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> but still less signal than a lunch interview Careful with that line of thinking. There’s a significant body of research showing that people feel like a “chat

by Swizec 3y ago

> but still less signal than a lunch interview Careful with that line of thinking. There’s a significant body of research showing that people feel like a “chat about tech” interview provides the best signal, but it empirically performs the worst with a roughly 50% correlation to on-the-job performance. You’re better off flipping a coin because at least then you’re not biased. source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise:_A_Flaw_in_Human_Judgment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise:_A_Flaw_in_Human_Judgmen...

eschneider 3y ago
Lunch interview is often a great way to get some signal about the company on your potential coworkers. It's not so much asking questions and getting answers, but you often get a chance to see the team interacting _with each other_ and sometimes you can get a view into what sort of issues they are really dealing with.
- deleted 3y ago
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pedrosorio 3y ago
> but it empirically performs the worst with a roughly 50% correlation to on-the-job performance. You’re better off flipping a coin because at least then you’re not biased. I was going to point out that a correlation of 50% is pretty good (specially for predicting job performance from a single interview), whereas flipping a coin has 0% correlation with anything that is independent of the coin flip (such as job performance). You probably meant to say the probability you rank job-performance of two random candidates correctly based on an interview is about 50% (what your source calls "percent concordant"), a correlation of 0%. Out of curiosity: do you remember which section of the book looks at "chat about tech" interviews compared to other kinds of tech interviews in regards to their job performance prediction capabilities?
- Swizec 3y ago
  You are right, I got my stats terms mixed up. The "Improving Judgements" portion uses interviews as a case study and builds up from "just have a chat" to the typical multi-round panel interview with pre-defined rubrics that we see in tech these days. When done correctly, the book suggests this is the best we can do short of hiring everyone and firing low performers soon after. I remember they specifically mention Google as one of the companies where they ran a study linking interview practices/decisions to on-the-job performance.
xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
Hiring well is all about collecting signal. I can reliably collect more signal in a lunch interview than a coding interview. But I never said anything about what the signal represented, and it certainly doesn't represent anything that correlates to performance. Passing a lunch interview should be the easiest thing in the world. Just don't be brazenly unethical or immoral, a complete douchebag, a sexist scumbag or a racist shithead. It's amazing how many people fail at this simple task. It doesn't take a lot of signal to fail. It's far more important that you can have a civil conversation with a reasonable, level headed person than it is for them to be able to solve fizz buzz in 30 minutes.

by Swizec 3y ago

eschneider 3y ago

Lunch interview is often a great way to get some signal about the company on your potential coworkers. It's not so much asking questions and getting answers, but you often get a chance to see the team interacting _with each other_ and sometimes you can get a view into what sort of issues they are really dealing with.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

pedrosorio 3y ago

> but it empirically performs the worst with a roughly 50% correlation to on-the-job performance. You’re better off flipping a coin because at least then you’re not biased. I was going to point out that a correlation of 50% is pretty good (specially for predicting job performance from a single interview), whereas flipping a coin has 0% correlation with anything that is independent of the coin flip (such as job performance). You probably meant to say the probability you rank job-performance of two random candidates correctly based on an interview is about 50% (what your source calls "percent concordant"), a correlation of 0%. Out of curiosity: do you remember which section of the book looks at "chat about tech" interviews compared to other kinds of tech interviews in regards to their job performance prediction capabilities?

Swizec 3y ago
You are right, I got my stats terms mixed up. The "Improving Judgements" portion uses interviews as a case study and builds up from "just have a chat" to the typical multi-round panel interview with pre-defined rubrics that we see in tech these days. When done correctly, the book suggests this is the best we can do short of hiring everyone and firing low performers soon after. I remember they specifically mention Google as one of the companies where they ran a study linking interview practices/decisions to on-the-job performance.

xyzzy_plugh 3y ago

Hiring well is all about collecting signal. I can reliably collect more signal in a lunch interview than a coding interview. But I never said anything about what the signal represented, and it certainly doesn't represent anything that correlates to performance. Passing a lunch interview should be the easiest thing in the world. Just don't be brazenly unethical or immoral, a complete douchebag, a sexist scumbag or a racist shithead. It's amazing how many people fail at this simple task. It doesn't take a lot of signal to fail. It's far more important that you can have a civil conversation with a reasonable, level headed person than it is for them to be able to solve fizz buzz in 30 minutes.