{"id":883,"date":"2014-10-08T10:16:59","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T17:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=883"},"modified":"2014-10-08T10:16:59","modified_gmt":"2014-10-08T17:16:59","slug":"the-myths-of-tech-interviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/the-myths-of-tech-interviews\/","title":{"rendered":"The Myths of Tech Interviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently ran across this article<\/a> on nytimes.com from over a year ago. Here\u2019s the punch line (or at least one of them):<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and everyone who had done the interviews and what they scored the candidate, and how that person ultimately performed in their job. We found zero relationship. It\u2019s a complete random mess\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I expect (hope?) that the results aren\u2019t at all surprising. After almost 20 years at Microsoft and hundreds of interviews, it\u2019s exactly what I expected. Interviews, at best, are a guess at finding a good employee, but often serve the ego of the interviewer more than the needs of the company. The article makes note of that as well.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cOn the hiring side, we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don\u2019t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I wish more interviewers paid attention to statistics or articles (or their peers) and stopped asking horrible interview questions, and really, really <\/em>tried to see if they could come up with better approaches.<\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

Why Bother?<\/h4>\n

So \u2013 why do we do interviews if they don\u2019t work? Well, they do<\/em> work \u2013 hopefully at least as a method of making sure you don\u2019t hire a completely incapable person<\/em>. While it\u2019s hard to predict future performance based on an interview, I think they may be more effective at making sure you don\u2019t hire a complete loser \u2013 but even this approach has flaws, as I frequently see managers pass on promising candidates for (perhaps) the wrong reasons out of fear of making a \u201cbad hire\u201d.<\/p>\n

I do mostly \u201cas appropriate\u201d interviewer at Microsoft (this is the person on the interview loop who makes the ultimate hire \/ no hire decision on candidates based on previous interviews and their own questions). For college candidates or industry hires, one of the key questions I\u2019m looking to answer is, \u201cis this person worth investing 12-18 months of salary and benefits to see if they can cut it\u201d. A hire decision is really nothing more than an agreement for a long audition. If I say yes, I\u2019m making a (big) bet that the candidate will figure out how to be valuable within a year or so, and assume they will be \u201cmanaged out\u201d if not. I don\u2019t know the stats on my hire decisions, but while my heart says I\u2019m great, my head knows that I may be just throwing darts.<\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

What Makes a Good Tech Employee?<\/h4>\n

If I had a secret formula for what made people successful in tech jobs, I\u2019d share. But here\u2019s what I look for anyway:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Does the candidate like to learn? To me, knowing how to figure out how to do something <\/em>is way more interesting than knowing how to do it in the first place. In fact, the skills you know today will probably be obsolete in 3-5 years anyway, so you better be able to give me examples about how you love to learn new things. <\/li>\n
  2. Plays well with others \u2013 (good) software engineering is a collaborative process. I have no desire to hire people who want to sit in their office with the door closed all day while their worried team mates pass flat food under their door. Give me examples of solving problems with others.<\/li>\n
  3. Is the candidate smart? By \u201csmart\u201d, I don\u2019t mean you can solve puzzles or write some esoteric algorithm at my white board. I want to know if you can carry on an intelligent conversation and add value. I want to know your opinions and see how you back them up. Do you regurgitate crap from textbooks and twitter, or do you actually form your own ideas and thoughts?<\/li>\n
  4. If possible, I\u2019ll work with them on a real problem I\u2019m facing and evaluate a lot of the above simultaneously. It\u2019s a good method that I probably don\u2019t use often enough (but will make a mental note now to do this more).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The above isn\u2019t a perfect list (and leaves off the \u201ccan they do the job?\u201d question, but I think someone who can do the above can at least stay employed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I recently ran across this article on nytimes.com from over a year ago. Here\u2019s the punch line (or at least one of them): \u201cWe looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and everyone who had done the interviews and what they scored the candidate, and how that person ultimately performed in their job. We found…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}