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>Of course not. Interview situations are very, very different than the others. Really? I disagree. There even exist situations (in the case of some positions)

>Of course not. Interview situations are very, very different than the others. Really? I disagree. There even exist situations (in the case of some positions) where you will be talking to a client of the company you're working for, effectively interviewing with the client, representing the company. And interviewing is a subset of "sales", which is important for working on many teams -- including selling management on changes that would improve the user experience, for example. >Meetings and code reviews are with co-workers, whom you know and trust. Actually, when you first start out, you don't know them much more than you did when they were interviewing you. And honestly, I haven't always learned to trust my coworkers; or rather, some I've learned to not trust. Regardless, this sounds like a psychological limitation on the side of the interviewee. Which is something you can work to improve. Disclaimer: I've always been good at interviews. At least good enough that I have a more than 50% job offer rate for interviews I've gone to. >For my own personal example, I once interviewed at a place where the interviewer wrote up some HTML on a whiteboard, and then asked me to write out the CSS next to it that would turn it into a horizontal drop down menu. Not my domain, but yes, that sounds like a "parrot from memory something that you could copy-and-paste or build up trivially with a real coding environment," which I agree is not a great question, nor is it a good way to interview. >I opted out of returning for the second round of interviews. I think this is where you failed, though. If they asked you back, then even though you didn't feel good about the interview process, you must have passed. Their process is broken, so probably NO ONE was able to do everything perfectly. >The next place I interviewed I sat down, in front of a computer, with the interviewer, and we talked through code as I wrote it. I took the job. That's certainly a better interview process. But you do realize that you filtered out a company for having a less-than-optimal interview process? Seems like a poor choice of filter, in both directions.

sghill 13y ago
> There even exist situations (in the case of some positions) where you will be talking to a client of the company you're working for, effectively interviewing with the client, representing the company. What positions would require you to prove the technical capability of your company at this level? I've been working for a consultancy for a few years now. I can't recall a time when a client asked me to describe a closure or what I thought of !important. If I'm on a development team, the conversation with clients is generally about the time and effort required to implement something, or the options we have for delivering the functionality. If I'm pulled into a sales meeting, it's usually high-level architectural discussions.
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  Pre-sales support engineers.
- SomeCallMeTim 13y ago
  Funny you should ask. I was JUST interviewed by a client of a local consulting company I work for periodically, and he asked all kinds of technical domain questions. Different domain than JavaScript, so different questions. I'm not even sure what's meant by "!important", honestly, though I do know what a closure is. I'm not an employee of the consulting company, but I COULD be if I asked, and in that case I would have been in that exact situation. I just prefer my contracting status; the upshot is that, not only did I do an interview like that, but I did it for free, on behalf of this company.
- acomar 13y ago
  My GF had to go through a round of technical interviews with clients after opting to accept a job with a contracting firm. The firm fills the various contracts they receive with employees, but the clients want to greenlight the employee before they start work. That might just be contracting with the government though.
wedtm 13y ago
Perhaps, but you also have time to prepare for the questions you'll get from the client, who's most likely purchasing something that you've done for the past X months/years. A technical interview requires perfection (or close to it) the first day you see the problem.
untog 13y ago
I think this is where you failed, though. If they asked you back, then even though you didn't feel good about the interview process, you must have passed. Sure. But do I want to work somewhere that has such a broken policy? Why haven't they fixed it? What other areas of the company have a similar lack of attention? Interviews go both ways. The candidate and the company only get a small glimpse at each other and have to extrapolate from there. What I extrapolated was not positive.
Bartweiss 13y ago
>Seems like a poor choice of filter I'm not convinced that this is true. Poor hiring doesn't mean that the company does other things wrong, but hiring determines what kind of people work at the company. Running into a hiring process that you believe won't select good coworkers can be a major problem.
a_c_s 13y ago
Nope! If we rank stress from 0 = sleeping to 10 = getting diagnosed with cancer, the amount of stress I feel in a meeting (including important ones I lead or that include bigwigs) is in the 1 to 3 range, with maybe the occasional 4. My level of stress in a technical programming interview is usually in the 6 to 8 range. Even recently negotiating with my boss for a raise (which I know he was positively predisposed to because he is the one who brought it up) was a 5, which is significantly more than any regular meeting.
- mcv 13y ago
  I think the real problem is in your head: your anxiety about job interviews is sabotaging something you're otherwise perfectly good at. You need to be more zen about this. More laid back, relaxed, confident, or something like that. You've probably been raised with the idea that job interviews are Very Important. Let go of that idea. It's just a chat with another programmer who's equally ill at ease with the situation. Imagine you're just having a coffee, or maybe discussing something at a seminar or something. He's not the boss; you're equals. When he asks the wrong question, let him know. Suggest changes. Discuss what YOU want to discuss instead of letting him dominate the conversation. Of course it's still possible that he's inflexible about it. That tells you something about your prospective co-worker, and possibly the corporate culture.
  - randallsquared 13y ago
    Telling a person they need to just be different is easy; being different is hard, and maybe objectionable for other reasons. For one, actually becoming more relaxed in confrontations is not something that has been achievable merely by asserting that I want to be -- instead, the only thing that seems to work is being in confrontations enough more often to reduce the stress level of such an environment. While this works to some degree, it raises the anxiety or stress level of the rest of my life, and is thus completely antithetical to most of the other things I do to make my life better. If I can instead just avoid situations which raise my stress level, and in which I would perform less well, that seems more conducive to overall happiness. For another (and this was somewhat already implied), making changes to one's personality often has other effects on one which may be undesirable. Being more assertive might make it more likely that one bullies others (unintentionally). I've noticed this in myself as my assertiveness waxes and wanes: if I'm feeling especially confident, I'm more likely to say things without qualification, and say things that I would normally stop myself from saying. Later, I wonder if what I said came across as asinine, since that's how I would take such statements. I sympathize quite a lot with the original poster, because while I'm a pretty good developer (at least, some others praise my skill highly), I'm really, really bad at interviewing, sales, talking to clients in a situation where I actually depend on their response, etc. (A previous commenter was quite right when he compared interviewing and sales -- they raise the same confrontational anxiety). When hired for a previous job, I was told months after the hiring that the interviewer was quite astonished that I'd turned out to be an intelligent and very capable developer, since I'd interviewed terribly, and the only reason he'd hired me at all was that he was having a fight with HR, and had announced that he would hire the next person he interviewed to show them how that worked out. That worked out poorly for his argument, but well for me and the team. :)
lsc 13y ago
>Really? I disagree. There even exist situations (in the case of some positions) where you will be talking to a client of the company you're working for, effectively interviewing with the client, representing the company. And interviewing is a subset of "sales", which is important for working on many teams -- including selling management on changes that would improve the user experience, for example. If you are using the same interview process for technical folks and for sales folks, you are doing it wrong. (I mean, unless your technical folks are also sales folks, in which case, whoo boy. people who are good at both exist? but they are in high demand, and they are rare to begin with, so... good luck with that.)
- SomeCallMeTim 13y ago
  I meant "sales" in the sense that "all jobs are sales jobs." Selling your team on a particular technical approach. Selling your boss on a raise. Heck, even selling a member of the appropriate gender on hooking up is "sales"; you're just the product you're selling in that case.
  - lsc 13y ago
    >"all jobs are sales jobs." some jobs... more than others. If an employer can find a programmer or sysadmin who can't get a job elsewhere because of poor sales skills, well, it sounds like they could either pay less or get someone with better technical skills than they could otherwise. (That and my personal feeling? the guys who are 'always selling' are hard to deal with. I can handle maybe one day a week, if that, dealing with those folks.) Seriously. Not everyone needs to be the team lead. The kid in the corner who is really good technically, who solves technical problems has a lot of value even if his or her social skills are poor. I mean, sure, they'd be /more/ valuable with social skills, too... My whole point is that you can't get the perfect candidate. Quite often it makes sense to take a hit on social skills if it gets you someone who is better technically. (and sometimes the converse makes sense, too.) I'm just saying, there is a place in the workplace for the introverts who don't interview or argue well. As an employer, if you only hire technical people who can get dates, well, you are limiting yourself.
curiousbiped 13y ago
Sure, it sucks for the company that talented people take a look at their process and fire them as employers, but how is that a bad filter for him? The first impression the company gave him was "we have a bad process" for arguably one of the most important tasks they do - hiring. If they're broken about interviewing, why should he think that the people they do hire are going to be people he wants to work with? Or that any of their other processes are going to be less broken? My current job (site reliability engineer) gave me a take home programming assignment, and one of the engineers did a code review face to face after I turned it in but before they gave me an offer. The quality of his review was a big factor in me taking the offer - I was impressed that they cared that much about code quality from a non software engineer.

sghill 13y ago

> There even exist situations (in the case of some positions) where you will be talking to a client of the company you're working for, effectively interviewing with the client, representing the company. What positions would require you to prove the technical capability of your company at this level? I've been working for a consultancy for a few years now. I can't recall a time when a client asked me to describe a closure or what I thought of !important. If I'm on a development team, the conversation with clients is generally about the time and effort required to implement something, or the options we have for delivering the functionality. If I'm pulled into a sales meeting, it's usually high-level architectural discussions.

mgkimsal 13y ago
Pre-sales support engineers.
SomeCallMeTim 13y ago
Funny you should ask. I was JUST interviewed by a client of a local consulting company I work for periodically, and he asked all kinds of technical domain questions. Different domain than JavaScript, so different questions. I'm not even sure what's meant by "!important", honestly, though I do know what a closure is. I'm not an employee of the consulting company, but I COULD be if I asked, and in that case I would have been in that exact situation. I just prefer my contracting status; the upshot is that, not only did I do an interview like that, but I did it for free, on behalf of this company.
acomar 13y ago
My GF had to go through a round of technical interviews with clients after opting to accept a job with a contracting firm. The firm fills the various contracts they receive with employees, but the clients want to greenlight the employee before they start work. That might just be contracting with the government though.

wedtm 13y ago

Perhaps, but you also have time to prepare for the questions you'll get from the client, who's most likely purchasing something that you've done for the past X months/years. A technical interview requires perfection (or close to it) the first day you see the problem.

untog 13y ago

I think this is where you failed, though. If they asked you back, then even though you didn't feel good about the interview process, you must have passed. Sure. But do I want to work somewhere that has such a broken policy? Why haven't they fixed it? What other areas of the company have a similar lack of attention? Interviews go both ways. The candidate and the company only get a small glimpse at each other and have to extrapolate from there. What I extrapolated was not positive.

Bartweiss 13y ago

>Seems like a poor choice of filter I'm not convinced that this is true. Poor hiring doesn't mean that the company does other things wrong, but hiring determines what kind of people work at the company. Running into a hiring process that you believe won't select good coworkers can be a major problem.

a_c_s 13y ago

Nope! If we rank stress from 0 = sleeping to 10 = getting diagnosed with cancer, the amount of stress I feel in a meeting (including important ones I lead or that include bigwigs) is in the 1 to 3 range, with maybe the occasional 4. My level of stress in a technical programming interview is usually in the 6 to 8 range. Even recently negotiating with my boss for a raise (which I know he was positively predisposed to because he is the one who brought it up) was a 5, which is significantly more than any regular meeting.

mcv 13y ago
I think the real problem is in your head: your anxiety about job interviews is sabotaging something you're otherwise perfectly good at. You need to be more zen about this. More laid back, relaxed, confident, or something like that. You've probably been raised with the idea that job interviews are Very Important. Let go of that idea. It's just a chat with another programmer who's equally ill at ease with the situation. Imagine you're just having a coffee, or maybe discussing something at a seminar or something. He's not the boss; you're equals. When he asks the wrong question, let him know. Suggest changes. Discuss what YOU want to discuss instead of letting him dominate the conversation. Of course it's still possible that he's inflexible about it. That tells you something about your prospective co-worker, and possibly the corporate culture.
- randallsquared 13y ago
  Telling a person they need to just be different is easy; being different is hard, and maybe objectionable for other reasons. For one, actually becoming more relaxed in confrontations is not something that has been achievable merely by asserting that I want to be -- instead, the only thing that seems to work is being in confrontations enough more often to reduce the stress level of such an environment. While this works to some degree, it raises the anxiety or stress level of the rest of my life, and is thus completely antithetical to most of the other things I do to make my life better. If I can instead just avoid situations which raise my stress level, and in which I would perform less well, that seems more conducive to overall happiness. For another (and this was somewhat already implied), making changes to one's personality often has other effects on one which may be undesirable. Being more assertive might make it more likely that one bullies others (unintentionally). I've noticed this in myself as my assertiveness waxes and wanes: if I'm feeling especially confident, I'm more likely to say things without qualification, and say things that I would normally stop myself from saying. Later, I wonder if what I said came across as asinine, since that's how I would take such statements. I sympathize quite a lot with the original poster, because while I'm a pretty good developer (at least, some others praise my skill highly), I'm really, really bad at interviewing, sales, talking to clients in a situation where I actually depend on their response, etc. (A previous commenter was quite right when he compared interviewing and sales -- they raise the same confrontational anxiety). When hired for a previous job, I was told months after the hiring that the interviewer was quite astonished that I'd turned out to be an intelligent and very capable developer, since I'd interviewed terribly, and the only reason he'd hired me at all was that he was having a fight with HR, and had announced that he would hire the next person he interviewed to show them how that worked out. That worked out poorly for his argument, but well for me and the team. :)

lsc 13y ago

>Really? I disagree. There even exist situations (in the case of some positions) where you will be talking to a client of the company you're working for, effectively interviewing with the client, representing the company. And interviewing is a subset of "sales", which is important for working on many teams -- including selling management on changes that would improve the user experience, for example. If you are using the same interview process for technical folks and for sales folks, you are doing it wrong. (I mean, unless your technical folks are also sales folks, in which case, whoo boy. people who are good at both exist? but they are in high demand, and they are rare to begin with, so... good luck with that.)

SomeCallMeTim 13y ago
I meant "sales" in the sense that "all jobs are sales jobs." Selling your team on a particular technical approach. Selling your boss on a raise. Heck, even selling a member of the appropriate gender on hooking up is "sales"; you're just the product you're selling in that case.
- lsc 13y ago
  >"all jobs are sales jobs." some jobs... more than others. If an employer can find a programmer or sysadmin who can't get a job elsewhere because of poor sales skills, well, it sounds like they could either pay less or get someone with better technical skills than they could otherwise. (That and my personal feeling? the guys who are 'always selling' are hard to deal with. I can handle maybe one day a week, if that, dealing with those folks.) Seriously. Not everyone needs to be the team lead. The kid in the corner who is really good technically, who solves technical problems has a lot of value even if his or her social skills are poor. I mean, sure, they'd be /more/ valuable with social skills, too... My whole point is that you can't get the perfect candidate. Quite often it makes sense to take a hit on social skills if it gets you someone who is better technically. (and sometimes the converse makes sense, too.) I'm just saying, there is a place in the workplace for the introverts who don't interview or argue well. As an employer, if you only hire technical people who can get dates, well, you are limiting yourself.

curiousbiped 13y ago

Sure, it sucks for the company that talented people take a look at their process and fire them as employers, but how is that a bad filter for him? The first impression the company gave him was "we have a bad process" for arguably one of the most important tasks they do - hiring. If they're broken about interviewing, why should he think that the people they do hire are going to be people he wants to work with? Or that any of their other processes are going to be less broken? My current job (site reliability engineer) gave me a take home programming assignment, and one of the engineers did a code review face to face after I turned it in but before they gave me an offer. The quality of his review was a big factor in me taking the offer - I was impressed that they cared that much about code quality from a non software engineer.