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Well, jobs are high stress affairs too. We often have to maintain production systems that fail in cryptic ways at the most inconvenient times. I postulate that

by 10098 13y ago

Well, jobs are high stress affairs too. We often have to maintain production systems that fail in cryptic ways at the most inconvenient times. I postulate that such situations are more stressful than solving some binary search tree problem on a whiteboard.

georgemcbay 13y ago
Most of my developer jobs haven't been particularly high stress. Perhaps there is some selection bias here in that if you rely on the usual high stress interview process for developers you increase the chance of working with people who create systems that regularly need hot patching in production. Sounds like a dreadful job to me, so I guess that if there is any truth to this speculation that I should be happy about the selection mechanism.
jaegerpicker 13y ago
Not at all. If I fix a production issue it's fixed. Either it is or it isn't. In an interview, I'm trying to impress another human. Who knows if I do a good job at that. Computers and their problems are simple in comparison. Judging a humans reaction, A LOT of developers are seriously bad at that. I'm pretty good at it myself but I hate it. I've had very few interviews that I didn't receive offers from but even I dislike the human part of interviews.
PencilAndPaper 13y ago
Im no neuroscientist or psychologist, but the stress of being sized up by other monkeys based on superficial first impressions that you know you dont happen to be very good at making, is WAY different than the stress that gets produced when a "cryptic" system needs fixing. For me the former situation leads to lots of bad feelings including irritation and incredible anxiety. I have often considered the latter type of situation fun times. For a lot of programmers difficult puzzle solving stress is good stress. From what I have witnessed from current in-the-box hiring practices is a lot of extroverts get hired who are good at spin and presentation. Quite a few managers never detect that they are actually not great programmers because they are brilliant at sucking up and putting on a show. Those skills dont always hurt, but they shouldnt be considered a deal breaker for a programmer who actually gets good work done. Best practice I have ever encountered is when interviewers give out interview questions in advance to allow to the interviewee a while to think about the problem in quiet. I love the idea of short term contracts for both parties to suss each other out.
walshemj 13y ago
Interviews are not the same as celebrating your first 5 million dollar month and your CTO nudging you and saying this had be right or we are both looking for a new month (I was in charge of running the system that produced the bills and I think the CTO might have reported to Vint at one point )

by 10098 13y ago

georgemcbay 13y ago

Most of my developer jobs haven't been particularly high stress. Perhaps there is some selection bias here in that if you rely on the usual high stress interview process for developers you increase the chance of working with people who create systems that regularly need hot patching in production. Sounds like a dreadful job to me, so I guess that if there is any truth to this speculation that I should be happy about the selection mechanism.

jaegerpicker 13y ago

Not at all. If I fix a production issue it's fixed. Either it is or it isn't. In an interview, I'm trying to impress another human. Who knows if I do a good job at that. Computers and their problems are simple in comparison. Judging a humans reaction, A LOT of developers are seriously bad at that. I'm pretty good at it myself but I hate it. I've had very few interviews that I didn't receive offers from but even I dislike the human part of interviews.

PencilAndPaper 13y ago

Im no neuroscientist or psychologist, but the stress of being sized up by other monkeys based on superficial first impressions that you know you dont happen to be very good at making, is WAY different than the stress that gets produced when a "cryptic" system needs fixing. For me the former situation leads to lots of bad feelings including irritation and incredible anxiety. I have often considered the latter type of situation fun times. For a lot of programmers difficult puzzle solving stress is good stress. From what I have witnessed from current in-the-box hiring practices is a lot of extroverts get hired who are good at spin and presentation. Quite a few managers never detect that they are actually not great programmers because they are brilliant at sucking up and putting on a show. Those skills dont always hurt, but they shouldnt be considered a deal breaker for a programmer who actually gets good work done. Best practice I have ever encountered is when interviewers give out interview questions in advance to allow to the interviewee a while to think about the problem in quiet. I love the idea of short term contracts for both parties to suss each other out.

walshemj 13y ago

Interviews are not the same as celebrating your first 5 million dollar month and your CTO nudging you and saying this had be right or we are both looking for a new month (I was in charge of running the system that produced the bills and I think the CTO might have reported to Vint at one point )