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Loved, loved the "I let him dig the deepest hole he could imagine by doing my best ditzy/derpy voice and just saying things like "they want me to ask about the

Loved, loved the "I let him dig the deepest hole he could imagine by doing my best ditzy/derpy voice and just saying things like "they want me to ask about the load... average...?" bit. I do that too. Honestly, if you're patronizing me in the interview, you're gonna be insufferable to work with. The best candidates light up when they have a chance to explain something cool, no matter who is listening and get even more excited when you ask a question about a detail. Good candidates are patient and thoughtful and ask YOU check-in questions ("so now we have X, right?") Mediocre candidates get a bit lost, sometimes overshoot or undershoot the right level of technical detail, but muddle through and sigh in relief at the end. Asshole candidates try to dump a bunch of smoke and mirrors on you, say shit like "well, if you haven't taken an algorithms class ...," wave off your questions, and pretend they don't have enough time to answer the question "seriously." If you think in your engineering career you're never going to have to explain "how something works" in at least some detail to a semi- or non-technical person, you are not going to have much of an engineering career.

kator 14y ago
I look a lot like a "pointy haired boss" type. I used this to my advantage at times in interviews, I allow the candidate to think I don't know much about the topic at hand. It's nice to see how they can articulate something and you can smell the BS quickly. That said I am looking for Attitude, Aptitude and Fit. It would be hard for me to spend much time with someone who started the call like that, I would have most likely politely bowed out pretty quickly (i.e. you failed Attitude in the first 30 seconds).
nerfhammer 14y ago
I thought that was needlessly vindictive. If you don't like the guy that much, just stop the interview.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Vindictive would be halting the interview immediately because the candidate made the (egregious) mistake. She's playing this part of the story for humor, but one imagines that a non-brain-damaged candidate could immediately correct for that boneheaded move. "Wow. I'm so embarrassed. I must sound like a complete tool. It's been a rough couple weeks dealing with HR teams. I'm very sorry, can we start over?" And, what she's saying is, predictably enough, most nerd candidates don't do this.
  - xentronium 14y ago
    I don't know. In a world of sucky interviews, wasting a candidate's time on purpose, because they mistook you with an HR (statistically, that's a much more probable occurrence) is as unethical as it gets short of plain lying in the interview result sheet. I can only hope that her not-that-productive-in-interviewing colleagues don't do such shit.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      If she'd just stopped the interview, some other HN commenter would be writing an angry post about how that was unfair, too.
      - xentronium 14y ago
        Not being able to just stop the interview must be a US thing. I'd take blunt response over sadistic 'derpy' torture any time.
        btilly 14y ago
        There are two reasons for not just stopping the interview. One is the corporate image that the company tries to project. The other is that upset interviewees in the US occasionally develop theories about why they might have been discriminated against. And their mis-memories about what was said can figure into that. No matter how far off base, the lawsuits are expensive, and the truth does not always win you the case. Therefore every competent HR person and anyone with experience in this part of the law will tell you that you never give anything away about why someone failed the interview.
      - jerrya 14y ago
        "Oh, this is (candidate), but let me save us some time. I thought this was going to be a technical interview." That guy bombed the interview right then and there. I didn't tell him that, though. I let him dig the deepest hole he could imagine by doing my best ditzy/derpy voice and just saying things like "they want me to ask about the load... average...?". He'd make up some garbage, and I'd log all of it. This way I could bury him both for being a sexist bastard and for being a lying piece of trash at the same time. He has already sunk the interview in her eyes, but she doesn't want to tell her employer that this guy bombed due to his interactions in the first 30 seconds with her. Moreover, he is a sexist bastard. He then tells her something she disagrees technically about load average, and this makes him a lying piece of trash. Regardless, he has bombed and sunk the interview, and her only duty now is to spend another 44:30 seconds to bury him. Of course, she is playing this for humor, so I am out of line for thinking Rachel sounds like a jackass who has done a disservice to the candidate as well as a disservice to her employer.
_delirium 14y ago
> The best candidates light up when they have a chance to explain something cool, no matter who is listening and get even more excited when you ask a question about a detail. I agree this is true in a general human-conversation sense: many good engineers like discussing things with non-engineers if the latter show any interest, and the best can actually explain things in understandable ways. But I think in the context of Corporate Bureaucracy things can be a bit different: I can forgive somebody who's normally a patient explainer being frustrated if they feel their time is being wasted by endless HR bureaucracy. In particular, there's a difference between someone asking you about a detail because they're actually interested in it, and someone asking about it even though they don't care at all, because it's on a checklist and their job is to plow through the checklist. Of course, that still wouldn't justify being a condescending ass, and certainly wouldn't justify giving wrong answers! If I felt the other person was uninterested and operating by rote, I would probably just recite correct, by-the-book answers.

kator 14y ago

I look a lot like a "pointy haired boss" type. I used this to my advantage at times in interviews, I allow the candidate to think I don't know much about the topic at hand. It's nice to see how they can articulate something and you can smell the BS quickly. That said I am looking for Attitude, Aptitude and Fit. It would be hard for me to spend much time with someone who started the call like that, I would have most likely politely bowed out pretty quickly (i.e. you failed Attitude in the first 30 seconds).

nerfhammer 14y ago

I thought that was needlessly vindictive. If you don't like the guy that much, just stop the interview.

tptacek 14y ago
Vindictive would be halting the interview immediately because the candidate made the (egregious) mistake. She's playing this part of the story for humor, but one imagines that a non-brain-damaged candidate could immediately correct for that boneheaded move. "Wow. I'm so embarrassed. I must sound like a complete tool. It's been a rough couple weeks dealing with HR teams. I'm very sorry, can we start over?" And, what she's saying is, predictably enough, most nerd candidates don't do this.
- xentronium 14y ago
  I don't know. In a world of sucky interviews, wasting a candidate's time on purpose, because they mistook you with an HR (statistically, that's a much more probable occurrence) is as unethical as it gets short of plain lying in the interview result sheet. I can only hope that her not-that-productive-in-interviewing colleagues don't do such shit.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    If she'd just stopped the interview, some other HN commenter would be writing an angry post about how that was unfair, too.
    - xentronium 14y ago
      Not being able to just stop the interview must be a US thing. I'd take blunt response over sadistic 'derpy' torture any time.
      - btilly 14y ago
        There are two reasons for not just stopping the interview. One is the corporate image that the company tries to project. The other is that upset interviewees in the US occasionally develop theories about why they might have been discriminated against. And their mis-memories about what was said can figure into that. No matter how far off base, the lawsuits are expensive, and the truth does not always win you the case. Therefore every competent HR person and anyone with experience in this part of the law will tell you that you never give anything away about why someone failed the interview.
    - jerrya 14y ago
      "Oh, this is (candidate), but let me save us some time. I thought this was going to be a technical interview." That guy bombed the interview right then and there. I didn't tell him that, though. I let him dig the deepest hole he could imagine by doing my best ditzy/derpy voice and just saying things like "they want me to ask about the load... average...?". He'd make up some garbage, and I'd log all of it. This way I could bury him both for being a sexist bastard and for being a lying piece of trash at the same time. He has already sunk the interview in her eyes, but she doesn't want to tell her employer that this guy bombed due to his interactions in the first 30 seconds with her. Moreover, he is a sexist bastard. He then tells her something she disagrees technically about load average, and this makes him a lying piece of trash. Regardless, he has bombed and sunk the interview, and her only duty now is to spend another 44:30 seconds to bury him. Of course, she is playing this for humor, so I am out of line for thinking Rachel sounds like a jackass who has done a disservice to the candidate as well as a disservice to her employer.

_delirium 14y ago

> The best candidates light up when they have a chance to explain something cool, no matter who is listening and get even more excited when you ask a question about a detail. I agree this is true in a general human-conversation sense: many good engineers like discussing things with non-engineers if the latter show any interest, and the best can actually explain things in understandable ways. But I think in the context of Corporate Bureaucracy things can be a bit different: I can forgive somebody who's normally a patient explainer being frustrated if they feel their time is being wasted by endless HR bureaucracy. In particular, there's a difference between someone asking you about a detail because they're actually interested in it, and someone asking about it even though they don't care at all, because it's on a checklist and their job is to plow through the checklist. Of course, that still wouldn't justify being a condescending ass, and certainly wouldn't justify giving wrong answers! If I felt the other person was uninterested and operating by rote, I would probably just recite correct, by-the-book answers.