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This part: I am not saying don't interview people. I'm just saying when you do it, assume all the signals and readings you're getting from your candidate are j

This part: I am not saying don't interview people. I'm just saying when you do it, assume all the signals and readings you're getting from your candidate are janky as hell, because they are. Lots of strong performers can't do their best thinking and judging when they're conflicted and anxious. Compensate. It hits me straight in the heart. I get very, very nervous at interviews. For no fucking reason whatsoever. My mind goes blank. Last one I did (more than a year ago), the person told me that I was obviously not prepared to work under pressure. But I can. Hell, I own and run 4 businesses. Pressure is what's for breakfast. The issue is that interviews are focused on trying to get me to fail, rather than letting me impress you. Which is the reason I am so successful as a freelancer. As an independent, all I need to do is show you my portfolio, talk about your needs, and get on to coding. There is no interview. There is, however, a trial period where I show you what I'm capable of. Its just strange. I'm building a search engine, and have built 3 lead generation applications. Yet for some fucking reason, I flunk interviews, and people won't hire me to write coldfusion. Still, can't complain. I make 5 times as much. Without having to deal with a dumb manager.

pyre 13y ago
- When you're a freelancer meeting with a prospective client, that client probably isn't meeting with 20+ other freelancers for the same job/project. On the other hand, when you're interviewing for a job, you could be one of 20 or more prospectives. - I have been rejected in interviews for the most arbitrary of things. I was once rejected because I didn't know what __call__() did in Python, and because I didn't know about Partial objects in the functools library (part of the Python standard library). These are things that I was able to look up in < 5 minutes after the interview. This to me comes across as, "I don't know how to interview people, so I'm just going to ask a bunch of obscure 'gotchas' and hire the people that get them right." No one in their right mind is going to go into that level of detail when talking to a freelancer. - "Having a Github account," seems like a requirement these days, but I don't think that anyone at any company I have interviewed with has actually looked at the code that I have written beyond maybe counting the number of repos and the types of projects. This seems like exactly the kind of thing that people would want to do to hire a freelancer, look at their body of work. - It's presumably more difficult (more hoops, more paper work, more laws to run afoul of, etc) when terminating an employee, vs. terminating a contract with a freelancer. So there's less of an idea that you need to make extra sure that you're getting the right person. - Freelancing is more of a B2B transaction than a job interview is. This seemingly puts you on more equal footing with the prospective client, than when you're running the obstacle course to 'prove' yourself for interviewers.
- orangethirty 13y ago
  Very good points.

pyre 13y ago

- When you're a freelancer meeting with a prospective client, that client probably isn't meeting with 20+ other freelancers for the same job/project. On the other hand, when you're interviewing for a job, you could be one of 20 or more prospectives. - I have been rejected in interviews for the most arbitrary of things. I was once rejected because I didn't know what __call__() did in Python, and because I didn't know about Partial objects in the functools library (part of the Python standard library). These are things that I was able to look up in < 5 minutes after the interview. This to me comes across as, "I don't know how to interview people, so I'm just going to ask a bunch of obscure 'gotchas' and hire the people that get them right." No one in their right mind is going to go into that level of detail when talking to a freelancer. - "Having a Github account," seems like a requirement these days, but I don't think that anyone at any company I have interviewed with has actually looked at the code that I have written beyond maybe counting the number of repos and the types of projects. This seems like exactly the kind of thing that people would want to do to hire a freelancer, look at their body of work. - It's presumably more difficult (more hoops, more paper work, more laws to run afoul of, etc) when terminating an employee, vs. terminating a contract with a freelancer. So there's less of an idea that you need to make extra sure that you're getting the right person. - Freelancing is more of a B2B transaction than a job interview is. This seemingly puts you on more equal footing with the prospective client, than when you're running the obstacle course to 'prove' yourself for interviewers.

orangethirty 13y ago
Very good points.