9 ms·

A Tale of Two Interviews, Part 1

133 points by javinpaul 14y ago

aaronbrethorst 14y ago
Make sure you read Part 2: http://www.youell.com/matt/writing/?p=801 http://www.youell.com/matt/writing/?p=801
antoniuschan99 14y ago
Read it. Awesome! So you what happened to the Startup? Did it fail?
Aloha 14y ago
I shouldnt need a compelling reason to work some place. I - need a job, presumably they need someone with my skillset, now obvious, there are soft skill concerns, do I match the culture, is it going the direction I feel my career ought to go? Other then that, it should be pretty simple.
- jfoster 14y ago
  You don't need it, but perhaps they do. It's far better for an employer if you're particularly enthusiastic about what you're going to be working on.
- Kudos 14y ago
  I think you probably need a compelling reason if you're not unemployed and they didn't come to you first.
- hmottestad 14y ago
  Since there are so many companies out there, giving some reason as to why you picked this particular one seems fair. I would usually go with something compiled together from separate things: - New challenges - Location - Their field of expertise - Their culture
  - Kequc 14y ago
    If you have any interest whatsoever in the product they are working on's success for example, tell them that. That's a good thing to tell them. If all you want is any job anywhere then you can probably work at Subway. If all you want is any job anywhere that pays as much as they do then at least tell them that.
  - Klinky 14y ago
    This is where it can get murky. If you are firing off a bunch of resumes to jump ship from a poor situation, honesty doesn't get you very far. While if you were targeting the company from the get go, honesty is your best option. It doesn't sound good to say "my current job sucks, and you guys responded to my resume", but if you don't want to say that, then you will scramble to come up with something that sounds like what you think they want to hear. I can understand how a company wants someone enthusiastic for their product/company, on the other hand I can understand how alienating it is to have to bullshit about the reality of your situation.
  - timv 14y ago
    My "go to" answer in that situation is to describe the kind of role I'm looking for, and then give some reasons why I think their company matches that. If I'm wrong, and they're a terrible match, then I don't want them to hire me.
- vellum 14y ago
  You shouldn't need a reason. But if it's a close choice between you and someone who's really good at faking enthusiasm, who do you think they're going with? We're only human, and people like being told their company is awesome. It validates their life choices.
  - megablast 14y ago
    Yeah, it might be fake, but it could also be the chance to work somewhere amazing. I have gone to a few jobs like this, where the job was fantastic, involved working on grid computing, traveling around europe. I did not have to fake enthusiasm, but I can imagine a lot of people would not have cared for it.
- hackinthebochs 14y ago
  A general rule for hiring is that one should never ask a question where its impossible to tell a good bullshit answer from a good answer. The bullshitters will always do better, and thus your biasing your hiring process to bullshitters. Answers to questions should be signal with extremely high information content. A question where a good bullshitter will get a disproportionate amount of points is in fact a net negative to your hiring process. If you're the type that needs personal validation such that you would knock a candidate for saying something like "I need money, you guys are paying in money", then you simply shouldn't ask the question. Of course, people love to think that they have a highly tuned bullshit detector, are immune to blatant flattery, etc. The problem is everyone thinks that. We are all susceptible to these things and we need to make sure our process is such that its not biased towards people who are particularly good at telling you what you want to hear.
  - doktrin 14y ago
    Thanks for writing this. It's a succinct and lucid description of the problem with the "commitment & faith" class of interview questions. There are two sides to the coin, of course. I personally don't mind being asked about my motivations because I tend to only apply to companies that I actually want to work at (paychecks notwithstanding).
- pbiggar 14y ago
  I'm hiring at the moment for CircleCI, and if you don't have a reason to work with us, that's a real red flag. That says you have no particular interest in the job, which means you either don't care about what we're building or what our customers need, or you might jump ship if a job comes up that you really do want. That said, you applied for a job here, so there must be some reason you want it. Maybe "I ended up in a really bad job and I want people who care about their craft", "I love Clojure and you guys write everything in clojure", or "I love your flat organizational structure", or "I like making developer tools". But "i need a job" is a terrible answer, and won't even get you past the phone screen.
  - SilasX 14y ago
    >"i need a job" is a terrible answer, and won't even get you past the phone screen. Which is why it should be part of the phone screen. In the article, they didn't even ask this until after the 5 hours of interviews. Ouch.
  - ahk 14y ago
    Every girl wants to feel 'special' too. But really, there's 3.5 billion of them. You are just going to weed out all the people who are not bullshitting you, and take in all the people who will. And amazingly, you are happy proclaiming this! I'd thank you for weeding me out though. I like reality. Don't like happy rainbow snowflake dreamland, which you've just outed your company as. Since such things never last.
    - jtheory 14y ago
      Meh. Look at the example reasons in the post you're responding to; you don't need an answer like "I want to save the world, and I'm pretty sure the best place to start is in the plastic chair manufacturing sector". If the best you can offer is "uh I need a job" that means you don't know a damned thing about the company you're applying to, doesn't it? I.e., you found a list of 30 companies that are offering jobs in your city that vaguely match your CV, and instead of reading about them and choosing a few, you're taking the shotgun approach. If you read about them, what made you choose this one? Do they seem like they have a culture that's better than your last job? Do they use a language you like (and/or would like to use more)? Are they doing something you know anything about, or find interesting at all, or can at least categorize as "not morally objectionable"? Almost anything is better than "I need a job".
- nonamegiven 14y ago
  I agree with you, but honesty can be expressed in different ways. "I'd never heard of you guys, but when I was searching around your thing seemed a lot more interesting than some of the other things." And on the employer side, unless you've actually got tanks out back from having turned water into wine you might notch the erection down a few degrees. There's smart people everywhere, that's not special.
kragen 14y ago
This is cool. At one point I worked at a startup where they hired a guy who interviewed well but froze up constantly when pairing — sort of the opposite of this story — who consequently didn't work out. Seems like pairing-as-interview would solve both that problem and the freezing-up-at-whiteboard problem. I admit to being sufficiently extraverted and borderline autistic myself that I don't have a good understanding of why people find his "part 1" interviews stressful and freeze up. I mean, it's just talking to hackers, right? I like talking to hackers. Who doesn't like talking to hackers? But I guess standing up and talking in front of a bunch of people, or being grilled to see what you understand and what you don't, is a lot more stressful for most people than it is for me.
proksoup 14y ago
Hm, I thought ~ 5 hour interview process wasn't uncommon?
- epochwolf 14y ago
  Same here. My interview for my current job lasted about 7 hours.
- djhworld 14y ago
  Must be a US thing. My first job had an interview that lasted around 2 hours. The second had one interview that lasted 90 minutes, then a follow up interview a few weeks later for 90 minutes. Taking up 5 hours of someone's day (especially if they are unemployed) is wrong and downright pathological. Job seekers are often desperate to get back into the market and abusing their time is grossly unjust. It's fine for the interviewer, they have a job and are in a position of power to decide the fate of the interviewee.
  - pbiggar 14y ago
    Not sure how its abusing their time? In any company I work for, I want to ensure that people who join my time are going to be good for my team and the company. You're going to be working with an individual for years hopefully, and the cost of getting rid of bad hires is really high: shouldn't you spend a few hours to make sure they're the right person?
  - proksoup 14y ago
    5 hours of the existing employees time is super expensive too. If they're investing the time for the full hour interview, they probably think you're worth it. Think of it as them spending like $2000 on you (at least).
- damncabbage 14y ago
  Seriously? Australian here; longest interview I've had is two, but they're usually an hour long at most. There may be two rounds of single hour interviews sometimes. (How are you supposed to take five hours out? Ask for leave in advance and hope the company doesn't mind waiting a fortnight for you to be able to show up? I usually interview before or after work.)
archagon 14y ago
Man, I'd honestly find example 2 more stressful than example 1. Is pair programming really something that programmers find useful? Should I develop this skill more? I've barely had to do it at all at my jobs, and when I have, it was difficult for me because I couldn't get into my usual flow. Even with an extra pair of eyes and hands, I felt like I was working at 50% efficiency. I guess I should read up on concurrency. :)
- aaronbrethorst 14y ago
  > Is pair programming really something that programmers find useful? Some do. Some people swear by it. > Should I develop this skill more? Yes, definitely. Think of it as being a more social version of learning a new programming language or systems architecture. > [I]t was difficult for me because I couldn't get into my usual flow. Even with an extra pair of eyes and hands, I felt like I was working at 50% efficiency. It's definitely an acquired skill. If you think about it, though, if you're spending most of your time while programming engaged in typing, odds are you're probably doing something wrong (or working in a ridiculously verbose language ;)
  - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
    > If you think about it, though, if you're spending most of your time while programming engaged in typing, odds are you're probably doing something wrong. He didn't say anything about typing. Pair programming is meant to be slower than alone programming, the extra eyes and ears actually slow you down because you have to reach consensus so often. Pair programming is about quality, not productivity.
    - jtheory 14y ago
      And quality is in turn at least partly about productivity (i.e., it's usually faster to avoid the bug than to fix it after the fact).
      - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
auctiontheory 14y ago
I myself have asked a candidate why he wanted to work for [my employer] in a position of some responsibility, and been unimpressed by the reply "well, it's a job." I had no idea this was a commonplace response. It's good that you recognize from their feedback where you went wrong, but it's bad that you don't understand why "I just want a job" is a poor answer. Your cynicism about "Cubicle Dream" also doesn't sit well. (Not trying to be harsh - I know exactly where you're coming from, having been there myself.) Here's a secret: in the workplace, unlike school, attitude trumps raw ability. Every single time. Think about what you really want. Maybe read Ask The Headhunter. Good luck.
- nilkn 14y ago
  I dislike like the "why do you want this job?" question because, unless I'm unemployed and really needing a job, the fact of the matter is that I don't know if I want the job. Interviews go both ways. I'll need time after the interview to consider the experience and try to predict whether I'd be happy working there. Unless your company is doing something extraordinarily cool, chances are your product is not enough in and of itself to attract many if any developers on that basis alone. What will attract people is the quality of the work environment, the quality of the people, and the amount of money you can offer them. That's really the gist of it, and during the interview the candidate won't have exact knowledge of any of those factors.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - kybernetikos 14y ago
    As an interviewer I'd far prefer a candidate who said 'I'm still not sure I do want the job - it looked interesting, but I still need to get a sense of your team and how you work' than someone who said 'actually I just need a job'. 'Actually I just need a job' is one of the worst answers to that question.
    - nasalgoat 14y ago
      Personally, I'd not like either answer. You have to watch out for people just using you to get a better deal at their current job. That's why I put expiry clauses in all offers.
drstewart 14y ago
I've had both kind of interviews before, and the latter made me want to work for the company so much more. Ever since that interview, it's how I conduct my interviews now -- no more whiteboards or pointless algorithm questions, I just bring in my laptop and we work on something together.
GoranM 14y ago
Is there really a need for a phone interview? I mean, you could just look at their github, and the writing on their blog, to determine if there's a baseline of competence.
- CognitiveLens 14y ago
  Github can sometimes be a lot of copy and paste from either other repos or Stack Overflow or tutorials and such. For blogs, many very talented developers don't have one (or don't keep it up to date), and so it's very difficult to determine and verify ability just from an online presence.
  - burntsushi 14y ago
    Eh. I still think GitHub can be useful, it just might take a little more time. Instead of simply scanning the list of projects, take a quick peak at the commit logs for a few of them. It should be pretty clear based on the workflow if it's just a copy & paste job, or if the developer is actually working. Someone could certainly game that, but it's a stretch...
- henrikschroder 14y ago
  I know this sounds crazy, but hear me out: The vast majority of talented programmers neither have a github account, nor do they keep a programming blog.
  - imalolz 14y ago
    Upvote, beacuse I see myself as a descent programmer and my github account has been idle for ages. Not to mention that holding a full time job and my wanting to spend time with my wife and kid leave very little time to maintain a blog (which I don't) or contribute to OSS (as much as I can, but next to nothing compared to other readers of this site).
kevin_morrill 14y ago
Seems like this issue with the first job is you just weren't that passionate about the company. The worst thing you can do is trick people into hiring you. You'll waste precious months/years of your life.
- megablast 14y ago
  Most people are not passionate about a company. How can you be passionate about a company you have never heard about, for people you have never met before?
azov 14y ago
Interview is a two way street, they interview you, you interview them. Basically, you just didn't like the first company and clicked with the second. Don't put too much weight on the interview style. If they didn't extend you an offer, chances are it would be even more frustrating - it's harder to figure out what went wrong with the second interview as they are relying more on the "gut feeling". The first one is a bit more systematic. Both styles can work fine.
- megablast 14y ago
  I think there is a lot more to it than that. I have been to interviews which were almost hostile like the first one, and the opposite, where it was almost a conversation. I do not understand people who do the first type. Why? The interviewee is the enemy.
  - DavidWoof 14y ago
    Sure, but read closer,and you'll see that the impression of the two interviews is based almost entirely on the subjective terms the writer chooses to describe them. One person was the "shark on the team" whose questions got "very aggressive", while the other was "intimidating but tolerable" and "I could tell he was protecting the quality of his team". Or consider "Instead of demanding from me why I wanted to work there, he just tried to get a feel for what I was aiming for." Was there really a difference, or did the writer just click personally with one group and not the other? If it had gone differently, I could imagine him writing that "team one was respectful of my time and allowed me to order my favorite sandwich and eat during the interview, while team 2 expected me to waste yet another hour socializing with the group at a bad restaurant, where they got very aggressive asking about my personal life". So maybe company one really was hostile; just like you, I've seen that happen. OTOH, maybe it was just a personality clash, or maybe some of it is slanted by the fact that he got an offer from one and not the other. In my experience, once an interview process starts to go bad, I start to see everything the company does in a bad light, and vice versa.
jaimebuelta 14y ago
Let's not forget something. Interviewing is also an skill that you will learn. If you are actively searching for job (because you're unemployed, or you really want to leave your current job), you'll know what to expect and be more confident and perform better on each interview. After the fifth interview, you have already faced 90% of all those pesky algorithm questions. I don't really believe in those kind of questions (other than for screening purposes) Anyway, as a company, if you are able to create an atmosphere when interviewees can relax and show "how they really are in a regular day" is a great win.
- faro1975 14y ago
  This needs repeating - interviewing is a skill you have to, and you can learn. Like lsc below, I'm also a "mercenary". But probably much less competent and maybe even better in interviewing. My background is in humint which gives me some skills to "read" people, figure out exactly how to build the trust with the interviewer, get them to like me and even manipulate the conversation towards the questions I want them to ask me... In my 17y IT contracting career, I didn't have a single interview that didn't end up in an offer despite my significant lack of algorithms or programming knowledge. Luckily, I didn't have 5h pair-programming interviews. You can make it "click" with the company and you can manipulate their "gut feel" to tell them that you would be the ideal candidate for the position. It's not fair and it's irrational that people like me can get the job instead of some much more capable developers, but that's what humans are - irrational.
gingerlime 14y ago
One small thing I was wondering about - how comfortably can you drive in a pair programming session on someone else's computer? I mean, I don't mind being in the back seat on whichever editor the driver is using, but if I'm driving, I really feel awkward without vim and my plugins and key bindings etc...
- super_mario 14y ago
  I was thinking the same, but in reverse. If I asked someone to sit and drive my esoteric setup, there is no way they'd even be able to type code let alone be productive :D. And the same is true when I walk over to help someone. I start typing and then I realize, this isn't vim, they don't have my .profile in their shell :D, ah fuck it, let me do it on my machine and I'll check it in or send you the change.
- Garbage 14y ago
  More than IDE, it's about the code you are doing. If you aren't comfortable with the IDE other person is using, I think you should request to change it and that person should allow.
- doktrin 14y ago
  In my experience, it can be a little awkward. At one point I interviewed with a company that uses Rubymine almost exclusively, and I had previously only used Sublime / vim (and Eclipse for Java). It was definitely more distracting than I would have thought going in. Everything is a potential hickup, from tab switching, file navigation and basic shortcuts. It's definitely less than ideal, given that you're essentially context switching into basic operational stuff when what actually matters is the logic of the problem at hand.
- wtracy 14y ago
  My understanding of pair programming is that the driver never even touches the keyboard. Do I have that backwards?
  - gingerlime 14y ago
    I think you have it backwards. According to [1] at least: "Pair programming is an agile software development technique in which two programmers work together at one workstation. One, the driver, writes code while the other, the observer or navigator, reviews each line of code as it is typed in" [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
jrs235 14y ago
The Internet lawyer in me gasped when I read he was pair programming, especially driving. Did he sign a transfer of IP rights and copyright beforehand? Placing his code into production? He still owns the copyright on that code...
- nigelk 14y ago
  Maybe it was open source software and/or he went through a simple CLA process?
- mdellabitta 14y ago
  It was a work for hire. He got paid in lunch.
jakejake 14y ago
This article made me kinda curious - is it common to go into an interview expecting to have to write algorithms? I've read about this frequently but writing enterprise software I've found very little occasion to write algorithms. I say almost but I probably could just say that we never write algorithms at all. I'm not saying algorithms are unimportant, obviously a lot of the tools we use rely on that type of skill. Just that enterprise software is almost always more about workflows, schema design, UI layout, automating processes, etc. Possibly some accounting math is used but generally those formulas would be provided by the accountants anyway. Is this just something interviewers are asking because it indicates school training? It is just a benchmark of general awareness? Does it indicate understanding of the simplistic recursion that some algorithms use? It seems to me just testing plain old memorization of forumulas - it's not like I expect the interviewee to have thought up the fibonacci sequence on his/her own.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Most people on net forums don't want to be in the enterprise software world, even if they are.

133 points by javinpaul 14y ago

aaronbrethorst 14y ago

Make sure you read Part 2: http://www.youell.com/matt/writing/?p=801 http://www.youell.com/matt/writing/?p=801

antoniuschan99 14y ago

Read it. Awesome! So you what happened to the Startup? Did it fail?

Aloha 14y ago

I shouldnt need a compelling reason to work some place. I - need a job, presumably they need someone with my skillset, now obvious, there are soft skill concerns, do I match the culture, is it going the direction I feel my career ought to go? Other then that, it should be pretty simple.

jfoster 14y ago
You don't need it, but perhaps they do. It's far better for an employer if you're particularly enthusiastic about what you're going to be working on.
Kudos 14y ago
I think you probably need a compelling reason if you're not unemployed and they didn't come to you first.
hmottestad 14y ago
Since there are so many companies out there, giving some reason as to why you picked this particular one seems fair. I would usually go with something compiled together from separate things: - New challenges - Location - Their field of expertise - Their culture
- Kequc 14y ago
  If you have any interest whatsoever in the product they are working on's success for example, tell them that. That's a good thing to tell them. If all you want is any job anywhere then you can probably work at Subway. If all you want is any job anywhere that pays as much as they do then at least tell them that.
- Klinky 14y ago
  This is where it can get murky. If you are firing off a bunch of resumes to jump ship from a poor situation, honesty doesn't get you very far. While if you were targeting the company from the get go, honesty is your best option. It doesn't sound good to say "my current job sucks, and you guys responded to my resume", but if you don't want to say that, then you will scramble to come up with something that sounds like what you think they want to hear. I can understand how a company wants someone enthusiastic for their product/company, on the other hand I can understand how alienating it is to have to bullshit about the reality of your situation.
- timv 14y ago
  My "go to" answer in that situation is to describe the kind of role I'm looking for, and then give some reasons why I think their company matches that. If I'm wrong, and they're a terrible match, then I don't want them to hire me.
vellum 14y ago
You shouldn't need a reason. But if it's a close choice between you and someone who's really good at faking enthusiasm, who do you think they're going with? We're only human, and people like being told their company is awesome. It validates their life choices.
- megablast 14y ago
  Yeah, it might be fake, but it could also be the chance to work somewhere amazing. I have gone to a few jobs like this, where the job was fantastic, involved working on grid computing, traveling around europe. I did not have to fake enthusiasm, but I can imagine a lot of people would not have cared for it.
hackinthebochs 14y ago
A general rule for hiring is that one should never ask a question where its impossible to tell a good bullshit answer from a good answer. The bullshitters will always do better, and thus your biasing your hiring process to bullshitters. Answers to questions should be signal with extremely high information content. A question where a good bullshitter will get a disproportionate amount of points is in fact a net negative to your hiring process. If you're the type that needs personal validation such that you would knock a candidate for saying something like "I need money, you guys are paying in money", then you simply shouldn't ask the question. Of course, people love to think that they have a highly tuned bullshit detector, are immune to blatant flattery, etc. The problem is everyone thinks that. We are all susceptible to these things and we need to make sure our process is such that its not biased towards people who are particularly good at telling you what you want to hear.
- doktrin 14y ago
  Thanks for writing this. It's a succinct and lucid description of the problem with the "commitment & faith" class of interview questions. There are two sides to the coin, of course. I personally don't mind being asked about my motivations because I tend to only apply to companies that I actually want to work at (paychecks notwithstanding).
pbiggar 14y ago
I'm hiring at the moment for CircleCI, and if you don't have a reason to work with us, that's a real red flag. That says you have no particular interest in the job, which means you either don't care about what we're building or what our customers need, or you might jump ship if a job comes up that you really do want. That said, you applied for a job here, so there must be some reason you want it. Maybe "I ended up in a really bad job and I want people who care about their craft", "I love Clojure and you guys write everything in clojure", or "I love your flat organizational structure", or "I like making developer tools". But "i need a job" is a terrible answer, and won't even get you past the phone screen.
- SilasX 14y ago
  >"i need a job" is a terrible answer, and won't even get you past the phone screen. Which is why it should be part of the phone screen. In the article, they didn't even ask this until after the 5 hours of interviews. Ouch.
- ahk 14y ago
  Every girl wants to feel 'special' too. But really, there's 3.5 billion of them. You are just going to weed out all the people who are not bullshitting you, and take in all the people who will. And amazingly, you are happy proclaiming this! I'd thank you for weeding me out though. I like reality. Don't like happy rainbow snowflake dreamland, which you've just outed your company as. Since such things never last.
  - jtheory 14y ago
    Meh. Look at the example reasons in the post you're responding to; you don't need an answer like "I want to save the world, and I'm pretty sure the best place to start is in the plastic chair manufacturing sector". If the best you can offer is "uh I need a job" that means you don't know a damned thing about the company you're applying to, doesn't it? I.e., you found a list of 30 companies that are offering jobs in your city that vaguely match your CV, and instead of reading about them and choosing a few, you're taking the shotgun approach. If you read about them, what made you choose this one? Do they seem like they have a culture that's better than your last job? Do they use a language you like (and/or would like to use more)? Are they doing something you know anything about, or find interesting at all, or can at least categorize as "not morally objectionable"? Almost anything is better than "I need a job".
nonamegiven 14y ago
I agree with you, but honesty can be expressed in different ways. "I'd never heard of you guys, but when I was searching around your thing seemed a lot more interesting than some of the other things." And on the employer side, unless you've actually got tanks out back from having turned water into wine you might notch the erection down a few degrees. There's smart people everywhere, that's not special.

kragen 14y ago

This is cool. At one point I worked at a startup where they hired a guy who interviewed well but froze up constantly when pairing — sort of the opposite of this story — who consequently didn't work out. Seems like pairing-as-interview would solve both that problem and the freezing-up-at-whiteboard problem. I admit to being sufficiently extraverted and borderline autistic myself that I don't have a good understanding of why people find his "part 1" interviews stressful and freeze up. I mean, it's just talking to hackers, right? I like talking to hackers. Who doesn't like talking to hackers? But I guess standing up and talking in front of a bunch of people, or being grilled to see what you understand and what you don't, is a lot more stressful for most people than it is for me.

proksoup 14y ago

Hm, I thought ~ 5 hour interview process wasn't uncommon?

epochwolf 14y ago
Same here. My interview for my current job lasted about 7 hours.
djhworld 14y ago
Must be a US thing. My first job had an interview that lasted around 2 hours. The second had one interview that lasted 90 minutes, then a follow up interview a few weeks later for 90 minutes. Taking up 5 hours of someone's day (especially if they are unemployed) is wrong and downright pathological. Job seekers are often desperate to get back into the market and abusing their time is grossly unjust. It's fine for the interviewer, they have a job and are in a position of power to decide the fate of the interviewee.
- pbiggar 14y ago
  Not sure how its abusing their time? In any company I work for, I want to ensure that people who join my time are going to be good for my team and the company. You're going to be working with an individual for years hopefully, and the cost of getting rid of bad hires is really high: shouldn't you spend a few hours to make sure they're the right person?
- proksoup 14y ago
  5 hours of the existing employees time is super expensive too. If they're investing the time for the full hour interview, they probably think you're worth it. Think of it as them spending like $2000 on you (at least).
damncabbage 14y ago
Seriously? Australian here; longest interview I've had is two, but they're usually an hour long at most. There may be two rounds of single hour interviews sometimes. (How are you supposed to take five hours out? Ask for leave in advance and hope the company doesn't mind waiting a fortnight for you to be able to show up? I usually interview before or after work.)

archagon 14y ago

Man, I'd honestly find example 2 more stressful than example 1. Is pair programming really something that programmers find useful? Should I develop this skill more? I've barely had to do it at all at my jobs, and when I have, it was difficult for me because I couldn't get into my usual flow. Even with an extra pair of eyes and hands, I felt like I was working at 50% efficiency. I guess I should read up on concurrency. :)

aaronbrethorst 14y ago
> Is pair programming really something that programmers find useful? Some do. Some people swear by it. > Should I develop this skill more? Yes, definitely. Think of it as being a more social version of learning a new programming language or systems architecture. > [I]t was difficult for me because I couldn't get into my usual flow. Even with an extra pair of eyes and hands, I felt like I was working at 50% efficiency. It's definitely an acquired skill. If you think about it, though, if you're spending most of your time while programming engaged in typing, odds are you're probably doing something wrong (or working in a ridiculously verbose language ;)
- seanmcdirmid 14y ago
  > If you think about it, though, if you're spending most of your time while programming engaged in typing, odds are you're probably doing something wrong. He didn't say anything about typing. Pair programming is meant to be slower than alone programming, the extra eyes and ears actually slow you down because you have to reach consensus so often. Pair programming is about quality, not productivity.
  - jtheory 14y ago
    And quality is in turn at least partly about productivity (i.e., it's usually faster to avoid the bug than to fix it after the fact).
    - seanmcdirmid 14y ago

auctiontheory 14y ago

I myself have asked a candidate why he wanted to work for [my employer] in a position of some responsibility, and been unimpressed by the reply "well, it's a job." I had no idea this was a commonplace response. It's good that you recognize from their feedback where you went wrong, but it's bad that you don't understand why "I just want a job" is a poor answer. Your cynicism about "Cubicle Dream" also doesn't sit well. (Not trying to be harsh - I know exactly where you're coming from, having been there myself.) Here's a secret: in the workplace, unlike school, attitude trumps raw ability. Every single time. Think about what you really want. Maybe read Ask The Headhunter. Good luck.

nilkn 14y ago
I dislike like the "why do you want this job?" question because, unless I'm unemployed and really needing a job, the fact of the matter is that I don't know if I want the job. Interviews go both ways. I'll need time after the interview to consider the experience and try to predict whether I'd be happy working there. Unless your company is doing something extraordinarily cool, chances are your product is not enough in and of itself to attract many if any developers on that basis alone. What will attract people is the quality of the work environment, the quality of the people, and the amount of money you can offer them. That's really the gist of it, and during the interview the candidate won't have exact knowledge of any of those factors.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- kybernetikos 14y ago
  As an interviewer I'd far prefer a candidate who said 'I'm still not sure I do want the job - it looked interesting, but I still need to get a sense of your team and how you work' than someone who said 'actually I just need a job'. 'Actually I just need a job' is one of the worst answers to that question.
  - nasalgoat 14y ago
    Personally, I'd not like either answer. You have to watch out for people just using you to get a better deal at their current job. That's why I put expiry clauses in all offers.

drstewart 14y ago

I've had both kind of interviews before, and the latter made me want to work for the company so much more. Ever since that interview, it's how I conduct my interviews now -- no more whiteboards or pointless algorithm questions, I just bring in my laptop and we work on something together.

GoranM 14y ago

Is there really a need for a phone interview? I mean, you could just look at their github, and the writing on their blog, to determine if there's a baseline of competence.

CognitiveLens 14y ago
Github can sometimes be a lot of copy and paste from either other repos or Stack Overflow or tutorials and such. For blogs, many very talented developers don't have one (or don't keep it up to date), and so it's very difficult to determine and verify ability just from an online presence.
- burntsushi 14y ago
  Eh. I still think GitHub can be useful, it just might take a little more time. Instead of simply scanning the list of projects, take a quick peak at the commit logs for a few of them. It should be pretty clear based on the workflow if it's just a copy & paste job, or if the developer is actually working. Someone could certainly game that, but it's a stretch...
henrikschroder 14y ago
I know this sounds crazy, but hear me out: The vast majority of talented programmers neither have a github account, nor do they keep a programming blog.
- imalolz 14y ago
  Upvote, beacuse I see myself as a descent programmer and my github account has been idle for ages. Not to mention that holding a full time job and my wanting to spend time with my wife and kid leave very little time to maintain a blog (which I don't) or contribute to OSS (as much as I can, but next to nothing compared to other readers of this site).

kevin_morrill 14y ago

Seems like this issue with the first job is you just weren't that passionate about the company. The worst thing you can do is trick people into hiring you. You'll waste precious months/years of your life.

megablast 14y ago
Most people are not passionate about a company. How can you be passionate about a company you have never heard about, for people you have never met before?

azov 14y ago

Interview is a two way street, they interview you, you interview them. Basically, you just didn't like the first company and clicked with the second. Don't put too much weight on the interview style. If they didn't extend you an offer, chances are it would be even more frustrating - it's harder to figure out what went wrong with the second interview as they are relying more on the "gut feeling". The first one is a bit more systematic. Both styles can work fine.

megablast 14y ago
I think there is a lot more to it than that. I have been to interviews which were almost hostile like the first one, and the opposite, where it was almost a conversation. I do not understand people who do the first type. Why? The interviewee is the enemy.
- DavidWoof 14y ago
  Sure, but read closer,and you'll see that the impression of the two interviews is based almost entirely on the subjective terms the writer chooses to describe them. One person was the "shark on the team" whose questions got "very aggressive", while the other was "intimidating but tolerable" and "I could tell he was protecting the quality of his team". Or consider "Instead of demanding from me why I wanted to work there, he just tried to get a feel for what I was aiming for." Was there really a difference, or did the writer just click personally with one group and not the other? If it had gone differently, I could imagine him writing that "team one was respectful of my time and allowed me to order my favorite sandwich and eat during the interview, while team 2 expected me to waste yet another hour socializing with the group at a bad restaurant, where they got very aggressive asking about my personal life". So maybe company one really was hostile; just like you, I've seen that happen. OTOH, maybe it was just a personality clash, or maybe some of it is slanted by the fact that he got an offer from one and not the other. In my experience, once an interview process starts to go bad, I start to see everything the company does in a bad light, and vice versa.

jaimebuelta 14y ago

Let's not forget something. Interviewing is also an skill that you will learn. If you are actively searching for job (because you're unemployed, or you really want to leave your current job), you'll know what to expect and be more confident and perform better on each interview. After the fifth interview, you have already faced 90% of all those pesky algorithm questions. I don't really believe in those kind of questions (other than for screening purposes) Anyway, as a company, if you are able to create an atmosphere when interviewees can relax and show "how they really are in a regular day" is a great win.

faro1975 14y ago
This needs repeating - interviewing is a skill you have to, and you can learn. Like lsc below, I'm also a "mercenary". But probably much less competent and maybe even better in interviewing. My background is in humint which gives me some skills to "read" people, figure out exactly how to build the trust with the interviewer, get them to like me and even manipulate the conversation towards the questions I want them to ask me... In my 17y IT contracting career, I didn't have a single interview that didn't end up in an offer despite my significant lack of algorithms or programming knowledge. Luckily, I didn't have 5h pair-programming interviews. You can make it "click" with the company and you can manipulate their "gut feel" to tell them that you would be the ideal candidate for the position. It's not fair and it's irrational that people like me can get the job instead of some much more capable developers, but that's what humans are - irrational.

gingerlime 14y ago

One small thing I was wondering about - how comfortably can you drive in a pair programming session on someone else's computer? I mean, I don't mind being in the back seat on whichever editor the driver is using, but if I'm driving, I really feel awkward without vim and my plugins and key bindings etc...

super_mario 14y ago
I was thinking the same, but in reverse. If I asked someone to sit and drive my esoteric setup, there is no way they'd even be able to type code let alone be productive :D. And the same is true when I walk over to help someone. I start typing and then I realize, this isn't vim, they don't have my .profile in their shell :D, ah fuck it, let me do it on my machine and I'll check it in or send you the change.
Garbage 14y ago
More than IDE, it's about the code you are doing. If you aren't comfortable with the IDE other person is using, I think you should request to change it and that person should allow.
doktrin 14y ago
In my experience, it can be a little awkward. At one point I interviewed with a company that uses Rubymine almost exclusively, and I had previously only used Sublime / vim (and Eclipse for Java). It was definitely more distracting than I would have thought going in. Everything is a potential hickup, from tab switching, file navigation and basic shortcuts. It's definitely less than ideal, given that you're essentially context switching into basic operational stuff when what actually matters is the logic of the problem at hand.
wtracy 14y ago
My understanding of pair programming is that the driver never even touches the keyboard. Do I have that backwards?
- gingerlime 14y ago
  I think you have it backwards. According to [1] at least: "Pair programming is an agile software development technique in which two programmers work together at one workstation. One, the driver, writes code while the other, the observer or navigator, reviews each line of code as it is typed in" [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

jrs235 14y ago

The Internet lawyer in me gasped when I read he was pair programming, especially driving. Did he sign a transfer of IP rights and copyright beforehand? Placing his code into production? He still owns the copyright on that code...

nigelk 14y ago
Maybe it was open source software and/or he went through a simple CLA process?
mdellabitta 14y ago
It was a work for hire. He got paid in lunch.

jakejake 14y ago

This article made me kinda curious - is it common to go into an interview expecting to have to write algorithms? I've read about this frequently but writing enterprise software I've found very little occasion to write algorithms. I say almost but I probably could just say that we never write algorithms at all. I'm not saying algorithms are unimportant, obviously a lot of the tools we use rely on that type of skill. Just that enterprise software is almost always more about workflows, schema design, UI layout, automating processes, etc. Possibly some accounting math is used but generally those formulas would be provided by the accountants anyway. Is this just something interviewers are asking because it indicates school training? It is just a benchmark of general awareness? Does it indicate understanding of the simplistic recursion that some algorithms use? It seems to me just testing plain old memorization of forumulas - it's not like I expect the interviewee to have thought up the fibonacci sequence on his/her own.

Evbn 14y ago
Most people on net forums don't want to be in the enterprise software world, even if they are.