4 ms·

Entry-level and non-senior positions have truly hellish interview processes. Five-six interview stages, week+ take-home projects, ghosting, zero-feedback. Large

by reedf1 3y ago

Entry-level and non-senior positions have truly hellish interview processes. Five-six interview stages, week+ take-home projects, ghosting, zero-feedback. Large number of companies interviewing with no intention of hiring. This is absolutely worse than other professions, I've recently made a bit of a career change and the interview involved one informal conversation, and my past experience/education was actually taken at face value.

kstrauser 3y ago
That mirrors my experience. Recent interviews have been mentally challenging because the other person was poking hard at the limits of my knowledge, but the process itself was easy. Example question we spent half an hour on: Tell me a decision you made at your last job that you would do differently now. That opened the door to a million roads. Is candidate self-reflective? Can they admit mistakes? Was the mistake a reasonable idea given limited knowledge? How deep can they go with their explanation? Can they explain their work to others? That was fun because it let me show what I can do, and it would be damn near impossible to bluff one’s way through. It beats the hell outta take-home exercises or “let’s say you’re writing a program to calculate the volume of a lake…”-type coding tests.
- whstl 3y ago
  I always ask those kinds of questions. I also ask what people are proud about. But I rarely get good answers, it's always some generic answers like "I built software for the company". Some people even fail to remember anything. Interviewing is hard :/
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    I’ve been on the other side of the table my share of times, and it’s so hard. I think that style has lots of signal, though. I don’t really wanna work with someone who can’t describe something they spent the last 2 years working on. Cheers for Team Grown-Up Conversation!
    - whstl 3y ago
      Yep, totally agree. I feel the same as you.
  - harimau777 3y ago
    The problem I see is that the things that I'm most proud of (that had the most value for the company) aren't necessarily the things that are likely to get me a job. E.g. by far the biggest impact that I've had at my current company is not any of the code that I've written; it's having interviewed and recommended for hiring several developers who have become top performers. The second biggest impact has been reforming processes that didn't bring value and killed moral. In fact, actually coding has been one of the smallest areas where I've contributed to my company. However, saying all that isn't going to get me a coding job. It's all about how many tickets you completed or at best features you implemented.
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      No, that’s exactly the kind of thing I’d like to hear about! Show me that you can think about those million things beside writing code that make you great to have around!
      - whstl 3y ago
        Exactly. It's great knowing those extra talents beforehand. One developer I hired also does Figma designs. Since I also do, I decided to hire them and we now do the designs ourselves.
    - whstl 3y ago
      > it's having interviewed and recommended for hiring several developers who have become top performers That's actually a great answer.
  - vaylian 3y ago
    > Some people even fail to remember anything. This is me. Part of the reason is that there is a never-ending torrent of problems that need to be solved. You've got this really tricky issue sorted out? Great, there is more stuff waiting down the line. This doesn't leave room for remembering and acknowledging the significance of things. However, there are some things that I actually am proud of, now that I think about it. But these are the moments, when I'm able to help a coworker with some technical obstacle and I've solved the issue within a few minutes because it's easy for me to see what's wrong. It's the exact opposite of a herculean effort but it causes a huge relief for my coworkers. But is this something that a recruiter would want to hear? I doubt it. They are more interested in me taking care of my tasks instead of the tasks of other people.
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      If I suspected I could hire someone that would never write a line of feature code but could make everyone else on the team 20% more productive, I’d hand-walk their application through HR. Have you ever considered specializing in platform and tooling work? Become the office hero!
      - pdimitar 3y ago
        Not your parent commenter. I considered it many times and with time became a tooling expert in many, many CLI areas. It's rare for me to be asked "do you know of a CLI tool that does X and Y?" and for me to be unable to answer. 1 out of 20 times, probably. Problem is that nobody wants to pay only for that, or I had a really shitty luck and didn't make a special effort to find better companies (reflecting back, sadly both are true). So wherever I worked, I was the senior dev + the tooling expert everyone was asking advice from. The latter part became like a hobby that I never managed to monetize.
    - whstl 3y ago
      Minor things are better than the super popular "I helped create a blockchain app that served 2 billion users and moved 5 trillion dollars per day". Those I legitimately don't care for, and the other answers must be good to make up for it. Disorganized answers are fine. Technical interviews are a place to talk shop. Run away from interviewers looking for perfection. Recruiters forward the answer to us, so at least in my case the more techy the better.
whstl 3y ago
Come to think of it, the best intern I ever worked with was hired after an informal "talk shop" chat with the CTO. On the other hand, the worst I had was hired after going through a convoluted process. Problem is, informal chat makes it difficult for certain candidates that lack people skills.
- zbentley 3y ago
  > informal chat makes it difficult for certain candidates that lack people skills. I think that's nearly right. If it were just a people skills issue, then a "failed" informal chat would be a valid reason not to continue with a lot of candidates--people skills are much more important than widely thought in programming, and doubly so for entry-level engineers whose early work is largely going to be learning/pairing/correcting. However, informal-chat-with-the-CTO filters are made unfairly difficult for the kinds of people who would not find themselves with quality face time with the CTO, which is a much bigger problem: remote candidates, non-native language speaker candidates, disabled candidates, and candidates at the "far end" of the funnel--people graduating from no-name colleges distant from the employer with no network connection that they could parlay into an informal chat. And that is a problem for informal face-time as an interviewing practice.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    Also, "informal chat" style interviews (at least those without quantifiable scoring) can be fraught with bias. Did the CTO "like" the chat with the candidate because he was measurably technically qualified, or was it because he was a lot like the CTO in many ways, and their personalities gelled?
    - whstl 3y ago
      Good points. But on the other hand, I enjoy working more with people whose personalities and style also gel with me. So I don't really know if this is that big of a problem. Communication is very important, and this is half the battle. EDIT: But to answer your question: it was for an internship position, so an informal "talk shop" chat was more than enough to measure what we wanted. Normally it takes a few rounds of technical interviews to get actual information from people who are less, let's say, "passionate". What would be better was if everyone could be as open as this person, so we would be able to just have the chat, instead of having technical questions and long interviews.

by reedf1 3y ago

kstrauser 3y ago

That mirrors my experience. Recent interviews have been mentally challenging because the other person was poking hard at the limits of my knowledge, but the process itself was easy. Example question we spent half an hour on: Tell me a decision you made at your last job that you would do differently now. That opened the door to a million roads. Is candidate self-reflective? Can they admit mistakes? Was the mistake a reasonable idea given limited knowledge? How deep can they go with their explanation? Can they explain their work to others? That was fun because it let me show what I can do, and it would be damn near impossible to bluff one’s way through. It beats the hell outta take-home exercises or “let’s say you’re writing a program to calculate the volume of a lake…”-type coding tests.

whstl 3y ago
I always ask those kinds of questions. I also ask what people are proud about. But I rarely get good answers, it's always some generic answers like "I built software for the company". Some people even fail to remember anything. Interviewing is hard :/
- kstrauser 3y ago
  I’ve been on the other side of the table my share of times, and it’s so hard. I think that style has lots of signal, though. I don’t really wanna work with someone who can’t describe something they spent the last 2 years working on. Cheers for Team Grown-Up Conversation!
  - whstl 3y ago
    Yep, totally agree. I feel the same as you.
- harimau777 3y ago
  The problem I see is that the things that I'm most proud of (that had the most value for the company) aren't necessarily the things that are likely to get me a job. E.g. by far the biggest impact that I've had at my current company is not any of the code that I've written; it's having interviewed and recommended for hiring several developers who have become top performers. The second biggest impact has been reforming processes that didn't bring value and killed moral. In fact, actually coding has been one of the smallest areas where I've contributed to my company. However, saying all that isn't going to get me a coding job. It's all about how many tickets you completed or at best features you implemented.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    No, that’s exactly the kind of thing I’d like to hear about! Show me that you can think about those million things beside writing code that make you great to have around!
    - whstl 3y ago
      Exactly. It's great knowing those extra talents beforehand. One developer I hired also does Figma designs. Since I also do, I decided to hire them and we now do the designs ourselves.
  - whstl 3y ago
    > it's having interviewed and recommended for hiring several developers who have become top performers That's actually a great answer.
- vaylian 3y ago
  > Some people even fail to remember anything. This is me. Part of the reason is that there is a never-ending torrent of problems that need to be solved. You've got this really tricky issue sorted out? Great, there is more stuff waiting down the line. This doesn't leave room for remembering and acknowledging the significance of things. However, there are some things that I actually am proud of, now that I think about it. But these are the moments, when I'm able to help a coworker with some technical obstacle and I've solved the issue within a few minutes because it's easy for me to see what's wrong. It's the exact opposite of a herculean effort but it causes a huge relief for my coworkers. But is this something that a recruiter would want to hear? I doubt it. They are more interested in me taking care of my tasks instead of the tasks of other people.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    If I suspected I could hire someone that would never write a line of feature code but could make everyone else on the team 20% more productive, I’d hand-walk their application through HR. Have you ever considered specializing in platform and tooling work? Become the office hero!
    - pdimitar 3y ago
      Not your parent commenter. I considered it many times and with time became a tooling expert in many, many CLI areas. It's rare for me to be asked "do you know of a CLI tool that does X and Y?" and for me to be unable to answer. 1 out of 20 times, probably. Problem is that nobody wants to pay only for that, or I had a really shitty luck and didn't make a special effort to find better companies (reflecting back, sadly both are true). So wherever I worked, I was the senior dev + the tooling expert everyone was asking advice from. The latter part became like a hobby that I never managed to monetize.
  - whstl 3y ago
    Minor things are better than the super popular "I helped create a blockchain app that served 2 billion users and moved 5 trillion dollars per day". Those I legitimately don't care for, and the other answers must be good to make up for it. Disorganized answers are fine. Technical interviews are a place to talk shop. Run away from interviewers looking for perfection. Recruiters forward the answer to us, so at least in my case the more techy the better.

whstl 3y ago

Come to think of it, the best intern I ever worked with was hired after an informal "talk shop" chat with the CTO. On the other hand, the worst I had was hired after going through a convoluted process. Problem is, informal chat makes it difficult for certain candidates that lack people skills.

zbentley 3y ago
> informal chat makes it difficult for certain candidates that lack people skills. I think that's nearly right. If it were just a people skills issue, then a "failed" informal chat would be a valid reason not to continue with a lot of candidates--people skills are much more important than widely thought in programming, and doubly so for entry-level engineers whose early work is largely going to be learning/pairing/correcting. However, informal-chat-with-the-CTO filters are made unfairly difficult for the kinds of people who would not find themselves with quality face time with the CTO, which is a much bigger problem: remote candidates, non-native language speaker candidates, disabled candidates, and candidates at the "far end" of the funnel--people graduating from no-name colleges distant from the employer with no network connection that they could parlay into an informal chat. And that is a problem for informal face-time as an interviewing practice.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  Also, "informal chat" style interviews (at least those without quantifiable scoring) can be fraught with bias. Did the CTO "like" the chat with the candidate because he was measurably technically qualified, or was it because he was a lot like the CTO in many ways, and their personalities gelled?
  - whstl 3y ago
    Good points. But on the other hand, I enjoy working more with people whose personalities and style also gel with me. So I don't really know if this is that big of a problem. Communication is very important, and this is half the battle. EDIT: But to answer your question: it was for an internship position, so an informal "talk shop" chat was more than enough to measure what we wanted. Normally it takes a few rounds of technical interviews to get actual information from people who are less, let's say, "passionate". What would be better was if everyone could be as open as this person, so we would be able to just have the chat, instead of having technical questions and long interviews.