Interview Theater
Oh hey, it&#x27;s HN&#x27;s favorite subject!<p>There&#x27;s a lot of good here.<p>Do companies have bad interviews? Yes.
Is it because they ask stupid trivia questions, demonstrate stupid biases against races, genders, ages, and nervousness, or otherwise don&#x27;t have a rigorously meaningful process? Yes.
Is interviewing stressful? 100%, and every interviewer should be cognizant of and prepared for the intensity of that stress for some people.<p>But saying that software engineers shouldn&#x27;t have to code in an interview is always going to sound absurd to me.<p>&gt; <i>A live coding exercise often has little to do with what the candidate&#x27;s output is like on the job.</i><p>That&#x27;s not an argument against live coding exercises. It&#x27;s an argument against ones that aren&#x27;t representative of the scale of expected work given the available timeframe and the position&#x27;s responsibilities.<p>There&#x27;s a parted Red Sea of difference.<p>There isn&#x27;t to my knowledge any other way to demonstrate ability to perform that can be completed in an hour or less. That isn&#x27;t to say that there are no other ways to evaluate someone. Certainly one could completely restructure their business around zero-onboard few-hour contract jobs, but that&#x27;s really an untenable degree of accommodation if we&#x27;re looking for something that can be applied broadly. Is there yet another way? I don&#x27;t know. I can&#x27;t think of one, and the author doesn&#x27;t provide any useful insight.<p>Do you know what a senior engineer in the US gets to do after they&#x27;re done demonstrating competence though? They get to make a shit-ton of money compared to everyone else on the planet except for drug lords, investment bankers, and Dwayne &quot;The Rock&quot; Johnson. We&#x27;re talking Scrooge McDuck swimming in his money bin money compared to approximately 100% of all people on the planet. All they have to do is put on a t-shirt for an hour or two and show that they&#x27;re halfway decent at their profession.<p>Maybe that&#x27;s worth some performance anxiety for a few miserable fucking hours and then they can go back to tweeting or binge-watching Ted Lasso or whatever it is that stressed people do to unwind these days. Does that privilege people who are better at demonstrating themselves? Yes. That is always going to be the nature of demonstration. But if they fail, there are a thousand more tries ready and available right now. And if they can&#x27;t do better after a few...well...nobody wants to hire someone who doesn&#x27;t improve when given the same test over and over again.<p>&gt; <i>Why are you giving Senior Engineers coding interviews anyway?</i><p>Because most so-called engineers quite frankly really suck.<p>&gt; <i>Do you really think someone who has been holding increasingly more demanding jobs over the past decade or two was faking knowing Python the whole time?</i><p>Uh. Yes. I&#x27;ve seen way too many &quot;senior&quot; bombs, and this is definitely the reality. Many if not most people who call themselves software engineers are actually very bad at what they do ranging from being utterly incapable to just not caring about quality. If that&#x27;s not you, show it.<p>&gt; <i>If you say to me &quot;tell me about a time you dealt with an unusual networking problem and how you resolved it&quot; I&#x27;m going to tell you a way more detailed and interesting story about Dell Optiplex 2x0 boxes that all had the same MAC address when their Service Tag was cleared.</i><p>If you let me contact your previous&#x2F;current bosses _before_ the interview, then I&#x27;ll gladly let you tell me all the stories you want. Otherwise I think I need to be able to see how you perform. And, yes, that also includes seeing if&#x2F;how you perform with pressure.<p>Look, I&#x27;ll plan, architect, code, document, and mentor circles around 99% of my peers and also be the life of the workplace that everyone enjoys interacting with, but ask me for a story about something I did one time and I&#x27;m going to stare at you with an eyebrow raised for a few seconds before saying &quot;Sorry, I don&#x27;t remember or even care about what I was thinking 30 seconds ago let alone before that. Are you hiring someone who builds software or someone who tells anecdotes? Perhaps I can solve a problem for you.&quot; And if I a person thinks that they&#x27;d rather have a story than a demonstration, then that&#x27;s their mistake to make, and I hope they find someone who tells very good stories after the fact. Maybe I&#x27;ve just solved so many significant problems that none of them are memorable anymore. Maybe the thing that makes me so good at solving problems is that I reserve all of my neurons for solving and don&#x27;t waste neurons on remembering.<p>&gt; <i>Take-home quizzes are dramatically less anxiety-inducing for a lot of people (myself included).</i><p>Take-home quizzes also don&#x27;t show anything about how well you perform. If I build a take-home quiz that should take a reasonably competent person 30 minutes and you spend all night on it, or worse ask a friend for help, then what? How do I know? Honesty? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.<p>&gt; <i>Why bother asking a question that tests someone&#x27;s ability to retain information for 12-24 hours?</i><p>IMO that&#x27;s not consistent with the immediately following paragraph suggesting that you should ask for &quot;tell me about a time when&quot; stories. You either care that they retain information for some period of time or you don&#x27;t.