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> You aren't interviewing people to determine how good they are at interviewing, because interviewing doesn't generate money for your company. Depends. At most

> You aren't interviewing people to determine how good they are at interviewing, because interviewing doesn't generate money for your company. Depends. At most companies, how you handle a simple interview is still relevant if it's for a revenue generating or client facing role (e.g., sales, marketing, and project management). Granted, most technical roles aren't generating revenue or in contact with clients, so this isn't nearly as important.

bmj 12y ago
most technical roles aren't generating revenue Wait, what? The products I build don't generate revenue for my employer?
- walshemj 12y ago
  mm so that billing system I worked on for BT didn't bring in revenue or the fix I and the company accountant did to fix the broken BACS feed
- physPop 12y ago
  He means you're not selling directly to clients in a typical SE role.
- wwweston 12y ago
  Your employers -- or, usually, your employer's bean counters -- may be like many humans in that it's easy to see cash flows and harder to see where value is produced. This is one of the reasons sales and marketing often have a lot of power in modern business organizations (at least, as long as sales are good).
notahacker 12y ago
I've often wondered whether for technical roles involving little or no client interaction[1], negatively-weighting skill at answering very pat interview questions (like where they want to be in five years, what they liked most about their degree course or why they're passionate about writing server side code for an ad platform) relative to their overall performance might actually be a useful, if very counter-intuitive heuristic? Someone who gives halting, but reasonably acceptable answers throughout an entire interview might be better at understanding technical problems than giving verbal answers in a pressured situation, and find the latter aspect far more difficult than the actual problem-set covered in the technical questions. On the other hand, someone who confidently, thoroughly and unhesitatingly reels off answers to all manner of non-technical questions should, at least theoretically, be similarly comfortable talking about technical problems they don't find especially hard... And if they're excelling in the pat interview questions because they've done far more interviews than average than may also be a negative mark [1]many of which, as others have pointed out, bring in a lot of revenue
- electronvolt 12y ago
  I think that falling into the trap of treating social skills and technical ability as a trade-off is a mistake. It's a hackneyed stereotype that I don't think has ever been true--but I'd imagine it has sometimes led to people expressly trying to seem socially abnormal in order to fit the idea of someone technically adept. I recall an anecdote about how a younger mathematician at a top research institution took up running his hand along the wall as he went places in order to seem odder, since it seemed like the best senior mathematicians there all had odd quirks. I'd imagine that the idea that social skills and technical ability are inversely correlated has led to similar things. But also, my experience in TAing the weed out course for the CS major (and from seeing my fellow TAs teach and work, who were more or less the best in class at my University--so much so that I was flown out by a company simply because of my involvement in that class) was that social skills had absolutely no correlation to technical ability: your ability to understand how pointers or complex data structures worked had absolutely no relation to how socially fluent you were. In fact, it often went the opposite way, up to a point: there was some base line of social fluency that everyone I worked with and the best people I taught seemed to meet. The single best coder I have /ever/ seen work (he alone makes me absolutely certain that the best people in our industry are 10x/100x more productive than the average) was also one of the most comfortable with people and had a very clear idea of his career goals. I'd expect him to give confident, unhesitating responses to "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" and "What's your greatest strength/weakness?" Negatively weighting that would mean you'd miss the hands down most productive person I've ever seen work: and you'd probably miss a decent number of the other people I taught with. (Who, as I said, were basically the cream of the crop from the program I was in. Not all of the best people were there, but all of the people there were among the best.) Now, I don't think they're particularly good interview questions, even though I understand why they're asked. I think that asking questions about actual workplace soft skills (conflict resolution, for instance) would be a much better use of everyone's time, since in the end it's those things that actually hold a team together.
  - pitt1980 12y ago
    I think he might be on to something not be people with crap social skills are better than people with good social skill but rather, people with crap social skills are easier for your competors to miss good tech skill + good social skill = good and expensive good tech skill + poor social skill = (I'll let everyone make up their own mind about how good they'll fit) definately less expensive though any trait you overfit for is something you giving up other traits for somewhere else

bmj 12y ago

most technical roles aren't generating revenue Wait, what? The products I build don't generate revenue for my employer?

walshemj 12y ago
mm so that billing system I worked on for BT didn't bring in revenue or the fix I and the company accountant did to fix the broken BACS feed
physPop 12y ago
He means you're not selling directly to clients in a typical SE role.
wwweston 12y ago
Your employers -- or, usually, your employer's bean counters -- may be like many humans in that it's easy to see cash flows and harder to see where value is produced. This is one of the reasons sales and marketing often have a lot of power in modern business organizations (at least, as long as sales are good).

notahacker 12y ago

I've often wondered whether for technical roles involving little or no client interaction[1], negatively-weighting skill at answering very pat interview questions (like where they want to be in five years, what they liked most about their degree course or why they're passionate about writing server side code for an ad platform) relative to their overall performance might actually be a useful, if very counter-intuitive heuristic? Someone who gives halting, but reasonably acceptable answers throughout an entire interview might be better at understanding technical problems than giving verbal answers in a pressured situation, and find the latter aspect far more difficult than the actual problem-set covered in the technical questions. On the other hand, someone who confidently, thoroughly and unhesitatingly reels off answers to all manner of non-technical questions should, at least theoretically, be similarly comfortable talking about technical problems they don't find especially hard... And if they're excelling in the pat interview questions because they've done far more interviews than average than may also be a negative mark [1]many of which, as others have pointed out, bring in a lot of revenue

electronvolt 12y ago
I think that falling into the trap of treating social skills and technical ability as a trade-off is a mistake. It's a hackneyed stereotype that I don't think has ever been true--but I'd imagine it has sometimes led to people expressly trying to seem socially abnormal in order to fit the idea of someone technically adept. I recall an anecdote about how a younger mathematician at a top research institution took up running his hand along the wall as he went places in order to seem odder, since it seemed like the best senior mathematicians there all had odd quirks. I'd imagine that the idea that social skills and technical ability are inversely correlated has led to similar things. But also, my experience in TAing the weed out course for the CS major (and from seeing my fellow TAs teach and work, who were more or less the best in class at my University--so much so that I was flown out by a company simply because of my involvement in that class) was that social skills had absolutely no correlation to technical ability: your ability to understand how pointers or complex data structures worked had absolutely no relation to how socially fluent you were. In fact, it often went the opposite way, up to a point: there was some base line of social fluency that everyone I worked with and the best people I taught seemed to meet. The single best coder I have /ever/ seen work (he alone makes me absolutely certain that the best people in our industry are 10x/100x more productive than the average) was also one of the most comfortable with people and had a very clear idea of his career goals. I'd expect him to give confident, unhesitating responses to "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" and "What's your greatest strength/weakness?" Negatively weighting that would mean you'd miss the hands down most productive person I've ever seen work: and you'd probably miss a decent number of the other people I taught with. (Who, as I said, were basically the cream of the crop from the program I was in. Not all of the best people were there, but all of the people there were among the best.) Now, I don't think they're particularly good interview questions, even though I understand why they're asked. I think that asking questions about actual workplace soft skills (conflict resolution, for instance) would be a much better use of everyone's time, since in the end it's those things that actually hold a team together.
- pitt1980 12y ago
  I think he might be on to something not be people with crap social skills are better than people with good social skill but rather, people with crap social skills are easier for your competors to miss good tech skill + good social skill = good and expensive good tech skill + poor social skill = (I'll let everyone make up their own mind about how good they'll fit) definately less expensive though any trait you overfit for is something you giving up other traits for somewhere else