[HN Gopher] Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not softw...
___________________________________________________________________
Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills
(2020)
Author : PretzelFisch
Score : 189 points
Date : 2021-11-10 15:45 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.ncsu.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.ncsu.edu)
| posharma wrote:
| Another tech interview discussion :-). How many do we have these
| in a month? Seriously, if you want to get into FAANG type
| companies and want the kind of money/work they offer, there's
| just no choice left other than leetcode. And it's not going to
| change unless these FAANG companies change. So, until then let's
| just get over it and get back to leetcode :-). Edit: I'm being
| downvoted. But I can't help speaking the raw truth here.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Okay, now explain why this is happening outside FAANG too and
| why we should accept it.
| posharma wrote:
| Unfortunately, other companies copy FAANG because FAANG are
| the most successful companies. We don't have to accept it. We
| just have to choose our battles. As I said, if you want the
| kind of money/work these companies offer, there's just no
| other choice these days.
| handrous wrote:
| Also because "four years at FAANG -> CTO or Development
| Lead (with a major hiring component) of a smallish funded
| startup" is a really common path, and those folks often
| bring along those interviewing processes. Startup founders
| & salespeople love to be able to say "so-and-so came to us
| from Google" when talking to e.g. potential investors or
| major sales prospects, but often can't really afford _great
| managers_ or well-seasoned developers from those places,
| most of the time, so you see a lot of this "this is my
| fourth job ever, counting an internship, and I've never
| held a position higher than Team Lead in which I still
| mostly wrote code, and I've been in industry less than ten
| years total, but half of that was at FAANG and one time I
| presented at a minor conference and that's on Youtube, so
| now I'm CTO of [25-employee startup]"
|
| I think those places are screwing up, since they usually
| can't match FAANG comp and anyone who is great at those
| kinds of interviews will just go to FAANG instead, but
| whatever.
| michaelpb wrote:
| The goal of research like this is to motivate exactly that
| (changing the companies)
| arenaninja wrote:
| > [...] the technical interview process means that many job
| candidates try to spend weeks or months training specifically for
| the technical interview, rather than for the actual job they'd be
| doing.
|
| I could've told you all of this ;)
|
| > [...] all of the women who took the public interview failed,
| while all of the women who took the private interview passed
|
| there's other underrepresented minorities that also underperform
| in these interviews
|
| Nothing will change for the foreseeable future
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > Nothing will change for the foreseeable future
|
| Makes me wonder if remote interviews will help or hinder this
| situation.
| WalterSear wrote:
| I was recently diagnosed with trauma disorder by my
| psychiatrist - due to long standing work-related issues, but
| specifically in regards to my current rounds of remote
| technical interviews.
|
| So, at least IME, it's not helpful.
| taurath wrote:
| Hey just wanted to say I'm really sorry you're having to go
| through that - its a cruel system. Don't be afraid to ask
| for affordances like take-home tests - I've found for me
| the biggest indicator of trouble is whether I think the
| interviewer is hostile or helpful. Otherwise, trauma really
| sucks to have to deal with, please take care of yourself
| first and foremost.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| Wait seriously - you've been diagnosed with trauma from
| interviews? Jeez what the hell happened in there - if it's
| alright I'm asking?
| taurath wrote:
| In the same way that kids with pressure on their SATs or
| college admissions or just generally "must do well"
| develop severe anxiety and depression there's no reason a
| panel of people testing you to determine your future
| economic value couldn't be legitimately traumatic -
| especially if you have a lot on the line either
| physically or emotionally, and don't have much in the way
| of security.
|
| I've nearly passed out in whiteboard interviews. I've had
| my BP spike to 150. I've nearly completely shut down.
| This doesn't happen even most of the time - I've also run
| multiple high profile launches for companies you know of
| and I react to emergencies extremely cool and collected.
| But I have a background that includes severe childhood
| trauma. Just to help your imagination!
| WalterSear wrote:
| Yes :(
|
| I'm just exceptionally sensitive to rejection and
| evaluation, and over the years, the interview process has
| become more traumatic for me, rather than less. Even
| decent technical interviews (ie - complete the task 100%,
| don't flub, don't blank out) can take me days to recover
| from - my physical/emotional reaction is often very far
| from where my rational mind perceives the situation. I
| was once deeply distressed by an interview where I
| ultimately received an job offer.
|
| It's a common aspect of ADD (rejection sensitive
| dysphoria), but it only really becomes a disruptive issue
| for me during job searches. However, as I develop as a
| coder, and apply for more senior positions, the gap
| between my performance in interviews and my perception of
| my abilities and value as a coder gets wider, and so does
| my distress.
|
| I've considered avoiding proctored and timed interviews
| entirely, but the cost of this not small: the more in
| demand a job opening is, the more motivated the hiring
| personnel are to streamline the process and to be
| comfortable with low-value methods to pick and choose
| between candidates - they have so many more candidates to
| eliminate. So, in the past, I feel I've taken jobs that I
| did not feel entirely excited about and ended in toxic
| work situations, that I was hesitant to leave, due to the
| trauma involved in hiring.
|
| I've probably disclosed more than is wise, given that I'm
| actively looking for work right now, but I'm kind of
| exhausted of hiding myself, and any hiring manager whose
| snooping my HN account is sure to find even better
| reasons not to hire me :)
| joelbluminator wrote:
| > I've probably disclosed more than is wise, given that
| I'm actively looking for work right now, but I'm kind of
| exhausted of hiding myself, and any hiring manager whose
| snooping my HN account is sure to find even better
| reasons not to hire me :)
|
| Naa don't worry about it, that's very unlikely. And if
| someone disqualifies you for what you wrote here I don't
| think you wanna work for them anyway.
| bradlys wrote:
| I see myself in this - I ended up getting past a lot of
| it. Mostly just required repeated success - which came
| from hundreds and hundreds of hours of studying, dozens
| of mock interviews, and hundreds of real interviews. I'm
| better now but by no means the best. After all - where I
| live (SFBA) - people live and breathe this stuff. A lot
| of the time because they enjoy it... It indexes on very
| certain personalities.
| arenaninja wrote:
| Not OP and I haven't been formally diagnosed with
| anything, but I also ran into severe anxiety issues (with
| no history of anxiety at all) after technical interviews.
| It's bad enough that I can't watch TV shows with any
| violence from overreaction
|
| I underperform severely from trying to keep it together
| during that time, and the perfect scenarios/answers
| always come to me minutes after the interview is over!
| [deleted]
| kodah wrote:
| As someone who didn't go to school, I struggle with doing
| algorithms and implementing data structures in front of someone.
| Outside of timeboxed interviews I negotiate them fairly well, but
| I'm almost always seeing something for the first time. Then
| again, for as long as I've been in software it's always been
| tailored for academics. This seems to be just fine and even
| championed as a good thing.
|
| My reaction is to plan my exit from the industry whenever this
| job comes to an end. I'll end up going back to school in my
| thirties, despite being qualified, because of self-imposed
| constraints by this industry that have little if anything to do
| with the tasks I'll be given or planning day to day.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| As a fellow college dropout who had the same insecurities and
| actually went back to college in his thirties (part-time) to
| study exactly this... all that knowledge still doesn't prepare
| you for time-boxed stressful leet code interviews.
|
| The people you are competing with study leet code for 3 months
| and get really good at solving coding puzzles within 45
| minutes. Study the basic data structures (nothing fancy needed
| beyond binary trees) and solve leet code an hour a day for 3
| months. That's all you need to do.
| politician wrote:
| That's a shame. Most software development jobs don't actually
| require a degree and getting a degree is no guarantee that
| you'll be able to solve the whiteboard questions.
| irq wrote:
| Or you can ignore employers who interview like that and keep
| searching until you find one that doesn't. A lot of people do
| this for the same reason you outlined.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| I gave up on software interviews. _Everyone_ wants to follow
| what FB and Google do to 'find the best people'. In my
| experience, 'keep searching until you find one' is bad
| advice.
|
| Can't tell you how many companies I interviewed with that
| simply take their entire process from others. We interview
| like X, we group teams/squads like Y, we do our agile process
| like Z. I don't want to work for your wannabe something else
| organization, get a clue.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| I think this can't really be the reason for your going back to
| school. A few weeks of drilling of common data structures and
| algorithms would put you at parity with college grads. Could it
| be you just don't like the industry and project that onto some
| kind of academic bias or something? Nothing wrong with not
| liking software development it is often awful.
| taurath wrote:
| As someone who's also self taught and currently going through
| the drilling process... its pretty tough to actually pull in
| and retain on an encyclopedic level all the information one
| needs, especially on concepts used less frequently in any
| sort of day to day - especially when in a timeboxed
| environment with an interviewer watching and evaluating my
| every move. Think also on the amount of people who are years
| out of college who struggle with these problems, given that
| they haven't actually used them in many years.
|
| An example of an extremely common question: "Write a function
| to check if a binary tree is a binary search tree."
|
| Yes you can memorize an answer here, and the implementation
| of a binary tree - I think most people just do that. Knowing
| the inns and outs of a binary tree is probably useful if
| you're writing a database, or a compression format. If
| they're hiring someone with the capability to write a
| database, or compression format, this question makes plenty
| of sense. It also makes sense if your criteria for hiring is
| "did they study and understand an algorithms course?". It
| doesn't make much sense if they're looking for someone who
| can do the actual job, in my opinion.
| jedmeyers wrote:
| > Yes you can memorize an answer here, and the
| implementation of a binary tree - I think most people just
| do that.
|
| If you are talking about a self-balancing binary search
| tree, then, yeah, most people will have to memorize the
| implementation, as it would take much more than an hour to
| implement correctly. But if you are talking about plan
| binary trees, most good engineers will be able to write a
| simple enough implementation for the interview in a couple
| of minutes. And it won't be from memory, it will come from
| _understanding_ of how the binary tree is structured. The
| beauty here is that there is no need to memorize the
| implementation, as it is much easier to remember the
| definition of a tree and then write an implementation based
| on that.
| handrous wrote:
| > It doesn't make much sense if they're looking for someone
| who can do the actual job, in my opinion.
|
| FAANG (& similar) have more applicants who can do the job
| than they have positions, so instead of checking for that
| and calling it a day, they filter for some combination of
| IQ and how bad you want it--willing to do a ton of
| otherwise-low-value prep work & practice, and to go through
| the painful interview process itself, likely several times
| at different companies, even for successful candidates.
|
| The reputation of their interviews also means they likely
| don't get a ton of candidates who _can 't_ do the job. So
| they could likely just start randomly selecting from their
| candidate pool and do damn near as well as they do with all
| the interview effort--except as soon as that become known,
| they wouldn't be able to do that anymore. Plus they'd lose
| the hazing factor, which likely helps build company in-
| group identity. Having a lot of your employees feel like
| they only have their job because the finally got "lucky" in
| an interview may also help with retention, especially when
| everyone else who pays as much interviews in similar ways.
|
| In a sense, being a huge, unpleasant waste of time is _the
| whole point_ of their interview processes.
| siquick wrote:
| This is the first time I've seen the reasoning behind the
| interview process they use explained in a way that makes
| sense. Thanks.
| bb88 wrote:
| > I think this can't really be the reason for your going back
| to school.
|
| What precisely makes you're more expert at the OP's
| experience then the OP?
| kodah wrote:
| It is, I plan on going back to school to be an EE when that
| times comes.
|
| > A few weeks of drilling of common data structures and
| algorithms would put you at parity with college grads.
|
| I don't know where one gets this kind of idea. I also stated
| fairly clearly that I have no trouble negotiating algorithms
| and data structures, the problem is when they're timeboxed
| and involve an interviewers participation.
|
| I think my main objection is to even doing these kinds of
| interviews. When, in the world, would one need to write out
| binary search and would have only 30 minutes to do so?
| Knowing the properties of different algorithms and data
| structures is important, imo, but implementing them in a
| timeboxed manner with abstract problems seems like an odd
| activity to demonstrate qualification.
|
| > Could it be you just don't like the industry and project
| that onto some kind of academic bias or something?
|
| Academic Bias may play less of a role than my perception
| makes it out to be, but I'd at least say it's significant in
| this industry. The way I think it gets in is subtle, catering
| questions and problems that one might find in an academic
| setting is one. My company also heavily hires interns, which
| again facilitates an academic bias in hiring, but there is no
| program for people who don't come from a prestigious
| university. The lingo used usually points to an academic
| background as well; I've learned "top talent" usually refers
| to prestigious companies (that primarily hire from academia)
| or prestigious universities.
| bb88 wrote:
| So maybe you'll read this and appreciate it I hope.
|
| I started getting back into electronics in the last 5
| years, and have been really enjoying it. I think EE is
| maybe one of the hardest engineering fields, but can also
| be the most rewarding I think when you do something cool.
|
| It's also wide ranging from RF to Electrical Grid to VLSI.
|
| So good luck. I wish you well.
| gmadsen wrote:
| an important thing to note, everything in the typical
| interview programming assessment is covered in one DS/algo
| class students usually take their sophomore year.
|
| If interviewing is your only worry, just get a single
| undergrad textbook on DS/algo. Interviews do not by any
| stretch cover the full academic breadth of a cs degree.
| [deleted]
| nickff wrote:
| There are many employers (such as mine,) which do not use these
| theoretical questions, and instead focus questions on prior
| project work. That said, many of the high-prestige employers
| (and their former employees) do use the tests you're talking
| about, largely because they see themselves as exclusive. If
| you're aiming for one of those prestige employers, you should
| be aware that they're also exclusive about which schools they
| recruit from.
| jonfw wrote:
| A degree to learn data structures and algorithms would be a
| massive waste. I think I had 2 classes that focused on them
| oriolid wrote:
| I think the idea of the algorithm interview is to see if you
| were awake in class while getting the degree and whether you
| can think on your feet. For other classes it's more difficult
| to come up with questions that aim for the same.
| jolux wrote:
| What algorithms courses are we even talking about? I
| dropped out after sophomore year but I still took data
| structures and algorithms, and a lot of the stuff I see
| people mention getting quizzed on at Google (I saw convex
| hulls in another thread on here) is 400-level, elective
| courses in these topics. The last object we studied in DS&A
| was graphs and graph algorithms, which I can handle just
| fine.
| raydev wrote:
| But didn't you have classes where some subset popped up again
| and again?
|
| That's why I still encourage people to pursue a Bachelors
| degree over bootcamp if they have minimal programming
| experience prior to going to school. If I'd taken only the
| "intro to ds" and only "intro to algos" courses to get my
| degree I would've been poorly equipped to start my first job,
| since that was the first time I'd seen those concepts.
| lifeplusplus wrote:
| My enter CS degree had one course on data structures and it
| didn't make me expert at white boarding ... Doing 40 mock
| interviews helped me
| jstx1 wrote:
| Personal anecdote - several months ago I got an interview at a
| prestigious big tech company. I couldn't sleep properly for at
| least a week before the interview and I failed. I also track my
| bodyweight and I can see a spike up just after the interview and
| then another one after I got rejected - I gained over 10kg
| (22lbs) in the following weeks while before that I was
| successfully losing weight for a while.
| curiousgal wrote:
| As someone struggling to gain weight, alright!
| jstx1 wrote:
| It wasn't the kind of weight you want to be gaining.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| It's hard to not be nervous for these interviews especially
| when coming from a non-FANG / huge tech company. The salary
| difference and opportunity can very much change your life. I
| don't have advice for this, but what you said resonates with
| me.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| Are you anxious in general? Or do you have some issue with
| tests? I hate algorithm interviews like the next guy but it
| sounds like you have it worse than most.
| jstx1 wrote:
| In general I'm not anxious person at all, quite the opposite.
| I found it very surprising myself. I actually prefer
| algorithm interviews, and I had never really been anxious for
| an interview before. This was also remote - I suspect that it
| would have been easier in person (I know for a lot of people
| it would be the opposite though).
| ssully wrote:
| I don't have it this bad, but I certainly have major anxiety
| during interviews. I was interviewing for a position at my
| current company and I blanked on what wget did. Literally a
| utility I used frequently and I completely blanked on it. So I
| bombed that interview, but I got a job with another group at
| the same company. I still get secondhand embarrassment whenever
| I think about it.
| [deleted]
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Link to actual study: http://chrisparnin.me/pdf/stress_FSE_20.pdf
|
| The study participants were split into two groups. One group
| solved the problem alone, in silence. The other group was
| instructed to _narrate their thought process out loud_ to an
| interviewer who stood over their shoulder (literally, see the
| photo on page 3) while they solved it.
|
| The flaw in this study is that the two groups weren't really
| assigned the same task. Solving a problem isn't the same as
| verbally narrating your solution to a problem. The authors
| attributed the differences not to the extra work narration work
| assigned to the second group, but to anxiety levels.
|
| The participants even explained that their difficulty came from
| having to talk while solving:
|
| > Participants also had difficulty with performing tasks that
| involved multiple simultaneous actions. Participants felt
| stressed by having to "talk while trying to write" (P44),
| "talking while writing" (P25), and "think and talk and do code at
| the same time" (P39). P41 found it difficult to "constantly speak
| during solving" and "lost breath at a few places during the
| task".
|
| There are other concerns with the study format such as many of a
| significant number of participants simply _giving up_ well before
| the clock ran out, in both the private and public interview
| groups. They were given 30 minutes to solve 3 problems, but some
| of the participants (including in the private group) were giving
| up around the 10 minute mark without solving anything at all.
| This suggests a very high variance of the underlying abilities of
| their candidates, which necessitates a much larger sample size to
| draw conclusions.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > The flaw in this study is that the two groups weren't really
| assigned the same task.
|
| The real flaw is that the title doesn't follow from the
| research. "Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not
| software skills." That's saying that you're really measuring
| level of anxiety, not skill. So skill is irrelevant and you're
| just measuring how anxious people are.
|
| But the study didn't show that _at all_. It just showed that on
| average, people perform better when they 're not anxious. Not
| exactly a surprising result!
|
| Of course people are going to be more anxious in an interview.
| But if it affects everyone equally who cares? Just make your
| questions easier.
| [deleted]
| SomeCallMeTim wrote:
| It sounds like the study points to the idea that "talk through
| your reasoning" is a bad interview approach.
|
| The last interview sequence I needed to do they put me in front
| of an online IDE and said "go code." They also said I could use
| my OWN IDE if I had it set up. One even said "you can finish it
| later (post-interview) if you want."
|
| The candidates giving up: Some nontrivial percentage of CS
| students are just ... not capable developers. That's why we use
| programming tests to begin with.
|
| Programming tests may be the worst possible way to assess
| candidates, but they also seem to be the _only_ way to assess
| candidates that doesn 't involve paying them for a trial
| period, which really only works for companies large enough to
| be able to waste a lot of money. "Democracy is the worst form
| of government, except for all the others."
| ziggus wrote:
| Having candidates talk through the solution to a non-trivial
| programming problem is a critical tool for me. I need to find
| developers that can not only code, but work as a part of a
| team - something that requires significant communications
| abilities.
|
| I can't afford to hire developers that can't effectively
| communicate complex ideas to other developers - something
| they're often required to do on-the-fly.
| cloverich wrote:
| If you want a comparable experience, assign a difficult
| task to one of your developers, then tell them: "I am going
| to watch you solve this problem. Talk me through it as you
| do so. I'll judge the result, if its not good enough I will
| have to fire you on the spot. Also this is timed. Proceed."
| saulpw wrote:
| These are two different modes of operation. I can code when
| in abstract problem-solving mode, and then _later_
| communicate that complex idea using my verbal skills. I can
| 't do both at the same time.
|
| It's like asking someone to give an extemporaneous talk on
| some subject, while translating each sentence into another
| language _as they go_. Even native bilingual speakers would
| have quite some trouble with this. They can generate
| content, they can speak fluently, and they can translate on
| the fly, but having to do all three "live" involves too
| much context switching. Maybe doable for simple or
| rehearsed topics, but most coding interview questions are
| non-trivial.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Maybe the existing process can be tweaked? Just give
| candidates some time to themselves when they're not under
| observation before they present.
| watwut wrote:
| I worked in teams whole my life. Having to explain while I
| am solving something non-trivial is rare to non existent
| situation. If just don't happen.
|
| Having to explain something non-trivial happens. But
| literally always there are hours between solution and
| explaining it. In pretty much any real situation, I have
| quite a lot of time to think about how to explain.
| chris11 wrote:
| > It sounds like the study points to the idea that "talk
| through your reasoning" is a bad interview approach.
|
| That idea definitely makes sense to me. And I think some devs
| do definitely underperform in interviews.
|
| Though I'm not sure if there's great alternatives. As an
| interviewer I feel that seeing someone work through a problem
| and debug issues gives useful information. I don't know if
| there's a better, less anxiety-producing way of testing those
| things.
|
| I do think take homes can be really useful, but those have
| their own problems. Maybe leaving someone alone onsite to
| complete the problem would be an option. But I think leaving
| the discussion to the end would give less info about the
| candidate's communication skills.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Just give them an initial five minutes or so to digest the
| problem themselves before asking them to communicate. Or
| even a few couple-minute long breaks throughout the
| interview where they're not under the microscope. Or some
| other way to lower artificial pressures.
|
| This unwillingness to experiment with the existing
| interview format, the intransigence to consider any
| alternatives, is simply maddening.
| mprovost wrote:
| This is a great point about CS grads. Maybe in the past, you
| could just take a degree at face value: "oh you graduated
| from Stanford with an A average, you must know how to code,
| here's a job". But nobody trusts any university to produce
| capable developers, so you have to test everyone with crazy
| interviews. So then what's the point of going to a top CS
| school and why can they keep charging so much tuition?
| jedmeyers wrote:
| > why can they keep charging so much tuition
|
| Because everyone keeps paying so much tuition. Why does
| _everyone_ can afford to pay so much is another question
| worth exploring.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| Because like it or not, people pay for branding. It's an
| ego thing or a correlation thing (in the past).
| gmadsen wrote:
| I doubt there exists a 4.0 gpa standford cs grad that is
| incapable of coding. It is more than just branding.
| Standford is harder and you learn more skills that a run
| of the mill state school.
|
| MIT moreso, no one is skating under the radar at MIT
| mywittyname wrote:
| I can't imagine someone getting a 4.0 at a crappy state
| school not being able to code without cheating.
| arebop wrote:
| Probationary hiring also doesn't work that well for many
| candidates. Despite at-will employment, there's an
| understanding about W2 white collar employment that gives new
| hires the confidence to buy and sell houses, move across the
| country or around the world, terminate talks with other
| prospective employers and pause interviewing, etc. This is a
| cultural thing that could change over time, but it would be a
| significant change.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Does it matter if it's anxiety or not?
| im3w1l wrote:
| Yes. If it's anxiety you can do things known to reduce
| anxiety. E.g. taking a beta blocker such as propranolol.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Now we expect people to get drugged up just to attend a job
| interview?
| sharps_xp wrote:
| > Participants also had difficulty with performing tasks that
| involved multiple simultaneous actions. Participants felt
| stressed by having to "talk while trying to write" (P44),
| "talking while writing" (P25), and "think and talk and do code
| at the same time" (P39). P41 found it difficult to "constantly
| speak during solving" and "lost breath at a few places during
| the task".
|
| This is why I built myself a tool to practice talking and
| narrating my thoughts! https://enumerable.co
| kerblang wrote:
| Am I reading this incorrectly or did literally all the female
| candidates finish the test in private while none of them
| finished in public?
|
| (disclaimer: Am male but still cannot talk and hack at the same
| time)
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Bear in mind there's a sample size of four women.
| Jensson wrote:
| There are 10 women. 4 in the private sample and 6 in the
| public sample.
| [deleted]
| Jensson wrote:
| Also the effect basically disappears if you take only male
| candidates, so the study is a bit suspect. Men and women
| typically aren't that different in studies.
| kerblang wrote:
| > Men and women typically aren't that different in studies.
|
| That's an _extremely_ broad assumption
| Jensson wrote:
| I have read a lot of psychological studies, the effect
| size difference between men and women in the same study
| is typically pretty small. But in this one the effect is
| close to 0 for men and 100% for women, that is really
| suspicious. I wouldn't trust results like these unless
| they were replicated with more robust methods.
| omarhaneef wrote:
| That would be a flaw in the sense that anxiety may not be the
| right word, but it does capture the parallel with white board
| interviews and underscore the problem that you may be turning
| away people who can perform the job well but not code while
| explaining.
| rsyring wrote:
| Our process is very evidence based. We use skills tests that are
| as close to real world as possible, given time limitations. We
| can't remove all anxiety, but we make an effort to mitigate it
| and limit its impact.
|
| Details of our interview and assessment process is at the bottom
| of each job listing: https://www.level12.io/careers/
| WalterSear wrote:
| > We use skills tests that are as close to real world as
| possible, given time limitations.
|
| If you are timing limiting candidates, your process is not
| evidence based and I question how serious you are about making
| efforts to mitigate or limit the effects of anxiety on
| applicants.
| rsyring wrote:
| Why do you believe time constraints and evidence based
| processes are antithetical?
|
| You can't give someone an unlimited amount of time to take an
| assessment and still expect to meaningfully be able to
| compare results. One person does a good job in 1 hour another
| person does a good job but it takes them 10 hours. Time
| limitations are a fact of life. Interviewees are only willing
| to give so much time to the application/hiring process and we
| have similar constraints. The time constraints are reasonable
| for the tasks given.
|
| We are working to mitigate anxiety in our process, I don't
| think we can ever completely eliminate it.
| WalterSear wrote:
| This confirms that you are part of the problem, and not
| serious about mitigating anxiety.
|
| Software development cycles are generally weeks in length
| for a reason: real software does not involve problems that
| can be done quickly in an hour.
|
| You are using time limits to minimize your own work, not
| improve your hiring process. A short, time-limited
| technical problem is easy to evaluate. The candidate will
| have correctly solved the problem in the time allowed, and
| their code will be short and easy to examine for code style
| and pattern. However, while the signals that this process
| provides you will be clear and easy to compare between
| candidates, ultimately you are searching under the street
| lamp: the signals you receive are poorly correlated with
| candidates' actual acumen and value.
|
| IME, this is generally done in order to push as many
| candidates through the pipeline as possible, in the
| intention of failing many decent candidates in order to
| avoid a 'bad hire'. However we have reams of evidence that
| this cynical and destructive approach does not have the
| outcome that people expect. It selects for people who are
| good at technical interviews, and against people for
| reasons other than their technical ability. It
| disproportionately selects for people coming from places of
| adversity.
| rsyring wrote:
| > This confirms that you are part of the problem, and not
| serious about mitigating anxiety.
|
| You should really stop making personal insinuations. Have
| you actually done a significant amount of hiring? Can you
| suggest a better process that works in our current hiring
| context?
|
| I don't disagree that the process we have developed is
| not ideal. Feel free to post a few of the best
| articles/resources you have from the "reams of evidence"
| you mention. But, just demonstrating that the process has
| problems isn't enough. Is anyone showing a better way
| that a small company with limited resources can actually
| execute on? Really, can you show us how to do it
| differently in a way that fits the practical realities of
| our current context?
|
| The truth is, I'd absolutely love to work with someone
| for a month or two before making a hiring decision. But
| most good software developers already have a job. They
| aren't going to spend a couple months working with you to
| give it a shot. They also want a level of certainty that
| there is a good fit in the organization before they leave
| their current post.
|
| And, on top of that, I already get flack b/c of how
| involved our process is. Lots of candidates don't want to
| put in that much time/effort. And with 10-20 places
| willing to hire them, I would assume a lot don't even
| take the time to apply. But I can't afford to have people
| on our team who can't perform at the level we need. And I
| hate firing people. So some kind of evaluation that fits
| all these parameters is necessary. Otherwise, no one gets
| hired and we eventually go out of business. Who does that
| serve?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Details of our interview and assessment process is at the
| bottom of each job listing: https://www.level12.io/careers/
|
| I clicked the first job listing and didn't find anything about
| the interview or assessment.
|
| They do have a weird note about the company's "Biblical
| principles" though:
|
| > Level 12 was founded on biblical principles and has
| biblically informed Values.
|
| Can you please write out your process here instead of making us
| search for it on your website?
| rsyring wrote:
| Expand "Next Step - Ready to apply". And it's at the very
| bottom. Yes, the UX is not ideal. The alternative is that the
| entire post is really long and yet, people really want this
| information.
|
| Pasted verbatim without taking time to format:
|
| The Rest of the Process
|
| Our application process is outlined roughly below.
|
| But, before you get there, we want to apologize in advance if
| this process seems...imposing. We have put considerable
| thought and refinement into each one of these steps in an
| effort to make sure our hiring process is as well crafted as
| our software. And just like software, hiring is a lot more
| complex than it might seem on the surface. Our hiring process
| is far from perfect (like our software), we are still
| learning and tweaking, but we want to assure you that each of
| these steps gives us crucial information regarding you and
| your development abilities that is essential for helping us
| to determine if this is a good match.
|
| Consider this: our entire process is less than a week's worth
| of effort to make sure that where you spend the next 1-5
| years of your life is a good fit. Isn't that worth it? Keep
| in mind that we have deliberately structured our process so
| that the earlier stages require less effort. Our hope is that
| if you make it to the later stages of our process, where the
| time commitment increases, you will have had a chance to get
| to know us a bit better so you can decide if the time
| investment on your part is worth it. We care about your time
| (and ours) and do our best not to waste it! Application Steps
| Evaluate resume and initial email correspondence
| Technical skills questionnaire Skills evaluation:
| 60-90 minute work simulation exercise Zoom
| interview(s): 45-90 minutes in one or two interviews to get
| to know you & your technical abilities Skills tests -
| phase I: three real-world programming challenges, no trick
| questions here (paid) Skills tests - phase II:
| project-based skills test: we give you a small project
| description and you build the best app you can (paid)
| Skills tests review interview: 2-3 hours on a Zoom meeting
| with our dev leadership team to get to know you and review
| your skills test results Collaborative work day:
| As close to a typical work day as we can get. We just want to
| see what it's like to work with each other. We'll
| assign you work based on a previous real-world project we
| performed This is a sample project, we're not using
| candidates for free or cheap labor. We will be
| available via Slack or Zoom throughout the day to talk
| through the work and assist you as needed.
|
| If at any step we don't feel like it's a good match, we'll
| let you know promptly. We ask that you do the same for us.
| pyaccount wrote:
| I am not religious but biblical principles and biblical
| values could be an extremely good thing for an employer to
| have.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Perhaps we have to look it up in the Bible?
|
| _> We exist to serve our customers, our employees, our
| partners, and our community in a way that brings them genuine
| benefit, honors Jesus Christ, and advances the Kingdom of
| God._
|
| Well, that's not what I expected from a software development
| website. And I can't speak for others, but this alone would
| be a reason I wouldn't even apply.
| handrous wrote:
| You see these sorts of companies sometimes, especially
| outside the coasts. It's kinda like plumbers (or whatever)
| with the ichthus symbol prominent in their logo. Sometimes
| they even find a way to work it into the name.
| rsyring wrote:
| I absolutely found a way to work it into our name. :)
|
| I don't hide my faith or the biblical foundations for my
| worldview, as my posts here on HN will show.
|
| But, I can say I've received way more discriminatory
| remarks and hassle because I don't hide those views than
| I've ever given out. I've also had people express a lot
| of surprise at the fact that I'm in software and have
| such a worldview. I don't want anyone to be surprised by
| it so I let it be known. If people think it's
| inappropriate or decide they don't want to work with us
| because of it, I can't help their attitude. But I'm not
| the one being biased.
| handrous wrote:
| > I absolutely found a way to work it into our name. :)
|
| Yeah, thought the "12" might be a bit of that, but didn't
| want to assume.
| rsyring wrote:
| It's even elaborated on at the bottom of:
| https://www.level12.io/about/
| logfromblammo wrote:
| I'd wager cash that the "12" in "Level 12" is a reference
| to apostleList.count() .
| rsyring wrote:
| How much cash? Feel free to send it my way. :)
|
| See the bottom of: https://www.level12.io/about/
| mywittyname wrote:
| Parent comment's reason is better, IMHO. Level12 isn't
| really much more biblical than Water25.
|
| Honestly I thought this is just another Level N
| technology company.
| shubb wrote:
| I guess it depends if they are doing consultancy for
| churches.
|
| Church IT is supprisingly complex these days. Apparently
| churches use all kinds of demographic and social media
| data to identify and contact people who are crisis and
| recruit them into their flock.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I assume it's doing what we all do... pushing the code,
| praying it works, and hoping to avoid being crucified.
| keithnz wrote:
| yeah, I saw that, that whole thing would be illegal in this
| country.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Sooner or later someone is going to get sued. Too many of the
| things tech companies are testing for are proxies for attributes
| of protected classes. Tech companies give lots of lip service to
| diversity but only certain kinds of diversity and certainly not
| diversity that covers ALL protected classes. Some company is
| going to get a large judgement against them at some point but I
| doubt there will be any change before then. The amount of the
| judgement, or any consent decree, will be minor compared to the
| reputational hit these companies will get once it is found out
| that their thin veneer of inclusion was only millimeters deep.
| Since almost all of them are doing it, once one gets caught,
| they'll all be in danger.
| [deleted]
| gruez wrote:
| >Sooner or later someone is going to get sued. Too many of the
| things tech companies are testing for are proxies for
| attributes of protected classes.
|
| IANAL, but my understanding is that discriminating is allowed
| if it's relevant for the job. Requiring programmers to deadlift
| 150b (which probably discriminates against women) would run
| afoul of anti-discrimination laws because it's not relevant to
| the job, but requiring that from construction workers is
| probably legal.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_occupational_qualifi...
| Animats wrote:
| _" For this study, researchers conducted technical interviews of
| 48 computer science undergraduates and graduate students."_
|
| Ah, the convenience sample problem.
| tehjoker wrote:
| For what it's worth, that sample would be semi-accurate for
| people trying to get their first job, though not mid-late
| career.
| ragle wrote:
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23848039
| me_im_counting wrote:
| I never had test anxiety growing up and didn't really empathize
| with why someone would (sympathized obviously). But solving a
| problem in FRONT of someone as they are evaluating me (rather
| than a normal collaboration) triggers a panic. The only thing
| that helped reduce the panic is repeated drills, which take a lot
| of time.
| WalterSear wrote:
| IMHO, you can't really drill for technical interviews. The
| landscape is way too large for one to be fresh on whatever they
| ask you to do.
| wombat-man wrote:
| learning some tips and tricks has made it all a lot less
| spooky. I hate that it's like this but it is kind of about
| that nowadays, for certain companies anyway. I guess they
| assume you have unlimited time to study, so if know enough it
| shouldn't be too hard. But if you are just walking in there
| cold as an experienced applicant, you can end up having a
| really bad time.
| WalterSear wrote:
| I have over a decade of programming experience. I've
| completed almost 10% of Leetcode's problem set. I've done
| dozens of technical interviews. I prep for days,
| specifically for every interview, and they invariably go
| about as bad as the first one.
| wombat-man wrote:
| I feel you man. I'd suggest Elements of Programming
| Interviews in your preferred language. It does a really
| good job in my opinion of walking you through a lot of
| common tricks. I'm not really grinding through a lot of
| problems but doing a problem wrong, and then reading a
| well written explanation of the solution is a lot better
| for me in terms of learning. The study guide picks a good
| selection of problems for you to optimize for time. Some
| of the mathy/low level problems are bullshit that nobody
| would ever actually ask though. I felt like I got a good
| run through of some of the data structures that I just
| don't typically use in Java, and how they can be
| extremely useful in a coding interview.
|
| LC problems are not always well written and a lot of
| times you just have to hope someone took the time to
| write out a good solution. A lot of times they just paste
| their code and expect you to get it.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| I can empathize. The only interviews where I think "huh,
| this went reasonably well" are basically online tests.
| Almost never when I interview in front of a person / live
| screen and do white boarding. The bad news is my chances
| of getting into FAANG are very slim. The good news there
| are tons of companies who aren't FAANG.
| WalterSear wrote:
| The only interviews I have a reasonable chance of passing
| are take home tests. I'm a good coder, not a performing
| monkey.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| Take homes are probably the best way to test actual
| coding abilities. I had a pretty good online coding test
| done by Microsoft actually, it was 2 hours of building an
| API; no trick questions, no big-o, just write a bunch of
| code. It wasn't easy but it felt as if they're actually
| testing what I do for a living. I passed it and it didn't
| go to the follow up - which would have probably been a
| shitty whiteboard interview but I'm not sure. Now that I
| think about it maybe I should have gone to that interview
| ...
| cloverich wrote:
| You can. I've worked at a few startups and participated in
| interviews, witnessing the variety of questions asked. For
| most companies its a limited pool of questions and well
| trodden ground.
| me_im_counting wrote:
| It's not drilling on the technical side. It's drilling the
| experience that produces anxiety (performing it to an
| interviewer).
| oneepic wrote:
| I disagree because:
|
| 1) you don't have to know everything, only the topics they
| happen to ask. You are rolling the dice, but part of the time
| you'll be lucky. Besides, after reviewing for a few months
| (also did 4 yr degree in CS) I felt really strong in the algo
| topics. That said, I started half of my recent Google
| interviews thinking "how the fuck do I solve this? is this
| where I fail?"
|
| 2) Aside from the topics, you can absolutely drill the
| process. Drill a basic flow like understand/clarify the
| question, do examples, mention a brute-force, etc. when you
| do LC problems.
| SomeCallMeTim wrote:
| And for 1)--a good interviewer won't actually mark you down
| for not knowing some fact, or not being able to think of
| some trick. I've passed interviews where I've just said,
| "Hey, I don't know [that particular thing]. How should it
| work?" or "I'd Google the exact algorithm for X; I'll
| pretend I wrote that and call it here..." or similar.
|
| Good interviewers want you to pass, and aren't just giving
| you a test of arbitrary programming trivia.
| WalterSear wrote:
| Technical interviews are about culling the incoming
| applicants on the assumption that passing many good hires
| is preferable to letting one bad hire through. So, IME,
| no matter how well intentioned an interviewer may be,
| they aren't ultimately looking for a reason to pass you -
| they are looking for any way to differentiate between
| candidates.
|
| Lip service is certainly paid to 'everyone has to look
| things up', and doing a quick search won't necessarily
| count against you, but, IME, the hesitation and doubt
| that caused you to look things up will. With so little
| material with which to evaluate a candidate, absolutely
| everything that doesn't impress them is going to count
| against you.
| josephg wrote:
| > passing many good hires is preferable to letting one
| bad hire through.
|
| This is certainly Google's philosophy, but our industry
| doesn't think with one mind on this.
|
| And as for having so little material - to me this is a
| sign of a badly designed interview. Almost everyone is
| weak in one area or another. If your interview only
| assesses candidates in one way (eg via a coding
| challenge, or based on a single whiteboard problem) then
| you are making a decision with insufficient signal.
| Multifaceted interviews are good interviews.
|
| Plenty of otherwise strong candidates are weak in at
| least one section of any assessment. And plenty of bad
| hires will still, for example, know trivia about data
| structures even though they don't actually know how to
| program. Making a hiring decision based on a single
| metric leaves way too much to chance.
|
| (Source: I've done over 400 technical interviews)
| mywittyname wrote:
| Sure you can:
|
| 1. HackerRank (or similar) challenges are pretty close to
| what you'd find in a lot of technical interviews.
|
| 2. Searching online for "<technology> interview questions"
| for a few of the technologies that you're likely going to be
| asked about. Make sure you have good answers for the
| questions that pop up a lot. This helps a lot with
| remembering Stuff You Should Know that kind of slipped your
| mind (ie., angular digest cycle) because you maybe haven't
| seen it in a bit.
|
| 3. Write up a summary of your previous accomplishments and be
| sure you can call them out on the spot.
|
| A lot of what the interviewer is looking for is confidence.
| And preparation begets confidence.
| WalterSear wrote:
| This is the conventional wisdom, and IME, it's minimally
| effective. I've followed this practice for years. I've
| completed almost 10% of leetcode's problem set.
|
| Interviewers should be looking for competence, not
| confidence.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Something to keep in mind is interviewers basically never
| receive any kind of training, and even experienced
| technical interviewers do it maybe once a week or so.
| These people are doing their best to gauge technical
| aptitude and culture fit from a one hour conversation.
|
| It's not easy either. If I mess up once while giving
| advice on a place where the candidate is stuck, I can
| really confuse the candidate. Plus the time cost of
| reviewing a person's resume to determine what questions
| are appropriate for them. Lastly, I can't be expected to
| know all the tech on someone's resume at a level that I
| can gauge their capabilities, I use other means to
| determine if what a COBOL person is telling me is
| accurate.
|
| So you have to kind of plan that interviewers take
| shortcuts (like judging confidence) and take advantage of
| that fact. If someone asks what are some benefits or
| drawbacks to a tech stack you use, have at the ready a
| good story about a shitty/hilarious/intersting experience
| you had while developing it. The experience doesn't need
| to be a 1-to-1 mapping either, it's a-okay to kind of
| nudge a question towards an answer you prepared.
|
| This is better advice than you're really appreciating. If
| you feel like you are doing this, but still am having
| trouble, it's likely that you need work in some other
| non-obvious aspect of interviewing. I highly suggest
| finding a coach or someone who can take you through mock
| interviews and help you find out exactly what you can do
| to improve your chances!
| moufestaphio wrote:
| Yeah I agree with this.
|
| If you drill enough of the Coding questions, they all start
| to run into similar buckets, and the way you approach them
| improves too. Buy a whiteboard off amazon, solve them legit
| out loud explaining what you're doing to yourself. You
| _will_ get better.
|
| The other stuff is great advice too, always try to have a
| summary (in your mind or on paper) of recent projects etc.
|
| And of course.. Doing interviews helps to :D
| lacker wrote:
| _For this study, researchers conducted technical interviews of 48
| computer science undergraduates and graduate students._
|
| So they weren't studying real interviews. They were studying fake
| interviews as performed by a bunch of PhD students at NC State.
| And it turns out those fake interviews weren't good at assessing
| software skills.
|
| This just doesn't seem like a meaningful study. Interviewing is a
| skill; you can't just assume that a random PhD student is just as
| good an interviewer as an experienced, professional software
| engineer. Heck, many PhD students won't be able to pass a typical
| tech interview themselves.
| curiousgal wrote:
| > _They were studying fake interviews_
|
| It's psychology research what did you expect.
| weathawi wrote:
| Therefore practice meditation :)
| decebalus1 wrote:
| Anecdotally, the best (by far) interview performances in my
| career where when I didn't actually care about the outcome. I
| guess fear is indeed the mind-killer, at least for me. That's why
| the absolute best time to switch jobs in when you don't really
| need to change jobs.
| tharne wrote:
| What's going on with "anxiety" lately? This went from something
| you heard about here and there 20-30 years ago, to something that
| everyone and their brother is feeling all the time.
|
| What changed?
| erellsworth wrote:
| The fact that you didn't hear about it much 20-30 years ago
| doesn't mean it wasn't just as common. Admitting to mental
| health problems is much more socially acceptable today than it
| was 30 years ago.
| satellite2 wrote:
| What's changed is basically an entire pan of medicine, the one
| dedicated to sleep emerged. Also, we now have a much deeper
| understanding of stress, or anxiety, its effect on sleep, on
| hormones, on the reproductive system, on rational decision
| making. We also have a better understanding of cortisol, the
| role it plays in increasing inflammation and all the problems
| associated with it. We also better understand how low level and
| punctual source of stress can also be beneficial for
| performances and focus, and how it is dose and duration
| dependant. Basically, we don't simply discard emotions as
| unrelated to the body anymore. We have a better and more
| integrated view of body and the mind and all that entails.
| jayd16 wrote:
| You're comparing, what, the booming 90s to now?
|
| That said, I don't think anyone ever thought interviews were
| anxiety free.
| taurath wrote:
| The pandemic has made most people a bit more aware, at least.
| The distractions people enjoyed were suddenly taken away, for
| at least over a year. That has heightened awareness, along with
| the need for self care.
|
| Even the idea of anxiety was extremely stigmatized, especially
| in the workplace, and still is but is now less so. What you're
| seeing is a growth of people talking about it as the stigma
| lessens.
| mikkelam wrote:
| Honestly I think we just started paying more attention to the
| subject. Anxiety is a completely natural survival mechanism:
| "was that a tiger in those bushes!?". It keeps us alive.
| danaris wrote:
| 5,000 years ago it kept us alive.
|
| Now it just adds unnecessary stress and impedes our
| functioning 99.8% of the time. We no longer live in a
| situation where a tiger lurking in the bushes is likely, but
| our brains haven't evolved to compensate for that.
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| I can't remember where I heard this but it makes sense --
| People who don't have enough anxiety are at the morgue.
| iab wrote:
| Economic uncertainty in a fundamentally unfair economic system
| on a planet that is literally degrading in front of our eyes,
| if I was to hazard a guess
| GDC7 wrote:
| It's the internet.
|
| The Internet is amazing!*
|
| *As long as there is a ban on discussing people , once you
| start discussing (and most importantly) advertising people on
| the internet , it's over.
|
| Endless comparison ensues and anxiety skyrockets for everybody.
|
| Humans were never made to be aware of being 1 unit in an 8B
| sample. The person sitting for an interview has high anxiety
| because they know they can be replaced easily
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Things could be better (less concern about items lower on
| Maslow's hierarchy allows one to worry about self-actualization
| and other items at the top), and it could also be worse
| (concern about the basic lower needs leads to anxiety). For
| engineers who are missing out on the boom times caused by the
| bubble, it might be a mix of both.
| handrous wrote:
| Shitloads of adults were on anti-anxiety meds (and anti-
| depressants, for that matter) 20 years ago. Plenty more self-
| medicated for those symptoms with alcohol or illegal drugs. One
| of the big shocks of my growing up was learning that, more or
| less, "everyone and their brother" in fact relied on mood- &
| perception-altering drugs, legal or otherwise, to get through
| the day.
|
| And they all still do (except that the weed and some of the
| psychedelics may be legal now). It may just be zeitgeisty, now.
|
| Then again, I'm not sure coverage of it is even greater now
| than it was in past decades. Future Shock was published in,
| what, the 70s? Or Affluenza? Bowling Alone's not new, though
| that treats of more than just anxiety. Direct associations
| between first The City and anxiety were so common they got
| really tropey in the first part of the 20th century, and later
| (starting in the 1940s and '50s) the suburban middle class and
| their (alienating, unfulfilling, and sometimes nearly or
| entirely useless, as in Graeber's _Bullshit Jobs_ , the core
| observations of which were made by others all the way back at
| the start of the modern postwar economy) office jobs got
| similar treatment, which has continued ever since.
|
| If there's a difference, I expect it's because people are using
| anxiety to cover more states of mind than it used to. It does
| seem to have become a blanket term for "mentally ill-at-ease,
| but _maybe_ not full-on mentally ill " in some usage.
|
| Or maybe it's just that Future Shock was right, in which case
| we'd expect that kind of thing to get worse over time, until
| something about the pace of change itself changes.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Postwar America was huge into self-medication. You watch a
| film like _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_ and characters are
| casually popping pills and swigging scotch every other scene.
| Before that, you had patent medicine shows and snake oil
| remedies and puritanical types inventing Graham crackers and
| corn flakes to promote temperance. The U.S. has always had a
| self-medicating, consumerist approach to health, for whatever
| reason.
| [deleted]
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Disclaimer: I haven't read TFA yet (will look at it later). But
| I've interviewed software people, detected anxiety sometimes, and
| made a mental note to not hold it against them. They're not
| interviewing for sales jobs, they are nerds, and it's fine for
| nerds to be shy introverts, especially around strangers.
|
| If you're interviewing someone like that, try to give them a
| little breathing space, and maybe even tell them that you are
| noticing the nervousness and that it is ok. If you're being
| interviewed, I think it is ok to say you are a little bit
| nervous, take a few deep breaths to calm yourself down, etc.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
|
| _Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills:
| study_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23848039 - July
| 2020 (1141 comments)
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| But if you can't communicate and think while under a bit of
| interview pressure, then you're not likely to be able to cope
| long-term in a development job. I don't think the way most
| companies interview is great. Particularly, I don't think
| whiteboarding is a decent use of anyone's time in a face to face
| meeting.
|
| At the same time, if I ask you a question and your eyes roll into
| the back of your head because you can't handle the pressure of
| coming up with an answer at a time where the result of getting it
| wrong is literally the status quo... then you probably aren't
| going to be the person I want in the long-run anyway. I'm hiring
| you to be an employee, not a cog.
| taurath wrote:
| > But if you can't communicate and think while under a bit of
| interview pressure, then you're not likely to be able to cope
| long-term in a development job.
|
| This may sound logical and like common sense, but it is flat
| out wrong. Pressure in interviews is not the same as pressure
| in a job. I've been the one to fix something in 5 minutes
| during a global outage with 10 people watching behind me, when
| the previous solution would have taken hours. I've been the
| lead on calls with 20 partner companies across 5 countries as
| the largest spike of traffic per year hits us. I can handle
| pressure.
|
| I've also had panic attacks in interviews. I've shut down
| completely. I've had my heart rate jump to 150. Not every time,
| but enough for interviewing to be a really big problem for me.
|
| Whats the difference? For me, it's the perception of conflict
| or adversary. Some interviewers LOVE to put it out, like
| they're some shining knight protecting their company from the
| slithering fake programmers. They're looking for reasons for
| you to fail. They're looking for whether you're a "cog", as you
| use the word, and more often than not when looking for that you
| find it. When I'm on a team who all has the same goal, I shine
| plenty bright. I would ask that you reevaluate your biases.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| It's not wrong in the slightest. There are multiple parts to
| performing at a development job, but one of the parts that
| you can least afford to screw up on is communication with
| members of your team. If you can't communicate effectively
| when nothing is actually at stake, then I would never trust
| you to communicate effectively when everything is on fire. A
| job interview is not an adversarial confrontation. It is an
| assessment of what you've done and how you communicate your
| ideas.
|
| You having an adversarial perception of a normal question and
| answer session says far more about you than it does the
| interviewer.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It sounds like you've had the good fortune of never running
| afoul of a harsh interviewer. I don't believe I've had
| either, but certainly stories abound. And I've definitely
| encountered interviewers who were checked out and seemed
| rudely unfocused on the interview.
|
| While interviews might not be inherently adversarial, they
| are at least inherently confrontational, there is a power
| asymmetry. One is being evaluated. The fail state of
| rejection is present and the other party is willing to use
| it against you if you fail their expectations. Whereas at
| most companies with non-toxic cultures, your coworkers do
| not consider doing that to you. As such, interviews are
| always inherently different social environments from day to
| day work.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| No, I've had the life experience of being a professional
| recruiter as well as a developer.
|
| There's no inherent power asymmetry in interviews outside
| of your own employer. They have a job to offer. You want
| the job they're offering. They either offer you the job
| or don't, you either accept the offer or don't. You are
| determining whether the employer is a fit for YOU and
| what YOU want out of your career just as much as they are
| deciding whether you are a fit for them. It takes two to
| agree. At the end of the day, you owe each other nothing
| but the courtesy one would normally have for someone you
| are about to spend an hour or more with. On either side
| of the desk, I interview for jobs much better than most
| because I always keep that in mind. Most people claim to
| understand that on a conceptual level but they don't
| actually process it.
|
| As the interviewer, I'm mostly interested in gauging the
| talent level of the individual and their interest in the
| problem domain that we are trying to solve for. As the
| interviewee, I understand that the worst anyone can do to
| me is waste my time because either our values don't
| align, the project isn't interesting, my skills aren't a
| fit, or there are simply better candidates out there.
| These are all okay.
|
| When I took my first job after being the sole developer
| at a company for a decade, it was going to be the first
| time I worked with a team of devs. The first time I
| worked with a version control system in a professional
| setting. The first time when I was not going to be the
| main point of contact for any flaws or failure in the
| system. The first time that I wasn't going to be the main
| designer of the system's components or front end. The
| first time I would ever work with Angular. I told them
| all of this.
|
| Know what got me the job?
|
| I could tell you every technical detail about everything
| I had ever done, but also fully admit where I was
| lacking. I left no grey area and offered to elaborate
| where necessary. Either I did something and was confident
| that I could reproduce it (or explain the business /
| design decisions behind it), or I had no on-the-job
| experience but expressed confidence that (a) I could
| learn, and (b) that I was enthusiastic about learning
| about the problem domain. And I got along with everybody
| I talked to because my aim was to be a part of a team and
| not some weird data processing oracle.
|
| Managers want a combination of talent, technical
| expertise, interest, and team fit. This shit isn't rocket
| science. You are totally within your rights to cancel an
| interview if someone tries to make you be a whiteboard
| monkey and regurgitate data structures that you will
| either never use or have widely-used open source
| libraries that are available, or if the interviewer is
| disrespectful to you, or if they aren't respectful of
| your time.
|
| As a matter of fact, I recommend it. But at the end of
| the day, if they don't hire you, you've lost nothing of
| value but the time it took to interview.
| bradneuberg wrote:
| Anecdotally, I'm very comfortable with public speaking and
| presenting complex ideas, code, and architectures to a room of
| colleagues. I've given conference keynotes to 1000s with no
| problems. However, high pressure technical whiteboards still
| cause my brain to freeze. So I think they are different parts
| of the brain, and doing well or not on a high pressure
| whiteboard doesn't correlate with how well that employee will
| do convincing and presenting complex ideas to coworkers (it's
| definitely not true in my own case, I know thats N=1, but its
| something).
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I think I already addressed the whiteboarding issue. I don't
| find it to be useful in any setting other than a VERY high
| level discussion about architecture.
| lanstin wrote:
| Yeah, put the things on the white-board that you will need
| to be reminded over the next several months while you
| execute the details of the design.
| josephg wrote:
| I disagree about this. I have a whiteboard at home just
| for programming work because it helps me think. When I
| find a problem difficult, I find it much easier to
| problem solve away from the computer. And I often prefer
| a whiteboard to paper for some reason.
| _robbywashere wrote:
| It's interesting to me that this type of comment always shows
| up with like minded articles and studies. It's always along the
| lines of "YOU CANT HANDLE THE PRESSURE"
| visarga wrote:
| Everyone's talking like they deserve the job and it's just
| the format that's causing anxiety, but in reality upwards of
| 90% of applicants don't measure up.
| josephg wrote:
| In their defence, anxiety does cause some applicants to
| fail. But the vast majority of applicants who apply to any
| technical role can't really program. It's obvious in these
| comment threads that lots of folks have never sat on the
| other side of an interview room.
|
| Performance anxiety is real though. One mark of a good
| interviewer is how well they can get a candidate to relax
| and perform at their best. I've done over 400 interviews
| and I still worry I don't quite have that skill down.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Because it's true. Job interviews aren't remotely as anxiety-
| inducing as a manager who wants to know why the widget you
| worked on blew up in production. If you can't answer basic
| questions about your background and experience, then you're
| not the sort of person I want to work with. I hire technical
| people with the expectation that they will one day either be
| able to fill my chair or exceed my abilities. If you're
| hiring a person who you would never want to work for, then
| you are hiring the wrong people. I guess the one caveat would
| be to hire someone directly out of school, since they would
| be less likely to have experienced that sort of direct
| pressure... but I expect an experienced employee to be able
| to answer questions with some sort of confidence.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| In real life you'll ask them why there's a bug on
| production - and he'll tell you wait 5 minutes I'm
| checking/reproducing the issue. It's very rare that you'll
| have to get an answer immediately - this isn't emergency
| medicine. We're only programmers.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| In real life there's still going to be pressure to come
| up with an answer regardless of how long that takes and
| how distasteful it might be. What I don't need is for
| someone who is completely risk and pressure-averse to
| have a meltdown because they feel that the answer to the
| question I ask is going to be unsatisfactory. I want to
| know what the correct assessment of the situation is so
| that I can make an informed decision going forward, not
| some glossed over bullshit that turns into a bigger
| problem down the road. People like that are their own
| worst enemies.
| taurath wrote:
| This comment is the personification of the mindset that
| makes interviews a hostile situation. You are not only
| extremely biased against some of the best coders I've ever
| worked with but actively harming the hiring process for
| your employer if you are involved at all.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| It isn't my fault that you have prejudged the person on
| the other side of the desk as hostile. That's on you.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Job pressure and interview pressure have almost nothing to
| do with each other besides that both phrases end in "
| pressure".
|
| You don't understand the problem, and are doubling down on
| the solution. Sadly common.
| lanstin wrote:
| I like to work with people that take a day and get the best
| solution, not the people that get an ok solution right
| away. To understand the essence of what is needed rather
| than the brute force answer. I also find a lot of people
| can function at that level when the environment is
| structured to reward deep thought and to help people calm
| themselves to the point they can think.
| acheron wrote:
| It's just hazing. "I had to do it, so you do too!"
|
| Fortunately not every company is like that. I'd suggest
| finding the good ones.
| fsloth wrote:
| "It's just hazing."
|
| I think you've found the core idea.
|
| Some profession include situations with actual stress and
| mortal danger. Doing good programming should be more like
| solving high school math problems in solitude than a high
| pressure social interaction.
|
| Or: if your development environment has high stress
| interaction get a consultant to settle the issue, you
| likely have multiple issues that need to be dealt with.
| bitwize wrote:
| Yeah, no shit. Today's "tech" firms are actually
| advertising/marketing firms. The ideal candidate, therefore,
| resembles the ideal marketroid: extraverted, outgoing, and super
| confident, with a "can-do" attitude toward everything.
|
| I've actually been passed over fot jobs because I wasn't
| confident enough. Well, stick me in a room full of MIT Ph.D.s who
| ask me to solve hard AI-related problems and what do you expect?
| Do you want to hire a programmer or Gilderoy fucking Lockhart?
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Its Bertram fucking Gilfoyle they want.
| bigyellow wrote:
| Can confirm: will easily pass over candidates that lack self-
| esteem and confidence, even if they possess strong technical
| backgrounds. Nobody cares that you can program in C, they just
| want to know if you're going to be a dick to work with and
| whether you're actually going to get shit done.
| buitreVirtual wrote:
| Interview anxiety does not mean lack of confidence or ability
| to get things done. It is an issue more related to social
| settings for many people who are otherwise enormously
| productive and smart. The point is that this interview style
| definitely misses lots of qualified individuals while it can
| also accept talkative people with outsized egos, which is
| also a problem down the road.
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