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I noticed I had an immediate bias against candidates that showed up to interviews using Windows (except for one person who was in WSL and seemed very comfortabl

I noticed I had an immediate bias against candidates that showed up to interviews using Windows (except for one person who was in WSL and seemed very comfortable in bash), or, not having their SSH key set up for cloning the github repo we used for our interview, or fumbling back and forth with their mouse between vscode and the browser, not using all their screen real estate, or not knowing even the most basic of keyboard shortcuts (I nearly cut an interview short once when I saw someone right click copy right click paste in vscode but I wanted to give them a fair shake so gritted my teeth and went through with the rest of the interview. They did poorly.). I never used it as a for/against factor but for me lack of interest in computers, and a lack of familiarity with the tools of our trade, is a red flag. On the flip side, immediate green flags for me were: using linux, using keyboard shortcuts to manipulate windows / within the IDE, using an IDE other than vscode (vim/nvim or emacs are huge green flags), having custom scripts, having custom themes, or, the biggest one, self-hosting some applications. And Lo, these candidates also seem to perform the best in my experience.

rwoerz 1y ago
> right click copy right click paste Remembers me of a fellow student who refused to maximize his editor window. It turned out that he moved the text cursor to the next line with the right indentation by using just a lot of spaces.
gyulai 1y ago
That seems pretty opinionated, and by building a monoculture, persons with high openness to experience likely won't be drawn to your workplace, and you're also leaving on the table the potential that comes from diversity (a loaded term these days, but substantively still a valid point). Depending on the kind of work you do and your customers, this may not matter to you, but in a lot of industries, you need the diversity to be able to properly represent and empathise with your customer base, who might be from a very different social cohort than your developers. And Linux desktops, which your customers almost certainly won't be using, may also make that difficult. People who spend a ton of time ricing their Linux desktops may be bad at setting priorities. If you expect them to continue their ricing, but not do it "on the clock", you're implicitly age-discriminating and discriminating against people with families and/or hobbies and/or "a life". Also keep in mind that your company is likely only one of a dozen or so workplaces that these people apply to in a given month, sometimes for many months before they land a job, and they probably haven't set up their computer specifically to impress you, but rather to fit the lowest common denominator among the requirements they face from all their application processes and educational activities, and some of that will require Windows.
- dchftcs 1y ago
  Yeah, seems I'd be doomed for doing interviews on my Windows laptop for the webcam and the compatibility with my bluetooth headset rather than my linux desktop. Tunnel vision and a lack of empathy are negative signals, so you could say I'd have dodged a bullet, but unfortunately in these situations I'd need the job more than the job would need me.
  - kelnos 1y ago
    From my perspective, I think it shows poor judgment that you've chosen hardware where you can't get your webcam and bluetooth headset to work under Linux. Or you haven't bought a wired headset and a USB webcam that you've researched and know works properly under Linux. It sounds like the alternative you've chosen is to take interviews using an OS and development environment you're not comfortable in, which seems like a foolish choice to make. These days it's not difficult to buy hardware with Linux in mind, even on a budget. (And if you have two computers, I feel like budget is probably not really a problem for you.)
    - tpmoney 1y ago
      Even if you bought with Linux in mind, there’s no guarantee what works today works tomorrow. I have a Linux box that had working HDMI audio. A recent set of updates to the audio subsystems now means that when the box boots, the HDMI devices are muted by default. It seems like something changed in the order that things are initialized and the HDMI devices aren’t present when the audio system is initialized so none of your saved settings are re-applied. Every boot now requires manually fiddling with the audio settings to reset where audio should be going and unmute the devices. If my choice when going into an interview is the box that you need to buy specific hardware for and hope that no one re-configured the audio subsystems in the last update or the box that runs an os by a company known to put explicit code paths to recreate a prior edition bug that other software relies on… I might choose the latter too, even if it is windows. Of course I’d also probably choose the latter because there’s a non zero chance the interviewer is going to want to use some conferencing software or website that doesn’t work in Linux regardless of how well matched my hardware is.
yeputons 1y ago
> cloning the github repo we used for our interview Unless it's a very well-known big tech, I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable running any externally provided code during the interview. For all I know, it's RCE with potential to steal cookies and/or crypto.
- jq-r 1y ago
  Cloning a repo and running things from it are two very different things.
- komali2 1y ago
  It's a FOSS repo on github... you can just look at the code yourself. If we RCE you you can easily sue us lol. So for you, how should a company determine from 200 applicants, which one will be able to do the job best? Or at least some approximation to get down to the 5 most likely to do the job best?
- kelnos 1y ago
  That seems unnecessarily paranoid. What's your threat model here?
fuzzythinker 1y ago
I don't see why using vi mode in vscode isn't a green flag.
- komali2 1y ago
  That would be a green flag for me.
brenainn 1y ago
I think going by that, for juniors anyway, isn't great. Remotely coding during an interview isn't a great environment to start with, and you're probably seeing a lot of people unable to achieve any sort of flow because their mental capacity is devoted to the interview. Some people also won't pick up more advanced tooling until they have to start coding day after day for a living, and until they have other people to learn from. That was my situation anyway.
rkomorn 1y ago
> And Lo, these candidates also seem to perform the best in my experience. You mean the people you're not prejudiced against for their choice of laptop OS tend to perform better in your eyes? Interesting.
- komali2 1y ago
  The interview has various portions, given in sequence. The ones who got the furthest (or ran out our interview to where we had to invent "new fun bits" on the fly) were the ones who I mean when I say "performed best." The interview was implementing in live coding a prepared frontend stack. The email sent out indicated explicitly the task, that they'd be expected to share their screen and clone a repo off github, run `npm` commands, and then pair program. So those that weren't prepared for this, fussing around with ssh keys not set up or node not installed, or not knowing how to use bash or git, yeah it counted against them.
hyperadvanced 1y ago
Some of these yes, some of these no. In general being a clicker is a completely fine way to weed people out. If you don’t code like time is on the line without being asked to, I will not take the risk of needing to ask you. I’m less passionate about windows and have met some absolute wizards who use it, but in general it’s a negative indicator.
schnebbau 1y ago
Copying and pasting with the context menu, sure. But using vs code or Windows entirely? That seems a little extreme.
- komali2 1y ago
  Using vscode wasn't a red flag, using a different IDE was just a green flag. Everyone uses vscode, I wouldn't hold it against anyone for doing so, especially not a junior. But picking a different tool exhibits a unique level of interest in the job and our tools, and a different mindset. Those are pluses for me. Nobody was rejected because they used windows. It just so happens that none of the windows folks got past problem 1 of 3 (as in, they ran out of time without solving). Edit: I'm remembering now, one of the windows folks did get to the end of the interview, and they were the first person I recommended actually, so it's not like it was a deciding factor, just something that I'd see and go "hm" about.
  - schnebbau 1y ago
    Understood, thanks for clarifying.
  - Balinares 1y ago
    For 20-ish years I used vim with a custom configuration made of piles of plugins painstakingly tailored over many hours to my exact taste. Now I use VSCode because it's there, and it works. (With vim bindings, though. I'm not going back on that.)
watwut 1y ago
That just means you insist on people like you are reject those who are a little different. Probably in a lot more areas then you are even realizing.
- komali2 1y ago
  If I handed you 200 resumes and said "hire from this set our next junior frontend engineer," how would you do it? Assume: generic b2b SASS, post-seed, 5 person engineering team making first junior hire.
1718627440 1y ago
> I nearly cut an interview short once when I saw someone right click copy right click paste I like to live in the terminal, but I still sometimes do that. There are multiple clipboards, so using the mouse might sometimes do something different and sometimes I'm just tired and want to use my hands in a different position. And if I selected with the mouse its not much more effort than stopping the selection. You press down left for the selection, move for selection, at the end roll the finger over to the right mouse button without lifting, continue moving so the pointer goes over the rollover and lift the finger again once the pointer is over the copy action. This is the same amount of finger lift than just stopping the selection. Then pressing one or two keys on the keyboard are two finger movements more.
mcmoor 1y ago
> right click paste I am sometimes forced to do this because with markdown, Ctrl+Shift+V will render the markdown instead. I almost never use Ctrl+V because it will append paste instead of replace paste.

rwoerz 1y ago

> right click copy right click paste Remembers me of a fellow student who refused to maximize his editor window. It turned out that he moved the text cursor to the next line with the right indentation by using just a lot of spaces.

gyulai 1y ago

That seems pretty opinionated, and by building a monoculture, persons with high openness to experience likely won't be drawn to your workplace, and you're also leaving on the table the potential that comes from diversity (a loaded term these days, but substantively still a valid point). Depending on the kind of work you do and your customers, this may not matter to you, but in a lot of industries, you need the diversity to be able to properly represent and empathise with your customer base, who might be from a very different social cohort than your developers. And Linux desktops, which your customers almost certainly won't be using, may also make that difficult. People who spend a ton of time ricing their Linux desktops may be bad at setting priorities. If you expect them to continue their ricing, but not do it "on the clock", you're implicitly age-discriminating and discriminating against people with families and/or hobbies and/or "a life". Also keep in mind that your company is likely only one of a dozen or so workplaces that these people apply to in a given month, sometimes for many months before they land a job, and they probably haven't set up their computer specifically to impress you, but rather to fit the lowest common denominator among the requirements they face from all their application processes and educational activities, and some of that will require Windows.

dchftcs 1y ago
Yeah, seems I'd be doomed for doing interviews on my Windows laptop for the webcam and the compatibility with my bluetooth headset rather than my linux desktop. Tunnel vision and a lack of empathy are negative signals, so you could say I'd have dodged a bullet, but unfortunately in these situations I'd need the job more than the job would need me.
- kelnos 1y ago
  From my perspective, I think it shows poor judgment that you've chosen hardware where you can't get your webcam and bluetooth headset to work under Linux. Or you haven't bought a wired headset and a USB webcam that you've researched and know works properly under Linux. It sounds like the alternative you've chosen is to take interviews using an OS and development environment you're not comfortable in, which seems like a foolish choice to make. These days it's not difficult to buy hardware with Linux in mind, even on a budget. (And if you have two computers, I feel like budget is probably not really a problem for you.)
  - tpmoney 1y ago
    Even if you bought with Linux in mind, there’s no guarantee what works today works tomorrow. I have a Linux box that had working HDMI audio. A recent set of updates to the audio subsystems now means that when the box boots, the HDMI devices are muted by default. It seems like something changed in the order that things are initialized and the HDMI devices aren’t present when the audio system is initialized so none of your saved settings are re-applied. Every boot now requires manually fiddling with the audio settings to reset where audio should be going and unmute the devices. If my choice when going into an interview is the box that you need to buy specific hardware for and hope that no one re-configured the audio subsystems in the last update or the box that runs an os by a company known to put explicit code paths to recreate a prior edition bug that other software relies on… I might choose the latter too, even if it is windows. Of course I’d also probably choose the latter because there’s a non zero chance the interviewer is going to want to use some conferencing software or website that doesn’t work in Linux regardless of how well matched my hardware is.

yeputons 1y ago

> cloning the github repo we used for our interview Unless it's a very well-known big tech, I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable running any externally provided code during the interview. For all I know, it's RCE with potential to steal cookies and/or crypto.

jq-r 1y ago
Cloning a repo and running things from it are two very different things.
komali2 1y ago
It's a FOSS repo on github... you can just look at the code yourself. If we RCE you you can easily sue us lol. So for you, how should a company determine from 200 applicants, which one will be able to do the job best? Or at least some approximation to get down to the 5 most likely to do the job best?
kelnos 1y ago
That seems unnecessarily paranoid. What's your threat model here?

fuzzythinker 1y ago

I don't see why using vi mode in vscode isn't a green flag.

komali2 1y ago
That would be a green flag for me.

brenainn 1y ago

I think going by that, for juniors anyway, isn't great. Remotely coding during an interview isn't a great environment to start with, and you're probably seeing a lot of people unable to achieve any sort of flow because their mental capacity is devoted to the interview. Some people also won't pick up more advanced tooling until they have to start coding day after day for a living, and until they have other people to learn from. That was my situation anyway.

rkomorn 1y ago

> And Lo, these candidates also seem to perform the best in my experience. You mean the people you're not prejudiced against for their choice of laptop OS tend to perform better in your eyes? Interesting.

komali2 1y ago
The interview has various portions, given in sequence. The ones who got the furthest (or ran out our interview to where we had to invent "new fun bits" on the fly) were the ones who I mean when I say "performed best." The interview was implementing in live coding a prepared frontend stack. The email sent out indicated explicitly the task, that they'd be expected to share their screen and clone a repo off github, run `npm` commands, and then pair program. So those that weren't prepared for this, fussing around with ssh keys not set up or node not installed, or not knowing how to use bash or git, yeah it counted against them.

hyperadvanced 1y ago

Some of these yes, some of these no. In general being a clicker is a completely fine way to weed people out. If you don’t code like time is on the line without being asked to, I will not take the risk of needing to ask you. I’m less passionate about windows and have met some absolute wizards who use it, but in general it’s a negative indicator.

schnebbau 1y ago

Copying and pasting with the context menu, sure. But using vs code or Windows entirely? That seems a little extreme.

komali2 1y ago
Using vscode wasn't a red flag, using a different IDE was just a green flag. Everyone uses vscode, I wouldn't hold it against anyone for doing so, especially not a junior. But picking a different tool exhibits a unique level of interest in the job and our tools, and a different mindset. Those are pluses for me. Nobody was rejected because they used windows. It just so happens that none of the windows folks got past problem 1 of 3 (as in, they ran out of time without solving). Edit: I'm remembering now, one of the windows folks did get to the end of the interview, and they were the first person I recommended actually, so it's not like it was a deciding factor, just something that I'd see and go "hm" about.
- schnebbau 1y ago
  Understood, thanks for clarifying.
- Balinares 1y ago
  For 20-ish years I used vim with a custom configuration made of piles of plugins painstakingly tailored over many hours to my exact taste. Now I use VSCode because it's there, and it works. (With vim bindings, though. I'm not going back on that.)

watwut 1y ago

That just means you insist on people like you are reject those who are a little different. Probably in a lot more areas then you are even realizing.

komali2 1y ago
If I handed you 200 resumes and said "hire from this set our next junior frontend engineer," how would you do it? Assume: generic b2b SASS, post-seed, 5 person engineering team making first junior hire.

1718627440 1y ago

> I nearly cut an interview short once when I saw someone right click copy right click paste I like to live in the terminal, but I still sometimes do that. There are multiple clipboards, so using the mouse might sometimes do something different and sometimes I'm just tired and want to use my hands in a different position. And if I selected with the mouse its not much more effort than stopping the selection. You press down left for the selection, move for selection, at the end roll the finger over to the right mouse button without lifting, continue moving so the pointer goes over the rollover and lift the finger again once the pointer is over the copy action. This is the same amount of finger lift than just stopping the selection. Then pressing one or two keys on the keyboard are two finger movements more.

mcmoor 1y ago

> right click paste I am sometimes forced to do this because with markdown, Ctrl+Shift+V will render the markdown instead. I almost never use Ctrl+V because it will append paste instead of replace paste.