

Perhaps Technical Interviews Suck Because Technical Interviewing Sucks - birken
http://danbirken.com/startups/2015/06/12/technical-interviews.html

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

~~~
fsk
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.

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

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BraveNewCurency
> 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
> 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.

