask this person to explain their hiring decision. This person will then reply: well it was my opinion that X, Y and Z. In the alternative case where you just get someone to follow a rigid process you can answer: Well he scored well on this exercise and the opinion of the team was in his favour and the work history ticked the right boxes. This effectively dilutes the responsibility. You can no longer blame one person for the bad hire. Lastly there's also the diversity aspect. With companies increasingly being scrutinized for their hiring practices, "it was my opinion" just gets translated to "this person's internal biases guided the hiring process and as such it was not fair." I agree this is all making hiring much harder than it needs to be. And certainly you can still find companies where the hiring decisions are made on highly experienced and well honed gut instinct (its the only kind of interview I have been a part of) but it also makes sense how in our increasingly overcomplicated world we are developing increasingly overcomplicated hiring processes. My recommendation is if you want a sensible hiring process (with maybe a telephone screen followed up by one normal interview) you should stick to smaller and less corporate companies.

OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago

From what I've seen, getting a regular job in classical music is difficulty and pressure on a level few of us can imagine. Might be easier to get tenure at Harvard than a rostered spot in an orchestra.

zweifuss 3y ago
You can be an excellent player with a likable personality and your chances of getting a spot in any high-profile orchestra are still less than 20%.
- OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
  I think the odds of getting a high-profile orchestra slot are far lower than that. Source: Multiple orchestra musicians and management speaking about the audition process and the now-defunct myauditions.com website Process: Show early talent Get the right instruction Get into a preparatory program Make it into a conservatory Do well once there Get a spot in an ensemble, probably lesser-known (not easy) and establish a reputation See an audition notice with repertoire to prepare, apply Spend a few weeks or months intensively practicing (on top of other commitments) Maybe get an audition, realizing the Music Director may be promoting his buddy past these rounds Travel at your own expense to the audition Play demanding repertoire behind a screen and respond to any directions Most likely get rejected Play in any following rounds If not rejected, maybe you get a qualifying week rehearsing with your potential colleagues and playing a couple of concerts when the Music Director is in town If you beat out the couple of stellar artists who've also gotten that far, you may get an offer Or, the MD's buddy may get the offer Or, there may be a no-hire If you get and accept the offer, you are "on approval" for a couple of years at which point there's the Tenure Decision

nicbou 3y ago

Can you explain to a non-musician what playing with an orchestra entails? I'm unfamiliar with the challenge.

haspok 3y ago

I love the comparison to music auditions, and I mostly agree with the advice. I would still require the candidate however to write some code. Something rather simple, not leetcode, ok, not fizzbuzz either, and something that proves their familiarity with at least one language and platform. I should be a GM by now simply watching chess analysis videos on Youtube, learning the names of some openings etc. I can talk about it all day long. But since I don't play at all (I'm not interested) when I actually do play on occasions I revert to 500 ELO... You can easily tell a seasoned veteran from a rookie just by looking at them code for a few minutes, working on a simple task. If you can't, you have no business in interviewing others :)

bolanyo 3y ago

Aesthetic judgements, and the ability to justify and defend them, are very important, but not the only important thing IMO. Someone who can explain why they love Rust and hate Python (or vice versa) is a convincing candidate but I think you need to see a couple of other things from them. In addition, sometimes you just don't hit on the right question to get evidence of their aesthetic judgement. (Like the candidate who doesn't care about Rust vs Python, but who hates Postgres and loves MariaDB..)