3 ms·

> Any long-winded answer to a question is immediate out and has been for years. Why? If the winding path is actually interesting and gives you insights into h

by hypfer 4mo ago

> Any long-winded answer to a question is immediate out and has been for years. Why? If the winding path is actually interesting and gives you insights into how the person works, why would that be a bad thing?

tokioyoyo 4mo ago
Not the OP, but because that’s not usually the answer I’m looking for, and my assumption would be the interviewee is not familiar with the concepts. I’d want to hear about how they use it, what are their pain points, how they’ve automated stuff and etc.
- hypfer 4mo ago
  Okay I see thank you. But that sounds more like "evasive" is the problematic attribute and not "long winding". Which does show up at the same time often, true. But not always.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 4mo ago
    This is also describing an interview scenario where the interviewee is trying to throw everything at the wall hoping to stick. Sure there is discretion in how much to elaborate, but it is a performative act, where someone is trying to demonstrate that they have deep knowledge about a topic and can appreciate nuance that not everything is black and white.
vibe_that_works 4mo ago
Often the hiring manager will have the person to be hired somewhere in his report chain. So if a person can't effectively communicate and can't properly respond to a "I only have 2 minutes, shoot", then I am getting a future liability into the company that will slow down all future communications. I much rather prefer someone who needs 3 seconds to triage a question and tell me: "This is X, I know this, here is the solution" or "This is Y, I don't know it, but I will get back to you within 24h". I do absolutely not want a "Well let's think jointly about this for a couple of minutes". There is no jointly with your boss. Let's do a some math of a 1:12 manager to direct report ratio. That means for every hour you have, your boss only has 5 minutes. And if you talk to your boss' boss, they have 25 seconds for every of your hours.
- hypfer 4mo ago
  That does sound like a bad org tho, sorry to say that. Not to disagree of course that time is limited, but in my experience, optimizing it this harshly leads to poor results, because eventually, you just get leapfrogged by reality. Hyper-optimized systems are brittle and can't really adapt to the market changing. But yeah, I guess they still need developers. Just doesn't sound like a fun job :D
  - vibe_that_works 4mo ago
    Just trying to fix the misunderstanding: I am not saying that you will have a literal 25 seconds meeting with your boss's boss. I am just making a math argument taking typical orgchart ratios. So let me take this a step further. You want to meet your boss' boss for 10 minutes to present them something. 10 minutes of his time are an equivalent of more than 20 hours of your time. So if your initial idea was to "take maybe 1-2h" to prepare for this -> You are underprepared by at least one order of magnitude.
    - hypfer 4mo ago
      I mean I am no expert, but to me it sounds like the org you're describing seems to lean away from the "engineering" side of things and into the "org for the sake of org". Which might not be ideal, because "orging for the sake of org" to my understanding consumes significant resources not going into building products/marketshare/shareholder value. But then again, I'm no hiring manager in such a structure, so this is probably just an uninformed take.
    - ImprobableTruth 4mo ago
      This is a very strange mindset. Even if you want to treat everything as sort of billable hours this doesn't really make sense because the average boss's boss's isn't paid anywhere near 144x. If a SWE spends 100 hours to save their boss's boss one hour, they're wasting a ton of money.
    - sensanaty 4mo ago
      > 10 minutes of his time are an equivalent of more than 20 hours of your time. What does this even mean?
michaelsalim 4mo ago
Not OP also but it typically signals that you're not confident with your answers. If I am actually curious about it, I'd ask a followup question for them to expand.

by hypfer 4mo ago

tokioyoyo 4mo ago

Not the OP, but because that’s not usually the answer I’m looking for, and my assumption would be the interviewee is not familiar with the concepts. I’d want to hear about how they use it, what are their pain points, how they’ve automated stuff and etc.

hypfer 4mo ago
Okay I see thank you. But that sounds more like "evasive" is the problematic attribute and not "long winding". Which does show up at the same time often, true. But not always.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 4mo ago
  This is also describing an interview scenario where the interviewee is trying to throw everything at the wall hoping to stick. Sure there is discretion in how much to elaborate, but it is a performative act, where someone is trying to demonstrate that they have deep knowledge about a topic and can appreciate nuance that not everything is black and white.

vibe_that_works 4mo ago

Often the hiring manager will have the person to be hired somewhere in his report chain. So if a person can't effectively communicate and can't properly respond to a "I only have 2 minutes, shoot", then I am getting a future liability into the company that will slow down all future communications. I much rather prefer someone who needs 3 seconds to triage a question and tell me: "This is X, I know this, here is the solution" or "This is Y, I don't know it, but I will get back to you within 24h". I do absolutely not want a "Well let's think jointly about this for a couple of minutes". There is no jointly with your boss. Let's do a some math of a 1:12 manager to direct report ratio. That means for every hour you have, your boss only has 5 minutes. And if you talk to your boss' boss, they have 25 seconds for every of your hours.

hypfer 4mo ago
That does sound like a bad org tho, sorry to say that. Not to disagree of course that time is limited, but in my experience, optimizing it this harshly leads to poor results, because eventually, you just get leapfrogged by reality. Hyper-optimized systems are brittle and can't really adapt to the market changing. But yeah, I guess they still need developers. Just doesn't sound like a fun job :D
- vibe_that_works 4mo ago
  Just trying to fix the misunderstanding: I am not saying that you will have a literal 25 seconds meeting with your boss's boss. I am just making a math argument taking typical orgchart ratios. So let me take this a step further. You want to meet your boss' boss for 10 minutes to present them something. 10 minutes of his time are an equivalent of more than 20 hours of your time. So if your initial idea was to "take maybe 1-2h" to prepare for this -> You are underprepared by at least one order of magnitude.
  - hypfer 4mo ago
    I mean I am no expert, but to me it sounds like the org you're describing seems to lean away from the "engineering" side of things and into the "org for the sake of org". Which might not be ideal, because "orging for the sake of org" to my understanding consumes significant resources not going into building products/marketshare/shareholder value. But then again, I'm no hiring manager in such a structure, so this is probably just an uninformed take.
  - ImprobableTruth 4mo ago
    This is a very strange mindset. Even if you want to treat everything as sort of billable hours this doesn't really make sense because the average boss's boss's isn't paid anywhere near 144x. If a SWE spends 100 hours to save their boss's boss one hour, they're wasting a ton of money.
  - sensanaty 4mo ago
    > 10 minutes of his time are an equivalent of more than 20 hours of your time. What does this even mean?

michaelsalim 4mo ago

Not OP also but it typically signals that you're not confident with your answers. If I am actually curious about it, I'd ask a followup question for them to expand.