9 ms·

Technical Interviews Make Me Cry

127 points by ctoth 13y ago

joebeetee 13y ago
Saw Pamela speak at an HTML5 Meetup at Yelp a couple of months ago. She was smart, funny, engaging and genuine - exactly like she sounds in this article. Love her honesty and how she wears her heart on her sleeve.
- pamelafox 13y ago
  Ha - glad you liked that talk! Curiously enough, this interview happened 6 hours before that talk. And it made me wonder, "why am I giving a talk tonight?? how am I qualified?" Thankfully, I recovered my confidence by the time that talk came around, and you guys were such a cool audience. :-)
joshmn 13y ago
I had the same thing happen to me while interviewing for the position I hold currently. I had gotten through 6 interviews without a hitch. They were all culture related, personality-based, "how will you fit with our team" type. Young, scrappy kind of team, who didn't believe in big corporation-type interviews. Well, the interview in question came. I'm a rockstar when it comes to interviews. I'm personable, confident, funny, and I carry myself really well in conversation. But what was different? The guy I interviewed with previously held a position with Microsoft. And he did things the Microsoft way. I'm nothing but a loose guy. I don't have the college education to back me. I hadn't worked on any famed projects. I didn't commit to open-source projects, have a network to vouch for me. I had a few side projects, but they were nothing more than me just building things. I owned a few companies in my mid-late teens that sold for a good amount of money, but nothing I'd write home about. I'm a utility player that can wear many hats: front-end, back-end, sysadmin, marketing, advertising, copywriting, legal stuff, financials, client management, databases... I don't do any one thing particularly well (except for maybe back-end) but I do all of them pretty damn good. And when I heard this guy was from MSFT I thought "well this is going to suck." Why? Because I thought that he may not care that I'm as scrappy as I am. The position I was applying for wasn't anything specific. It was just that utility player. I wasn't expected to write gobs of code, I wasn't expected to manage systems. I was just expected to do what was asked of me, and take ownership of it. So the interview began. He asked me some really, really low-level questions. Questions that you'd be asked on an exam if you're a CSCI major at MIT. I had no idea how to answer them, so I tried to explain them high-level and ignore the fact he wanted low-level answers. That got me nowhere except him thinking down on me. When it came down to me writing code, I just blanked. He wanted me to write a class for a shopping cart and he wanted to see how I'd apply a coupon code, how I'd manage the items in the cart, how I'd sort and group them together, etc. It lasted all of five minutes when I just disconnected from the internet, took the battery out of my phone, and sat there. I suffer from crippling anxiety, and this was no exception. I've learned how to manage it better since, though. About twenty minutes after my meltdown I emailed the CEO of the company. I was in tears, because I wanted the job so badly, and I explained that to him. I said that the guy was an asshole, really belittling, and didn't reflect the values of those who I had spoke with prior. I still got the job, and I'm still with them today. It's the butt of a lot of the jokes we have with our team of five. "Josh, is this someone you'd consider hanging up on?" or "Well it's okay, because Josh once hung up on someone that was interviewing him. Thus, this isn't that bad in comparison!" Damn right I take it like a champ.
- zerr 13y ago
  What happened to that ex-MS guy? :)
  - joshmn 13y ago
    No idea. But we recently hired someone who had to go through him as well. Our candidate said the same thing about him, though he did get through his interview unscathed.
    - kabdib 13y ago
      Sounds like he might be doing damage. (Speaking as an ex-Microsoftie, actually).
      - sliverstorm 13y ago
        Or maybe someone up the hiring chain just wants to see how their applicants react to that "curve ball"
- suyash 13y ago
  "About twenty minutes after my meltdown I emailed the CEO of the company. I was in tears, because I wanted the job so badly, and I explained that to him. I said that the guy was an asshole, really belittling, and didn't reflect the values of those who I had spoke with prior" - To me it's perfectly clear who was the real asshole there. Bitching about technical problems to the CEO, haha..what a loser. You didn't have the caliber to handle, you should have not blamed anyone else but yourself.
  - zerr 13y ago
    The fact is that he is still with that company, so he obviously was a good fit. So it is the interviewer who didn't have a caliber to do his job - determine if the person was a good fit.
    - deleted 13y ago
philwelch 13y ago
It's normal for people to be upset when they're stressed and frustrated and it's good for interviewers to be kind and help them through it. Freezing up shouldn't be a disqualifier by itself, it's just a barrier to finding out whether the candidate has the skills and knowledge you're looking for and one that the interviewer has a vested interest in helping to overcome. On the other hand, stress and frustration are part of the experience of being a software developer. Lots of developers, myself included, would be better off learning to handle them productively.
zerr 13y ago
Hm, I've never heard that Google was giving take-home assignments, and even with the job relevant tasks.
- pamelafox 13y ago
  That may have only been for Developer Relations and only years ago. Not sure if they're doing them anymore.
DigitalSea 13y ago
As a self-taught developer these stories scare me. I don't know the ins and outs of programming fundamentals, but I know how to program and I am really efficient in what I do as well. I've got big ideas, I have drive and vision and I think technical interviews can have the reverse effect of attracting real people. For what I lack in low-level understanding, I more than make up for it on a higher level. Ask me to build something as a whole, don't ask me to solve mathematics questions and other unrealistic junk questions. The biggest takeaway from this post is definitely this: In my experience, when we are programming on the job, we're given the problem and we have time to think about it. We have time to research possible solutions, we have time to try stuff out that we know will most likely fail, and we can wait until we have something decent before we show it to our colleagues ^THIS. One hundred times over. How is putting someone on the spot to build something and build it perfect a good test of their capabilities and skills? That's not even how it works in the real world.
- philwelch 13y ago
  You're implying that low level CS knowledge plain isn't important in a developer role. Perhaps in some cases it isn't, but lacking low level CS knowledge is very limiting in a technical role and there are valid reasons employers might emphasize technical chops. There exist very good developers with drive and vision who have a strong grasp of technical fundamentals and can still manage to pass technical interviews. Why wouldn't you want to hire them? No one expects interview code to be "perfect", especially not for your first answer. Thinking about it aloud and going down a false path or two rather than trying to write a perfectly optimized solution first time is what you're supposed to do and a good interviewer will encourage that. On the other hand, you should also be able to get onto a fruitful path rather quickly, or at least when you get there, you should be able to follow it easily.
- quanticle 13y ago
  >For what I lack in low-level understanding, I more than make up for it on a higher level. Ask me to build something as a whole, don't ask me to solve mathematics questions and other unrealistic junk questions. Without the math, how do you know that your solutions are any good? How do you know that the algorithm you sketched out on the whiteboard will work on the 1,000,000 records that we have in production in addition to the 5 record toy example that you worked out? I mean, sure, I agree that brainteasers are in appropriate. Knowing why manhole covers are round or how M&Ms get their candy shell tells me nothing about your programming ability. But basic math and algorithms? They're a lot more important than you think. Knowing Big-O notation, various kinds of basic algorithms and a good assortment of data structures lets me know that you can evaluate a solution and find potential flaws and bugs. How is putting someone on the spot to build something and build it perfect a good test of their capabilities and skills? There's a difference between perfect and working. I've never had an interviewer ask me for perfect code. Not at Amazon. Not at Google. Not at Facebook. I have, however, been asked for working code. The code doesn't need to be 100% bug free, but it should be syntactically correct and should solve the problem in a reasonable fashion (e.g. without using inordinate time or space). Frankly, I like technical interviews a lot more than the alternative, which increasingly boils down to, "Make me a webapp and we'll evaluate your code." I'm sorry, but if I wanted to make a webapp for you on my own time, I also want to get paid for it. Even now, when I'm single and living alone, I have a hard time motivating myself to do homework problems. I can't imagine having to do something like that when I'm married and have children.
freework 13y ago
Imagine someone walking up to Maya Angelou, handing her a white eraser marker, and asking her to write you a poem on a white board. She's obviously not going to immediately write you a poem, at least not one thats any good. Is it fair to judge her poem writing abilities by this off the cuff creation?Creators can only do their best creation when they are in their comfortable space. Asking a programmer to write code over the phone will result in substandard quality no matter what.
- philwelch 13y ago
  Sorry, if I ask you to write a function that determines whether two given words are anagrams of each other, "I need to get into my comfortable space for my creative process to work" is an evasion. No one's asking for a masterpiece, just a demonstration of basic competence.
  - seiji 13y ago
    What kills me with Do Work While We Stare At You interviews is my process is all over the place. I tend to draft something, try it, find my five mistakes, try more things, etc. That doesn't fly in an interview. At least, I don't feel it does. Interviewers expect mostly right and mostly very fast. I end up standing there trying to pre-think the entire problem so something correct comes out the first time, which, to them, is just dead time with me staring at the wall. The other option is to "dive in" and backtrack a lot, but the people watching can't tell the difference between actual incompetence and just figuring it out.
    - MichaelSalib 13y ago
      That doesn't fly in an interview. Actually, it does. I've been interviewing a lot lately, and I'm totally fine with people trying something, changing their mind, fixing mistakes, etc. When they get stuck, I help them out. All decent interviewers know that being interviewed is stressful and that you need to cut candidates some slack. Speaking personally, I don't care much about speed. I care about things like how much fluency do you have with your programming language (is writing a for loop something you have to struggle with?), do you know how to use a hash table (you'd be amazed at how many people don't), can you explain what the tradeoffs are when you make design choices and compare them to the alternatives, etc. Also, since I can, I'm going to complain about my pet peeve: candidates who want to write a solution in C++ or C or java (I let them choose any language they want) but who refuse to use a container library. They'll insist on using arrays, even when the problem pretty clearly requires something like std::vector. And then they'll tie themselves in knots to make static fixed size arrays work. Now, if you can justify why you don't want to use a @#$! container library, that's fine, but usually the justifications are garbage ("it will be too slow...no, I've never measured that"). What really gets me is that a good sw engineer should be able to see that rewriting stl::vector by hand in every application intertwining its code with your application code (vector's client) is a maintenance and performance nightmare.
prezjordan 13y ago
Pretty funny to see this, because you've interviewed me before (not super technical, though!). Even more so, I think I got the same question when I interviewed for KA ;) Small world. Great post, it's really refreshing to see someone with your hacking chops experiencing the same anxieties as a little college student like me.
- pamelafox 13y ago
  I seem to remember that while I was interviewing you (for Coursera), I was browsing your Github repos and checking out your cool libraries. I didn't feel a need to test your technical chops when I could see them in front of me. I'd rather get to know other sides when I can. :-)
akanet 13y ago
I really feel for the author. I had a similar problem, except on the other side of the table - evaluating whether candidates' solutions while interviewing them over the phone was excruciating. I built https://coderpad.io https://coderpad.io to make the whole programmer-interview phone screen process easier. It's like Stypi on steroids, because it comes with a live REPL. You can play around with, say, JS, right there in the window. I've found it much more accurately simulates coding alone: the experimentation, quick validation, and verifiability that editors alone don't have is sooooo important.
- RogerL 13y ago
  I just wanted to chime in and say how righteous this app is. I've recommended it at work, though, as usual, no one listens.
- n1ghtmare_ 13y ago
  What a cool app ! I'll use it next time ! Bookmarked ! Is this by any chance open sourced ? I'd like to contribute if you need a hand.
anmalhot 13y ago
I recently had a couple of skype interviews with a well-known startup. First one went fine and I got good feedback but during the second one I was asked to share my screen & work on an IDE of my choice. That being something new, I didn't feel comfortable coding and though I did answer, the interviewer felt I was a bit (iffy) - I had written a conditional check & then changed it later. Interviews can get pretty hectic and it is way easier to say no to someone you don't even look at.
viraptor 13y ago
I'd also recommend - if you're an interviewee normally, try to join an interview at your current job (if possible). I was quite anxious about being interviewed some time ago. Being on the other side of the table once changed everything however. The amount of preparation, ideas, planning, time needed to interview someone is just crazy if you want to do it properly. And you're still left with: what if I didn't ask the right questions, what impression I left on them, are they going to be a good fit or was their behaviour just an act for today, etc. Now I know that the people of the other side are either just as anxious to do everything right as I am, or they just don't care much. One way or another, I'm just not able to get nervous about an interview anymore. The best ones turn into pleasant chats about tech anyway.
adsr 13y ago
"If you ever suffer from Impostor syndrome, you should probably prepare even more, because the standard interview situation will make you feel like an Imposter in the worst way." It may also help to think of that Dunning-Kruger study [1], according to that it would be normal for the competent to be full of doubt while the less experienced would be full of confidence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
tptacek 13y ago
Oh, wow, 1000x this article. Forget about the crying thing, which makes it vivid and more interesting to read but might obscure the fundamental point, which is that interviews make people incredibly uncomfortable. Some of the calmest, most unflappable people I work with shook visibly in their interviews with us. What's important about that is: you are not getting an accurate read of a candidate's state of mind in a high-stakes interview. I think you have just a couple of options to improve your accuracy given that fact: * You can take deliberate steps to lower the stakes in your interview process by changing the kinds of transactions that happen in the interview (for instance, by constructing interviews that involve collaborating on a problem instead of challenging the candidate). * You can "discount" the signals you get from the interview, particular w/r/t already nebulous concepts like "confidence", "social skill", "enthusiasm", and the dreaded "culture fit". * You can push more of the recruiting process into situations where the candidate controls their environment (for instance, by doing stuff at home, and on a fixed but flexible time scale) and less on in-person timeboxed interviews. I'd love more ideas. We're trying all three, but it's a lather-rinse-repeat kind of situation. I'm getting good, I think, at spotting signals that are probably the result of jitters. And I think I've learned pretty conclusively that those jitters have zero correlation to on-the-job performance. But I have so much more to learn.
- david_shaw 13y ago
  I like your ideas, particularly collaborating on problems and giving candidates the ability to control their environment while problem-solving (such as giving them a week-long assignment). We've had good luck with the latter, and it's provided several valuable employees who, frankly, would probably not have passed a "live" interview. Another tactic we employ is to keep the technical interviews very conversational. Rather than asking a very difficult question and putting the candidate on the spot, we try to talk through problems and do an over-the-phone "white board" session. We like to choose problems with many answers; some of these answers are easy to arrive on, while other explanations may be trickier. The candidate gains confidence getting the first part of the question correct, and seems to be more at-ease while completing the more difficult tasks. There's no way that we can completely cut out the stress of a technical interview--no matter what, it's nerve-wracking to put your technical capabilities on the line--but it doesn't need to be a belittling, terrifying experience like the ones we so often hear described.
deleted 13y ago
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cpprototypes 13y ago
For me, what helps a lot with tech interview stress is to already have a job. It turns the tables so that I don't really need them, they need me. The change in attitude is powerful and gives confidence.
hkarthik 13y ago
To share my experience, the kinds of "make you cry" interviews which test a lot of CS knowledge seem relegated to the Bay Area companies which I interviewed with. All my interviews with companies in Texas (where I live) would interview more to ask about your experiences with a technology, challenges you'd faced when working with a similar stack, and maybe ask how you solved some tricky performance problem. They tended to focus more on the real world experiences than the academic knowledge. Once in a while someone would throw a framework- specific curveball your way to make sure you knew what your resume said you knew. This isn't a knock on the companies in the Bay Area, because clearly what they are doing works for them, but it's just a drastically different style that feels foreign to me. When those of you in the Bay Area interview every few years for new jobs, do you just brush off all your CS textbooks, study/review for a month, and then start the process?
- sitharus 13y ago
  That's what I've always experienced. I've only had one company do a technical phone interview with one company - Google - and I told them not to call me back. All the other jobs I've only had an in-person interview and it's been about experiences and the occasional "Why is Prototype a bad Javascript framework?" for example. Anything more complex than FizzBuzz will take me a while to figure out, because I never start writing code without actually understanding the problem that's being solved.
- mmorett 13y ago
  I happened to have a conversation with someone about this recently. Software developer: the career where you study to get the job, toss much of that away when you actually do the job, then study for the interview for the next job, where you toss much of that away when you actually do the job... It's a rhetorical question, but I can't understand studying for a job. You either do it on the job or you don't. Studying, however, puts a ton of stuff in short term memory where it gives the appearance of brilliance.
  - hkarthik 13y ago
    See that's where I want to dig deeper with those that really believe in this style of interviewing. Clearly it must have some value other than the weed-out factor. Are there engineers who actually keep the algorithms/data structure stuff in their head and find small ways to apply it while they work on a standard web or mobile app? That's the only way I could see the knowledge having any value, but I've never worked this way nor have I observed anyone who works this way.
sgustard 13y ago
Unfortunately, there are way too many unqualified people out there applying for jobs and ruining it for the rest of us. As a hiring for manager for years, I've seen a huge number of people try to fake their way through interviews. They can talk vaguely and grandiosely about all the technical problems they solved at their past jobs or in school. But the breakdown always happens when you ask them to solve a problem for you. Sure, they may be undiscovered geniuses who are too nervous to think straight. But where there's smoke, there's fire, and in this case behind the smoke are ten other people lined up to interview for the same job. All things being equal in terms of general personability and hygiene, the one who displays technical competence gets the job. Just imagine if the odds weren't so skewed in favor of job hunters. When the economy slows, when your jobs are really subject to outsourcing to a lowest bidder overseas for a fraction of the price, these sympathy hires will be a thing of the past.
hogu 13y ago
One approach I've tried recently is getting a digital ocean box and giving the prospective candidate access to the box 24 hrs prior, just so they can install whatever tools they like if they so choose, and then giving the candidate a simple problem to build on the box for 30 minutes. Then we mute the phones for 30 minutes, so that people can work in peace, but we're around if they want to ask us any questions. And at the end of the 30 minutes we discuss how far they got, and what they would do differently, etc.. We've only done this twice, but I think it was fairly useful both times. Haven't done it enough to know whether or not this is a good approach.
n1ghtmare_ 13y ago
I recently had an interview with Google London, Oh boy did a screw it up, it's like I'm reading my experience, my mind simply went blank ! The interviewer was like the nicest person I've been interviewed by (he's pretty famous and I recognized his voice btw). The task was hilariously easy (I've done the same thing like 2 days ago), but when I was asked to work on it on the phone I bombed ! Basically I was thinking of everything else BUT the problem at hand. The guy kept being nice telling me that this happens all the time (you know people freezing). At the end I wasn't lucky enough to proceed to the next level and frankly I felt that I deserved to fail and I should not be a programmer and what not. Very depressing - I took at as a BIG personal failure and missing an opportunity of a lifetime. I think the thing that makes it worst is the fact that I honestly knew this, after the interview was over I looked at the problem and couldn't believe that I wasn't able to do it. Complete mental block. I think I've recovered since, and I'm trying to improve. Just want to say (because I've heard complaints from other people) - Google were very nice, and worked very quick with me, I've submitted my CV and got a call the same day (maybe just lucky), then I basically chose the date of my interview and they were spot on. Also they gave me good feedback.
hschool 13y ago
This post hit a nerve! This is exactly what got me working on http://www.phoneinterviewme.com/ http://www.phoneinterviewme.com/ to help fellow developers prepare better for their phone interviews. Here is how it works. You get a call at a time you pick on your phone line. You are asked some automated questions related to the interview you expect. Once you are done, you can go back and listen to your session to see how you did. I was hoping this would help developers practice and get over the fear during an actual interview. Would this help you be better prepared?
Apocryphon 13y ago
You know, there's a lot of these interview articles. Where whiteboarding doesn't work. Or whiteboarding works but filters out a vast majority of applicants. Give homework problems instead. No, applicants can easily cheat or resort to copy pasting code when given time away from the interviewer. The future is GitHub repos to see candidates' prior work. No, open-source code is not verifiable and easily falsifiable. What about determining if an applicant has solid fundamentals, not overthinking it, and having him or her learn on the job? Whatever happened to providing training? Is there really no room for apprentices or novices in modern tech companies?
holyjaw 13y ago
Rather relevantly, this article [1] was posted a few days ago. “In improvisational acting there is this great rule that I’ve used in my life: ‘Act As If’. Act as if this is completely normal. Of course I’m supposed to be interviewing Barack Obama. Of course I’m supposed to be playing guitar with Bruce Springsteen and of course there’s a big part of me inside that’s saying: ‘What are you talking about?’” It's been in the front of my head since I read it and, while I can't say I've passed any major coding interviews, it's certainly helped quell the screaming voice inside me that is the source of my constant anxiety. [1]: https://medium.com/design-startups/3600f4672b3e https://medium.com/design-startups/3600f4672b3e
benjamincburns 13y ago
A few months ago, I decided that I really wanted to join Khan Academy. I would longingly browse their jobs page in my idle hours, read their intern blog posts from top-to-bottom, and fork their repos on Friday nights. It became a bit of an obsession. (Shh, don't tell them how creepy I am.) I realize that she's joking here with the creepy bit, but I have to ask. Does anyone honestly think this kind of behavior is creepy? To answer my own question, as someone who interviews people quite often, I'd love to hear that a candidate did this sort of thing. Honestly, if you're worried that you're going to be weak in your interview for a company which you really want to work for, do this. Oh, and also - if interviews make you nervous, please tell your interviewer. For some people it's really obvious that they're nervous, but others do an amazing job hiding it. If there's any chance at all that you think your interviewers aren't aware of your nerves, just tell them. First off, we're used to it. I'd guess somewhere between 60 to 80% of my interviewees are visibly nervous. Further, quite often the people interviewing you experience the same sort of nervousness when they're on your side of the table. If they're good at what they're doing, they'll totally empathize, and clearing the air helps a lot. Unless you're interviewing for a sales type position where it's essentially your job to be interviewed, nobody in their right mind should view nervousness as a sign of weakness. Personally, about 9 out of 10 times this happens I err on the side of "this person really wants this job" rather than "wow, this person must be nervous because they don't know their shit."
- vonmoltke 13y ago
  > To answer my own question, as someone who interviews people quite often, I'd love to hear that a candidate did this sort of thing. Honestly, if you're worried that you're going to be weak in your interview for a company which you really want to work for, do this. Guilty as charged. There are a handful of companies that have provoked this type of reaction from me. I have yet to actually get an interview from any of them, though. I'm actually surprised how much Pamela sounds like me when it comes to interviewing. Almost exactly like me. I just have crippling anxiety on top of that which I only recently got taken care of.

127 points by ctoth 13y ago

Saw Pamela speak at an HTML5 Meetup at Yelp a couple of months ago. She was smart, funny, engaging and genuine - exactly like she sounds in this article. Love her honesty and how she wears her heart on her sleeve.

pamelafox 13y ago
Ha - glad you liked that talk! Curiously enough, this interview happened 6 hours before that talk. And it made me wonder, "why am I giving a talk tonight?? how am I qualified?" Thankfully, I recovered my confidence by the time that talk came around, and you guys were such a cool audience. :-)

joshmn 13y ago

I had the same thing happen to me while interviewing for the position I hold currently. I had gotten through 6 interviews without a hitch. They were all culture related, personality-based, "how will you fit with our team" type. Young, scrappy kind of team, who didn't believe in big corporation-type interviews. Well, the interview in question came. I'm a rockstar when it comes to interviews. I'm personable, confident, funny, and I carry myself really well in conversation. But what was different? The guy I interviewed with previously held a position with Microsoft. And he did things the Microsoft way. I'm nothing but a loose guy. I don't have the college education to back me. I hadn't worked on any famed projects. I didn't commit to open-source projects, have a network to vouch for me. I had a few side projects, but they were nothing more than me just building things. I owned a few companies in my mid-late teens that sold for a good amount of money, but nothing I'd write home about. I'm a utility player that can wear many hats: front-end, back-end, sysadmin, marketing, advertising, copywriting, legal stuff, financials, client management, databases... I don't do any one thing particularly well (except for maybe back-end) but I do all of them pretty damn good. And when I heard this guy was from MSFT I thought "well this is going to suck." Why? Because I thought that he may not care that I'm as scrappy as I am. The position I was applying for wasn't anything specific. It was just that utility player. I wasn't expected to write gobs of code, I wasn't expected to manage systems. I was just expected to do what was asked of me, and take ownership of it. So the interview began. He asked me some really, really low-level questions. Questions that you'd be asked on an exam if you're a CSCI major at MIT. I had no idea how to answer them, so I tried to explain them high-level and ignore the fact he wanted low-level answers. That got me nowhere except him thinking down on me. When it came down to me writing code, I just blanked. He wanted me to write a class for a shopping cart and he wanted to see how I'd apply a coupon code, how I'd manage the items in the cart, how I'd sort and group them together, etc. It lasted all of five minutes when I just disconnected from the internet, took the battery out of my phone, and sat there. I suffer from crippling anxiety, and this was no exception. I've learned how to manage it better since, though. About twenty minutes after my meltdown I emailed the CEO of the company. I was in tears, because I wanted the job so badly, and I explained that to him. I said that the guy was an asshole, really belittling, and didn't reflect the values of those who I had spoke with prior. I still got the job, and I'm still with them today. It's the butt of a lot of the jokes we have with our team of five. "Josh, is this someone you'd consider hanging up on?" or "Well it's okay, because Josh once hung up on someone that was interviewing him. Thus, this isn't that bad in comparison!" Damn right I take it like a champ.

zerr 13y ago
What happened to that ex-MS guy? :)
- joshmn 13y ago
  No idea. But we recently hired someone who had to go through him as well. Our candidate said the same thing about him, though he did get through his interview unscathed.
  - kabdib 13y ago
    Sounds like he might be doing damage. (Speaking as an ex-Microsoftie, actually).
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Or maybe someone up the hiring chain just wants to see how their applicants react to that "curve ball"
suyash 13y ago
"About twenty minutes after my meltdown I emailed the CEO of the company. I was in tears, because I wanted the job so badly, and I explained that to him. I said that the guy was an asshole, really belittling, and didn't reflect the values of those who I had spoke with prior" - To me it's perfectly clear who was the real asshole there. Bitching about technical problems to the CEO, haha..what a loser. You didn't have the caliber to handle, you should have not blamed anyone else but yourself.
- zerr 13y ago
  The fact is that he is still with that company, so he obviously was a good fit. So it is the interviewer who didn't have a caliber to do his job - determine if the person was a good fit.
  - deleted 13y ago

philwelch 13y ago

It's normal for people to be upset when they're stressed and frustrated and it's good for interviewers to be kind and help them through it. Freezing up shouldn't be a disqualifier by itself, it's just a barrier to finding out whether the candidate has the skills and knowledge you're looking for and one that the interviewer has a vested interest in helping to overcome. On the other hand, stress and frustration are part of the experience of being a software developer. Lots of developers, myself included, would be better off learning to handle them productively.

zerr 13y ago

Hm, I've never heard that Google was giving take-home assignments, and even with the job relevant tasks.

pamelafox 13y ago
That may have only been for Developer Relations and only years ago. Not sure if they're doing them anymore.

DigitalSea 13y ago

As a self-taught developer these stories scare me. I don't know the ins and outs of programming fundamentals, but I know how to program and I am really efficient in what I do as well. I've got big ideas, I have drive and vision and I think technical interviews can have the reverse effect of attracting real people. For what I lack in low-level understanding, I more than make up for it on a higher level. Ask me to build something as a whole, don't ask me to solve mathematics questions and other unrealistic junk questions. The biggest takeaway from this post is definitely this: In my experience, when we are programming on the job, we're given the problem and we have time to think about it. We have time to research possible solutions, we have time to try stuff out that we know will most likely fail, and we can wait until we have something decent before we show it to our colleagues ^THIS. One hundred times over. How is putting someone on the spot to build something and build it perfect a good test of their capabilities and skills? That's not even how it works in the real world.

philwelch 13y ago
You're implying that low level CS knowledge plain isn't important in a developer role. Perhaps in some cases it isn't, but lacking low level CS knowledge is very limiting in a technical role and there are valid reasons employers might emphasize technical chops. There exist very good developers with drive and vision who have a strong grasp of technical fundamentals and can still manage to pass technical interviews. Why wouldn't you want to hire them? No one expects interview code to be "perfect", especially not for your first answer. Thinking about it aloud and going down a false path or two rather than trying to write a perfectly optimized solution first time is what you're supposed to do and a good interviewer will encourage that. On the other hand, you should also be able to get onto a fruitful path rather quickly, or at least when you get there, you should be able to follow it easily.
quanticle 13y ago
>For what I lack in low-level understanding, I more than make up for it on a higher level. Ask me to build something as a whole, don't ask me to solve mathematics questions and other unrealistic junk questions. Without the math, how do you know that your solutions are any good? How do you know that the algorithm you sketched out on the whiteboard will work on the 1,000,000 records that we have in production in addition to the 5 record toy example that you worked out? I mean, sure, I agree that brainteasers are in appropriate. Knowing why manhole covers are round or how M&Ms get their candy shell tells me nothing about your programming ability. But basic math and algorithms? They're a lot more important than you think. Knowing Big-O notation, various kinds of basic algorithms and a good assortment of data structures lets me know that you can evaluate a solution and find potential flaws and bugs. How is putting someone on the spot to build something and build it perfect a good test of their capabilities and skills? There's a difference between perfect and working. I've never had an interviewer ask me for perfect code. Not at Amazon. Not at Google. Not at Facebook. I have, however, been asked for working code. The code doesn't need to be 100% bug free, but it should be syntactically correct and should solve the problem in a reasonable fashion (e.g. without using inordinate time or space). Frankly, I like technical interviews a lot more than the alternative, which increasingly boils down to, "Make me a webapp and we'll evaluate your code." I'm sorry, but if I wanted to make a webapp for you on my own time, I also want to get paid for it. Even now, when I'm single and living alone, I have a hard time motivating myself to do homework problems. I can't imagine having to do something like that when I'm married and have children.

freework 13y ago

Imagine someone walking up to Maya Angelou, handing her a white eraser marker, and asking her to write you a poem on a white board. She's obviously not going to immediately write you a poem, at least not one thats any good. Is it fair to judge her poem writing abilities by this off the cuff creation?Creators can only do their best creation when they are in their comfortable space. Asking a programmer to write code over the phone will result in substandard quality no matter what.

philwelch 13y ago
Sorry, if I ask you to write a function that determines whether two given words are anagrams of each other, "I need to get into my comfortable space for my creative process to work" is an evasion. No one's asking for a masterpiece, just a demonstration of basic competence.
- seiji 13y ago
  What kills me with Do Work While We Stare At You interviews is my process is all over the place. I tend to draft something, try it, find my five mistakes, try more things, etc. That doesn't fly in an interview. At least, I don't feel it does. Interviewers expect mostly right and mostly very fast. I end up standing there trying to pre-think the entire problem so something correct comes out the first time, which, to them, is just dead time with me staring at the wall. The other option is to "dive in" and backtrack a lot, but the people watching can't tell the difference between actual incompetence and just figuring it out.
  - MichaelSalib 13y ago
    That doesn't fly in an interview. Actually, it does. I've been interviewing a lot lately, and I'm totally fine with people trying something, changing their mind, fixing mistakes, etc. When they get stuck, I help them out. All decent interviewers know that being interviewed is stressful and that you need to cut candidates some slack. Speaking personally, I don't care much about speed. I care about things like how much fluency do you have with your programming language (is writing a for loop something you have to struggle with?), do you know how to use a hash table (you'd be amazed at how many people don't), can you explain what the tradeoffs are when you make design choices and compare them to the alternatives, etc. Also, since I can, I'm going to complain about my pet peeve: candidates who want to write a solution in C++ or C or java (I let them choose any language they want) but who refuse to use a container library. They'll insist on using arrays, even when the problem pretty clearly requires something like std::vector. And then they'll tie themselves in knots to make static fixed size arrays work. Now, if you can justify why you don't want to use a @#$! container library, that's fine, but usually the justifications are garbage ("it will be too slow...no, I've never measured that"). What really gets me is that a good sw engineer should be able to see that rewriting stl::vector by hand in every application intertwining its code with your application code (vector's client) is a maintenance and performance nightmare.

prezjordan 13y ago

Pretty funny to see this, because you've interviewed me before (not super technical, though!). Even more so, I think I got the same question when I interviewed for KA ;) Small world. Great post, it's really refreshing to see someone with your hacking chops experiencing the same anxieties as a little college student like me.

pamelafox 13y ago
I seem to remember that while I was interviewing you (for Coursera), I was browsing your Github repos and checking out your cool libraries. I didn't feel a need to test your technical chops when I could see them in front of me. I'd rather get to know other sides when I can. :-)

akanet 13y ago

I really feel for the author. I had a similar problem, except on the other side of the table - evaluating whether candidates' solutions while interviewing them over the phone was excruciating. I built https://coderpad.io https://coderpad.io to make the whole programmer-interview phone screen process easier. It's like Stypi on steroids, because it comes with a live REPL. You can play around with, say, JS, right there in the window. I've found it much more accurately simulates coding alone: the experimentation, quick validation, and verifiability that editors alone don't have is sooooo important.

RogerL 13y ago
I just wanted to chime in and say how righteous this app is. I've recommended it at work, though, as usual, no one listens.
n1ghtmare_ 13y ago
What a cool app ! I'll use it next time ! Bookmarked ! Is this by any chance open sourced ? I'd like to contribute if you need a hand.

anmalhot 13y ago

I recently had a couple of skype interviews with a well-known startup. First one went fine and I got good feedback but during the second one I was asked to share my screen & work on an IDE of my choice. That being something new, I didn't feel comfortable coding and though I did answer, the interviewer felt I was a bit (iffy) - I had written a conditional check & then changed it later. Interviews can get pretty hectic and it is way easier to say no to someone you don't even look at.

viraptor 13y ago

I'd also recommend - if you're an interviewee normally, try to join an interview at your current job (if possible). I was quite anxious about being interviewed some time ago. Being on the other side of the table once changed everything however. The amount of preparation, ideas, planning, time needed to interview someone is just crazy if you want to do it properly. And you're still left with: what if I didn't ask the right questions, what impression I left on them, are they going to be a good fit or was their behaviour just an act for today, etc. Now I know that the people of the other side are either just as anxious to do everything right as I am, or they just don't care much. One way or another, I'm just not able to get nervous about an interview anymore. The best ones turn into pleasant chats about tech anyway.

adsr 13y ago

"If you ever suffer from Impostor syndrome, you should probably prepare even more, because the standard interview situation will make you feel like an Imposter in the worst way." It may also help to think of that Dunning-Kruger study [1], according to that it would be normal for the competent to be full of doubt while the less experienced would be full of confidence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

tptacek 13y ago

Oh, wow, 1000x this article. Forget about the crying thing, which makes it vivid and more interesting to read but might obscure the fundamental point, which is that interviews make people incredibly uncomfortable. Some of the calmest, most unflappable people I work with shook visibly in their interviews with us. What's important about that is: you are not getting an accurate read of a candidate's state of mind in a high-stakes interview. I think you have just a couple of options to improve your accuracy given that fact: * You can take deliberate steps to lower the stakes in your interview process by changing the kinds of transactions that happen in the interview (for instance, by constructing interviews that involve collaborating on a problem instead of challenging the candidate). * You can "discount" the signals you get from the interview, particular w/r/t already nebulous concepts like "confidence", "social skill", "enthusiasm", and the dreaded "culture fit". * You can push more of the recruiting process into situations where the candidate controls their environment (for instance, by doing stuff at home, and on a fixed but flexible time scale) and less on in-person timeboxed interviews. I'd love more ideas. We're trying all three, but it's a lather-rinse-repeat kind of situation. I'm getting good, I think, at spotting signals that are probably the result of jitters. And I think I've learned pretty conclusively that those jitters have zero correlation to on-the-job performance. But I have so much more to learn.

david_shaw 13y ago
I like your ideas, particularly collaborating on problems and giving candidates the ability to control their environment while problem-solving (such as giving them a week-long assignment). We've had good luck with the latter, and it's provided several valuable employees who, frankly, would probably not have passed a "live" interview. Another tactic we employ is to keep the technical interviews very conversational. Rather than asking a very difficult question and putting the candidate on the spot, we try to talk through problems and do an over-the-phone "white board" session. We like to choose problems with many answers; some of these answers are easy to arrive on, while other explanations may be trickier. The candidate gains confidence getting the first part of the question correct, and seems to be more at-ease while completing the more difficult tasks. There's no way that we can completely cut out the stress of a technical interview--no matter what, it's nerve-wracking to put your technical capabilities on the line--but it doesn't need to be a belittling, terrifying experience like the ones we so often hear described.

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cpprototypes 13y ago

For me, what helps a lot with tech interview stress is to already have a job. It turns the tables so that I don't really need them, they need me. The change in attitude is powerful and gives confidence.

hkarthik 13y ago

To share my experience, the kinds of "make you cry" interviews which test a lot of CS knowledge seem relegated to the Bay Area companies which I interviewed with. All my interviews with companies in Texas (where I live) would interview more to ask about your experiences with a technology, challenges you'd faced when working with a similar stack, and maybe ask how you solved some tricky performance problem. They tended to focus more on the real world experiences than the academic knowledge. Once in a while someone would throw a framework- specific curveball your way to make sure you knew what your resume said you knew. This isn't a knock on the companies in the Bay Area, because clearly what they are doing works for them, but it's just a drastically different style that feels foreign to me. When those of you in the Bay Area interview every few years for new jobs, do you just brush off all your CS textbooks, study/review for a month, and then start the process?

sitharus 13y ago
That's what I've always experienced. I've only had one company do a technical phone interview with one company - Google - and I told them not to call me back. All the other jobs I've only had an in-person interview and it's been about experiences and the occasional "Why is Prototype a bad Javascript framework?" for example. Anything more complex than FizzBuzz will take me a while to figure out, because I never start writing code without actually understanding the problem that's being solved.
mmorett 13y ago
I happened to have a conversation with someone about this recently. Software developer: the career where you study to get the job, toss much of that away when you actually do the job, then study for the interview for the next job, where you toss much of that away when you actually do the job... It's a rhetorical question, but I can't understand studying for a job. You either do it on the job or you don't. Studying, however, puts a ton of stuff in short term memory where it gives the appearance of brilliance.
- hkarthik 13y ago
  See that's where I want to dig deeper with those that really believe in this style of interviewing. Clearly it must have some value other than the weed-out factor. Are there engineers who actually keep the algorithms/data structure stuff in their head and find small ways to apply it while they work on a standard web or mobile app? That's the only way I could see the knowledge having any value, but I've never worked this way nor have I observed anyone who works this way.

sgustard 13y ago

Unfortunately, there are way too many unqualified people out there applying for jobs and ruining it for the rest of us. As a hiring for manager for years, I've seen a huge number of people try to fake their way through interviews. They can talk vaguely and grandiosely about all the technical problems they solved at their past jobs or in school. But the breakdown always happens when you ask them to solve a problem for you. Sure, they may be undiscovered geniuses who are too nervous to think straight. But where there's smoke, there's fire, and in this case behind the smoke are ten other people lined up to interview for the same job. All things being equal in terms of general personability and hygiene, the one who displays technical competence gets the job. Just imagine if the odds weren't so skewed in favor of job hunters. When the economy slows, when your jobs are really subject to outsourcing to a lowest bidder overseas for a fraction of the price, these sympathy hires will be a thing of the past.

hogu 13y ago

One approach I've tried recently is getting a digital ocean box and giving the prospective candidate access to the box 24 hrs prior, just so they can install whatever tools they like if they so choose, and then giving the candidate a simple problem to build on the box for 30 minutes. Then we mute the phones for 30 minutes, so that people can work in peace, but we're around if they want to ask us any questions. And at the end of the 30 minutes we discuss how far they got, and what they would do differently, etc.. We've only done this twice, but I think it was fairly useful both times. Haven't done it enough to know whether or not this is a good approach.

n1ghtmare_ 13y ago

I recently had an interview with Google London, Oh boy did a screw it up, it's like I'm reading my experience, my mind simply went blank ! The interviewer was like the nicest person I've been interviewed by (he's pretty famous and I recognized his voice btw). The task was hilariously easy (I've done the same thing like 2 days ago), but when I was asked to work on it on the phone I bombed ! Basically I was thinking of everything else BUT the problem at hand. The guy kept being nice telling me that this happens all the time (you know people freezing). At the end I wasn't lucky enough to proceed to the next level and frankly I felt that I deserved to fail and I should not be a programmer and what not. Very depressing - I took at as a BIG personal failure and missing an opportunity of a lifetime. I think the thing that makes it worst is the fact that I honestly knew this, after the interview was over I looked at the problem and couldn't believe that I wasn't able to do it. Complete mental block. I think I've recovered since, and I'm trying to improve. Just want to say (because I've heard complaints from other people) - Google were very nice, and worked very quick with me, I've submitted my CV and got a call the same day (maybe just lucky), then I basically chose the date of my interview and they were spot on. Also they gave me good feedback.

hschool 13y ago

This post hit a nerve! This is exactly what got me working on http://www.phoneinterviewme.com/ http://www.phoneinterviewme.com/ to help fellow developers prepare better for their phone interviews. Here is how it works. You get a call at a time you pick on your phone line. You are asked some automated questions related to the interview you expect. Once you are done, you can go back and listen to your session to see how you did. I was hoping this would help developers practice and get over the fear during an actual interview. Would this help you be better prepared?

Apocryphon 13y ago

You know, there's a lot of these interview articles. Where whiteboarding doesn't work. Or whiteboarding works but filters out a vast majority of applicants. Give homework problems instead. No, applicants can easily cheat or resort to copy pasting code when given time away from the interviewer. The future is GitHub repos to see candidates' prior work. No, open-source code is not verifiable and easily falsifiable. What about determining if an applicant has solid fundamentals, not overthinking it, and having him or her learn on the job? Whatever happened to providing training? Is there really no room for apprentices or novices in modern tech companies?

holyjaw 13y ago

Rather relevantly, this article [1] was posted a few days ago. “In improvisational acting there is this great rule that I’ve used in my life: ‘Act As If’. Act as if this is completely normal. Of course I’m supposed to be interviewing Barack Obama. Of course I’m supposed to be playing guitar with Bruce Springsteen and of course there’s a big part of me inside that’s saying: ‘What are you talking about?’” It's been in the front of my head since I read it and, while I can't say I've passed any major coding interviews, it's certainly helped quell the screaming voice inside me that is the source of my constant anxiety. [1]: https://medium.com/design-startups/3600f4672b3e https://medium.com/design-startups/3600f4672b3e

benjamincburns 13y ago

A few months ago, I decided that I really wanted to join Khan Academy. I would longingly browse their jobs page in my idle hours, read their intern blog posts from top-to-bottom, and fork their repos on Friday nights. It became a bit of an obsession. (Shh, don't tell them how creepy I am.) I realize that she's joking here with the creepy bit, but I have to ask. Does anyone honestly think this kind of behavior is creepy? To answer my own question, as someone who interviews people quite often, I'd love to hear that a candidate did this sort of thing. Honestly, if you're worried that you're going to be weak in your interview for a company which you really want to work for, do this. Oh, and also - if interviews make you nervous, please tell your interviewer. For some people it's really obvious that they're nervous, but others do an amazing job hiding it. If there's any chance at all that you think your interviewers aren't aware of your nerves, just tell them. First off, we're used to it. I'd guess somewhere between 60 to 80% of my interviewees are visibly nervous. Further, quite often the people interviewing you experience the same sort of nervousness when they're on your side of the table. If they're good at what they're doing, they'll totally empathize, and clearing the air helps a lot. Unless you're interviewing for a sales type position where it's essentially your job to be interviewed, nobody in their right mind should view nervousness as a sign of weakness. Personally, about 9 out of 10 times this happens I err on the side of "this person really wants this job" rather than "wow, this person must be nervous because they don't know their shit."

vonmoltke 13y ago
> To answer my own question, as someone who interviews people quite often, I'd love to hear that a candidate did this sort of thing. Honestly, if you're worried that you're going to be weak in your interview for a company which you really want to work for, do this. Guilty as charged. There are a handful of companies that have provoked this type of reaction from me. I have yet to actually get an interview from any of them, though. I'm actually surprised how much Pamela sounds like me when it comes to interviewing. Almost exactly like me. I just have crippling anxiety on top of that which I only recently got taken care of.