26 ms·

Yes, SV interviews can be pretty bad, and I've been through the whiteboard coding style ones myself, and in one case probably faired badly. As I was trying damn

Yes, SV interviews can be pretty bad, and I've been through the whiteboard coding style ones myself, and in one case probably faired badly. As I was trying damn hard to remember stuff from 2nd year software engineering class, I was also wondering why the interview was focusing on a skill I hadn't used since University, and not, instead, questioning any of the skills I've been using for the past 10 years -- and which were relevant to the actual job. My regret is not walking out half way through that interview. Not all companies interview poorly. My Netflix interviews were great, and focused on what value I can bring to the company, down to discussing specific projects and tasks I could begin work on. Note that this wasn't strictly a programming role, but then, nor was the other company who did have me do whiteboard coding. As for more programming roles: can we come up with a better interview technique? How about this: - Ask the candidate for several URLs to code they have written (eg, github). - Select some code beforehand and print it out. - During the interview, ask the interviewee to explain their own code. Explain choices, rationale, how they tested it, how they developed it, etc. edit: formatting

PopeOfNope 11y ago
Funny enough, that's exactly how I got my current job. I have no code up on github or anywhere else, but I sent them a piece of a project I had worked on as a consultant (with permission from all the pertinent people). They were impressed with it. We discussed the decisions I made over the phone as well as my other views on software development and just like that I was hired. No in person interview required. The company is fully distributed, so they didn't have an office I could go to anyway. It's also important to point out that the interview process went fast and smooth because I had the exact mix of skills they were both looking for and lacking at their company at the same time. Those skills in this case were PHP based CMS's and single page web applications. So, to OP, if you want the interview process to go better, identify a company that needs the skills you provide badly. Most mid-sized startups in SV who advertise that they're hiring typically just need meat to scale their operations. Sometimes you can get lucky and use those opportunities to switch domains (ie: from JS web development to mobile game development) but most of the time those jobs just suck.
logn 11y ago
That's how I got my first job out of college. Actually when I walked into the interview room, they had my program on a projector, the code loaded into an IDE, and asked me to explain everything. Then they loaded their apps on to the projectors and basically did the inverse for me. A very nice interview. The final portion was their most junior developer who told me just to ask whatever questions I wanted that would help me decide whether I wanted to work there.
seige 11y ago
Netflix is a wonderful example of a company doing interviews right. I haven't had the opportunity to complete a full process as I bailed out mid process because of their location but the 2 rounds of process I had, I was absolutely blown away and was genuinely very pleasantly surprised. If any of netflix employees are lurking around here, Please keep up the good job.

PopeOfNope 11y ago

Funny enough, that's exactly how I got my current job. I have no code up on github or anywhere else, but I sent them a piece of a project I had worked on as a consultant (with permission from all the pertinent people). They were impressed with it. We discussed the decisions I made over the phone as well as my other views on software development and just like that I was hired. No in person interview required. The company is fully distributed, so they didn't have an office I could go to anyway. It's also important to point out that the interview process went fast and smooth because I had the exact mix of skills they were both looking for and lacking at their company at the same time. Those skills in this case were PHP based CMS's and single page web applications. So, to OP, if you want the interview process to go better, identify a company that needs the skills you provide badly. Most mid-sized startups in SV who advertise that they're hiring typically just need meat to scale their operations. Sometimes you can get lucky and use those opportunities to switch domains (ie: from JS web development to mobile game development) but most of the time those jobs just suck.

logn 11y ago

That's how I got my first job out of college. Actually when I walked into the interview room, they had my program on a projector, the code loaded into an IDE, and asked me to explain everything. Then they loaded their apps on to the projectors and basically did the inverse for me. A very nice interview. The final portion was their most junior developer who told me just to ask whatever questions I wanted that would help me decide whether I wanted to work there.

seige 11y ago

Netflix is a wonderful example of a company doing interviews right. I haven't had the opportunity to complete a full process as I bailed out mid process because of their location but the 2 rounds of process I had, I was absolutely blown away and was genuinely very pleasantly surprised. If any of netflix employees are lurking around here, Please keep up the good job.