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Interview environments are always stressful, but so are other common workplace situations. Being unable to manage stress effectively might contribute to poor on

Interview environments are always stressful, but so are other common workplace situations. Being unable to manage stress effectively might contribute to poor on-the-job performance, even for people with great pure coding ability. The process right now seems focused on finding people who are the best at only coding. In the future, do you intend to also consider communication skills? Senior developers act as mentors for junior employees, and often need to coordinate projects across multiple teams.

vonmoltke 11y ago
"Stress" is not some monolithic, universal feeling. This line gets trotted out frequently in these discussions, but no one has shown a correlation between the types of stress induced in interview situations and the types of stress induced in whatever situations are typical for your company. I would hesitate to even equate the stress of high-pressure situations in different companies.
- mirkules 11y ago
  Indeed. I am one of the people that freezes up in interviews. Yet I thrive in stressful work situations, such as customer emergencies (system is down), critical bugs, etc and I resolve the issues quickly precisely because of the right amount of stress. The best way I can describe the difference in stress is with an analogy. When I visited the Grand Canyon and hiked around the mountain, my body literally froze. I couldn't move a muscle even though my mind knew I could do this and hike around. I knew it was irrational, but I was powerless. This is what interviewing feels like - a fear of heights. And with every rejection letter, the fear is reinforced. Stress in the office is like playing competitive sports - it's a challenge rather than percieved harm to oneself.
foobarqux 11y ago
Interview stress is of the type I call "defusing the bomb": everything at stake, essentially immediate time constraints and confrontational. This never occurs in real life.
- gjm11 11y ago
  "Unfortunately something not so different sometimes does. E.g., you're at a startup, you have a critical demo for your best-hope customer, it was scheduled very aggressively because the CEO wanted to fit the customer's availability, it's happening in one hour, and nothing is working. Not exactly confrontational (though it could easily get that way if you aren't careful) but just as stressful. Of course it's far better to avoid such situations, but they do happen.
  - RogerL 11y ago
    You are ignoring the data. Person after person says they do fine in the job, yet have trouble with interviews. I've presented in rooms where the lowest ranking officer was a colonel, and most were important people at the Pentagon. No freeze up, easy peasy, because I know what the hell I'm talking about and because I know I'm not going to be judged on some bullshit evaluation. (re: "x<<8 from above). Interviews are more a crap shoot. I mostly get offers, but sometimes just utterly choke. More importantly, I usually feel miserable after. Don't make up theoretical situations when you have real, empirical data, please.
    - x0x0 11y ago
      a handful of self-reported, potentially biased posts is not data. It's barely even anecdata.
    - gjm11 11y ago
      What data am I ignoring, and how do you know? I made no comment on what kind of interview works best. I merely observed -- what is certainly true -- that sometimes "defusing the bomb" situations actually do come up in real life, where everything is at stake and you have to work under very severe time pressure. Do you disagree that such situations sometimes arise in real life? If not -- if your point is that that isn't necessarily a good reason for interviews to involve such situations -- then I think we are in violent agreement. I am not arguing for defusing-the-bomb interviews. I just don't think it's quite right to say that in real life you never have to defuse a bomb.
ammon 11y ago
I think it's really on the interviewers (and us) to show that people who freeze in tech interviews would also do poorly in a job. It's probably sometimes true, but many times not.
tokipin 11y ago
I don't think there's any relation. Some people may be nervous just because they are interacting with strangers, whereas they would have no problem with people they already know. Personally I don't have nervousness/stress issues in interviews, but I've found that conversation screws up the analytical mode that I use when I'm programming. It's like how people say they don't like having their managers interrupt them in the middle of the day because they get taken "out of the zone." I can program or I can converse, I can't do both without screwing up both of them. That's just my particular conundrum. People probably have all sorts of reasons (besides the possibility of them being bad at programming) for why they may have trouble in interviews.
- xraystyle 11y ago
  Couldn't agree more. When I'm trying to think through a problem I want everyone around me to be friggin' quiet and leave me alone. When I'm thinking about an abstract concept, trying to visualize how the pieces fit together, 'talking it through' is not helpful either. It's really goddamn distracting. The feedback I got from my last 'cs 101 algorithms whiteboard quiz for a web dev job' was, "You need to talk more and explain what you're thinking." Ugh. Do you want the code or do you want me to talk, because you're not gonna get both.
cgag 11y ago
It's amazing to me that a real human who has experienced job interviews could think that common workplace situations are comparable coding in front of a stranger at a job interview.
mshenfield 11y ago
Programming interview stress is a terrible indicator of real-life leadership ability. But communication skills are still an incredibly important of being a good programmer, often more important to success than programming ability (http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-write-without-writing/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-write-without-writing/). Personally, I've spent hours working on a project or problem only to find that, be it the result of miscommunication, lack of critical thinking by a manager, or lack of understanding on my part, what I'd created contributed nothing to the bottom line success of our organization. Anyone, what kind of resources are there to objectively assess a candidates communication skills, leadership ability, and teamwork? What is a constructive way to provide feedback and resources for interviewees about their performance?

vonmoltke 11y ago

"Stress" is not some monolithic, universal feeling. This line gets trotted out frequently in these discussions, but no one has shown a correlation between the types of stress induced in interview situations and the types of stress induced in whatever situations are typical for your company. I would hesitate to even equate the stress of high-pressure situations in different companies.

mirkules 11y ago
Indeed. I am one of the people that freezes up in interviews. Yet I thrive in stressful work situations, such as customer emergencies (system is down), critical bugs, etc and I resolve the issues quickly precisely because of the right amount of stress. The best way I can describe the difference in stress is with an analogy. When I visited the Grand Canyon and hiked around the mountain, my body literally froze. I couldn't move a muscle even though my mind knew I could do this and hike around. I knew it was irrational, but I was powerless. This is what interviewing feels like - a fear of heights. And with every rejection letter, the fear is reinforced. Stress in the office is like playing competitive sports - it's a challenge rather than percieved harm to oneself.

foobarqux 11y ago

Interview stress is of the type I call "defusing the bomb": everything at stake, essentially immediate time constraints and confrontational. This never occurs in real life.

gjm11 11y ago
"Unfortunately something not so different sometimes does. E.g., you're at a startup, you have a critical demo for your best-hope customer, it was scheduled very aggressively because the CEO wanted to fit the customer's availability, it's happening in one hour, and nothing is working. Not exactly confrontational (though it could easily get that way if you aren't careful) but just as stressful. Of course it's far better to avoid such situations, but they do happen.
- RogerL 11y ago
  You are ignoring the data. Person after person says they do fine in the job, yet have trouble with interviews. I've presented in rooms where the lowest ranking officer was a colonel, and most were important people at the Pentagon. No freeze up, easy peasy, because I know what the hell I'm talking about and because I know I'm not going to be judged on some bullshit evaluation. (re: "x<<8 from above). Interviews are more a crap shoot. I mostly get offers, but sometimes just utterly choke. More importantly, I usually feel miserable after. Don't make up theoretical situations when you have real, empirical data, please.
  - x0x0 11y ago
    a handful of self-reported, potentially biased posts is not data. It's barely even anecdata.
  - gjm11 11y ago
    What data am I ignoring, and how do you know? I made no comment on what kind of interview works best. I merely observed -- what is certainly true -- that sometimes "defusing the bomb" situations actually do come up in real life, where everything is at stake and you have to work under very severe time pressure. Do you disagree that such situations sometimes arise in real life? If not -- if your point is that that isn't necessarily a good reason for interviews to involve such situations -- then I think we are in violent agreement. I am not arguing for defusing-the-bomb interviews. I just don't think it's quite right to say that in real life you never have to defuse a bomb.

ammon 11y ago

I think it's really on the interviewers (and us) to show that people who freeze in tech interviews would also do poorly in a job. It's probably sometimes true, but many times not.

tokipin 11y ago

I don't think there's any relation. Some people may be nervous just because they are interacting with strangers, whereas they would have no problem with people they already know. Personally I don't have nervousness/stress issues in interviews, but I've found that conversation screws up the analytical mode that I use when I'm programming. It's like how people say they don't like having their managers interrupt them in the middle of the day because they get taken "out of the zone." I can program or I can converse, I can't do both without screwing up both of them. That's just my particular conundrum. People probably have all sorts of reasons (besides the possibility of them being bad at programming) for why they may have trouble in interviews.

xraystyle 11y ago
Couldn't agree more. When I'm trying to think through a problem I want everyone around me to be friggin' quiet and leave me alone. When I'm thinking about an abstract concept, trying to visualize how the pieces fit together, 'talking it through' is not helpful either. It's really goddamn distracting. The feedback I got from my last 'cs 101 algorithms whiteboard quiz for a web dev job' was, "You need to talk more and explain what you're thinking." Ugh. Do you want the code or do you want me to talk, because you're not gonna get both.

cgag 11y ago

It's amazing to me that a real human who has experienced job interviews could think that common workplace situations are comparable coding in front of a stranger at a job interview.

mshenfield 11y ago

Programming interview stress is a terrible indicator of real-life leadership ability. But communication skills are still an incredibly important of being a good programmer, often more important to success than programming ability (http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-write-without-writing/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-write-without-writing/). Personally, I've spent hours working on a project or problem only to find that, be it the result of miscommunication, lack of critical thinking by a manager, or lack of understanding on my part, what I'd created contributed nothing to the bottom line success of our organization. Anyone, what kind of resources are there to objectively assess a candidates communication skills, leadership ability, and teamwork? What is a constructive way to provide feedback and resources for interviewees about their performance?