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> I’m not sure why anyone would want a job they clearly aren’t qualified for. Well, I suck at interviewing and/or leetcode questions, but have so far done perf

by Aeolun 3y ago

> I’m not sure why anyone would want a job they clearly aren’t qualified for. Well, I suck at interviewing and/or leetcode questions, but have so far done perfectly fine in any actual position. I can totally see how you’d resort to ChatGPT to give the interviewers their desired robotic answers after 3 months of failing to pass an interview the conventional way.

munk-a 3y ago
I understand that you have no control over who you're interviewing with but... if you're a good fit and the interviewer leaves thinking you're a terrible fit that's a sign of a bad interviewer. Obviously there are non-proficiency things you can do to skew that perception (bad hygiene, late, obviously disinterested) but a good interviewer (especially one used to working with developers) should be good at getting by all the social awkwardness to evaluate your problem solving. And yes, most large companies have terrible interviewers.
- aydyn 3y ago
  Yes agreed that it is a problem with interviewers, but in practice all the responsibility falls on the interviewee. I've never once seen an interviewer getting better in any company I've worked for. What happens is they just move onto the next interviewee.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  I refuse to believe that all the interviewers I had over the course of 6 months were all terrible. It must be something about the process that is pathologically broken (especially when getting hired at larger companies)
  - verve_rat 3y ago
    I mean... if the interview process is even a little broken then doesn't that mean that over time worse and worse interviewers will get hired, making for worse and worse interviews meaning that worse and worse interviewers get hired...
Swizec 3y ago
> give the interviewers their desired robotic answers As someone who has interviewed a lot of people – robotic answers are specifically not what I (we?) look for. The difference between hands-on experience and book knowledge is exactly what we're trying to tease out. It's very obvious when someone is reciting answers from a book or google or youtube or whatever vs. when they have actually done the thing before. For the record: ChatGPT is very good and the answers it gives are exactly the kind of answers that people with book knowledge would give. High level, directionally correct, soft on specifics. I mostly interview seniors, you obviously wouldn't expect experience from an entry-level candidate. Those interviews are different.
davidthewatson 3y ago
That resonates. Me too! Here's Pew's Janna Anderson in 2015: "Algorithms are taking over much of the human work of hiring humans. And, unless they are programmed to seek out currently undervalued and difficult-to-track factors, they may tend to find that the more robot-like a human is the best she or he will be at doing most jobs. So, it could be that the robots are most likely to hire the most robotic humans." https://medium.com/@jannaq/the-robot-takeover-is-already-here-5aa55e1d136a https://medium.com/@jannaq/the-robot-takeover-is-already-her... I find the whole gamified system to be bizarre and disheartening no matter which side of the table you're on. To me, looking at modern tech interviewing is like comparing the gold standard OCEAN and the emergent HEXACO in personality surveys. Take the former on a bad day and it may leave the test taker feeling bad about themselves. The latter, much kinder and gentler in messaging around strengths and weaknesses. That "by design" quality strikes me as missing from the entire tech interview system. If it weren't broken, this would not be a 7-year conversation updated yesterday: https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards

by Aeolun 3y ago

munk-a 3y ago

I understand that you have no control over who you're interviewing with but... if you're a good fit and the interviewer leaves thinking you're a terrible fit that's a sign of a bad interviewer. Obviously there are non-proficiency things you can do to skew that perception (bad hygiene, late, obviously disinterested) but a good interviewer (especially one used to working with developers) should be good at getting by all the social awkwardness to evaluate your problem solving. And yes, most large companies have terrible interviewers.

aydyn 3y ago
Yes agreed that it is a problem with interviewers, but in practice all the responsibility falls on the interviewee. I've never once seen an interviewer getting better in any company I've worked for. What happens is they just move onto the next interviewee.
Aeolun 3y ago
I refuse to believe that all the interviewers I had over the course of 6 months were all terrible. It must be something about the process that is pathologically broken (especially when getting hired at larger companies)
- verve_rat 3y ago
  I mean... if the interview process is even a little broken then doesn't that mean that over time worse and worse interviewers will get hired, making for worse and worse interviews meaning that worse and worse interviewers get hired...

Swizec 3y ago

> give the interviewers their desired robotic answers As someone who has interviewed a lot of people – robotic answers are specifically not what I (we?) look for. The difference between hands-on experience and book knowledge is exactly what we're trying to tease out. It's very obvious when someone is reciting answers from a book or google or youtube or whatever vs. when they have actually done the thing before. For the record: ChatGPT is very good and the answers it gives are exactly the kind of answers that people with book knowledge would give. High level, directionally correct, soft on specifics. I mostly interview seniors, you obviously wouldn't expect experience from an entry-level candidate. Those interviews are different.

davidthewatson 3y ago

That resonates. Me too! Here's Pew's Janna Anderson in 2015: "Algorithms are taking over much of the human work of hiring humans. And, unless they are programmed to seek out currently undervalued and difficult-to-track factors, they may tend to find that the more robot-like a human is the best she or he will be at doing most jobs. So, it could be that the robots are most likely to hire the most robotic humans." https://medium.com/@jannaq/the-robot-takeover-is-already-here-5aa55e1d136a https://medium.com/@jannaq/the-robot-takeover-is-already-her... I find the whole gamified system to be bizarre and disheartening no matter which side of the table you're on. To me, looking at modern tech interviewing is like comparing the gold standard OCEAN and the emergent HEXACO in personality surveys. Take the former on a bad day and it may leave the test taker feeling bad about themselves. The latter, much kinder and gentler in messaging around strengths and weaknesses. That "by design" quality strikes me as missing from the entire tech interview system. If it weren't broken, this would not be a 7-year conversation updated yesterday: https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards