4 ms·

Isn't that what companies would look for, though? They want people who can work under stress. If you had two equal programmers, and one who was stressed and the

Isn't that what companies would look for, though? They want people who can work under stress. If you had two equal programmers, and one who was stressed and the second who was not, any company would pick the second one without thinking.

chii 2y ago
That assumes that during regular work, you'd be under stress. If it were the military, then yes, i would agree - working while you're being shot at means you need to be able to work under stress. However, a lot of people don't do well under stress, and in many corporate settings, there's usually no real source of stress (except perhaps artificial stress induced by management). Someone might work much better in a stress free environment than someone else under a stressful environment, but you'd then easily miss these candidates by structuring the interview to be stressful.
lapcat 2y ago
All stress is not the same. Interview stress is actually very different from working stress. Ask a firefighter who rushes into burning buildings for a living to give a public speech in front of a large crowd of people in a non-burning building. Which is more stressful? For the firefighter, it may be the latter. Fighting fires is what they train for, what they're experienced with, whereas giving speeches is not. A lot of people, no matter the profession—firefighter, programmer, etc.—have a great fear of public speaking. Likewise, a lot of people, no matter the profession, also have a great fear of job interviews, especially the crazy audition-style interviews of programmers. It's simply human nature, with little bearing on job performance in general. We shouldn't be giving auditions to people who aren't stage performers. Personally, I never work with someone watching me—definitely not a judgmental stranger who will fire me for any perceived peccadillo—nor do I ever have some specific narrow time limit on my work in the range of 15 minutes or so.
- starkparker 2y ago
  Interview stress is nigh indistinguishable in my experience from a bad customer call. Indeed, if I replaced the bug fix part with writing an effective ticket or test for the issue, this becomes an even better method for tech support, technical account managers, or sales engineers than for developers, unless it's a company where devs regularly interact directly with customers.
playingalong 2y ago
Some organizations (although admittedly not all) put a lot of effort to offer a creative environment for their creative staff. So they optimize for something else. A bit like 100m race vs. marathon.
- StefanBatory 2y ago
  I'm still at university, so despite my previous post having a bit of accusatory tone, I was genuinely curious. At least my profs told us many times that we should be prepare that stress at work is absolutely normal and that if we can't handle it, just drop out.
  - sdlion 2y ago
    In my experience, being a workplace or even academia, there's as many types of work environments as types of teachers. In the end, management (or founders if it's a startup) set the tone and who they end up hiring (thus, who will manage your work). And management is just normal people in the end.
  - burnished 2y ago
    Working minimum wage jobs of most stripes or in the service industry (retail, restaurants, that sort of thing) is far more stressful in my experience. Working conditions tend to be worse and people treat you worse. Not that tech isn't stressful at times, just that I've never felt like I needed to go to the walk-in to cry about it.
burnished 2y ago
>> They want people who can work under stress. Not exactly. Interviews are a different kind of stress that is usually a direct result of being observed in an unfamiliar and somewhat high pressure situation. You might have to deal with an outage at work, but typically your employment isn't on the line (less pressure) and you have a great deal more familiarity. Some hiring practices intentionally try to create a more welcome, less stressful experience because they don't want to bias for interviewing skill (as opposed to fitness for the job).

chii 2y ago

That assumes that during regular work, you'd be under stress. If it were the military, then yes, i would agree - working while you're being shot at means you need to be able to work under stress. However, a lot of people don't do well under stress, and in many corporate settings, there's usually no real source of stress (except perhaps artificial stress induced by management). Someone might work much better in a stress free environment than someone else under a stressful environment, but you'd then easily miss these candidates by structuring the interview to be stressful.

lapcat 2y ago

All stress is not the same. Interview stress is actually very different from working stress. Ask a firefighter who rushes into burning buildings for a living to give a public speech in front of a large crowd of people in a non-burning building. Which is more stressful? For the firefighter, it may be the latter. Fighting fires is what they train for, what they're experienced with, whereas giving speeches is not. A lot of people, no matter the profession—firefighter, programmer, etc.—have a great fear of public speaking. Likewise, a lot of people, no matter the profession, also have a great fear of job interviews, especially the crazy audition-style interviews of programmers. It's simply human nature, with little bearing on job performance in general. We shouldn't be giving auditions to people who aren't stage performers. Personally, I never work with someone watching me—definitely not a judgmental stranger who will fire me for any perceived peccadillo—nor do I ever have some specific narrow time limit on my work in the range of 15 minutes or so.

starkparker 2y ago
Interview stress is nigh indistinguishable in my experience from a bad customer call. Indeed, if I replaced the bug fix part with writing an effective ticket or test for the issue, this becomes an even better method for tech support, technical account managers, or sales engineers than for developers, unless it's a company where devs regularly interact directly with customers.

playingalong 2y ago

Some organizations (although admittedly not all) put a lot of effort to offer a creative environment for their creative staff. So they optimize for something else. A bit like 100m race vs. marathon.

StefanBatory 2y ago
I'm still at university, so despite my previous post having a bit of accusatory tone, I was genuinely curious. At least my profs told us many times that we should be prepare that stress at work is absolutely normal and that if we can't handle it, just drop out.
- sdlion 2y ago
  In my experience, being a workplace or even academia, there's as many types of work environments as types of teachers. In the end, management (or founders if it's a startup) set the tone and who they end up hiring (thus, who will manage your work). And management is just normal people in the end.
- burnished 2y ago
  Working minimum wage jobs of most stripes or in the service industry (retail, restaurants, that sort of thing) is far more stressful in my experience. Working conditions tend to be worse and people treat you worse. Not that tech isn't stressful at times, just that I've never felt like I needed to go to the walk-in to cry about it.

burnished 2y ago

>> They want people who can work under stress. Not exactly. Interviews are a different kind of stress that is usually a direct result of being observed in an unfamiliar and somewhat high pressure situation. You might have to deal with an outage at work, but typically your employment isn't on the line (less pressure) and you have a great deal more familiarity. Some hiring practices intentionally try to create a more welcome, less stressful experience because they don't want to bias for interviewing skill (as opposed to fitness for the job).