[HN Gopher] Don't do interviews, do discussions
___________________________________________________________________
Don't do interviews, do discussions
Author : maddynator
Score : 138 points
Date : 2021-11-07 18:22 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thinkingthrough.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thinkingthrough.substack.com)
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Slightly OT - on hiring, not interviewing - I recently realized
| what could improve hiring, and it's simultaneously a great and
| terrible idea.
|
| How does hiring work today? First, the employer sets out a
| "careers" page (which varies quite a bit, even within the same
| company, even for the same job title!) which includes the
| following banal information: A job title, part-time/full-
| time/remote/location-based, a company values blurb, a paragraph
| about the general responsibilities of anyone with this job title,
| a tech stack, a list of prerequisites that nobody will ever meet
| "or relevant experience", and maybe the benefits and perks.
|
| Nowhere does it describe the actual project they're working on,
| their timelines, what kind of situation you're walking into, what
| the specific team's culture is like, whether there's a strong
| team lead or everyone is just a genius, if they're culturally
| diverse, what their daily workflow is, whether their OKRs have
| sustainability or social responsibility goals, or feedback from
| team members. Is the project they're working on greenfield or
| brownfield? What's the architecture? Will you be on-call? Will
| you be supporting customers or working in a silo? What is the
| reporting structure like? Career advancement / lateral movement?
| Training? Do they go to happy hour on Fridays? Is there an LGBTQ
| ERG?
|
| And from the other side, the company knows next to nothing about
| who's applying. After all the candidates have played tech
| buzzword bingo in their resumes, the company (or worse,
| recruiter) pulls out a divining rod and tries to pick up the one
| or two candidates who they _imagine_ are a match culturally,
| technically, and professionally. If you don 't know somebody
| inside the company, or a recruiter doesn't push you as one of the
| two candidates they've found locally, you might as well be a
| translucent blob of Arial 12-point font.
|
| How can we connect employees and employers in a meaningful way
| that isn't an arbitrary screening process? Well it seems to me
| that somebody has already come up with an answer: dating sites.
|
| Please, stop throwing things at me and hear me out! What are
| jobs? Relationships between an employee and an employer. Well,
| dating sites are masters at finding the intersections where
| people match, in order to find good relationship matches. You can
| create a curated list of multiple-choice weighted questions, and
| ask the other person to fill them out, with a small text blurb to
| elaborate on your answer. The most common/popular ones
| automatically bubble up for everybody as default questions.
|
| This combination of quantitative and qualitative matching would
| allow people to quickly see which employees/employers are the
| best match. We may still need a way to ascertain technical skill
| or professional experience, but at least the people who come in
| the door would appear to be the closest matches to what we want.
| Will there be some catfishing? Sure, but there already is with
| today's hiring mess! Can somebody please make the OkCupid of
| hiring? I'm waiting to open my account.
| charles_f wrote:
| Every few weeks someone comes back with the one true way of
| interviewing, or the X things wrong with how interviews are led.
| I have conducted a few hundred of these by now, and the most I
| know about it is that there's no good way, because you try to
| figure someone out in just a few hours based on stuff _they_ tell
| you. The format that seems to work the least worse for me is when
| you get them to tell you about actual stuff from their
| experience, which tends to prevent getting completely pointless
| people. I have been forced to do coding exercises for a while but
| I replaced by a general discussion on some tech they have been
| using recently, just to get a feeling of whether they understand
| what they 're doing.
|
| Recently I have been looking for another team internally to my
| company. An interesting fit is that I went through 3 interviews.
| I'm an engineering manager. Two interviews were focused on system
| design, one was coding. The only non coding question I received
| was around how I coach people. The three persons who interviewed
| me I asked: "what does the team need to do better", and they all
| answered a variation of "it takes a while to get stuff to prod
| once it's built. We need someone who can help get better at
| that". Yet not a single question for that. I guess the lesson
| learnt is that if you are looking for a particular skilk, maybe
| focus on that as well.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| I do the discussion approach, but my goal is to make sure I 'give
| candidates enough rope to hang themselves'. I also make extremely
| clear that it's ok to tell me that they don't know or aren't
| sure. A lot of times, I never ask the question that makes someone
| look bad, I just let them talk. No interview system is good, but
| after cycling through many interview styles, this is the one I
| have found to be the least bad. On a side note, I also can't
| believe tools like hackerrank report if a candidate has alt-
| tabbed out of the browser. I'm nearly 20 years in and I still
| have to look up basic syntax.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| In my company we use hackerrank for the coding interviews, but
| more as a whiteboard, since we are not doing in-person
| interviews anymore. We say that syntax is not the most
| important thing, we are not going to run the code, and that
| anything they would usually check on google/SO, they can just
| ask us.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I tried the discussion approach instinctively in most of the
| interviews I performed. I tried to look at it as if both the
| interviewee and I are evaluating each other to see if we're a
| match. Kept the conversation light hearted and mostly focused on
| general technology trends relevant to the job. Same as if you
| were at a meetup or something and had just met someone new.
|
| The only difference is that I would drill into specifics in
| certain areas, but keeping it conversation-style so that it
| doesn't feel like a pointed question. Usually I found it to be
| pretty easy to see a persons level of knowledge because they tend
| to hit a certain depth where they aren't able to keep the
| conversation flowing, so you have to pull back up into their more
| familiar territory.
|
| The only drawback with this approach is that I have to be really
| mindful about potentially being biased. Pointed questions aren't
| as much fun but they're easier to approach from an objective
| viewpoint.
| nickjj wrote:
| This is exactly how I would approach interviews too. I say
| "would" because I mostly do contract work and sometimes sit in
| on interviews when other companies are trying to hire someone.
| I've always thought to myself almost exactly what you wrote. I
| think having a low pressure conversation with someone can get
| you almost everything you need to be comfortable hiring someone
| or at least trialing them out with contract work to begin with.
|
| You can absolutely get a good sense of their tech skills from
| just chatting and you can also get a decent feel for how they
| communicate in general which IMO is more important than tech
| skills once you reach a certain point.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| I've lately been trying to get people to teach me something as an
| interview.
|
| Interviewed a guy with a PhD in organic electronics and asked him
| how to make an organic transistor at home. It was a great
| conversation, not sure yet if it was a great interview.
| mikesabbagh wrote:
| Best interview questions are open ended general questions. What
| is your opinion on software security? How would you improve your
| efficiency?
|
| This usually is a great discussion where everyone feels good at
| the end, but tell a lot about the sophistication of the person
| being interviewed.
|
| After this, pass a small test to make sure the person can do some
| real work.
| airpoint wrote:
| > Use "We" instead of "you" because it feels more inclusive and
| it is. For example, ask a question as "Suppose we have this
| problem to solve. How would we go about doing that?"
|
| Oh god how much I hate this! It's misused by (some) managers so
| much these days, it's infuriating. For me it has the very
| opposite effect than the intended inclusivity.
| baal80spam wrote:
| On a tangent - to this day I can't stomach when Windows talks
| about itself in plural ("We are setting things up"). It started
| around Windows 10 and I hate it.
|
| Ugh...
| midasuni wrote:
| Well windows is plural...
| CalRobert wrote:
| I've finally reached a point in my career where I have a great
| paying job and like it well enough, and really don't give a shit
| what interviewers think.
|
| Paradoxically, I think I interview a lot better. I can steer
| conversation towards stuff I care about, and if they insist on
| being annoying, just thank them for their time and leave. Though
| this might just be a result of being pickier about who I
| interview with.
|
| If nothing else, it's _amazing_ for negotiating. "honestly I'm
| really happy where I am, but every man has his price, what can
| you offer?" does wonders.
| osrec wrote:
| > I can steer conversation towards stuff I care about, and if
| they insist on being annoying, just thank them for their time
| and leave.
|
| I like this approach. Stops you from being painted into a
| corner, and if you are, you can still leave with your dignity.
| Some interviewers can be on such a power trip, which can make
| things feel pretty horrible for the interviewee.
| xyzelement wrote:
| > Stops you from being painted into a corner, and if you are,
| you can still leave with your dignity.
|
| Talk about wasting time. You are bothering to do the
| interview because for one reason or another you're interested
| in the job.
|
| It's weird to feel good leaving the interview where you
| somehow saved face for yourself by not answering any of the
| questions. You just guaranteed that you neither get the job
| nor learn anything useful for your next set of interviews.
| osrec wrote:
| Not quite. Confidence is a big part of interviewing, and
| having someone turn the screw on you on some esoteric topic
| doesn't really help build your knowledge or your
| confidence.
| xyzelement wrote:
| That's totally subjective. What someone may perceive as
| "turning the screw" could simply mean "probing deeper" or
| "seeing how you handle tough questions". One can get self
| righteous about that but it may be costing you
| tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost earnings.
| marcodave wrote:
| > If nothing else, it's _amazing_ for negotiating. "honestly
| I'm really happy where I am, but every man has his price, what
| can you offer?" does wonders
|
| My cynical self is thinking whether this is (one of) the reason
| why young people are preferred in our industry.
|
| Young = Less experience in negotiating = lower wage
| xyzelement wrote:
| >> My cynical self is thinking ... >> Young = Less experience
| in negotiating = lower wage
|
| Your compensation formula is completely void of the value
| someone can bring to the table. Young = less experienced,
| period. In negotiation, sure, but also in the on-the-job
| skills/experience/maturity. So of course they make less.
|
| If you're a kid out of college competing with thousands of
| equally green kids, what would be your negotiating leverage?
| If you are someone 20 years in the industry with unique and
| proven experience, you can negotiate _because you have
| something to negotiate with - there isn 't another you._
| gpderetta wrote:
| I had similar experiences as well. When there are no stakes you
| can be very relaxed during the interview and have all the cards
| during negotiations.
| b20000 wrote:
| this is the way.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| This is the proper way to negotiate. Most people don't do it
| while they have a job, only when they want one, and it puts
| them at a serious disadvantage.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| The flip side is it will often get you dropped out of most
| interview funnels since you're likely to be a waste of time.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Quite the opposite. Companies fight that much harder to get
| a candidate they know is valuable.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| That's true, if you have something to show for your
| value. You do sometimes get candidates who are very full
| of themselves but whose record track is not impressive,
| trying to use their confidence to skip past the
| interviews.
| vmception wrote:
| Which is fine because you arent desparate
| mattnewton wrote:
| I wonder how much "interviewing" is really testing the kind of
| performance anxiety that people without other good offers yet
| have.
|
| I experience this too as I not just as I progressed in my
| career, but even within one batch of interviewing. I've always
| tried to batch as many interviews as I can. By the third
| interview I am feeling much less anxious and just perform much
| better and by the fourth or fifth I am nailing them to the wall
| - performance seems to be inversely proportional to how much I
| am worried about doing well in this particular interview.
| kube-system wrote:
| I interview and I explicitly adjust for this in my
| interviews. Anxiety is not too hard to pick up on, especially
| if you know family and friends who have it, and I'll give
| people the benefit of the doubt in the case that I do notice
| it.
|
| Many people with social anxiety are excellent writers and I
| make sure we always have a written portion of our evaluation
| to give them.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I also do interviews, but find it is really hard to adjust
| for this. If a person repeatedly locks up and you give them
| space to come down from their anxious position for example,
| you simply get less signal than the person who confidently
| talks through their thought process the whole time and
| arrives at the right answer.
|
| Is the written portion the way to offset this in your
| experience? In addition to being hard to squeeze into
| typical 45 minute interview chunks, I'm not sure that would
| calm my anxiety personally. But I'm certainly willing to
| try.
| kube-system wrote:
| I've had some candidates who were mediocre in the verbal
| portion who blew me out of the water with their writing.
| They were clearly smart and capable people but were just
| anxious. I recommend these people be hired.
|
| I've also had people who did great in the verbal portion
| completely make a fool of themselves in the written
| portion. They have the confidence and social ability, but
| they often show they're missing the skills. They'd
| probably make better sales people than engineers.
|
| I haven't yet had someone who totally bombed the verbal
| do a good job in the written portion. All of the ones
| I've had were just overall poor communicators. If you
| can't communicate an idea verbally or written, it's going
| to be tough to work with a team of people who like to
| self-organize.
|
| I don't put the written portion in any time-block, if
| that's what you're saying. I normally give it via email
| and give people a week to get back to me.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Do you really want to work for any outfit that believes
| that's a tactic that brings out the best in someone?
|
| Hard pass.
| foobiekr wrote:
| This is my experience as well. I no longer interview for
| things, I interview people who want to hire me. At this point
| in my career, as an engineering IC, my initial conversations
| are with the VP/GMs of business units.
|
| Younger me would have been very surprised how much i actually
| enjoy these conversations with manager types. In my experience,
| _most_ of the VP GM and CEO types are much broader and more
| interesting than most engineers tend to believe, at least
| younger me.
| LASR wrote:
| Above a certain level of expertise, ICs are far harder to
| hire than management-like positions.
|
| This is definitely surprising to younger ICs in the industry
| - who seem to want to become engineering managers any way
| they can.
|
| The ceiling of genius you can possibly spike to as an
| engineer is far higher. I've seen single engineers at smaller
| startups perform the work of entire teams at big companies.
| And these folks get paid maybe 3x-4x the standard engineer
| salary. Huge savings. But hard to hire these folks.
| User23 wrote:
| If you're not willing to walk away from the deal then you're
| not actually negotiating.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| It's because you're coming from a position of abundance. Works
| wonders in dating as well. The trick is realizing you don't
| actually need to have abundance to take a position of
| abundance.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| >I've finally reached a point in my career where I have a great
| paying job and like it well enough, and really don't give a
| shit what interviewers think.
|
| I've interviewed people who have resched this point. It makes
| for a chill interview. In some cases, the interviewee is overly
| "chill" and is bored with the challenges described in the job.
| I prefer to hire people who are EXCITED about the challenges
| they will face in the job.
| isoos wrote:
| It is much better to face boring challenges with interesting
| people than interesting challenges with boring people. Maybe
| focusing on the team would excite these kind of persons.
| xyzelement wrote:
| >> "honestly I'm really happy where I am, but every man has his
| price, what can you offer?" does wonders.
|
| I would be very surprised if you say _literally_ this and get
| results. No self-respecting company or manager is going to
| invest in talking to you if you describe yourself so overtly
| mercenary.
|
| Obviously, when you're happy where you are, money is part of
| the equation to get you to move, but making it seem like the
| only motivator is super gauche and culture-centric companies
| (which are the good ones) would hang up on this answer.
|
| So curious - are you actually literally saying this and people
| aren't hanging up on you?
| User23 wrote:
| This is total loserthink. Saying literally that will
| assuredly get results.
|
| Mature managers and owners are well aware that hiring is a
| commercial act and that commercial acts are about money.
| Signaling that you're willing to walk from the negotiation is
| key to getting good compensation. Strategically, you wait
| until they've already invested thousands of dollars in labor
| costs interviewing you first.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Strategically then, wait until you are 4 months in the job,
| when they've paid the commission to the recruiter (finding
| and contacting interesting people is a job, paid ~20% of
| the gross salary), and THEN you raise the price.
|
| Expect to receive a flying chair. If you get out of it
| alive, you'll get a better salary.
| User23 wrote:
| I assume you're being sarcastic, but if you change 4
| months to a year and play hardball in your first review
| it's not a terrible plan. This is assuming you spent that
| first year creating big value.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| I've said a variation of it, and it works exceptionally well
| if the other side is also mercenary.
|
| A mercenary working for another mercenary can be a very
| educational experience, and I have found that it is far
| easier to work with other mercenaries because they can be
| focused and aligned quicker than people that need to be
| inspired.
|
| Honestly, if I was a hiring manager, then I'd try to only
| hire mercenaries keeping things professional.
| jen20 wrote:
| > culture-centric companies (which are the good ones)
|
| This depends on what you are looking for.
| xyzelement wrote:
| > This depends on what you are looking for.
|
| I am open to learning other sides here because this is so
| foreign to me. What are the cases where you don't want to
| work in a place where people care about the mission and
| culture and want coworkers who do as well?
|
| What are the cases where you're happy working for the
| company whose attitude is "we don't care who you are and
| what you value, as long as you have the basic skills and
| are willing to take what we pay, welcome aboard?" Do such
| companies become great places to work and if so how?
|
| I am asking genuinely curious because I've always looked
| for high culture high mission companies because that's what
| I am like.
| akomtu wrote:
| Companies don't have self-respect and competent managers are
| necesserarily hypocritical, but your point is right for
| another reason: someone who speaks truth to power like that
| won't fit a typical team of hypocrites. A hiring manager
| would think: "if this dude disrespects my authority now, why
| is he going to respect it later? better to hire that less
| stellar candidate who at least will be manageable."
| austincheney wrote:
| The biggest challenge with software interviews is that you don't
| know when to lie. The process is maximally biased and so you have
| maximum incentive to lie. The only reason to not lie is
| reputation damage in the highly unlikely case you are caught. In
| the end you are either hired for more money or you are just
| wasting your time as a candidate.
|
| Most of us really want to be as honest as possible, not just
| because we are good people, but because went want to ensure
| maximum compatibility. This is incredibly deceptive in itself
| because employer compatibility doesn't really matter. As an
| employee you do things the company way or you don't work there.
|
| So, just lie. I really hate that, but there is no reason not to
| and every reason to do so. It's just the nature of conforming to
| system of inherent implicit bias.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > So, just lie.
|
| I think this is bad advice. I have never lied in an interview.
| I've also never had a job not offered to me if I made it to the
| in person interview part. This isn't to say that I have magical
| job-getting powers, but only that not lying has not hurt my
| chances.
|
| In one job I applied for, I didn't have a lot of domain
| knowledge, but I had knowledge in an adjacent domain and wanted
| to to jump over to this one. I told this to the interviewer up
| front, and the interview was a bit rough but I managed to do
| OK. What I did was explained my thinking process and in many
| cases arrived at the right solution, or close to it. In others
| I didn't. The interviewer was sufficiently happy with my
| ability to solve problems on the spot that they hired me. It
| wasn't hard to acquire that new domain knowledge, but I had to
| work at it. I also took a level down in the new job, but they
| increased my pay over my old job, so I didn't care about the
| leveling. Long term, that helped me as my salary ended up being
| higher as a gained levels in the new place.
|
| So being honest about not being the perfect fit has worked out
| for me. I think it can work out for you, too.
| austincheney wrote:
| Think about it like this. The goals are attain employment and
| maximize compensation. That's it.
|
| That said you are probably best off training machine learning
| to do this for you. It won't suffer the nonverbal faults
| associated with dishonesty, because truth to a machine is how
| effectively it completes the assigned goal.
| kube-system wrote:
| Maybe this works in big companies, but many small companies
| that I've worked at, you'd be caught, even lying on silly
| little things. The people reading your resume are the same ones
| you're going to be working beside, and they'll absolutely ask
| you about things you said you knew.
|
| And once they find out that you lied about your volunteering
| experience at your local little league team, your whole resume
| goes under the microscope. I've seen it happen.
| b20000 wrote:
| what is it with lying on resumes? is that a thing? i went
| through some interviews a while ago. everyone assumed i lied
| on my resume without any basis to do so.
| austincheney wrote:
| There is a couple of problems with that. More than half the
| time I have interviewed nobody reads resumes. They know your
| name and kind of how long you have been employed.
|
| Second, you control what appears on your resume. You can spin
| it how you want by the facts you include and omit. You list
| the great selling points about yourself and none of the bad.
| Don't lie on a resume because its already under your control
| and it's a document of record that can follow you from any
| point in the past.
|
| This tread isn't about resumes. It's about interviewing,
| specifically as a discussion.
| jstx1 wrote:
| "Discussion interviews" can suck because they're a lie. You're
| still being examined, and now you have to pretend that you aren't
| being examined in addition to performing well.
|
| Some of my best interviewing experiences have been when as part
| of the interview I ended up having a discussion about something.
| But the interview didn't explicitly start with that format in
| mind.
|
| Some of the worst interviewing interviewing experiences that I've
| had is when they say that it will be a discussion, and it is, up
| to the point when they spring an algorithm question out of the
| blue... it feels so scummy and fake. Ask me about the algorithm
| if you want, but mixing your question into 40 minutes of
| discussing other things and pretending that you aren't examining
| me is a farce.
|
| The intention seems to be to make the experience more authentic
| and it often ends up having the exact opposite effect.
|
| If your criteria for hiring boil down to "did I like talking to
| this person", you're probably not hiring well and you're allowing
| all kinds of biases to influence your decision. If your criteria
| are specific but you're hiding them behind the pretense of
| "discussion", you're doing everyone involved a disservice.
| midasuni wrote:
| You're being examined at an interview, but you're also
| examining the person you may choose to work for. If you don't
| _need_ to take the job you're in a much more powerful position
| and you can have an honest discussion to come to a mutually
| beneficial arrangement.
| monocasa wrote:
| Discussion style interviews aren't about pretending they're not
| interviewing you though.
| jstx1 wrote:
| The title is "Don't do interviews, do discussions". That's
| repeated in the main text. The author seems to be concerned
| about the feeling of "I am being evaluated". I think that's
| counterproductive because it's false - being evaluatated is
| the whole point of the conversation and it's better if both
| sides were honest about it instead of lying to each other and
| playing games.
| pdpi wrote:
| "Interview" is ambiguous here. No matter what you do, it's
| always true that you're interviewing the candidate in the
| "assessing a candidate" sense, but you don't have to do
| this by interviewing them in the sense of "question and
| answer format you'd see a journalist use".
| kube-system wrote:
| The tone of an evaluation can change the experience and
| isn't boolean.
| monocasa wrote:
| In context, I take it to mean "don't do the normal format
| of interviewing, use discussions". No amount of phrasing is
| going to convince you that you aren't sitting in an
| interview. I wouldn't want to convince you you're not in an
| interview anyway, that seems pretty dishonest. There's just
| way more value in having a (albeit can be fairly technical)
| discussion rather than typical call/response style of
| interview that consists pretty much solely of "did you
| memorize what I'm looking for". Particularly because I
| don't expect the person I'm interviewing to be a master of
| everything, having a discussion can lead to some common
| ground where we can go in deep on some of your actual
| previous experience.
| vmception wrote:
| Exactly, if you lead with some obscure or polarizing hobby
| thinking its a casual discussion its a big mistake
|
| "Hiking, trips to the beach" those are the answers. Any
| behavioral interview training will say the same
|
| Everyone is lying (or actually boring and unambitious)
| flyinglizard wrote:
| I interview quite a bit of people. I always do it in a laid
| back, conversational style. When I ask technical questions,
| somewhere towards the middle or end of the session, I do it
| because I just want to know that the person I talked with
| understands some fundamentals (it's never a tricky question;
| just something basic like creating some threads, etc).
|
| I talk with them about their previous work, stuff they're proud
| of, their hobbies and other things. I've recruited teams that
| excelled compared to their peers, and were certainly more fun
| than others.
| dtoms wrote:
| threading is your basic question at the end of an interview?
| flyinglizard wrote:
| Yes, but really simple. It can get progressively worse
| though. Like: 1. Make a loop which counts and prints up to
| N 2. Now make it run in a thread 3. Now make another thread
| which only prints once this var hits modulo X == 0 etc
| metters wrote:
| Not the main topic of the article, but in my opinion an
| interview/discussion also is supposed to answer another (third)
| question: Does the company fulfill the expectations of the
| potential employee? Not only the candidate has to sell their own
| service/skill during the interview/discussion, the company is
| being evaluated, too.
| cema wrote:
| One of the business for interviewers our company has is to
| leave a good impression even on a weak candidate. This makes
| for an overall better experience and, should the candidate
| become a better fit in the future, we do not want to lose them.
| amirkdv wrote:
| This so much. This would be on the syllabus of the missing
| Employment 101 course. Very few people I've seen try to
| evaluate the company as much as they're being evaluated.
|
| We all grow up with the false, ingrained assumption that it's
| some sort of one-way privilege for you, the employee, to rent
| your time/body/mind to the employer.
| midasuni wrote:
| That's because in most interviews for most people the company
| holds far more power than the applicant.
|
| For those who have done well in tech and don't need to take
| the next job offered to pay for the next months food bill,
| because they have the savings, because they have 2 or 3
| offers already, we may have the luxury of interviewing the
| company.
|
| Most people aren't in that situation, especially early in the
| career
| 01100011 wrote:
| Depends on the role and the candidate. If I'm hiring for a lower
| skill position and the candidate has a strong resume I just might
| want to verify the resume and confirm they have a basic grasp of
| the relevant skills.
|
| If I'm hiring for a high-output FANG job, you bet your ass we're
| going to the whiteboard. Sure, I hate it too(on either side of
| the table), but it's not too much to ask to prove that you can
| think on your feet and solve hard problems if that's what the job
| is.
|
| I generally tend to have discussions because I'm not very
| confrontational and also because I hate the modern coding
| interview. After moving to a FANG though, I now understand why
| the process is so hard. I also get that a lot of folks are
| frustrated because they've been told their whole career that
| they're smart, and they probably are, but for some roles the bar
| is just set higher. My 30 year old self, who thought he was hot
| shit because of all the praise I got for doing basic work(shake
| and bake linux embedded work, deep dive bugfixing, mostly writing
| glue code), was in no way qualified to exist in the world I
| (barely manage to) work in now.
| throwaway98az8 wrote:
| Typical FANG employee... Hates whiteboard interviews until they
| get into FANG, then thinks that anyone outside of FANG is
| actually delusional about their skills and must whiteboard to
| prove themselves worthy of handling the incredibly challenging
| world which is FANG-engineering.
|
| More likely that you've drank the kool aid that you are somehow
| special and smarter for working at a FANG...
| throwaway67834 wrote:
| Why are you so mad that someone allegedly considers
| themselves smarter than you?
| hfjkdh790sn wrote:
| > More likely that you've drank the kool aid that you are
| somehow special and smarter for working at a FANG...
|
| The USD $250K/year compensation, 0 YOE, fresh bachelor grad
| kool aid. Sure.
|
| Sorry, but some people in society are strictly inferior to
| others -- defined by an age-adjusted combination of family,
| friends, health, finances, and happiness, both current and
| future trajectory.
| badcomment111 wrote:
| Ranking people like this is sickening.
| neeleshs wrote:
| I'm honestly curious to know. Can you say more about what your
| current work entails?
| 01100011 wrote:
| HPC programming library. It has to be fast, correct, secure
| and has strong compatibility guarantees so design decisions
| can have never ending repercussions.
|
| Previous to this job I laughed at the goofy CS questions
| asked in interviews. "I've been doing this 30 years and never
| needed A* or a graph algorithm." I have to retract that
| statement now. Not that the modern coding interview isn't a
| little overdone, but there is a point to it.
|
| There's also the question of dedication. When you work on a
| very driven team you have to show a similar level of drive or
| you're just going to get burnt. I'm not saying the level of
| work/life balance is fair or the way it should be, but it's
| the way it is and it has taken me quite a bit to get used to.
| It's a toxic environment on many levels. That said, it's by
| far the most impactful job I've ever had. I'm immensely
| grateful for the opportunity to contribute 0.0000000001 pct
| to some amazing work.
| brailsafe wrote:
| How did you transition between the previous state you
| describe and when you found success getting into your
| current role, in terms of prepping to do that sort of
| testing, as well as motivation?
|
| I'm very close to 30 now, and have been burnt out enough
| times that it's a struggle to imagine how I could care
| about tech enough to attempt to re-transition into almost
| only caring about sort of climbing that ladder.
| mehphp wrote:
| Mostly reversing binary trees obviously
| tchalla wrote:
| > Sure, I hate it too(on either side of the table), but it's
| not too much to ask to prove that you can think on your feet
| and solve hard problems if that's what the job is.
|
| That's a big IF.
| xyzelement wrote:
| > think on your feet and solve hard problems > if that's what
| the job is. > That's a big IF.
|
| My experience with FAANGS is that their bar is universal.
| Even if you're going to a team which somehow won't require
| solving hard problems collaboratively under pressure, ability
| to do so is the bar for working at the company.
|
| As the person you're replying to says, they use the interview
| style that gives them signal about this. And in general,
| unless one work at a FAANG and understands the roles, how
| does one think they have the correct perspective on how FAANG
| ought to be hiring for their roles?
| dtoms wrote:
| so there is no glue code at FAANG? Or you have overqualified
| folks doing, and getting bored, and jumping ship between FAANG
| every 1.5 years...
| callamdelaney wrote:
| I interviewed a guy who had this approach. He seemed to think it
| was a great way to avoid answering actual questions, needless to
| say it wasn't a positive result.
| tchalla wrote:
| In the attempt of bias removal, interviewers now want to ask the
| same question to everyone and leave the effort to the
| interviewer. Take for example, the standard behavioural question
| which is expected to answer in a STAR format [0]. The question
| will go as "Tell me about a time you did .... ". Now, it all
| sounds fine and dandy but you are basically offloading everything
| to the poor interviewee. You want them to (1) think of an
| instance in their past and (2) think of a good, relevant instance
| in their career and (3) follow a format for your convenience. I'd
| say that's a lot of pressure. Even if you want to stick to the
| STAR format - you can still be consistent and ask the same
| question with a twist.
|
| "Did you have any conflict at work? Tell me about such
| situations"
|
| "What was the impact of the conflict?"
|
| "What steps did you take to resolve it?"
|
| "What changed after you took those steps?"
|
| Well, it's the same line of questioning and addresses all needs
| of the interviewer. Yet, most of them wouldn't do that. It's
| still a discussion format and win-win.
|
| [0] https://careercenter.lehigh.edu/node/145
| akomtu wrote:
| Don't experienced candidates know that behavioral questions is
| bs and just make things up on the fly? You ask them about a
| conflict in past, they invent a story about a small
| disagreement with coworkers that got resolved in a model
| textbook way, leaving everyone better and wiser? It's not a
| deposition under oath, after all.
| xwdv wrote:
| Imagine a hellish interview process where multiple candidates are
| brought in for a "discussion" at the same time and based on the
| impression they give one could get the job.
| joelbondurant wrote:
| To enforce the mandatory level of diversity, all tax cattle
| communications must be standardized and final hiring decisions
| must be based on gender and race.
| ab_testing wrote:
| I think the author has not really interviewed in the past couple
| of months / years. Now-a-days I see interviewers skipping the
| pleasantries and straight jumping on to LC style questions. In
| fact, in a lot of companies, the first couple of rounds are
| online assessments where you try to pound on LC mediums or hards
| without even talking to anybody else
| version_five wrote:
| Do you think this is a response to tech salaries getting
| higher, and more unqualified people who interview well applying
| for jobs?
|
| A couple years ago we were hiring data scientists, and started
| with a chat with the hiring manager, and then at some point a
| technical evaluation. We attracted business grads and others
| for the position (in addition to cs folks), and a lot of them
| talked a good game but couldn't do basic data science stuff. So
| we ended up switching the process to have some kind of table
| stakes technical evaluation up front, and then do the
| interviews.
|
| I don't think it's ideal, but the filter has to be somewhere,
| and companies want to optimize hiring to cut people as quickly
| as possible rather than do a bunch of interviews and drop them
| later.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I think it's a result of the cost of technical testing
| reducing to a negligible amount, and then as you say, an
| unhealthy relationship with risk aversion. If any company can
| open a funnel to the entire timezone or world and put
| everyone through a HackerRank test they bought off the shelf,
| they have sunk no real cost by the time they interview
| someone and potentially no shortage of people who'll go
| through with it. This is proven out by how little of a signal
| these cost-of-entry tests apparently provide, because they go
| on to do other tests anyway, and inevitably reject candidates
| who passed all of them for any reason they can come up with.
| version_five wrote:
| > I think it's a result of the cost of technical testing
| reducing to a negligible amount
|
| This is a good point that I overlooked and definitely agree
| is also present. The same thing is happening with other
| types of interviews - I have seen companies hiring now
| where the candidate is asked to record video answers to
| prompted question, that from what I remember are evaluated
| by some kind of machine learning. They can open up the
| funnel without having to do anything (except forgo
| candidates that either have some self respect or are not
| desperate for work)
| brailsafe wrote:
| Yes, absolutely. I've bumped into literally random people
| out in the world, outside of tech, who have experienced
| and complained (unprompted) about those creepy AI
| interviews and they find it dystopian.
|
| I've been asked at least 3 times to do a similar thing,
| and every time I've just refused, it's a few steps too
| far for me to even participate in, even though I am
| almost completely out of options at this point.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > This makes me (and I guess most of us) nervous.
|
| It doesn't me nervous. It makes me wonder if they know what year
| it is. :)
|
| Ultimately, it's a relationship. Yes, it has to work for them.
| But it has to work for me as well. Fit matters.
|
| If they're doing all the asking and I'm doing all the answering
| that's a red flag. If we get to the end and they say "We have a
| couple minutes left...do you have any questions?" That's another
| red flag.
|
| Put another way, as I've said before:
|
| How you hire is who you hire.
|
| So if you're hiring ppl that can't see your red
| flags...well...um...that's a red flag ;)
| Jugurtha wrote:
| There usually is not a table between us. I sometimes sit on a
| couch, or we both go to the balcony and talk facing the sea
| (balcony view:https://twitter.com/jugurthahadjar/status/145136819
| 388953805...). If they smoke they'll have a cigarette there. We
| sometimes hack on a project together right there.
|
| I use the term conversation or dialogue often to do away from
| discussion's root of 'breaking' or 'stomping'. I offer to make
| them coffee. We talk about pretty much everything. I ask
| questions. They ask questions.
|
| We try to quickly get rid of the interview vibe by making them
| feel comfortable. We've refined this over the years.
| kerng wrote:
| A friend once told me that he is interviewing Google.
|
| I found that mindset very powerful.
|
| And the best part, he got an offer but didnt accept it.
| andrekandre wrote:
| yes! 1000x this.
|
| don't let the power asymmetry get to you, take that attitude
| and you wont easily made nervous or uneasy and instead projects
| confidence
|
| prepare insightful and incisive questions about how decisions
| are made, tech stacks, even how executives think about dev
| process and the business etc etc
|
| as it turns out, many companies really appreciate the
| thoughtfulness!
| 123pie123 wrote:
| Depending on the interview I always try to make it light hearted
| and a discussion
|
| One of the best times this happened is when I was being
| interviewed by the future manager and he said after 5 minutes you
| clearly know more than me and we started talking about the best
| places to go for a drink in the area.
|
| I got the job and he was a fantastic manager and good friend
| [deleted]
| jschrf wrote:
| I love this thread and the comments in it.
|
| I just had a useless interview with a company that pops up here
| from time to time. The only thing I liked about the experience
| was that the itinerary at least tried to make it clear what the
| key values seemed to be: listening to customers, outcomes,
| evolving vision. I tried to "map" my experience with their
| potential customers and how they could think about the "box" and
| listen and solve.
|
| There's a 10 billion dollar problem in this particular industry
| and if you take the time to understand customers, it's pretty
| obvious. I watched first-hand the biggest competitor of this org
| pivot for this after being around for decades.
|
| The "discussions" I had were not discussions at all. They all
| seemed rushed. There was no "deep dive" into tech at all.
|
| Next time I interview, I'm going to try a radically different
| approach: I am going to undershare rather than overshare.
|
| As an interviewer, I'm going to start asking people about
| cucumbers rather than speak about particular tech or follow some
| form-based process.
| greenail wrote:
| I'm not sure why but it seems that most of my "interviews" end up
| with me asking lots of tough questions along with the reasoning
| behind my questions. I end up leading the discussion. I don't
| have numbers but it seems I get offers when I take the lead and
| ask tough questions about the business, what challenges exist,
| and how the interviewer deals with them. Anecdotally when I've
| been passive in the past I've not moved forward in the process.
|
| On the flip side, when doing the interview and when I'm
| answering/explaining something to a candidate, I'm not really
| able to think ahead to the next tougher question in a chain of
| questions. I wonder how that impacts my assessments. I used to do
| 3-5 interviews per week, it is a shame I didn't take notice of
| this and compare to the group's consensus and outcome.
| indymike wrote:
| I'm not even sure what an interview that is not a discussion
| would look like and even less sure it would provide value,
| especially when it comes to technical talent. There's far too
| much time spent on validating "can this person do X that they
| claim they do." That can be easily tested or validated with
| reference checks. What is hard is knowing if an interviewee knows
| when to do X, when to do Y, and can they coordinate with teams A
| and B to get it done.
| pezzana wrote:
| > Here are some tips for converting interview into the discussion
| as an interviewer ...
|
| Two ideas follow. I don't think they'll work very well.
|
| Here's the #1 thing you can do as a candidate to turn the
| interview into a discussion: Come prepared with some
| interrogative-led questions. These usually begin with the words
| "who"; "where"; "what"; "when"; and "why". Then ask your
| questions at appropriate times. A good time might be, for
| example, right after you answer a question on a topic related to
| the question you're about to ask. Another good time might be when
| the interviewer asks "Do you have any questions for me?" Having
| been on the other side of the interviewing table a lot, it's
| quite surprising how few candidates have anything to ask about
| one of the biggest decisions they'll ever make.
|
| The quality of your questions will determine what you get out of
| the interview. To prepare good question, you'll need to
| understand the following at more than just surface level:
|
| - the position
|
| - the company/group/pod
|
| - the interviewer
|
| Research these three things before the interview. The questions
| you bring to the interview should be designed to gather relevant
| and missing information on these points.
|
| What's "relevant information"? You'll need some goals to figure
| that out. Don't set foot in the interview until you have some
| goals that make sense for you.
|
| Reversing the above into a process for preparing for an
| interview:
|
| 1. figure out why you're interviewing at all, and interviewing at
| that company in particular
|
| 2. research the position, the company/group/pod, and your
| interviewers
|
| 3. draft questions you'll ask during the interview
|
| 4. ask your questions at appropriate times during the interview
| tchalla wrote:
| > ere's the #1 thing you can do as a candidate to turn the
| interview into a discussion: Come prepared with some
| interrogative-led questions.
|
| Yes, the candidate should come prepared to (1) resolve Leetcode
| Medium/Hard problems with obscure data structures and
| algorithms, (2) have a Github profile and demonstrate their
| side projects and (3) have best instances of their past careers
| to answer behavioural questions in the STAR format. In the same
| time, we want to demonstrate how the candidate "thinks of their
| feet" and now we have interrogative style questions. The way I
| see it - we don't really require interviewers at all. I don't
| see any benefit of an interviewer. We can replace them with
| robots.
| anotheraccount9 wrote:
| Discussion will only be possible/advantageous if the interviewer
| decides to engage in a less strict and structured approach. I've
| had interviewers sticking to very specific questions and wanting
| very specific answers (not necessary what they needed to know me,
| but what they wanted to complete a form).
|
| A discussion means an organic, constructive exchange. If anyone
| is too stuck-up, it way not work well.
|
| Obviously getting to know the candidate through discussion is
| best.
| arketyp wrote:
| I've been involved in interviews for new hires a couple of years
| now. I'm pretty sure I could have the interviewee talk about
| cucumbers for 10 minutes and I could determine if its a good hire
| or not. It's all about getting insight about how the person
| thinks.
| ragona wrote:
| To be honest I sometimes get better signal from things like
| cucumbers than I do with technology. Tech has a real issue with
| biasing towards people who happen to have worked on a
| particular topic, and as we all know we get bounced to
| unfamiliar topics constantly.
| jstx1 wrote:
| If I'm kind of stiff in conversations with strangers but decent
| at programming, does that mean that your company doesn't have a
| place for me?
| jfengel wrote:
| The problem with "decent at programming" is that it's often
| only a fraction of the job. You rarely get formal
| specifications and clear orders. Nearly everything involves
| discussion of the user's needs or eliciting the circumstances
| of a bug.
|
| Real programming is very little like they teach in school and
| even less like coding competition. Being good at programming
| is great, and mandatory, but if you can't also have a
| conversation then you can't actually do most jobs.
| jstx1 wrote:
| In my experience there's a big difference between an
| interview and talking/communicating/collaborating with
| coworkers. I don't think that you can use one as a reliable
| predictor of the other.
| jfengel wrote:
| I think that's the point of TFA. You can never predict
| perfectly but it might be a closer approximation than a
| traditional interview.
|
| At least you're talking about programming, something you
| should know about. In the actual job you'll have to talk
| about the subject domain, which you aren't always an
| expert in.
| xyzelement wrote:
| > I don't think that you can use one as a reliable
| predictor of the other.
|
| It's pretty hard to claim that there's no _signal_ from
| this kind of interview.
|
| Candidate A: was able to have a conversation with me,
| asked good questions, explained their thinking well, was
| easy to follow, etc.
|
| Candidate B: seemed to not understand what I was
| saying/asking, his answers were rambling and incoherent,
| and unless I led the conversation he just sat there in
| awkward silence.
|
| You can't make a prediction about which of these _is more
| likely_ to communicate well at the office?
| kube-system wrote:
| Not the OP, but I have a similar experience. Being "stiff in
| conversations" is not really enough detail to answer the
| question. I don't care about whether people are social
| butterflies. I care about whether they can accomplish the
| work as a part of a team. I know that sounds cliche but it's
| the truth. I just want people who are accepting to feedback,
| don't act unprofessionally, and can effectively work in a
| team.
| cema wrote:
| Accepting feedback, but also providing feedback, also
| asking for it. So being able to initiate a conversation
| when needed is an important skill.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| Are you stiff when talking about programming? Regardless what
| you're talking about, you're going to have to work with a
| team and communicate the problems at hand. I think that's
| really the crux of "having a conversational interview". Can
| you communicate technical things, both broadly and in depth,
| effectively.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| In all likelihood, you've rejected phenomenal candidates and
| you didn't even realize it.
| chrisabrams wrote:
| This is why I have candidates do a take home. We'll (speaking
| across entire career not just current employer) have people
| who do mediocre in the video interviews but then turn in a
| great take home submission. Not everyone performs their best
| on the spot. I've hired so many talented people just by
| trying alternative formats to the traditional "today you're
| gonna interview with 6 people hope you did your leet code."
| dtoms wrote:
| Don't do interviews, do take home tests. Do what's representative
| of the work you will be doing. I highly doubt even at google that
| it's a life or death situation that you correctly code an obscure
| algorithm in 30 minutes. Folks think you "cheat" on take home,
| but all they are doing is selecting for folks who "cheat" by
| being able to memorize massive amount of leetcode questions, its
| still a poor signal. 6-8 400-500K interviewees, likely costs more
| than 2 folks reviewing a take home for 2 hours.
| Daishiman wrote:
| To me it comes down to the following: you're not going to advance
| your career at a place you don't do your best in, and the best
| way to find out is to see how well you do with future _peers_.
| Treating your interview as talking with your peers frames your
| thinking in a much more productive manner.
|
| Life's too short to be stuck with mediocre employers.
| axegon_ wrote:
| > Life's too short to be stuck with mediocre employers.
|
| Billboard worthy quote right there.
| emodendroket wrote:
| At the risk of sounding cynical it sounds exactly like a
| slogan that would appear on billboards for one of those low-
| rent employment agencies.
| dudul wrote:
| > you're not going to advance your career at a place you don't
| do your best in
|
| Hard disagree. I've worked at a lot of places where I was
| frustrated, didn't give a damn and felt like I was completely
| underperforming. And yet, my career has been advancing both in
| terms of title and earnings. So, unless you have a different
| metric for "advancing your career" I disagree.
|
| That being said, I agree with your main point :)
| OJFord wrote:
| But how do you know you wouldn't have advanced more if you'd
| been doing better?
|
| It seems sort of trivially true to me, excepting any
| workplaces that are simultaneously soul-sucking and growth-
| prospect-full, in such an outsized way that it's better to
| underperform there than overperform elsewhere...
| dudul wrote:
| Irrelevant. The parent didn't say "optimally advance your
| career".
| Daishiman wrote:
| You can advance your title and earnings while also
| simultaneously not lose your will to live.
|
| I've done the whole money+title things at places where my
| work barely made any impact. You'll pay for it later on; 40+
| hours of weekly grind takes a toll on your mind and body.
| dudul wrote:
| I dont disagree. The parent's only metric was "advancing
| your career". Not being happy or feeling fulfilled or
| anything else.
|
| If the only thing you focus on is career advancement, you
| don't _need_ to be at a great place that makes you the most
| productive.
| sevagh wrote:
| Agreed with this.
|
| Oftentimes, you even _have_ to painfully grind out
| advancements in your career from unfulfilling, unhappy
| places, because amazing jobs aren't abundant and you have
| to eat (and also you have to have experience and a resume
| to apply for amazing jobs).
| EGreg wrote:
| I do that on my own show, when I interview Noam Chomsky, former
| regulators etc. I don't like to fawn over them and ask the same
| questions as everyone. I try to bridge what they talk about and
| modern technology, and see if we can have a meaningful DISCUSSION
| about freedom of speech or sociopolitics or economics or
| regulations. Here are some episodes:
|
| Economics: Thomas Greco, community currency economist
| https://community.intercoin.org/t/interview-with-thomas-h-gr...
|
| Regulations: Sara Hanks, former SEC regulator and author of
| Regulation S https://community.intercoin.org/t/interview-with-
| sara-hanks-...
|
| Freedom of Speech: Noam Chomsky, sociopolitical commentator and
| linguist https://community.qbix.com/t/freedom-of-speech-and-
| capitalis...
|
| I don't hold back, in the Noam Chomsky discussion I accuse him
| for example of having a lot of social capital (followers and
| influence is a form of capital that is convertible to other
| forms) and he brushes it off. Overall the discussions tend to
| focus 99% on substance, and deal with the Web, Social Platforms,
| Blockchain and Cryptocurrency, how they can change the world and
| the issues surrounding them.
|
| PS: I know that for now no one has heard of Intercoin or Qbix or
| my interviews and I am OK with that. Eventually it will be
| discovered once our products are more mainstream. I am looking
| forward to interviewing Edward Snowden and a few other people
| next.
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