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It's funny, because to change it, you have to admit that the way you were doing it before is not effective. I've come across many people who admit that they ar
by nissimk 12y ago
It's funny, because to change it, you have to admit that the way you were doing it before is not effective. I've come across many people who admit that they are bad at being interviewed, but very few people I meet have admitted to being bad at interviewing others. It's incongruous with the results, because these are the same people that have hired folks that we all agree are not exhibiting the level and characteristics that they are supposedly screening for.
Good job coming up with something different. I hope it's really working out as well as you say.
- tptacek 12y agoI was horrible at interviews. I was a sport interviewer. I had favorite tricky questions. "Design the fastest possible traceroute" was one for a long time. "Describe the most important feature of TCP NO WRONG, IT'S CONGESTION CONTROL NITWIT". I trust my own interviewing ability least of all, which is why I sink so much time into avoiding them.
- pcthrowaway 12y agoWhy do you feel that congestion control is so much more important than guaranteed delivery? Guaranteed delivery would have been my first thought.
- tptacek 12y agoGuaranteed delivery is extremely easy to provide. TFTP manages it. But think about a bunch of ethernet-connected browsers sharing a 1mb/s link; that's kind of a miracle.
- powertower 12y ago> I was horrible at interviews. I was a sport interviewer... That's nowhere near as bad as the interviewer who has the primary goal of demonstrating how smart he is (to the person he is interviewing), with the actual hiring process being secondary.
- tptacek 12y agoThat is automatically what I think about anyone who says "I'm a very good interviewer".
- throwawaykf05 12y ago> "Design the fastest possible traceroute" Hmm, I once took it upon myself to do exactly that (mostly using non-blocking sockets, skipping hostname lookups, etc.), but what's so "tricky" about this question? Assuming the position involved network programming, I'd consider it a good way to test someone's networking knowledge. Is the "tricky" part knowing how routers often drop ICMP replies if they exceed some threshold rate?
- bentcorner 12y agoI'll admit that I'm bad at interviewing others. I'm not trying to humble-brag or anything. I'm just bad at it. Part of it is that I haven't had to go through an interview in over 10 years, so it's difficult to empathize with a candidate. I do my best, though. The other part is that I'm happy at what I do, but I'm not the best. I sometimes can't keep up with candidates when they're writing on a whiteboard and make a claim that such-and-such works. I squint and can make a judgement on that claim, but really I need to cover x, y, and z during our hour together and we're already 20 minutes into it and I don't want to get dragged into the weeds. So, I'm not a fan of giving interviews. I wouldn't mind shadowing someone better than I, but my first inclination is that that would be a terrible idea since it would make candidates even more nervous.
- jfb 12y agoI am painfully aware of my limitations as an interviewer. I wish there was institutional support for interviewing as a skill distinct from more specific job requirements. I've worked at big companies, small companies, been a founder, and I've never been comfortable with engineering interviews. So, more power to tptacek in his crusade.