
Why You Didn't Get the Job - fecak
http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/06/20/why-you-didnt-get-the-job/
======
ChuckMcM
This is pure awesomeness. I've rejected people for all of those reasons but
haven't ever put them together so succinctly.

The one that can really swing my vote one way or another is the lack of
passion. To be clear you are probably passionate about _something_ , and I
don't mean "getting paid to work here." For example when I was with Google
(and even earlier at Sun) I interviewed candidates who were passionate about
wanting to work at the company but were not passionate about any thing in
particular the company was doing. Their passion was 'to be employed by
<company X>' and I would ask them "Ok, so lets say we hire you and you've
achieved your goal, now what are you hoping to achieve?" only to get crickets.
That is always hard to get past.

~~~
fecak
Thanks for reading. I've received many of these responses lately on some job
candidates and thought there was some value in compiling them for engineers
that may be interviewing. I could certainly see where candidates might get
hung up on working for a particular employer without necessarily being as
passionate for their role there. I don't see that too often as I tend to
recruit for smaller software firms, but I'm not at all surprised that you
would see that at Google, Sun, Apple, etc.

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geebee
Interesting part about the "fanboy" complex, where programmers insist on
working with specific technologies.

Unfortunately, some segments of the recruiting industry do encourage this
behavior. Once a programming language or framework is established, it can be
difficult to get a job without direct experience. There's a short, narrow
window of opportunity when a technology first appears where nobody has much
experience and people can learn on the job, and that's the magic moment to
gain experience. Queue the stampede. For instance, when EJB hit, a lot of Java
devs thought that if they didn't gain experience with this new technology
quickly, they'd be shut out. And I did start to see job postings that
specifically required EJB experience, not just general java experience.

I get the feeling that the industry has moved away somewhat from this type of
skills matching, but hacker news can give you a distorted view on how things
work. Lack of experience with a specific technology is less likely to hurt you
here than with a consulting/body shop attempting to put square pegs in square
holes. But even this article recommends that you gain deep experience in a
technology and avoid becoming a "jack of all trades" (while at the same time
advising against being a fanboy for a specific technology). This isn't
necessarily inconsistent - there is a meaningful difference between being a
fanboy to the exclusion of all else and being an expert with depth in a
particular technology, but it can be a tight line to walk.

~~~
fecak
Well said, and I could claim some guilt in years past about jumping on the
next big thing and encouraging my network to learn what seemed to be on the
horizon. I still keep track of trends and will mention them to candidates, but
I now try to tell engineers (particularly younger ones) that they should try
to experience several languages and tools to become better at the overall
craft. Deep engineering experience seems to be acquired by seeing variety.

I think the fanboy comment would be attributed to someone today walking into
an interview and saying they 'only want to work in (specific language)', which
would be a turnoff to most companies. Having passion for a technology is good
and engineers will always have preferences, but being willing to help out
where you can will have greater value.

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at-fates-hands
What a great read. I've recently run the gauntlet on interviewing and I'm
acutely aware of all of these. I only have one issue which is about the
section on "Candidate showed a lack of passion".

I'm completely passionate about development. I do freelance work, I build
stuff outside of my 9-5 job, I go to conferences and meet-ups locally. But I
know developers who are much better JavaScript and Ruby guys than me. They
have more experience, but don't do nearly the same amount of stuff outside of
work that I do. Does that "lack of passion" about the industry and their
profession make them a less worthy candidate than myself?

~~~
eshvk
Yeah, I was uncomfortable with that too. There are two sets of people I know:
Folks of the kind that you mentioned who are incredibly good programmers but
who have other interests outside life. In fact one of the smartest coworkers I
knew spent half his time at work and the other half time in a band and he was
extremely productive. Another group are the people who have a personality
which doesn't exude visible signals for passion: They probably never hang out
at meetup groups or conferences, but they quietly hack away in their own time
without tweeting about it or whatever. From a macro perspective they are
"passionate" for sure but are susceptible to false negatives especially in the
highly noisy interview setup.

~~~
fecak
A lot has been written about passion lately, and even another recent blog post
of mine is relevant ([http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/04/17/how-employers-
measure-...](http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/04/17/how-employers-measure-
passion-in-software-engineering-candidates-and-how-to-express-your-passion-in-
resumes-and-interviews/)). I don't think passion has to be demonstrated by
'only' doing coding 24 hours a day, or going to meetups every day. I know very
good technologists who don't attend meetups or hackathons, but you can tell in
how they talk about technology that they have passion. It's hard to quantify,
but I think for the most part good companies tend to get it right more often
than not.

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jwegan
Another one to add is personality. Generally at the end of the interview there
are two questions I have to answer:

1) Can the candidate do the job?

2) Can I work 8-10 hours a day, 5 days a week, under stressful situations with
this person?

I've had candidates just rip apart their past co-workers and previous
companies. Sure you might have some gripes with how things were done at your
previous company, but make sure you don't end up portraying yourself as
someone that is difficult to get along with.

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bitdiffusion
Not sure where this one fits in (passion? commitment?) but having a candidate
mention that they "don't do overtime... ever" half-way through an interview
when nothing has been mentioned about over-time is a serious turn-off.

Sure - people have families and not everyone is geared up for 18-hour work
days - but sometimes the sky is falling and companies need an employee that
isn't going to disappear out the door at 5:01 PM when the place is burning
with a "well that's me for today! good luck guys!"

~~~
fecak
If a candidate says they are 'never' willing to work overtime, they are
probably in the wrong business. I can't say I've ever had someone tell me
never. Most engineers understand that there are going to be at least some
support or production situations that need to be addressed beyond standard biz
hours. I wouldn't say that is passion or commitment - having some expectation
of at least occasional overtime is probably just a minimum requirement.

~~~
alinajaf
Just to clarify, if someone stayed late to fix something on Tuesday and then
clocked off early on Wednesday in lieu, would that count as overtime in your
definition?

~~~
fecak
It would in mine.

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Killswitch
What the heck is going on in that top image?

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kenrikm
Interesting read, seems to nail the main points really well.

P.S Why is the Wordpress stament at the top in Ruby?

~~~
fecak
Thanks. Would you rather see it in something else?

~~~
notJim
I would rather it was a logo. Currently, it comes off as kind of precious. It
was actually quite distracting. I came to your blog to read an article, and
found myself presented with this bit of text, which I initially mistook for
the beginning of the article.

~~~
fecak
I think it will be a logo at some point, this site and my company site are
rather new and works in progress. I sincerely appreciate the feedback.

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gallerytungsten
An overly large sense of entitlement and lack of passion are the two biggest
red flags for me. Someone with a great attitude but lack of skills can be
trained; someone with a bad attitude can't be fixed (at least not by the
hiring organization).

------
alinajaf
Great article, though I do some of these things and have never really had
trouble securing work, some examples:

 _Candidate has wide technical breadth but little depth_ and related: _not
uncommon, particularly for folks that have perhaps bounced from job to job a
little too much_

I think this describes me, though I'm not sure how to define technical depth
here. The only benefits I can see (technically) from staying at a company for
more than a year or so would be greater domain knowledge and perhaps a greater
understanding of the long-term implications of architectural decisions.

As for technical depth in terms of skill, IME I've found that job-hopping has
dramatically increased the speed at which I've been able to gain expertise.
For example, I've worked at some places where, for cultural reasons, there's
no call to do fat-client javascript applications, with more of a focus on
server-side technologies like stored procedures. Conversely, where the front-
end stuff was more important, I got much better at organizing large javascript
codebases and creating web services to interact with them. Had I worked at
only one or the other, I would have lacked technical depth in the area I was
missing out on.

 _Candidate displayed a superiority complex or sense of entitlement_ -

Guilty as charged! Unless I'm being hired as a consultant, I generally tend to
wrap-up interviews when I realize the technical staff I'd be reporting to
don't have as much technical ability as I do (for my own, entirely subjective
measure of technical ability). Also, I don't work with PHP, Java or anything
related to Microsoft.

I'll also disqualify companies where I feel like they have bad process, or if
there's any social weirdness in the interview (I've experienced everything
from off-the-cuff anti-Semitism to the interviewers shouting at each other). I
don't mind a flexible work schedule, i.e. I work late on a Tuesday and then I
go home early on a Wednesday, but overtime without pay is not an option.

 _Candidate talked more about the accomplishments of co-workers_ -

Programming of any significance is a team sport. Sometimes a potential hirer
will ask "Do you have any experience with problem X?" and my answer is often
"Yes, alongside other developers" or "Not directly, but I was involved in
discussions about X when we were dealing with it at #{company_name}" or even
"No, but I was talking about X with #{someone} at #{some_tech_meetup} and he
said they were trying #{some_solution} which sounded like a sensible strategy.
I think it's probably better than #{other_solution} because it means that
#{benefit_of_first_solution}".

As long as I discussed some of the tradeoffs of various options and managed to
adequately demonstrate my understanding of the technology, I think the
interviewers were happy. I feel somewhat uncomfortable taking _full_
responsibility for achievements at any company I work at, because in practice
it involves mulling over ideas, discussing pros and cons and coming to a
solution together.

~~~
fecak
Good points. Depth is hard to measure, but generally I find that clients will
ask a question about a specific programming topic and start off basic. When
the candidate gets that right, they go a little deeper with the second
question and the candidate fails. It's like being able to name all the
baseball teams but none of the players - that would be breadth but not depth.
You might come across as a baseball fan initially, but not on further review.

RE: entitlement - I don't think what you are describing is a superiority
complex as much as coming to a realization that you are more senior than the
person - no complex, just a fact I'd say. Companies that have bad process
should be off limits for you as well, I don't think that is entitlement but
rather some basic expectations. Not being willing to work at all with PHP,
Java or MS could be perceived as entitled if everyone else has to dive in on
those from time to time.

Agreed with your ideas re: co-workers. The key being that you demonstrate the
understanding. It's not so much about claiming responsibility as it is about
being curious about your surroundings and interested in things beyond your
individual contribution to the project.

~~~
alinajaf
> Depth is hard to measure, but generally I find that clients will ask a
> question about a specific programming topic and start off basic. When the
> candidate gets that right, they go a little deeper with the second question
> and the candidate fails.

My experience bears this out. In one of the best interviews I had the
interviewer essentially picked items off my CV and asked me more and more
about them until I was forced to say "I don't know". This was supposedly
deliberate (i.e. they wanted to see a) how much knowledge I actually had and
b) what I would do at the limits of it). I came away from that interview with
no idea of how well I did, but I got the job!

> Not being willing to work at all with PHP, Java or MS could be perceived as
> entitled if everyone else has to dive in on those from time to time.

In a tougher market I might be singing a different tune, but at the moment
there's just so much work out there that I think the average developer can
afford to be a little picky, or entitled as it were. Not saying it's right,
it's just what it is.

~~~
fecak
I don't disagree, it is currently a seller's market in most places if you are
skilled.

------
timaelliott
Great article but I have to wonder.. is it actually relevant today? With the
huge demand for engineers and the utter lack of even somewhat qualified
engineers, I wonder if people actually are still having a tough time landing a
job?

~~~
pyre
Whenever I hear/read these comments, my first thought is always that the
speaker/poster is from The Valley, and assumes that every place is like The
Valley (or that everyone with technical skills wants -- or can -- move to The
Valley). In other words, "The Valley" isn't the answer to life, the universe
and everything.

[Also, there can't be that high of a demand for engineers, because I've been
denied jobs for the most trivial of reasons. I was denied a job once for not
being able to answer a Python trivia question about something that took me 5
minutes to learn from the Python documentation.]

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jmomarty
amazing!

