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My approach to technical interviews is just to talk shop with the candidate for an hour. Throughout the conversation, we mostly stay light and touch on a lot o

My approach to technical interviews is just to talk shop with the candidate for an hour. Throughout the conversation, we mostly stay light and touch on a lot of different topics. But every so often, I’ll drill in and start discussing some random topic at depth. If you drill in just 2-3 times throughout the interview, you get a pretty clear picture of the candidates average depth of knowledge. Not only is this LLM proof, but you also get a sense of their opinions, their interests, their passion, etc.

koliber 2y ago
This is a great approach and I like it as well. I did have a few situations where the person could talk shop like an expert but when it came to actually writing some code they failed. I literally had a person fail fizzbuzz that was supposedly senior and talked shop really well.
- bilsbie 2y ago
  I’d really want to dig into that. Maybe they were nervous? I’ve gotten so nervous in some situations I’ve forgotten the next sentence was going to say. I wonder if it’s an issue like that. Your mind just blanks.
- SilverRubicon 2y ago
  As a senior developer I had to search for "wtf is fizzbuzz". How many senior developers spend their time solving these kinds of problems?
bilsbie 2y ago
It’s a major improvement but you still want to be careful on what you consider common knowledge. There’s a lot of breadth to software engineering and there can be whole areas someone is missing but can learn. For example I was always a great employee but early in my career I wasn’t big on unit testing. Or I interviewed for an ML job and they dinged me for not knowing a bunch of statistics things off the top of my head.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  > I was always a great employee but early in my career I wasn’t big on unit testing Unit testing does have drawbacks though, so as long as you could explain why you aren't a huge fan of it, I don't see why this would be a disqualification
Ferret7446 2y ago
This doesn't scale, and opens up legal liability to unfair hiring accusations.

koliber 2y ago

This is a great approach and I like it as well. I did have a few situations where the person could talk shop like an expert but when it came to actually writing some code they failed. I literally had a person fail fizzbuzz that was supposedly senior and talked shop really well.

bilsbie 2y ago
I’d really want to dig into that. Maybe they were nervous? I’ve gotten so nervous in some situations I’ve forgotten the next sentence was going to say. I wonder if it’s an issue like that. Your mind just blanks.
SilverRubicon 2y ago
As a senior developer I had to search for "wtf is fizzbuzz". How many senior developers spend their time solving these kinds of problems?

bilsbie 2y ago

It’s a major improvement but you still want to be careful on what you consider common knowledge. There’s a lot of breadth to software engineering and there can be whole areas someone is missing but can learn. For example I was always a great employee but early in my career I wasn’t big on unit testing. Or I interviewed for an ML job and they dinged me for not knowing a bunch of statistics things off the top of my head.

bluefirebrand 2y ago
> I was always a great employee but early in my career I wasn’t big on unit testing Unit testing does have drawbacks though, so as long as you could explain why you aren't a huge fan of it, I don't see why this would be a disqualification

Ferret7446 2y ago

This doesn't scale, and opens up legal liability to unfair hiring accusations.