
Ask HN: Are there software jobs that don't require a technical interview? - abtinf
I&#x27;ve been looking around for new job opportunities, but in a slow and deliberate manner because I&#x27;m mostly okay with where I am.<p>Because I&#x27;m under no pressure to find a job quickly, I&#x27;ve come to realize something about the engineer job hunting process: I abhor technical programming interviews.<p>I hate the quizzes. I hate the variations on fizbuzz. I hate the gotcha algorithmic questions. The whole process is excruciating and demeaning.<p>I&#x27;m a veteran programmer who has written and deployed a mountain of code (backend, frontend, low level, high level, etc), led a number of teams, hired and mentored junior devs. I can, if desired, go into deep detail about any past projects I&#x27;ve worked on. I will happily chat about software and programming all day long.<p>I&#x27;ve talked to a number of friends about this and know that I&#x27;m not alone on this issue. Several have said they would engage in a new job search themselves, but don&#x27;t want to deal with the hassle of technical interviews.<p>Are there any companies out there that replace technical interviews with, say, a you-will-be-fired-after-three-months-for-failure-to-perform? Most companies already operate in this manner anyway, except with a 1 year timeline instead of 3 months.
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throwawaymsft
I've personally seen "senior devs" who literally couldn't program a for loop
in any language of their choice. Let's put it this way: would you hire someone
without a technical interview?

Most companies hire to minimize false positives, not false negatives. It's far
better to overlook a good candidate vs. fire a bad one. (The hassle, the
headache, litigation, project is delayed, etc.)

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akg_67
Go freelance. Clients don't give you technical quizzes to test your
qualifications. They care about whether you can deliver and have you delivered
before.

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kohanz
To be honest, the majority of interviews I've had for software jobs were non-
technical. Once I reached a certain level of experience, talking about past
work seemed to be enough for people to validate that I knew what I was talking
about. That's not to say that technical things were not discussed in the
interview, but it was more of a conversation, rather than a quiz.

That being said, most of these jobs were at engineering companies (e.g. device
companies that employed several types of engineers, software only being a
part). Not your Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. The few times that I have been
interviewed by pure software companies, that's when the quizzes happened. So
maybe there's a cultural element to it.

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jtchang
Feel free to post some contact information and what you are into tech wise.

I can tell you my interviewing style is over tea/chocolate/coffee and I prefer
to talk about a candidate's experience.

I've spoken with other startups who do hiring and it is the same.

What exactly do you consider a technical interview? Whiteboarding sucks. I
hate making people do it and I hate doing it myself. I've never had to make
someone whiteboard code out to assess their technical competency. Just really
open ended questions like:

    
    
      What do you like to code in?
      What have you made? What made it hard?
      Do you like XYZ tech? Have you played around with it?
    

Etc.

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ayers
I understand and can relate to your situation. I also dislike the gotcha
algorithmic questions.

However, I strongly believe that there should be some form of technical
element to the interview process. I have participated in a few interview
processes where a task was given to do in my own time which related to the
job. These were no more than a couple of hours and were very simple tasks. I
find this type of technical test much better than the algorithmic ones.
Examples of ones I know about; scraping a website for specific values,
creating a basic web proxy, rendering data into a chart on a webpage,
programmatically mapping out points on google maps.

I am currently recruiting for .NET developers and I get everyone to code up a
task that relates to the job. There are no gotchas or edge cases, it is just a
very simplified version of something that they will have to deal with in the
job.

I find this extremely useful as quick feed back into the style/competency of
the candidate and you can quite easily see where they are coming from. I also
use the result of the task as a discussion point during the on site interview
process. Having a concrete example to discuss has proven very useful as it
leaves no room for ambiguities or misinterpretation. I personally would be
very hesitant to join a company that had no step involving anything technical.

Regarding your "you-will-be-fired-after-three-months-for-failure-to-perform",
it is standard over here in the UK that you go through a probation period.
This can be anything from 3 months to 6 months and during that time either
party can end the employment with a shorter notice period. I am not sure where
you are based but at least in the UK you will find companies doing exactly
what you are describing.

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bjourne
If you are that good, it shouldn't be that hard for you to learn how to
perform in technical interviews. Personally, I'm not so fond of the shakey-
hands parts, or how you need to connect with the interviewer on irrelevant
topics "wow you like to surfing! I do too!" or smile and pretend you're best
pals, but I've learnt how to do it.

I.e it's just a skill that you should easily be able to acquire.

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Bahamut
You don't have to be fake in an interview - if I see that in an interview, it
is a warning sign, since it erodes trust in what the person is saying since I
don't believe in what the person has said.

My own approach to interviewing is generally being honest and respecting
disagreements/avoiding creating controversy & arguments (I will point out any
technical disagreements I have though).

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oftenwrong
I have had many interviews without a technical or problem-solving component. I
think you just need to keep looking. Try being up-front about it, and tell the
prospective employer that you would rather they dig into your past work than
force you to endure the typical interview routine.

Personally, if I am not challenged to demonstrate my skills during the
interview, I consider it a "red flag", potentially signifying low standards in
their hiring process. If they are not verifying that I'm capable, the
developers at the company might not be capable. It sounds like you are far
more experienced, however. In your case, it would make more sense for a
company to skip the technical quizzes based on the merit of your more
extensive portfolio.

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percept
Between the startup and big-org ends of the hiring spectrum, I've found the
latter to be far less demanding, at least when it comes to newer technologies.

(They have to be less discriminating to attract talent away from the "cool"
jobs, and they may lack the in-house capability to assess the very skills for
which they're hiring.)

Or as another poster suggested, try freelancing and/or starting your own
company.

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samfisher83
One of the interviews I had just had me write some code before hand and then
we talked about the code I had written during the interview. I kind of liked
that format. Basically whoever game up with best algorithm got the interview.
It saved everyone a lot of time and they gave you GC for just doing the
assignment.

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MalcolmDiggs
I've found that it varies based on how we (the candidate and the hiring
manager) crossed paths. If I (the candidate) approached them out of the blue
then I'm probably going to have to jump through some hoops like technical-
interviews and such. But if they approached me then that stuff rarely comes
up.

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fred_is_fred
I didn't do a technical at my last two jobs because I had previous work
experience with the hiring managers. I did have coffee with some of the guys
so they knew I wasn't a total moron.

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brd
I've had to deal with a technical quiz 2 times in the last ~9 years, one of
which was when I was applying as an intern.

I'm an SAP guy and the enterprise space pretty much hires exclusively off
prior experience and not on technical merit (for better or worse).

As an aside, the 2nd quiz was while applying as an expert in a (at the time)
very niche UI technology. The nature of the questions were such that
immediately after the call I got in touch with the recruiter and hiring
manager and told them I felt insulted by the triviality of the questions and
was no longer interested in the position. Consider that my small contribution
to ending this practice of asking technical gotcha's that have little bearing
on one's competence.

