8 ms·

Stop eliminating good candidates by asking them the wrong questions

122 points by Anon84 3y ago

Leires 3y ago
Anand would do well to read the room. This is why soft skills are so valued. If he sees he’s annoying the vp with too many questions, maybe dial it back. Does Anand want the job or want to be right?
- thinkingkong 3y ago
  Its easy to misread people after several hours of interviewing. Especially if everyone else is open to questions and things go well. Id actually apply criticism to the VP ahead of the candidate. My expectation is that someone operating at the VP level has some degree of self awareness which this person clearly lacked.
- BossingAround 3y ago
  I'm not sure why it's only on Anand. If the VP was getting annoyed, why couldn't the VP steer the conversation? He's the VP ffs. Isn't "having conversations" one of the key job requirements for any VP? The problem with "just read the room" is that you can very easily misread someone when you're meeting them for the first time, for example during a several-hour-long interview session.
- BazookaMusic 3y ago
  Anand could very well be moving across countries and investing immense amounts of times to start a new life. He could also be leaving a great job to seek a new challenge in a company he wants to invest years of his effort in. The VP has also dedicated time specifically for Anand's interview. He also probably has the power to fire him in short notice and with limited severance. Anand should ask all the annoying questions. This way he's saving both himself and the VP all the wasted time of hiring him and then having a broken relationship because things weren't clear later. This way the VP can also see what concerns the potential employee and if they have a potential mismatch in expectations. Finally, even if we disregard all that I said above, if it's Anand's working style to ask a lot of questions and he hides this style during the interview, then he will invariably clash with management later due to it if he's hired. Then he may have more to lose then just a potential future job.
- devnullbrain 3y ago
  He wants to be right. A job interview is not like an exam, it's like dating. An opportunity for two parties to decide if they can work together. Hiding who you really are to 'pass' is a bad foundation. That's why I don't like the conclusion of the article. Anand didn't fail the interview because the criteria were wrong - the interviewer failed because they suck at being an engineering manager.
  - chii 3y ago
    > it's like dating ... Hiding who you really are to 'pass' is a bad foundation. you'd be surprised at the amount of people who fake themselves for the date.
    - drekipus 3y ago
      And continuing into the resulting relationships
    - bheadmaster 3y ago
      To be fair, not all of us can be socially competent mentally healthy people who enjoy life and regularly stop to smell the flowers. Some of us just suck, some of us are miserable, so we have to put on a fake persona in order to entertain the other person enough for them to actually give us a chance. In a way, dating is all about entertaining and being entertained. It's either that or stay lonely.
      - dublinben 3y ago
        The better alternative is to work on yourself to become a better person, who is worthy of dating without deception.
        bheadmaster 3y ago
        You are implicitly assuming that there's some finite amount of work that could make every such person "dateable without deception". While it may or may not be true in individual case, as a general statement it sounds to me more like "well, it's _your_ fault because you didn't work on yourself enough, so you deserve to be lonely".
- jacknews 3y ago
  OTOH maybe the VP feels challenged, which is why the questions are 'annoying'. I mean, in this climate where people are being asked to win X-factor competitions for the privilege of a job, how sure are we that those already onboard would pass if they had to run the gauntlet?
- beowulfey 3y ago
  Personally, I would not enjoy working for someone who was annoyed by me asking questions. Questions mean someone is interested in it, and is paying attention. To learn about something is to invest effort into it; it’s a great sign. Anand dodged a bullet here IMO.
- civilized 3y ago
  The article says that being an effective contributor is more about bringing a fresh perspective to the table, rather than making leadership comfortable. It also says that Anand was ultimately hired and was effective in the role. It's sad when "read the room" and "soft skills" are equated to agreeableness and making management comfortable. A company that thinks this way has only one real brain, the one in the head of the leader. Everyone else's job is to agree with that brain, not use their own brains to question it. If the leader happens to be a world-historical genius, this might work, but that's not true in most cases, so such a dictatorial structure doesn't seem likely to be the foundation of a successful company.
  - civilized 3y ago
    And actually, there's an even more devastating problem with being a dictator who surrounds themselves with yes-folk. Dictators don't like information that contradicts their perspective, and the yes-folk learn that. So eventually the dictator is only getting information that confirms what they think, and the org becomes incapable of adaptation.
kayodelycaon 3y ago
I’ve had this experience. I passed all of the interviews only to be failed by a senior manager that had some kind of expectation I couldn’t figure out. About 6 seconds into a phone call, I’d failed for not matching whatever expectation he had for how a phone call should go. As far as I can tell, he expected me to do everything his way without being asked. That was truly bizarre. I think I dodged a bullet there.
- sshine 3y ago
  I once failed a job interview at the algorithms exam. I don’t know what it is, I’ve done great in other BSc-level math oral exams. Felt weird to have two teams at the employer, one that felt confident about hiring me, and another that thought I’m deeply incompetent. Combine the scrutiny with a 3-6 month hiring process, I decided to dodge whatever that was.
- leke 3y ago
  So if this type of thing let's us dodge bullets, maybe nothing should change?
  - ninkendo 3y ago
    Eh… it could be that the job is perfect in every respect except the one person (and they may be otherwise perfect in every respect except their interviewing skills.) It’s not 100% given that a bad interview experience implies a bad company to work for.
  - kayodelycaon 3y ago
    My final interview with a different company included the CEO. I took the job despite the red flags because I needed money. While his antics and temper caused a lot of problems for many people, it didn’t affect my department much. I have a disability and no network to speak of. Getting job offers is difficult. I generally can’t afford to avoid every job with a red flag.
- woleium 3y ago
  > I think I dodged a bullet there. Bingo! Remember that the interview process is bidirectional, you are also interviewing them to see if you want to work there or not :))
gnfargbl 3y ago
The set up of this article doesn't make a lot of sense. It describes a case where "not a good fit" was in fact exactly that; the candidate wanted an open workplace where he could express opinions and grow his skills, the hiring manager wanted an experienced resource who would do as they were told and not rock the boat. Both types of workplace exist, and both types of candidates exist. The question for me is why the article author sent a type-A candidate into a type-B workplace. So that they could write an article about how they "educated" the VP?
- karmakaze 3y ago
  > do as they were told and not rock the boat This is a problem. It means the best output you're going to get is that of the level of the person doing the telling rather than the person who's first-hand doing and learning. I see this all the time. I once wondered why sometimes a new club/bar would open up, sparing no expense, but then the music would sound like shit. Not the sound system, but the DJ. It's because they were hired by someone who had more money than sense and didn't actually have good taste.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    People being bad at at hiring is really orthogonal to whether people want someone who just does what they're told, or who also partially controls the direction of their work. You're making the assumption that it's some idiot owner hiring people, when it could just as easily been that the owner has hired someone with a particular vision to run their company, and that person needs you not for your creativity, but your level of craft. It doesn't make me bad at hiring painters if I don't want them to have a say in the color.
    - karmakaze 3y ago
      Any place I work would offer more autonomy than being cog in the company. Somewhat more like as an interior designer than as a painter. It's hard to imagine a painter as executing a vision. I certainly agree that the degree varies by level of role.
rr808 3y ago
For my current job I got grilled with leetcode style questions. Lucky I'd done a few before so knew the tricks. Now I work there the job is basic crud style work, nothing fancy required. Employer also hires grads almost exclusively from Ivy League universities and they mostly suck. Makes me look good. :)
- mewpmewp2 3y ago
  I think most work is CRUD related, and I also think that it's actually counter productive to hire leetcode or university crowd for these jobs, as they will naturally try to treat CRUD problems as the problems they have been studying and practising, which would mostly yield something that could be done in a few lines of code as something that is really over engineered. They will start trying to figure out problems that have been solved already for them with countless of libraries and tools, because that's what they have been learning. Either following certain design principles, and over engineering, causing massive amounts of boilerplate code, or spending way too much time on trying to consider and optimise for certain types of edge cases, which libraries would handle for them anyway.
  - specialist 3y ago
    Yes and: CRUD (and ETL) is just data processing. Find something, copy some strings, munge, paste some strings. ADTs, IDLs, validation goo, logging, tests, etc can help. But also can get in the way. Sometimes, if we're really lucky, we get to mix in some indexes, caching, parsing, undo/redo, and release notes.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- logicalmonster 3y ago
  > For my current job I got grilled with leetcode style questions. I don't mind being asked a leetcode style question or two in an interview. Even if somebody struggles with solving an unfamiliar problem off the cuff, you can see if they they take some logical problem solving approaches. But it's frustrating that no practical web-development questions are ever asked for those kinds of jobs. For instance, security is really important to the survival of any company. An insecure system that has a data leak could literally destroy a company overnight. Having a secure system is far more important than knowing a more efficient algorithm for sorting some data or whatever. But I've never been asked 1 practical question about security in a technical job interview. It's so painfully stupid it hurts.
phkahler 3y ago
I agree with most of it but not this: "Interviewees are often told to use “I” to get credit for work done, but “we” is probably a more realistic depiction of how work gets done." I've had too many candidates talk about "we" and the general project, or what the team they were on did. But when I try to get at what they specifically did I get nothing. Sure we need team players, but not just cheerleaders. Take credit for your work! The weirdest was one guy who I could tell probably did a lot of good stuff but wouldn't say so. It was like he was coached to always talk about the "we".
- Lapsa 3y ago
  more relevant in States. rest of the world isn't as obsessed with managing their egos
  - saalweachter 3y ago
    This is highly regional, both within the US and throughout the rest of the world. In some cultures, you always downplay your own contributions, and listeners inflate them; in others, you always talk yourself up, and listeners adjust accordingly. When you work in a large, heterogenous organization, it is important to pay attention to these differences, or else you end up either assuming someone did nothing or is a useless braggart because their culture doesn't match your own.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mardifoufs 3y ago
    I see you've never been to Europe then, or just don't realize how worse it is there? I'd rather take the "ego management" of the US than the crazy rigid hierarchies in Europe. At least you can take credit for your own work, which is better than never being able to get into management (say, become a "cadre" in France) just because you didn't go to a certain school, no matter how good you are or how much experience you have built up. Ivy league elitism exists in the US too, but it's not even close to how prevalent it is in a country like France. To me that's a much worse form of ego brain rot than America's.
brycewray 3y ago
(2019)
steveBK123 3y ago
The interview process is a great filter for the candidates as well to understand if the company/team/manager is in one way or another, insane. The interview process exposes company culture in one way or another. Things to watch for as a candidate: * Is the process oddly impersonal with lots of gates to make it through before even talking to the team who is hiring? Red flags - MBTI personality tests. Extremely hard tech tests that even half correct gets your through. Video recorded timed take home tests. Etc. * Do the people hiring you know how to do the job, are they asking you anything relevant? Are all the interviews kind of high level 10k foot view, and/or in the weeds in weird ways? Red flag - All there interviewees are peers to the hiring manager and above. Red flag - Digging into arcane proof of concept code from 10+ year old white papers that the entire industry has moved past. Not the flex the interviewer thinks it is. Red flag - Interviewers who seem confused why they are interviewing you, don't know what role it is for. * If hiring into an existing team, are any of these peers part of the interview process? Red flag if no - sign of huge turnover / mad max type org where you are being brought in to fight for survival. * Is the process unclear, do new rounds keep popping up, do interviews keep getting rescheduled, are interviewees constantly late to the interview? Red flag - Disorganized chaos, do they even actually have a role open they can hire, are they stalling?
- Krisjohn 3y ago
  You pretty much described my last interviewing experience from one end to the other
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    The red flags above were compiled over 20 years of interviewing but honestly it's gotten worse and most of it was the last 10 years. In fact, 80% of the above was experienced in my last job search cycle. I've managed to avoid leetcode/hackerrank due to my industry/niche/seniority, but orgs manage to invent their own BS.
kazinator 3y ago
Anand may have dodged a bullet there, on the other hand.
BiteCode_dev 3y ago
I see a lot of geeks giving advice on how to hire other geeks, but I'm guessing most of them had never being involved in the hiring process. In fact, if you sum up all the recommendations of people online about recruitment, you can't hire anybody, because every single move is something you should not do according to one of the self-proclaimed new expert. Once again, as a developer, I can only notice how much of a diva my peers have become. We are very lucky we are a hot commodity on the market, because I tell you, no other professionals get a pass for a tenth of the things we claim we are entitled too.
- slekker 3y ago
  And yet developers go through the most ludicrous interviewing processes, having to prove time and time again that they have enough technical skills, while having 10 years of experience in their CV :^)
  - BiteCode_dev 3y ago
    I regularly gets paid by my clients to help them filter out candidates because they don't feel they have the technical skill to do so or their team is too busy coding something to be available for anything else than than validating the last batch. One thing that comes over and over again is how much most candidates suck at programming. There are a huge quantity of people that are terrible at coding that will apply to your senior dev $200k job offer. They all have a great CV, and they cheat at everything: fake interviews with a look-alike, using chatgpt or indian services to solve programming tests are not uncommon. Last year, I had one former trader applying for a python job with a perfect resume, a stellar homework result, and who was claiming he likes "putting some good 10 hours of coding". First, there are maybe a 100 people in my country that can focus 10 hours in a row on code, and they won't apply for those clients. Second, the live coding review showed that he struggled to even create a basic virtualenv. Last month I created a test that I knew had one question that ChatGPT got wrong. 2 candidates gave me the GPT answer last week. So companies are desperate and try sieves after sieves, hoping to separate gold from mud. And they have limited time and resources to do so. Of course the hiring process sucks. Even if they knew what they were doing, and most of them are not, it would suck. Now don't get me wrong, it's nice the power balance is shitfing toward the workers for once, but hoping the other side won't react is just naive.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
remote_phone 3y ago
It sounds like the VP is there one who needs to be fired. If he can’t handle questions like that it brands he is building a really bad team. Better to get rid of him and find someone who is better at team building and recognizing talent.
axpy906 3y ago
Interview Question: “Show me how to reverse a linked list.” Position : Backend AI Engineer
- krackers 3y ago
  Step 1: Train an LLM... I'm giddy that the glib article from 7 years back has finally become reality: https://joelgrus.com/2016/05/23/fizz-buzz-in-tensorflow/ https://joelgrus.com/2016/05/23/fizz-buzz-in-tensorflow/
SloopJon 3y ago
Although this anecdote is presented as something that actually happened, it feels like a straw-man premise. The VP "practically growled at me" and "found Anand's questions 'super annoying.'" "His assessment that Anand was a 'bad fit' was really code for 'I don't want to feel uncomfortable.'" This seems uncharitable, but if it really does describe the VP accurately as a cartoonish pointy haired boss, this isn't the article that's going to change his mind, even if the fairy tale did have a happy ending. I generally welcome questions in an interview, but not all questions are equal. Some may signal a lack of preparation, don't seem particularly relevant, or come across as canned, like something they read in an HBR article (just kidding). I'm no expert interviewer on either side of the table. If there's one nugget I'd take from this article, it's a challenge to "uncover capabilities, not just experience." How do I convey my own capabilities as a job seeker, or elicit them as a hiring manager? Incidentally, the "77% of all jobs ... require little to no creativity" link takes you to a marijuana podcast, as the Martin Prosperity Institute is apparently defunct. I believe the statistic refers to a footnote in this paper (co-authored by the author of the submitted article): https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/80108 https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/80108
harles 3y ago
What an odd article. The title and contents don’t match (at least the title and main example where a candidate disqualified himself by asking annoying questions). I’m honestly not sure what point the author is trying to make.
JJMcJ 3y ago
Candidate: "I honestly wonder how you plan to stay in business for more than three months." VP: "He kept asking questions we weren't prepared to answer." Recruiter: "I think I'll go work for my cousin's parking lot striping company."
oldandtired 3y ago
A couple of decades ago, I was being interviewed for a position as the support developer. The interviewer asked me to tell what a piece of code was meant to do. I responded by by telling him that without context, the code was quite unclear. Strangely enough that was what he was looking for - someone who could recognise that the code needed further study before answering. Subsequently I was offered the job and took it. In a later interview for another position, during that interview it became very clear that they were wanting someone who would follow IT policy and NOT look after the end-user. I then couched my responses to focus on what the end-user needed. Subsequently I didn't get offered the job for which I was very happy.
specialist 3y ago
Interviewing practices are little better than folklore. Has anyone figured out how to do this? Like reproducible experiments, formalisms, checklists...? Last time I got good, actionable advice was from Journey of the Software Professional by Luke Hohmann. Covered stuff like self-selecting teams, assemblying a team with complimentary skills, and so on. Or maybe there's some secret manual for interviewing as hazing and torture? Like the CIA's simple sabotage field manual?
- fmajid 3y ago
  Google used to be notorious for hiring only based on the prestige of the candidate's alma mater and gotcha interviews with Fermi questions or the kind where the interviewer is trying to show his superiority, like an adolescent pissing match. But they invested in researching the factors that best predict success and ended up with two: IQ tests and highly structured interviews. Everything else was worse than useless. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/future-of-marketing/management-and-culture/structured-interviewing/ https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/future-of-marketing/manageme...
andrewstuart 3y ago
Recruiting outcomes are essentially random. Once you truly understand that then you can relax. If you get the job, you get it. If you don’t then you don’t. Roll of the dice. Means nothing. I went to a job interview recently and the feedback from the recruiter was I couldn’t explain the (many) projects I’d built. My recollection was I wasn’t asked, in a 30 minute interview that started late. My lifetime of software development skills and experience was judged in minutes to be inadequate. Roll of the dice.

122 points by Anon84 3y ago

Anand would do well to read the room. This is why soft skills are so valued. If he sees he’s annoying the vp with too many questions, maybe dial it back. Does Anand want the job or want to be right?

thinkingkong 3y ago
Its easy to misread people after several hours of interviewing. Especially if everyone else is open to questions and things go well. Id actually apply criticism to the VP ahead of the candidate. My expectation is that someone operating at the VP level has some degree of self awareness which this person clearly lacked.
BossingAround 3y ago
I'm not sure why it's only on Anand. If the VP was getting annoyed, why couldn't the VP steer the conversation? He's the VP ffs. Isn't "having conversations" one of the key job requirements for any VP? The problem with "just read the room" is that you can very easily misread someone when you're meeting them for the first time, for example during a several-hour-long interview session.
BazookaMusic 3y ago
Anand could very well be moving across countries and investing immense amounts of times to start a new life. He could also be leaving a great job to seek a new challenge in a company he wants to invest years of his effort in. The VP has also dedicated time specifically for Anand's interview. He also probably has the power to fire him in short notice and with limited severance. Anand should ask all the annoying questions. This way he's saving both himself and the VP all the wasted time of hiring him and then having a broken relationship because things weren't clear later. This way the VP can also see what concerns the potential employee and if they have a potential mismatch in expectations. Finally, even if we disregard all that I said above, if it's Anand's working style to ask a lot of questions and he hides this style during the interview, then he will invariably clash with management later due to it if he's hired. Then he may have more to lose then just a potential future job.
devnullbrain 3y ago
He wants to be right. A job interview is not like an exam, it's like dating. An opportunity for two parties to decide if they can work together. Hiding who you really are to 'pass' is a bad foundation. That's why I don't like the conclusion of the article. Anand didn't fail the interview because the criteria were wrong - the interviewer failed because they suck at being an engineering manager.
- chii 3y ago
  > it's like dating ... Hiding who you really are to 'pass' is a bad foundation. you'd be surprised at the amount of people who fake themselves for the date.
  - drekipus 3y ago
    And continuing into the resulting relationships
  - bheadmaster 3y ago
    To be fair, not all of us can be socially competent mentally healthy people who enjoy life and regularly stop to smell the flowers. Some of us just suck, some of us are miserable, so we have to put on a fake persona in order to entertain the other person enough for them to actually give us a chance. In a way, dating is all about entertaining and being entertained. It's either that or stay lonely.
    - dublinben 3y ago
      The better alternative is to work on yourself to become a better person, who is worthy of dating without deception.
      - bheadmaster 3y ago
        You are implicitly assuming that there's some finite amount of work that could make every such person "dateable without deception". While it may or may not be true in individual case, as a general statement it sounds to me more like "well, it's _your_ fault because you didn't work on yourself enough, so you deserve to be lonely".
jacknews 3y ago
OTOH maybe the VP feels challenged, which is why the questions are 'annoying'. I mean, in this climate where people are being asked to win X-factor competitions for the privilege of a job, how sure are we that those already onboard would pass if they had to run the gauntlet?
beowulfey 3y ago
Personally, I would not enjoy working for someone who was annoyed by me asking questions. Questions mean someone is interested in it, and is paying attention. To learn about something is to invest effort into it; it’s a great sign. Anand dodged a bullet here IMO.
civilized 3y ago
The article says that being an effective contributor is more about bringing a fresh perspective to the table, rather than making leadership comfortable. It also says that Anand was ultimately hired and was effective in the role. It's sad when "read the room" and "soft skills" are equated to agreeableness and making management comfortable. A company that thinks this way has only one real brain, the one in the head of the leader. Everyone else's job is to agree with that brain, not use their own brains to question it. If the leader happens to be a world-historical genius, this might work, but that's not true in most cases, so such a dictatorial structure doesn't seem likely to be the foundation of a successful company.
- civilized 3y ago
  And actually, there's an even more devastating problem with being a dictator who surrounds themselves with yes-folk. Dictators don't like information that contradicts their perspective, and the yes-folk learn that. So eventually the dictator is only getting information that confirms what they think, and the org becomes incapable of adaptation.

kayodelycaon 3y ago

I’ve had this experience. I passed all of the interviews only to be failed by a senior manager that had some kind of expectation I couldn’t figure out. About 6 seconds into a phone call, I’d failed for not matching whatever expectation he had for how a phone call should go. As far as I can tell, he expected me to do everything his way without being asked. That was truly bizarre. I think I dodged a bullet there.

sshine 3y ago
I once failed a job interview at the algorithms exam. I don’t know what it is, I’ve done great in other BSc-level math oral exams. Felt weird to have two teams at the employer, one that felt confident about hiring me, and another that thought I’m deeply incompetent. Combine the scrutiny with a 3-6 month hiring process, I decided to dodge whatever that was.
leke 3y ago
So if this type of thing let's us dodge bullets, maybe nothing should change?
- ninkendo 3y ago
  Eh… it could be that the job is perfect in every respect except the one person (and they may be otherwise perfect in every respect except their interviewing skills.) It’s not 100% given that a bad interview experience implies a bad company to work for.
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  My final interview with a different company included the CEO. I took the job despite the red flags because I needed money. While his antics and temper caused a lot of problems for many people, it didn’t affect my department much. I have a disability and no network to speak of. Getting job offers is difficult. I generally can’t afford to avoid every job with a red flag.
woleium 3y ago
> I think I dodged a bullet there. Bingo! Remember that the interview process is bidirectional, you are also interviewing them to see if you want to work there or not :))

gnfargbl 3y ago

The set up of this article doesn't make a lot of sense. It describes a case where "not a good fit" was in fact exactly that; the candidate wanted an open workplace where he could express opinions and grow his skills, the hiring manager wanted an experienced resource who would do as they were told and not rock the boat. Both types of workplace exist, and both types of candidates exist. The question for me is why the article author sent a type-A candidate into a type-B workplace. So that they could write an article about how they "educated" the VP?

karmakaze 3y ago
> do as they were told and not rock the boat This is a problem. It means the best output you're going to get is that of the level of the person doing the telling rather than the person who's first-hand doing and learning. I see this all the time. I once wondered why sometimes a new club/bar would open up, sparing no expense, but then the music would sound like shit. Not the sound system, but the DJ. It's because they were hired by someone who had more money than sense and didn't actually have good taste.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  People being bad at at hiring is really orthogonal to whether people want someone who just does what they're told, or who also partially controls the direction of their work. You're making the assumption that it's some idiot owner hiring people, when it could just as easily been that the owner has hired someone with a particular vision to run their company, and that person needs you not for your creativity, but your level of craft. It doesn't make me bad at hiring painters if I don't want them to have a say in the color.
  - karmakaze 3y ago
    Any place I work would offer more autonomy than being cog in the company. Somewhat more like as an interior designer than as a painter. It's hard to imagine a painter as executing a vision. I certainly agree that the degree varies by level of role.

rr808 3y ago

For my current job I got grilled with leetcode style questions. Lucky I'd done a few before so knew the tricks. Now I work there the job is basic crud style work, nothing fancy required. Employer also hires grads almost exclusively from Ivy League universities and they mostly suck. Makes me look good. :)

mewpmewp2 3y ago
I think most work is CRUD related, and I also think that it's actually counter productive to hire leetcode or university crowd for these jobs, as they will naturally try to treat CRUD problems as the problems they have been studying and practising, which would mostly yield something that could be done in a few lines of code as something that is really over engineered. They will start trying to figure out problems that have been solved already for them with countless of libraries and tools, because that's what they have been learning. Either following certain design principles, and over engineering, causing massive amounts of boilerplate code, or spending way too much time on trying to consider and optimise for certain types of edge cases, which libraries would handle for them anyway.
- specialist 3y ago
  Yes and: CRUD (and ETL) is just data processing. Find something, copy some strings, munge, paste some strings. ADTs, IDLs, validation goo, logging, tests, etc can help. But also can get in the way. Sometimes, if we're really lucky, we get to mix in some indexes, caching, parsing, undo/redo, and release notes.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
logicalmonster 3y ago
> For my current job I got grilled with leetcode style questions. I don't mind being asked a leetcode style question or two in an interview. Even if somebody struggles with solving an unfamiliar problem off the cuff, you can see if they they take some logical problem solving approaches. But it's frustrating that no practical web-development questions are ever asked for those kinds of jobs. For instance, security is really important to the survival of any company. An insecure system that has a data leak could literally destroy a company overnight. Having a secure system is far more important than knowing a more efficient algorithm for sorting some data or whatever. But I've never been asked 1 practical question about security in a technical job interview. It's so painfully stupid it hurts.

phkahler 3y ago

I agree with most of it but not this: "Interviewees are often told to use “I” to get credit for work done, but “we” is probably a more realistic depiction of how work gets done." I've had too many candidates talk about "we" and the general project, or what the team they were on did. But when I try to get at what they specifically did I get nothing. Sure we need team players, but not just cheerleaders. Take credit for your work! The weirdest was one guy who I could tell probably did a lot of good stuff but wouldn't say so. It was like he was coached to always talk about the "we".

Lapsa 3y ago
more relevant in States. rest of the world isn't as obsessed with managing their egos
- saalweachter 3y ago
  This is highly regional, both within the US and throughout the rest of the world. In some cultures, you always downplay your own contributions, and listeners inflate them; in others, you always talk yourself up, and listeners adjust accordingly. When you work in a large, heterogenous organization, it is important to pay attention to these differences, or else you end up either assuming someone did nothing or is a useless braggart because their culture doesn't match your own.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  I see you've never been to Europe then, or just don't realize how worse it is there? I'd rather take the "ego management" of the US than the crazy rigid hierarchies in Europe. At least you can take credit for your own work, which is better than never being able to get into management (say, become a "cadre" in France) just because you didn't go to a certain school, no matter how good you are or how much experience you have built up. Ivy league elitism exists in the US too, but it's not even close to how prevalent it is in a country like France. To me that's a much worse form of ego brain rot than America's.

brycewray 3y ago

(2019)

steveBK123 3y ago

The interview process is a great filter for the candidates as well to understand if the company/team/manager is in one way or another, insane. The interview process exposes company culture in one way or another. Things to watch for as a candidate: * Is the process oddly impersonal with lots of gates to make it through before even talking to the team who is hiring? Red flags - MBTI personality tests. Extremely hard tech tests that even half correct gets your through. Video recorded timed take home tests. Etc. * Do the people hiring you know how to do the job, are they asking you anything relevant? Are all the interviews kind of high level 10k foot view, and/or in the weeds in weird ways? Red flag - All there interviewees are peers to the hiring manager and above. Red flag - Digging into arcane proof of concept code from 10+ year old white papers that the entire industry has moved past. Not the flex the interviewer thinks it is. Red flag - Interviewers who seem confused why they are interviewing you, don't know what role it is for. * If hiring into an existing team, are any of these peers part of the interview process? Red flag if no - sign of huge turnover / mad max type org where you are being brought in to fight for survival. * Is the process unclear, do new rounds keep popping up, do interviews keep getting rescheduled, are interviewees constantly late to the interview? Red flag - Disorganized chaos, do they even actually have a role open they can hire, are they stalling?

Krisjohn 3y ago
You pretty much described my last interviewing experience from one end to the other
- steveBK123 3y ago
  The red flags above were compiled over 20 years of interviewing but honestly it's gotten worse and most of it was the last 10 years. In fact, 80% of the above was experienced in my last job search cycle. I've managed to avoid leetcode/hackerrank due to my industry/niche/seniority, but orgs manage to invent their own BS.

kazinator 3y ago

Anand may have dodged a bullet there, on the other hand.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago

I see a lot of geeks giving advice on how to hire other geeks, but I'm guessing most of them had never being involved in the hiring process. In fact, if you sum up all the recommendations of people online about recruitment, you can't hire anybody, because every single move is something you should not do according to one of the self-proclaimed new expert. Once again, as a developer, I can only notice how much of a diva my peers have become. We are very lucky we are a hot commodity on the market, because I tell you, no other professionals get a pass for a tenth of the things we claim we are entitled too.

slekker 3y ago
And yet developers go through the most ludicrous interviewing processes, having to prove time and time again that they have enough technical skills, while having 10 years of experience in their CV :^)
- BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  I regularly gets paid by my clients to help them filter out candidates because they don't feel they have the technical skill to do so or their team is too busy coding something to be available for anything else than than validating the last batch. One thing that comes over and over again is how much most candidates suck at programming. There are a huge quantity of people that are terrible at coding that will apply to your senior dev $200k job offer. They all have a great CV, and they cheat at everything: fake interviews with a look-alike, using chatgpt or indian services to solve programming tests are not uncommon. Last year, I had one former trader applying for a python job with a perfect resume, a stellar homework result, and who was claiming he likes "putting some good 10 hours of coding". First, there are maybe a 100 people in my country that can focus 10 hours in a row on code, and they won't apply for those clients. Second, the live coding review showed that he struggled to even create a basic virtualenv. Last month I created a test that I knew had one question that ChatGPT got wrong. 2 candidates gave me the GPT answer last week. So companies are desperate and try sieves after sieves, hoping to separate gold from mud. And they have limited time and resources to do so. Of course the hiring process sucks. Even if they knew what they were doing, and most of them are not, it would suck. Now don't get me wrong, it's nice the power balance is shitfing toward the workers for once, but hoping the other side won't react is just naive.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

remote_phone 3y ago

It sounds like the VP is there one who needs to be fired. If he can’t handle questions like that it brands he is building a really bad team. Better to get rid of him and find someone who is better at team building and recognizing talent.

axpy906 3y ago

Interview Question: “Show me how to reverse a linked list.” Position : Backend AI Engineer

krackers 3y ago
Step 1: Train an LLM... I'm giddy that the glib article from 7 years back has finally become reality: https://joelgrus.com/2016/05/23/fizz-buzz-in-tensorflow/ https://joelgrus.com/2016/05/23/fizz-buzz-in-tensorflow/

SloopJon 3y ago

Although this anecdote is presented as something that actually happened, it feels like a straw-man premise. The VP "practically growled at me" and "found Anand's questions 'super annoying.'" "His assessment that Anand was a 'bad fit' was really code for 'I don't want to feel uncomfortable.'" This seems uncharitable, but if it really does describe the VP accurately as a cartoonish pointy haired boss, this isn't the article that's going to change his mind, even if the fairy tale did have a happy ending. I generally welcome questions in an interview, but not all questions are equal. Some may signal a lack of preparation, don't seem particularly relevant, or come across as canned, like something they read in an HBR article (just kidding). I'm no expert interviewer on either side of the table. If there's one nugget I'd take from this article, it's a challenge to "uncover capabilities, not just experience." How do I convey my own capabilities as a job seeker, or elicit them as a hiring manager? Incidentally, the "77% of all jobs ... require little to no creativity" link takes you to a marijuana podcast, as the Martin Prosperity Institute is apparently defunct. I believe the statistic refers to a footnote in this paper (co-authored by the author of the submitted article): https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/80108 https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/80108

harles 3y ago

What an odd article. The title and contents don’t match (at least the title and main example where a candidate disqualified himself by asking annoying questions). I’m honestly not sure what point the author is trying to make.

JJMcJ 3y ago

Candidate: "I honestly wonder how you plan to stay in business for more than three months." VP: "He kept asking questions we weren't prepared to answer." Recruiter: "I think I'll go work for my cousin's parking lot striping company."

oldandtired 3y ago

A couple of decades ago, I was being interviewed for a position as the support developer. The interviewer asked me to tell what a piece of code was meant to do. I responded by by telling him that without context, the code was quite unclear. Strangely enough that was what he was looking for - someone who could recognise that the code needed further study before answering. Subsequently I was offered the job and took it. In a later interview for another position, during that interview it became very clear that they were wanting someone who would follow IT policy and NOT look after the end-user. I then couched my responses to focus on what the end-user needed. Subsequently I didn't get offered the job for which I was very happy.

specialist 3y ago

Interviewing practices are little better than folklore. Has anyone figured out how to do this? Like reproducible experiments, formalisms, checklists...? Last time I got good, actionable advice was from Journey of the Software Professional by Luke Hohmann. Covered stuff like self-selecting teams, assemblying a team with complimentary skills, and so on. Or maybe there's some secret manual for interviewing as hazing and torture? Like the CIA's simple sabotage field manual?

fmajid 3y ago
Google used to be notorious for hiring only based on the prestige of the candidate's alma mater and gotcha interviews with Fermi questions or the kind where the interviewer is trying to show his superiority, like an adolescent pissing match. But they invested in researching the factors that best predict success and ended up with two: IQ tests and highly structured interviews. Everything else was worse than useless. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/future-of-marketing/management-and-culture/structured-interviewing/ https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/future-of-marketing/manageme...

andrewstuart 3y ago

Recruiting outcomes are essentially random. Once you truly understand that then you can relax. If you get the job, you get it. If you don’t then you don’t. Roll of the dice. Means nothing. I went to a job interview recently and the feedback from the recruiter was I couldn’t explain the (many) projects I’d built. My recollection was I wasn’t asked, in a 30 minute interview that started late. My lifetime of software development skills and experience was judged in minutes to be inadequate. Roll of the dice.