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Holy hell, just reading that made me feel sympathetic anxiousness. Don't do the things she's suggesting, it's a short walk to a lifetime of stress, anxiety and

Holy hell, just reading that made me feel sympathetic anxiousness. Don't do the things she's suggesting, it's a short walk to a lifetime of stress, anxiety and being underappreciated for your work. The problem is that the OP is fundamentally approaching the interview process as a role in which she must please the interviewer in order to be granted the prize of a job. All of her advice is to prepare better and be more on your game so that the other person might perhaps like you more. Coming in with this mindset automatically puts you on a back footing and makes everything more difficult. Instead, focus on flipping the status game around. When you're with the interviewer, you're with a peer. Talk to them as if you're talking to a friend, not as if you're in a high pressure, life or death situation. Take the VC interview, for example. Imagine if you're catching up with your best friend from college and they ask you if you've made any friends in NYC yet. Do you freeze up and start blabbering incoherently? No, you laugh about it and bitch about how tough it is and ask them if they have any advice or whatever it is that you would do. Approaching it this way changes the entire tenor of the interview process. This is where unskilled and unaware of it genuinely comes in handy. People who are just bad enough that they have no idea how they compare easily sail through interviews since they assume they're above average while genuinely talented people spend so much time comparing themselves to others they get wracked by insecurity. I know this is something easier said than done and that some people in particular find it especially challenging. So is learning Javascript or Photoshop, yet we don't complain when a job requires us to know them to be hired. Learning social skills is as equally important to your career as technical skills so just nut up and do it.

picks_at_nits 12y ago
The particular example that stood out for me was the story of the elevator design problem. At some point, she lost interest. Fine, she lost interest. I think it’s fine to say so. “Sorry, I really can’t think of anything more productive or interesting to do with this problem.” That happens in real life. You reach diminishing returns thinking about something. In real life, maybe you have a reasonable starting point and can get going with work on one of your designs. Maybe you rope a colleague in for fresh insights. Maybe you think about another problem and come back to this one when you’re fresh. Or maybe you decide that the problem isn’t interesting to you and you don’t want to spend the only currency you truly have--your time--on it. Hand-waving the entire question of whether puzzle problems are an effective interviewing technique, one of the things they select for is people who find that particular problem interesting. I recall being asked about balancing rocks in an interview. I honestly found it interesting. But I know good people who don’t. Should the question never be asked? I dunno. But I would personally NEVER fault someone for taking an honest crack at it and then saying, “That’s it, I’m out of ideas for balancing rocks.” If I were interviewing and someone asked me about something that didn’t interest me, I’d take my best crack at it. If I ran out of juice, I’d say so. If they wanted to fail me for that, why should I argue? That’s one of the things they’re testing for. Why should I lie to them about my level of interest and personality just to get a job offer? This leads me to another faux pas. I have particular tactics for “Do you have any questions for us?” But I have been in interviews where I have lost interest in the process and don’t have any questions. That’s fine. Not all interviews involve me being curious at the end. Why lie to them about being interested, if I’m not?
- sanderjd 12y ago
  > Why should I lie to them about my level of interest and personality just to get a job offer? I think that's the crux of these two different viewpoints, and I think it is merely different tactics falling out of different strategies. On the one hand, if your strategy is to find work that you're interested in and are a great personal fit for, then it absolutely makes sense to prioritize being yourself above getting the job. If, on the other hand, your strategy is to get this job, either because you're very ambitious and this is a high-paying, high-status, or career-expanding position, or (more likely for most people in the real world) you really really need a job to pay your bills, then it might make sense to "please the interviewer in order to be granted the prize of a job". tl;dr; The answer to your question that I quoted is, Because you prioritize getting this job over getting the "right" job. The more interesting question is whether the tactic of being nonchalant still works better, even if you're desperate to get the job. I think it probably does, but the great Catch-22 of the job market is that it is so much easier to get jobs when you don't need them.
  - picks_at_nits 12y ago
    I wanted to take some time before answering this, to make sure that my feelings did not change, and they haven’t. I do not consider a question of pretending to be someone I’m not a question of “strategy.” I do not need to convince myself that it leads to some better outcome for me to be authentic with people. It’s one of my values, and values are things you explicitly recognize are sometimes sub-optimal for the things you wish to pursue.
    - sanderjd 12y ago
      I think you read my comment in a much more personal way than was intended, but I can see why, and I'm sorry for that. I didn't at all mean to suggest that you (personally) are playing out a "strategy" that you have devised to get ahead, and I absolutely got the impression from your original comment that it is a matter of values for you, which I think is great. My point was mostly that for many people interviewing for jobs, that authenticity is a luxury that is difficult for them to achieve.
jghn 12y ago
It's well and good to say this, and this is always my tactic anyways (although it's also how I naturally interact in any meeting). However, that only gets you so far. I have a dirty little secret, I'm really bad at a lot of the types of whiteboard questions which get asked and while i have a good natural intuition on things like big O that intuition doesn't translate well into actual words. So instead I end up in a situation where for instance I'm told by my boss that I could easily/quickly get a job most anywhere I wanted and yet fearful that I'd get turned away from Bob's CRUDapp shop. It is what it is and I realize these are the entry bars that our industry uses & I don't complain about it, but there's more to the equation than simply owning the room.
- hiharryhere 12y ago
  Ditto ditto ditto. Thanks for articulating this. It's exactly how I feel too.
- manacit 12y ago
  Couldn't agree more with this, thanks for articulating it.
- thoman23 12y ago
  Interesting. I wouldn't think you would need a "natural intuition" for big O. You just need to know what it is and how to determine it. It would be like having a "natural intuition" for long division.
  - taeric 12y ago
    Big O is, in some senses, about giving a natural intuition for reasoning with equations. As Knuth says, "it significantly simplifies calculations because it allows us to be sloppy."[1] So, having a natural intuition for it could be a way of saying that one has a natural intuition for equations, in general. [1] https://micromath.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/donald-knuth-calculus-via-o-notation/ https://micromath.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/donald-knuth-calc...
    - 12y ago
ellenchisa1 12y ago
Hi! Author here. Point well taken. Trying to post quickly before class... I hope I didn't imply that you should walk into the interview feeling like you were on the defensive - I don't think that's the case at all. I just think being well prepared (a) makes you feel prepared and (b) makes you more likely to be able to handle something on the fly. I'm also not sure what roles you've been interviewing for. I've found these sorts of things to be more important for PM/Product than for Engineering or Design. The other roles have some more concrete goals to judge off of. It's hard to tell if someone is 'good' at Product, and I've found things go better for me if I keep all of this in mind.
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hiou 12y ago
I'm doing some interviewing right now, and what I'm trying to do is help perspective employers decide if they would actually like working with me. I could easily prep the interview and say all the right things, but then comes the part where we actually have to work together. Getting a job is 1/1,000th of the time working at a job. I would recommend being more concerned about the 999/1000th part while interviewing. That is unless of course you have personal reasons, like finding an employer to put on your resume or impending personal financial obligations. Otherwise, have faith in yourself that someone out there appreciates the unique bits you bring and realize that figuring out how to ace an interview can sometimes cause you to never get that 5th interview which is where you really belong.
jonnathanson 12y ago
There is definitely something important and often overlooked in what you're saying. "Framing," for lack of a better word, is the secret sauce in many interviews. Especially when you reach the point in your career where you're interviewing for mid- to senior-level roles. Nine tenths of the job, at least in the interview, is to "look the part," or to "command the room," by way of framing yourself as a confident, whip-smart, personable, executive presence. In fact, a very strong interview strategy often involves turning the interview around and subverting its premise a little bit -- launching right into enthusiastic questions about the product, or the roadmap, or the team, which demonstrate your strong knowledge about the product and the landscape in which it operates. Doing this, assuming you do it skillfully, can actually short-circuit some of the conventional screening script, and bump you over into the "What will it take to get you on board?" script. But here's the thing: you still have to know what you're talking about. Ellen's points about intense preparation are extremely important. As a mildly anxious and "Type A" personality, I can relate very profoundly to Ellen's point about deriving confidence from inside-and-out knowledge about the product. Confidence and poise come naturally to some people, whom I'd describe as socially gifted in much the same way that we'd describe high-IQ people as intellectually gifted. And some rare unicorns have both skills in abundance. But for the rest of us, deriving confidence from some tangible locus -- preparation, knowledge, etc. -- is just as valid. The trick is not letting your preparation slot you into a subordinate, obsequious frame of mind, but instead, letting it fuel your "I'm awesome, and I love this" frame of mind.
nlawalker 12y ago
>> approaching the interview process as a role in which she must please the interviewer in order to be granted the prize of a job. This is the natural approach to the process when you feel that you need the job, which is the state most people are in when they're interviewing. As far as I can tell, the only thing you can do is interview for open positions frequently, especially when you are already employed and like your job. This nets you practice and exposes you to opportunities without the desperation. There are drawbacks to this strategy too, though - each interview you do at a company that does not result in a hire can make you less likely to be asked back for another one for a different position there unless they are desperate for you, and the real value gained from spending time and effort practicing at interviewing is debatable.
pm90 12y ago
This is really the best advice for interviewing. Personally, interviews used to be me trying to impress interviewers with my skills, my talents, uniqueness yadda yadda which would always end up with the interviewer closing up, because of course I was doing all the talking trying to prove what a gem I was. Then I started a different approach. If you think about it, nobody is doing anyone a favor here. We are all professionals, trying to solve real problems. So now, my attitude is more "How may I help you? Would I enjoy working at the company? Would they enjoy working with me? Are my skills suited for the job?" rather than "Please hire me!". I feel like an honest approach like this one saves a lot of time; you know immediately whether things have a good chance of working out, if you do get hired.

picks_at_nits 12y ago

The particular example that stood out for me was the story of the elevator design problem. At some point, she lost interest. Fine, she lost interest. I think it’s fine to say so. “Sorry, I really can’t think of anything more productive or interesting to do with this problem.” That happens in real life. You reach diminishing returns thinking about something. In real life, maybe you have a reasonable starting point and can get going with work on one of your designs. Maybe you rope a colleague in for fresh insights. Maybe you think about another problem and come back to this one when you’re fresh. Or maybe you decide that the problem isn’t interesting to you and you don’t want to spend the only currency you truly have--your time--on it. Hand-waving the entire question of whether puzzle problems are an effective interviewing technique, one of the things they select for is people who find that particular problem interesting. I recall being asked about balancing rocks in an interview. I honestly found it interesting. But I know good people who don’t. Should the question never be asked? I dunno. But I would personally NEVER fault someone for taking an honest crack at it and then saying, “That’s it, I’m out of ideas for balancing rocks.” If I were interviewing and someone asked me about something that didn’t interest me, I’d take my best crack at it. If I ran out of juice, I’d say so. If they wanted to fail me for that, why should I argue? That’s one of the things they’re testing for. Why should I lie to them about my level of interest and personality just to get a job offer? This leads me to another faux pas. I have particular tactics for “Do you have any questions for us?” But I have been in interviews where I have lost interest in the process and don’t have any questions. That’s fine. Not all interviews involve me being curious at the end. Why lie to them about being interested, if I’m not?

sanderjd 12y ago
> Why should I lie to them about my level of interest and personality just to get a job offer? I think that's the crux of these two different viewpoints, and I think it is merely different tactics falling out of different strategies. On the one hand, if your strategy is to find work that you're interested in and are a great personal fit for, then it absolutely makes sense to prioritize being yourself above getting the job. If, on the other hand, your strategy is to get this job, either because you're very ambitious and this is a high-paying, high-status, or career-expanding position, or (more likely for most people in the real world) you really really need a job to pay your bills, then it might make sense to "please the interviewer in order to be granted the prize of a job". tl;dr; The answer to your question that I quoted is, Because you prioritize getting this job over getting the "right" job. The more interesting question is whether the tactic of being nonchalant still works better, even if you're desperate to get the job. I think it probably does, but the great Catch-22 of the job market is that it is so much easier to get jobs when you don't need them.
- picks_at_nits 12y ago
  I wanted to take some time before answering this, to make sure that my feelings did not change, and they haven’t. I do not consider a question of pretending to be someone I’m not a question of “strategy.” I do not need to convince myself that it leads to some better outcome for me to be authentic with people. It’s one of my values, and values are things you explicitly recognize are sometimes sub-optimal for the things you wish to pursue.
  - sanderjd 12y ago
    I think you read my comment in a much more personal way than was intended, but I can see why, and I'm sorry for that. I didn't at all mean to suggest that you (personally) are playing out a "strategy" that you have devised to get ahead, and I absolutely got the impression from your original comment that it is a matter of values for you, which I think is great. My point was mostly that for many people interviewing for jobs, that authenticity is a luxury that is difficult for them to achieve.

jghn 12y ago

It's well and good to say this, and this is always my tactic anyways (although it's also how I naturally interact in any meeting). However, that only gets you so far. I have a dirty little secret, I'm really bad at a lot of the types of whiteboard questions which get asked and while i have a good natural intuition on things like big O that intuition doesn't translate well into actual words. So instead I end up in a situation where for instance I'm told by my boss that I could easily/quickly get a job most anywhere I wanted and yet fearful that I'd get turned away from Bob's CRUDapp shop. It is what it is and I realize these are the entry bars that our industry uses & I don't complain about it, but there's more to the equation than simply owning the room.

hiharryhere 12y ago
Ditto ditto ditto. Thanks for articulating this. It's exactly how I feel too.
manacit 12y ago
Couldn't agree more with this, thanks for articulating it.
thoman23 12y ago
Interesting. I wouldn't think you would need a "natural intuition" for big O. You just need to know what it is and how to determine it. It would be like having a "natural intuition" for long division.
- taeric 12y ago
  Big O is, in some senses, about giving a natural intuition for reasoning with equations. As Knuth says, "it significantly simplifies calculations because it allows us to be sloppy."[1] So, having a natural intuition for it could be a way of saying that one has a natural intuition for equations, in general. [1] https://micromath.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/donald-knuth-calculus-via-o-notation/ https://micromath.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/donald-knuth-calc...
  - 12y ago

ellenchisa1 12y ago

Hi! Author here. Point well taken. Trying to post quickly before class... I hope I didn't imply that you should walk into the interview feeling like you were on the defensive - I don't think that's the case at all. I just think being well prepared (a) makes you feel prepared and (b) makes you more likely to be able to handle something on the fly. I'm also not sure what roles you've been interviewing for. I've found these sorts of things to be more important for PM/Product than for Engineering or Design. The other roles have some more concrete goals to judge off of. It's hard to tell if someone is 'good' at Product, and I've found things go better for me if I keep all of this in mind.

deleted 12y ago

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deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

hiou 12y ago

I'm doing some interviewing right now, and what I'm trying to do is help perspective employers decide if they would actually like working with me. I could easily prep the interview and say all the right things, but then comes the part where we actually have to work together. Getting a job is 1/1,000th of the time working at a job. I would recommend being more concerned about the 999/1000th part while interviewing. That is unless of course you have personal reasons, like finding an employer to put on your resume or impending personal financial obligations. Otherwise, have faith in yourself that someone out there appreciates the unique bits you bring and realize that figuring out how to ace an interview can sometimes cause you to never get that 5th interview which is where you really belong.

jonnathanson 12y ago

There is definitely something important and often overlooked in what you're saying. "Framing," for lack of a better word, is the secret sauce in many interviews. Especially when you reach the point in your career where you're interviewing for mid- to senior-level roles. Nine tenths of the job, at least in the interview, is to "look the part," or to "command the room," by way of framing yourself as a confident, whip-smart, personable, executive presence. In fact, a very strong interview strategy often involves turning the interview around and subverting its premise a little bit -- launching right into enthusiastic questions about the product, or the roadmap, or the team, which demonstrate your strong knowledge about the product and the landscape in which it operates. Doing this, assuming you do it skillfully, can actually short-circuit some of the conventional screening script, and bump you over into the "What will it take to get you on board?" script. But here's the thing: you still have to know what you're talking about. Ellen's points about intense preparation are extremely important. As a mildly anxious and "Type A" personality, I can relate very profoundly to Ellen's point about deriving confidence from inside-and-out knowledge about the product. Confidence and poise come naturally to some people, whom I'd describe as socially gifted in much the same way that we'd describe high-IQ people as intellectually gifted. And some rare unicorns have both skills in abundance. But for the rest of us, deriving confidence from some tangible locus -- preparation, knowledge, etc. -- is just as valid. The trick is not letting your preparation slot you into a subordinate, obsequious frame of mind, but instead, letting it fuel your "I'm awesome, and I love this" frame of mind.

nlawalker 12y ago

>> approaching the interview process as a role in which she must please the interviewer in order to be granted the prize of a job. This is the natural approach to the process when you feel that you need the job, which is the state most people are in when they're interviewing. As far as I can tell, the only thing you can do is interview for open positions frequently, especially when you are already employed and like your job. This nets you practice and exposes you to opportunities without the desperation. There are drawbacks to this strategy too, though - each interview you do at a company that does not result in a hire can make you less likely to be asked back for another one for a different position there unless they are desperate for you, and the real value gained from spending time and effort practicing at interviewing is debatable.

pm90 12y ago

This is really the best advice for interviewing. Personally, interviews used to be me trying to impress interviewers with my skills, my talents, uniqueness yadda yadda which would always end up with the interviewer closing up, because of course I was doing all the talking trying to prove what a gem I was. Then I started a different approach. If you think about it, nobody is doing anyone a favor here. We are all professionals, trying to solve real problems. So now, my attitude is more "How may I help you? Would I enjoy working at the company? Would they enjoy working with me? Are my skills suited for the job?" rather than "Please hire me!". I feel like an honest approach like this one saves a lot of time; you know immediately whether things have a good chance of working out, if you do get hired.