Perhaps Technical Interviews Suck Because Technical Interviewing Sucks

http://danbirken.com/startups/2015/06/12/technical-interviews.html

by birken • 11 years ago

20 9 11 years ago

dpweb• 11 years ago

Interviews only exist as a tactic in the goal to bring on valuable people. While it's surely important to bring on good people - and not bring on bad - this just seems to be one of those nebulous skills like 'leadership'. Everyone trying to 'nail it', and its not a skill you're going to get exactly right anyway. I'm tending towards - give up on trying to nail the optimal method of accessing talent.

You have to interview there's no substitute for having a conversation with someone. Then, hire someone as a contractor. You'll see how good they are on the job with a more limited investment, and hire them f/t later if they're good.

Also, I find these 'code for me now' sessions rather undignified - but its a world of young people, and young people are more likely to put up with demeaning worthless crap.

ThrustVectoring• 11 years ago

Interviews are also a great way to avoid getting blamed for a bad hire.

fsk3• 11 years ago

Rationally speaking, the only people who should prefer interviewing to other things are the people that benefit from hiring talented people, which primarily is equity holders of the company.

I've actually been burned by this one a couple of times. Some people on the interview team recommended against hiring me. That wasn't because they thought I was a bad programmer. Actually, they were concerned that I was too good of a programmer, and they didn't want the competition.

Feedback from hiring manager: "I thought you were great, but some people on my team had doubts. Therefore, no hire."

If the interviews are conducted one-on-one in private, nothing prevents the interviewer from falsely saying that you bombed the interview.

That's one reason "Only hire if everyone on the interview team says yes." is a bad idea. Some people will say no to good candidates, precisely because they don't want competition. Only someone with meaningful equity in the business wouldn't have that incentive.

eli_gottlieb• 11 years ago

Do you really want to work somewhere in which you function mainly as competition for your coworkers?

fsk3• 11 years ago

I haven't worked or interviewed at many places where management was competent enough to prevent that from happening.

Example: I was working somewhere as an employee. They had a contractor, who was probably billing 3x as much hourly, who wasn't as talented. He was the team lead, so he took every opportunity to trash my reputation. If his bosses realized I was more productive than him, he might lose his gravy train. There was nothing I could do. By the time I realized what was happening, all the management thought I was useless.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 11 years ago

If you're competing against your co-workers, you're doing it wrong.

fsk3• 11 years ago

If people are competing against their coworkers, management is doing it wrong.

BraveNewCurency• 11 years ago

Rationally speaking, the only people who should prefer interviewing to other things are the people that benefit from hiring talented people, which primarily is equity holders of the company.

Citation needed. Most people understand that "adding more people in their group" will lead to "less work per person", so they will benefit from the new hire. I also assume most people see the benefit in choosing their new co-worker, because letting the Boss choose is not in their interests. (I've actually had a boss tell me "I'm not going to take your needs into account because you may not be here down the road.". I made sure I wasn't.)

Some people will just really like interviewing, [..], but clearly they are in the minority given the complaints about technical interviews.

The reason people don't like interviews is simple: We're trying to figure out a skill (programming) by proxy (simple exercises and whiteboard sketching). Writing software takes hours or weeks to truly understand a problem enough to write really good code. In fact, sometimes I'm more productive alone with a piece of paper than in front of a computer. It's hard to "test" for that skill.

birken• 11 years ago

Most people understand that "adding more people in their group" will lead to "less work per person"

In my experience hiring new people doesn't mean less work per person, though it might allow for everybody to specialize a little bit more. At the end of the day companies hire more people so more overall work will be done, not so life is easier for existing employees.

letting the Boss choose is not in their interests

But it hopefully is in the company's interests, which in a perfect world are aligned with yours. And if your interests are not aligned with the company, why should you get to help in hiring decisions?

If you are a valuable employee, the boss will want to keep you happy and not hire anybody who would jeopardize that. The boss wants to hire talented people so the team accomplishes more. In some perverse scenarios, the boss will make bad decisions, but any random employee could make those bad decisions as well (and if your boss is making bad decisions, you should leave anyways).

At least if the boss is making the decisions, you can spend your time coding instead of interviewing. But as stated, if interviewing is a skill that somebody values and appreciates, I think by all means they should find a way to get involved and help the company do it.

Perhaps Technical Interviews Suck Because Technical Interviewing Sucks

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