
Stuff I've Messed Up While Interviewing - luu
http://blog.ellenchisa.com/2014/04/13/stuff-ive-screwed-up-while-interviewing/
======
shalmanese
Holy hell, just reading that made me feel sympathetic anxiousness. Don't do
the things she's suggesting, it's a short walk to a lifetime of stress,
anxiety and being underappreciated for your work.

The problem is that the OP is fundamentally approaching the interview process
as a role in which she must please the interviewer in order to be granted the
prize of a job. All of her advice is to prepare better and be more on your
game so that the other person might perhaps like you more. Coming in with this
mindset automatically puts you on a back footing and makes everything more
difficult.

Instead, focus on flipping the status game around. When you're with the
interviewer, you're with a peer. Talk to them as if you're talking to a
friend, not as if you're in a high pressure, life or death situation. Take the
VC interview, for example. Imagine if you're catching up with your best friend
from college and they ask you if you've made any friends in NYC yet. Do you
freeze up and start blabbering incoherently? No, you laugh about it and bitch
about how tough it is and ask them if they have any advice or whatever it is
that you would do. Approaching it this way changes the entire tenor of the
interview process.

This is where unskilled and unaware of it genuinely comes in handy. People who
are just bad enough that they have no idea how they compare easily sail
through interviews since they assume they're above average while genuinely
talented people spend so much time comparing themselves to others they get
wracked by insecurity.

I know this is something easier said than done and that some people in
particular find it especially challenging. So is learning Javascript or
Photoshop, yet we don't complain when a job requires us to know them to be
hired. Learning social skills is as equally important to your career as
technical skills so just nut up and do it.

~~~
jghn
It's well and good to say this, and this is always my tactic anyways (although
it's also how I naturally interact in any meeting).

However, that only gets you so far. I have a dirty little secret, I'm really
bad at a lot of the types of whiteboard questions which get asked and while i
have a good natural intuition on things like big O that intuition doesn't
translate well into actual words.

So instead I end up in a situation where for instance I'm told by my boss that
I could easily/quickly get a job most anywhere I wanted and yet fearful that
I'd get turned away from Bob's CRUDapp shop. It is what it is and I realize
these are the entry bars that our industry uses & I don't complain about it,
but there's more to the equation than simply owning the room.

~~~
thoman23
Interesting. I wouldn't think you would need a "natural intuition" for big O.
You just need to know what it is and how to determine it. It would be like
having a "natural intuition" for long division.

~~~
taeric
Big O is, in some senses, about giving a natural intuition for reasoning with
equations. As Knuth says, "it significantly simplifies calculations because it
allows us to be sloppy."[1]

So, having a natural intuition for it could be a way of saying that one has a
natural intuition for equations, in general.

[1] [https://micromath.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/donald-knuth-
calc...](https://micromath.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/donald-knuth-calculus-via-
o-notation/)

~~~
jghn
"one has a natural intuition for equations, in general"

Well, that's also true and I also have the same problem.

What I'm really trying to capture is that there are a lot of things which I
"get" in some fuzzy way but I have difficulty verbalizing it, even in my head.
When I do manage to verbalize things, it often comes out sounding very non-
academic. But what happens is that coworkers end up thinking I _really_ know
these things well, as long as I don't open my mouth much (and when I do, they
think I'm just having a brain fart)

------
chrisbennet
Re: "Do you have any questions?"

A few years ago I started asking the interviewer this question:

"I'm always looking to learn new things. Given what you've seen of my resume',
what new things could I learn here?"

I sincerely wanted/want to know this but I discovered that there was an
unintended side benefit: In response to this question, the interviewer often
tries to "sell" you on the company which changes the dynamic. Instead of you
trying to please the _interviewer_ , the interviewer is now trying to please
_you_ instead - or at least it seemed that way to me.

~~~
qzcx
I also like the question "Now that you've interviewed me and seen my
abilities, how do you feel my working here will impact the team/company? What
will I help out the most with?" I found it to be an effective question at
turning it around, but it also makes them think about just what I could
accomplish for them. It gives me a good gage of how well I did before I even
leave the interview.

~~~
CaveTech
I feel that question is far too upfront for an interview, definitely an
initial interview anyways. You're not asking where they think you could fit,
you've phrased it as _where do I fit?_. It's an interview, not a job offer.

~~~
qzcx
This wouldn't happen in a phone screen. This is for the on-site interview
after I've already gotten a positive feel for it.

Maybe I didn't word it perfectly, but it is partially out of a desire to know
how they think I would benefit the company. Am I just another redundant cog in
the machine, or am I really going to play a key role? I guess it is a good
point to still make it in hypothetical language.

------
hessenwolf
Things I have screwed up:

1\. No ability to do mental arithmetic whatsoever.

2\. No ability to write standard template library-based C++ code from memory,
except maybe cout and cin.

3\. Being late. (3 times at least)

4\. Being in a different country and forgetting about it.

5\. Trying to sell myself because that is what I was told to do and coming
across as unforgiveably arrogant. (a difficult balance)

6\. When asked about if I minded the data-cleaning work, which could be
boring, I joked that if I was worried about being bored I would have chosen a
different career. Maybe this isn't even a joke. Either way, highly offended
interviewer.

7\. Couldn't really speak the language.

8\. When interviewing for a position as a bartender, said I could pour beer.
Then proceeded to spray the customers with my attempt when I was asked to
prove it. (I was young) However, the bar owner then let me work for free as a
trainee for the night, and I got the next job.

------
pja
The author seems to beat herself up a lot over failings that I don’t think
were her fault. Sure, the "do you have any questions?" foul-up is a huge own-
goal, but some of the others?

Eg, " _I wanted to talk about Gmail (I used it daily) but the interviewer
didn’t want to. Instead, we opted to talk about Google Docs. Unfortunately,
the interviewer had been the Google Docs PM, and I’d only used it at a surface
level. Every suggestion I made turned out to already be in the Product.
Whoops._ "

To me, this has the smell of the "know it all" interviewer who is more
interested in proving their superiority over the candidate than actually
conducting a decent interview. Of _course_ the interviewer wanted to stick to
discussing the product they were the PM on, how else would they be able to
smugly call out the interviewee on their (perfectly reasonable) suggestions?

~~~
kethinov
I recently completed five (yes, five) interviews with Stack Exchange and had
to give the "no" answer to "do you have any questions?" on the fifth
interview. After five interviews, I pretty much had all my questions answered.
Seemed like a valid answer to me in that context.

I was declined at interview #5, after passing the previous four. Not sure how
much that question played a role. It was also the weakest of my technical
interviews. I was surprised to get hit with more programming questions after
having passed so many other technical interviews with them.

After 5 interviews which dragged out for almost two months that was super
disappointing though. It was probably the last interview I needed to pass.
It's like being knocked out of the race with a blue shell in the last 20
seconds in Mario Kart.

~~~
colefichter
Wow, I just went through the exact same thing (except it took 5 months!). I
had 5 interviews (1 non-technical) which went really well, then a sixth, and
final, technical interview with the VP of Engineering in which he threw at me
a math puzzle that I had never seen before. Of course it's in pseudocode in a
Google Doc, so it's basically sink or swim.

I did OK, but only OK on it. His comment when we ran short of time was "Yeah,
I think with a little debugging, that solution would probably work" but then
he passed.

Perhaps it's just my bruised ego, but I think he made a bad decision. Here he
is with 5 members of his own team saying that I'd be a great fit, but he
basically selects for people who have encountered a puzzle with very little
relation to the actual work involved in the role. He may as well have
evaluated me as a developer on my ability to prepare a chocolate souffle in 30
minutes. It would have been roughly as representative of my skill set.

~~~
kethinov
Every detail you just described exactly mirrors my experience. The VP of
engineering, the math puzzle I hadn't seen before, trying to solve it in a
Google doc rather than with code I could compile. All of it.

I did end up solving it, but I wasn't happy with the solution and neither was
he, with good reason of course, but it was one of those problems I easily
could have solved if given the proper time to work on it rather than digitally
whiteboarding it for 20 minutes in a high pressure situation. A quick and
dirty solution is all you should expect from working on a never before seen
problem in 20 minutes on paper without a compiler.

I came away feeling as though their process was more broken than my
performance. Doubtless, I could have done better. But it just felt so strange
to be washed out after four other engineers thought I was qualified.

~~~
x0x0
The high pressure situation makes things hard. In a recent interview, I turned

    
    
       P(A and B and C) = P(A) + P(B|A) + P(C|AB)
    

rather than the product of the probabilities just because I was stressed, then
got a nonsensical answer. Fortunately the interviewer just asked me to
reconsider that line, but it was not a mistake I would normally make.

------
Sir_Substance
I have found myself wishing a lot over the last year or so that interviewing
was less of an art and more of a science.

The writer talks about being quizzed on a google product she had only
superficially used. She recommends that people do their homework more, but
honestly, even a dedicated googlophile would struggle to have tried every
google product in depth. She was unlucky that they asked about that specific
product.

Honestly, there is a lot more luck in the interview process than makes me
comfortable. The difference between getting the job vs losing it can be that
the interviewer chose to ask you about smart pointers rather than heap
allocation, and that's galling when the reality of the job is that you're
going to spend half your time moving text boxes by two pixels and changing log
formats to suit the new Unified Log Structure your sysadmins have dreamed up.

~~~
ArekDymalski
> interviewing was less of an art and more of a science

I'd extend your wish to "Whole recruitment process should be less of an art
and more of a science". The problem is that even the properly conducted
interview using established, good practices (like competence based/behavioral
interview) can give you max. 50% accuracy in assessing the competencies. What
means that additional methods are absolutely necessary.

But even the most accurate methods will lead to wrong decisions when companies
don't have precisely and adequately defined what competencies are actually
required to perform well in a given position.

And from my experience this is the core problem. People debate over
questions/fizz-buzz/puzzles/whiteboard/whatever but usually do not invest
enough time to determine what would they like to measure with these methods.

~~~
lolo_
I've given a lot of interviews (>100) and while I totally accept it's a best
guest and imperfect, I find that you get more out of fizzbuzz and the like
than meets the eye.

Firstly, I certainly agree unnecessary algo questions for a job that doesn't
involve algorithmic problem solving on a day-to-day is silly and leads to
false negatives.

But the simpler problems give you more than just the basic 'can you code' test
- it gives you an insight their into thought process.

For example, seeing how somebody progresses from:-

    
    
       for(var i = 1; i <= 100; i++) {
           if (i % 3 == 0)
               console.log('fizz');
           else if (i % 5 == 0)
               console.log('buzz');
           // ah hm both % 3 and %5...
        }
    

To:-

    
    
       for(var i = 1; i <= 100; i++) {
           if (i % 3 == 0 && i % 5 == 0)
               console.log('fizzbuzz');
           else if (i % 3 == 0)
               console.log('fizz');
           else if (i % 5 == 0)
               console.log('buzz');
           ...
        }
    

And dealing with the fact they have a mistake that needs fixing is always
interesting to observe, and gives you insight into how they approach problems.

It seems so incredibly trivial and irrelevant at first hand but shows you a
lot (assuming they've not seen it before.) I've been _really_ surprised by
this.

I suspect the idea of there being a science of this is a bit of a mistake -
there's plenty of stuff that involves so many factors that it's really hard to
know the really ideal approach. A quick look at the actual state of software
engineering studies (30 undergrad students != all programmers) or e.g.
macroeconomics should give you pause.

Certainly loads of scope for improvement though, I agree wholeheartedly!

~~~
frownie
I concur. When hiring with these kinds of small problems, you actually see a
_lot_. First, in my case, it sorts programmers from not-programmers (it's in
the 50% ballpark). Then with a problem a bit harder, it helps sort
"programmer-in-the-guts" from "programmer-for-a-job". At the end, I've removed
90% of the candidates and I'm left with average to very good programmers.

Moreover, leaving people to do these little tests in the team and proposing
them to ask questions whenever they want, plus asking them to explain their
solutions helps a lot in seeing the social skill I need (communication,
openness...)

Of course, it's not 100% safe, but I'd say it's a good heuristic :-)

~~~
lolo_
It's interesting to hear that other people have had similar experiences :) I
was also surprised as to what degree you can get an insight into social skills
just from interacting with people during the interview.

------
edw519
Of all the things I've ever tried in order to do well in interviews, one of
them trumps all of the others:

I am interviewing them.

That's it. It's that simple. The sooner we understand that every interview is
a _2 way interview_ and that we are interviewing them just as much as they are
interviewing us, the sooner we can adopt the right mental attitude the make
the rest of the bullshit details melt away.

I even take it a step further: it's much more important the I make the right
choice than they do. I am giving them my time, which I can never get back.
They are giving me their money, which they have plenty of and can always get
more.

Interview them. Be nice. Have a nice 2 way dialogue. And never forget: it's
your party, not theirs.

If it doesn't lead anywhere, no problem. There are plenty more of them, but
only one of you.

Aside: More thoughts in Chapter 3 here:
[http://static.v25media.com/edw519_mod.html](http://static.v25media.com/edw519_mod.html)

~~~
e40
_I am interviewing them._

I can't tell you how many times I've interviewed someone and they never asked
me a single question. Even if they seemed good, I always put them into the
reject pile. Not a single question? Wow.

~~~
odonnellryan
I don't ask questions if I lose interest during the interview process.

~~~
jghn
I encourage our candidates to ask questions and while I won't explicitly hold
it against them (I find many people are too afraid of the power dynamic) if
they don't it certainly helps them if they have a rich conversation instead of
just blankly answering my own questions.

As an interviewee I try to ask any questions which come up throughout the
process, I don't wait for them to ask me. This sometimes annoys interviewers,
but that's their problem.

However, what I vehemently disagree with is that someone needs to have a
clever answer to "do you have any questions for us?". This is usually thrown
in the last few minutes of an interview and frankly it calls for a canned
question which means by the 10th person I've talked to I'm tired of hearing
the answer(s).

~~~
e40
_However, what I vehemently disagree with is that someone needs to have a
clever answer to "do you have any questions for us?"_

I'm not looking for clever, I'm looking for interest.

~~~
Infinitesimus
> I'm not looking for clever, I'm looking for interest.

Not saying this is true of course, but have you considered that some of those
times might be that you as the interviewer were unable to pique their interest
in what you do? It is a two way street, after all.

------
raverbashing
This reminds me that every single time Google recruiters tried to reach me
after I interviewed (and got rejected) there they just stopped responding me
after I got back to them

I find this _extremely rude behaviour_ and managed to make my will of ever
interviewing back to Google plummet to zero (that and the stories I've heard)

Also, yes, people screw up (me inclusive), get passed, such is life, but
really, people should avoid alienating their candidates, and this seems to
happen more often than not.

~~~
throwaway223344
What I also find strange (rude?) if an application process requires a bit more
effort from the applicant than just sending a CV and the other side does not
even care about writing back a single 'No thanks'. Mapbox.com has been looking
for engineers last month and you had to send them a C++ code solving some kind
of pathfinding problem -- not a huge thing but still takes at least a couple
of hours to code. So you invest 3-5 hours and then they don't have 30 seconds
to inform you that you're rejected. Quite sad.

------
pgl
_" Do you have any questions?"_

I've come up with a load that I like to ask. Some of them are naturally
answered during an interview process anyway, but generally there are at least
a few left:

TEAM:

* How big is the team I would be working with?

* Do team members socialise out of hours?

* What is the average age of team members?

* How long has the longest member of the team been there?

* What language is spoken in the team - both socially and for business reasons?

* Does the company have a "no arseholes" rule (or "no brilliant jerks")?

THE WORK:

* What kind of projects would I be working on?

* What software development methodology do you use?

* Does the company release any software as open source?

COMPANY:

* How old is the company?

* Is the company constantly recruiting, or has it recently started hiring more people?

* How would I progress in the company? What opportunities for promotion exist?

COMPENSATION:

* What kind of salary range are you offering for this position? (I realise that it depends on skill and experience, but hopefully you should have a good idea of that based on my CV.)

* Does the company provide any relocation assistance?

~~~
logfromblammo
I never ask the money questions directly, during the interview. It's a red
flag for some companies, who seem to think that people should love the work
and be paid for it as a happy coincidence. Salary negotiation happens after
the company decides it wants you, and then you come in with a sack of
potential nickels and dimes in benefits that they can give you in lieu of
higher base pay. But you save all that until it is already clear that they
want you.

Instead of asking about the salary range, ask about what local neighborhoods
the employees live in. Look up the home prices later, on a real estate site.

Instead of asking about promotion paths, ask about how the roles of the
employees have changed as the company has matured.

Instead of asking about relocation assistance, ask about how much experience
the company has in hiring non-local candidates.

You can also ask about what the <position title> can do individually to
increase the revenues of the company. That answer will give you an idea about
how flexible they are on salaries for <position title>.

~~~
pgl
I understand why you wouldn't want to talk about money questions earlier on,
but for me there's two main reasons to bring it up:

1) Employers have _always_ me about my salary expectations. If they want to
know from me, why shouldn't they answer as well?

2) If the range expectations are way off, you don't have to waste your time
going through a series of interviews only to find out that their salary range
is 10k less than you were expecting, or they don't offer relocation, or
whatever.

Personally, I only ever want to be paid a fair wage; I'm not after the most I
can possibly get. So finding out whether the range matches what the market
seems as fair early on is important.

~~~
logfromblammo
1) It's a double standard. You don't have the power to enforce fairness in the
interview process. You can only react to prevailing tactics in a way that best
preserves your position. Your best options are to not apply to positions that
post a range too low, and to not discuss salary at all until an offer is on
the table.

If you already have a job, and the prospective employer asks you for your
expectations, defer and delay. If they will not proceed without your answer,
WALK AWAY. Otherwise, name a price 20% higher than what you would be happy
with, and qualify it by saying that what you learn later in the interview
process may merit a revision.

2) $10k is peanuts to the company. If they really can't afford to monetize
your efforts enough to pay you what you are worth, they should really be up
front about that themselves, and put their range in the ad.

Otherwise, any company above a certain size can pretty easily justify
budgeting $200k or more in salary and benefits for even a mediocre developer.
A mediocre developer will never be able to actually get that much because of
market pressures, but if a company can justify hiring their own developers at
all, they can justify paying a little more for a good one. That's why the
logical progression is to first find out how much you will be worth to the
company, and then determine the compensation package that makes you a
profitable employee.

You don't want to work for a company that determines compensation first, then
scrambles to figure out how to pay for it.

In summary, always make the employer say their salary number first. If they
won't, they are already trying to cut the costs you represent to them, before
even hiring you.

The fair wage _is_ the most you can possibly get [while still earning profit
for the company].

~~~
jghn
"You don't have the power to enforce fairness in the interview process"

I can though, I can choose to not participate. While this hasn't always been
the case, there is no position that I'd want so dearly that I'll let them
treat me like dirt during the hiring process. If it pisses them off that I
expect them to treat it like a 2 way street, c'est la vie.

------
SeanDav
> _Spring 2008, Microsoft – “Give me 10 ways to improve an elevator.” . . .
> The interviewer called me on it, and (verbatim) said “are you fucking with
> me?”_

Got to laugh at the irony of this comment during a software/programming
interview.

------
iamben
Long term recruiter friend of mine has always said a great response to the "do
you have any questions for me?" is "if I could do this whole interview again,
where could I have been better?"

Anecdotally, the few times I've used it, I've had a great or worthwhile
response to that.

Edit: Obviously ask this at the _very_ end after a couple of the normal
questions about the company...

~~~
atom-morgan
Similar question: "Based on everything you've heard in this interview what
makes you think I'm not the person for this job?" I've used it once so far
(that I can remember) and it led to a great discussion and eventually a job
offer after what I believed was my worst technical interview ever.

~~~
iamben
That's an excellent one. I'll be sure to remember that!

------
dreamweapon
_The interviewer called me on it, and (verbatim) said “are you fucking with
me?” I still haven’t met anyone else who got told to stop fucking around in an
interview._

Which she can safely take as a sign that she should be very, very glad not to
have "passed" that MS interview. It may or may not have been a very useful
question to ask, but the interviewer's response indicates that he had clearly
let the task assigned to him go to his head, and was basically on power trip,
by that point.

 _The question that turned me into a babbling buffoon was “have you made any
friends since moving to NYC?”_

Also not an appropriate question to ask, and indicates a lack of respect for
basic personal boundaries on the part of the interviewer.

~~~
jschwartzi
It was also a terrible question, since you could have absolutely no technical
knowledge of elevators and thus no thoughts about improvement. It sounds like
it was meant to gauge her enthusiasm for making suggestions about things she's
ignorant of. She definitely dodged a bullet there.

------
iN7h33nD
I have been interviewing a lot lately, and I have to say that Company's really
expect you to waste a lot of time just so they can weed you out.

Here is a coding exercise that will take around and hour. Once you finish it
you never end up hearing back anyway and when you send a followup they still
don't respond. How are can you know whether you should waste your time doing a
coding exercise or not?

If its not coding exercises its an excessive number of hour long interviews,
or the employer requiring that you work with them for free for anywhere from a
few hours to a week.

Is there any way to weed them out before you waste so much of your time?

~~~
cookiecaper
>Here is a coding exercise that will take around and hour. Once you finish it
you never end up hearing back anyway and when you send a followup they still
don't respond. How are can you know whether you should waste your time doing a
coding exercise or not?

If you don't hear back, the company's not interested. Few people write
rejection letters as few people react well to them.

We do coding exercises before we interview candidates, but try to keep them as
minimalist as possible. It sucks for the candidate who is doing 10 of these a
week, but companies waste huge amounts of time with people who are totally
unqualified and the pre-screen is necessary to weed such persons out.

>If its not coding exercises its an excessive number of hour long interviews

Hiring someone is a big commitment. If a company wants to interview you a
reasonable amount of times, be flattered and enjoy it. Recognize that this is
a big commitment for them and they have a lot of candidates to choose from.

>or the employer requiring that you work with them for free for anywhere from
a few hours to a week

Stay away from any company that wants you to work for free. Sure, a
probationary contract is fine, but if they're actually expecting you to do any
non-interview work without paying you for it, you don't want to be involved
with that company. Don't even entertain these types of offers.

>Is there any way to weed them out before you waste so much of your time?

Look online for postings that discuss that company's hiring processes. In your
cover letter, tell them that you're excited about the prospect of working for
their company and ask about their interview process. This will hint that
you're sensitive to excessive prospective-employer time consumption, and
you'll probably get back some kind of answer with which you can make more of a
decision. After you interview, post about the process online for future
applicants' benefit.

~~~
x0x0
And somewhere on the front page of HN _right now_ is someone whining about an
engineering "shortage", whilst telling engineers that applying to their
company costs 2-8 hours of time. The cognitive dissonance is a little hard to
take, is what I'm saying.

~~~
cookiecaper
I mean, I understand that it can be demanding and have personally halted my
applications when people had interview "tests" that were obviously hours of
work, but you can't expect the company to hire someone without doing a
reasonable amount of due diligence, which usually includes at least some basic
exercises and multiple interviews. Like I said, hiring is a big commitment for
the company -- bigger than people who've never employed people often think.

Most interviewers will be sympathetic because they'll remember what it was
like when they were applying for jobs, but that doesn't mean they can just
hand-wave away all the requirements.

~~~
x0x0
Of course companies need to verify you can actually do the work for which they
are potentially going to hire you.

However, if you hand me such a task (or glassdoor says you will), I have to be
_really_ excited about your company to spend my time that way. A 20 minute
shared-coding session in one of the dozen online collaborative edit tools
would probably give you most of the same information while saving a lot of the
candidate's time.

~~~
cookiecaper
The code exercise we distribute shouldn't take a competent developer more than
20 minutes. I agree that you don't need to waste a lot of the dev's time.

------
cpprototypes
I hate what Silicon Valley companies (Google, Amazon, etc.) have done to the
software engineer interviewing process. It heavily favors recent college
graduates and destroys job mobility for older senior engineers who have a busy
life.

For example, look at the answers to this Quora question about interviewing:

[http://www.quora.com/How-much-time-did-you-spend-
preparing-f...](http://www.quora.com/How-much-time-did-you-spend-preparing-
for-Googles-interviews?share=1)

The first reply mentions spending 5 weeks of studying, 2.5 hours every weekday
and 8 hours on every weekend day. That's 28.5 hours of studying every week. 5
weeks of that is 142.5 hours. And he also spent time doing mock interviews.

I have a family and as a senior engineer I'm busy with work. What little free
time I have is spent keeping up with new technologies. It has been many years
since college. This process is basically very hostile to most senior engineers
who have years of experience. I wish more companies would recognize this and
change their process.

~~~
crucifiction
People who are studying that much for the interview are never going to make it
at those companies even if they "pass" the interview. They will be managed out
in a year or so since weeks of studying to produce actual work isn't really a
viable strategy.

Having done 200+ interviews at one of the Big Companies you can generally see
through "studied and memorized the question" from earnest attempts at solving
it as well (asking them WHY they are doing something is an easy tell).

If I were going out to interview again, the main thing I would brush up on is
coding small example problems on a piece of paper/white board. The transition
from IDE+internet -> whiteboard in a high pressure situation is not something
you want to be coming in cold for. If you are a senior engineer, the
problems/coding themselves shouldn't be that hard to tackle blind, but doing
them on a whiteboard will throw you off if you haven't tried recently.

------
kabdib
"Have you made any friends since moving to NYC"

Really? I would never, ever ask that question in an interview. Too many ways
it can fail.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
It definitely _was_ appropriate during a VC interview. I previously posted a
longer explanation:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9150092](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9150092)

------
richev
Many years ago an interviewer had me handwriting my solution to a code
challenge on a whiteboard. As I scribbled away I had a sense that something
was amiss...the ink on the pen didn't smell quite right.

Focussing on the problem at hand, I dutifully filled the whiteboard with my
solution.

All was well until I needed to erase the board, only to discover that I had
selected a permanent marker rather than a dry wipe one.

Whiteboard ruined.

I did not get the job, but I did learn the importance of checking what type of
pen you're using _before_ you start to use it...

~~~
zhte415
Have done similar (though not in an interview). Usually an alcohol-based
cleaning fluid can get that off with minimal effort.

Why they had a permanent marker next to a whiteboard is another question -
incompetence, or to stop you rubbing anything out?

~~~
marcosdumay
It looks like everybody keeps a permanent marker next to their whiteboard. I
have no idea why, but I make sure to ask the responsible person every time I
see one. (I never got the same answer twice, I once got one that was honest.)

If richev really lost the job because of the marker, he safely got out of a
place where people lose jobs because of powerfull people's (the interviewer)
fault. Good for him.

~~~
logfromblammo
The permanent markers are there to mark the writable disc media.

But everywhere _I_ have worked, the dry erase markers are kept near the
whiteboards, and the permanent markers are kept next to the stack of blank
discs, or near the disc-writer drives. Keeping them both in the same place is
a Murphy's Law infraction.

------
mootothemax
_" Do you have any questions?"_

I've always found this tricky, as generally interviews with me go both ways,
and I'm asking questions about the work, company, people and so on throughout
the interview.

If you need a safe fallback, asking them to describe your typical day, who'll
you'll be working with, and what project(s) you'll start with are both useful
and a pleasant note to end the interview on.

~~~
johnward
I usually just go to the fallbacks because I honestly have no questions. So I
just go to the standard BS. I don't really care about the company to be
honest. I've never liked any job I've ever had in this industry and I don't
really see that changing based on company. I only work because I have to. to
provide the lifestyle I want for myself and my family. I work because I need
money and that's the absolute only reason.

I know people are going to tell me how wrong this is but I'm just being
honest. How can I pretend to be interested when I'm actually not?
Coincidentally I've been looking to make a move and not finding anything but I
guess that's not surprising. There is nothing I really like in life but at
least people tell me I'm pretty good (or at least I've never been fired) at
this software stuff so I just stick with it.

~~~
ryandrake
Its kind of sad (and telling) that you expect people here to jump in and tell
you your opinion is "wrong". Have an upvote--I don't think there is anything
wrong or even unusual about your attitude. In reality, I've worked with many
more people in Technology who work because they like getting paid and whose
job is "just a job," than I've worked with people who were passionately in
love with writing an accounting app or CRUD web service. Not saying that
attitude is "wrong" either, but it does appear to be the prevailing one in
this community.

~~~
johnward
I think this stems from so many articles about "passion" I see on HN. That and
when I look at job posting they always want someone who has contributed to a
significant amount of projects on github. If you can't share your day to day
work publicly like that (I can't) then it must be open source or side
projects. To take on things like that I feel like you need to have free time,
and then the drive to actually want to do those things after you've spent 10
hours or more at your day job. Then if you don't have a profound github
profile I feel like you aren't taken seriously, at least as a developer. I
don't think passion is a requirement to be good at something.

~~~
acheron
I think it's another HN bubble thing, though. It's been a few years since I
was out interviewing, so maybe it's different now, but I would honestly be
shocked if I interviewed with someone who even knew what "Github" was.
Obviously it depends on the specific field you're looking in -- if you're
interviewing with startups in San Francisco, then sure, the HN view might be
helpful, but the vast majority of companies are nothing like that.

------
roneesh
The question I love asking an interview is:

"In the trade-offs between time, cost, and quality, we know you can have two
but not all three, which two are valued here? And you can't say we value all
three."

The last part is important, because when I first started asking it people just
said they were special and did all three, but we know that it never works that
way.

------
shanemhansen
The author lost me right at the beginning: "It’s important to realize that one
bad interview doesn’t mean you’ll never get a job. It might just mean you
aren’t a good fit for that company, or that you didn’t prepare well enough."

While it might mean those things, it's just as likely to mean that the
interviewer is unprepared. This happens surprisingly often. Interviewers will
either ask questions you've been asked already, or they will make up questions
on the spot that they think they know the answers to but don't.

Maybe your interviewer spilled coffee on themselves on the way to work, maybe
they just interviewed 3 candidates in front of your and they are
exhausted/picky.

Quite often an interviewer will fail to clarify an important issue, and give
negative feedback because they aren't sure if you're competent in that area.

------
erroneousfunk
I've also been in the situation where I'm on the umpteenth interview with the
company when the "Do you have any questions?" question comes around. I try to
have at least one question about the company where the answer might vary from
person to person. Something like "What's one thing you'd like to improve about
the company?" or "What's your average day like?"

Even if interviewers compare notes, I don't look weird for asking the same
question, and I don't have to awkwardly admit I don't have any questions.

------
JoshDoody
This is a great blog post because it confirms that hiring managers ask wacky
questions all the time. (I confess I've done this as well.)

I'm writing a career management guide right now, and one of my chapters is
explicitly on this topic ("How to ace your next interview"). I think about
this a lot (I'm a hiring manager, currently building my team, so I've been on
both sides of the desk). I break the interview phase down into four phases
(Preparation, Pre-interview, Interview, Post-Interview). I think "Preparation"
and "Interview" are really appropriate here.

Here's what I recommend thinking about when preparing for an interview:

PREPARATION

\- Do basic company research. You should understand the basics of the company:
what they do, how they make money, how big they are.

\- Know which job you’re applying for. Read the description a few times to
make sure you understand it well.

\- Know which other jobs the company is trying to fill. You can learn a lot
about a company by looking at their job openings. See if you can get a sense
of where they’re currently focused and how you can either contribute directly
to helping them get there, or how you can contribute indirectly in this job.
Take note of other jobs you might be a good fit for, just in case.

\- Prepare for the dreaded salary question. They’ll probably ask what you’re
making now, and what you want to make. I recommend telling them your current
salary (because they can probably figure it out anyway), and not telling them
your desired salary. For the desired salary piece of the dreaded salary
question, I usually say, “I want this move to be a big step forward for me in
terms of both responsibility and compensation.”

INTERVIEW

\- Be early. Don’t keep your interviewer waiting—that’s a horrible way to make
a first impression.

\- Bring a notebook and your resume. You should take notes, and it’s possible
your interviewer won’t already have your resume. Be prepared.

\- Try to relax and be honest during introductions. It’s ok to make small talk
for a few minutes so you and your interviewer can get settled in, but don’t
spend too much time on this.

\- Come prepared for different types of questions. Here’s a partial list of
common types of questions you may be asked:

* Questions about your resume

* Questions about you personally

* Questions about tools and technology

* Technical questions

* Questions about your career goals and aspirations

* “Why do you want to work here?”

* Questions about “a challenging situation”

* Questions about special projects or side projects you’ve done

\- Don’t be afraid to ask for some time to think about your answer. This shows
intentionality and may help you formulate better answers to tricky questions.
But don’t do this more than a couple times during an interview.

\- Don’t be caught off guard by crazy questions. If your interviewer asks you
something wacky, just gather your thoughts, listen carefully, and formulate
the best answer you can. Make sure to account for any constraints that are
part of the question as well.

\- When things start wrapping up, look for opportunities to ask questions to
learn more about the company and the role you’re interviewing for. Here are
two good questions you can ask if they haven’t been addressed already:

* “So what does a typical day look like for this role?” * “What are the greatest challenges for your team right now?” or “What is the greatest challenge for this particular role?"

If both of those questions have already been covered, see if any of your Pre-
interview questions might work.

\- Only ask questions if you can learn new information from them. If you’ve
already covered everything in your interview, it’s ok to say, “I think we
actually covered everything already!”

That's a summary of each phase, and the chapter itself goes into quite a bit
more detail.

You can get the full chapter for free here:
[http://JoshDoody.com/interview?ref=hn4](http://JoshDoody.com/interview?ref=hn4)

~~~
steven777400
It would be nice if candidates were this prepared! It's good advice, at least
for the way we interview. On one particularly egregious occasion, we got
through the "soft" questions and told the candidate, "Now we will ask you some
technical skill questions," and candidate said, "I didn't know there would be
technical questions" (this was for a software developer position), and refused
to answer them. What else would someone possibly expect??

~~~
JoshDoody
That's exactly why I'm writing a book in this topic. So many aspects of career
management seem mysterious but are really pretty straightforward. Interviewing
is something most people just don't do very often, so it seems mysterious. But
they're all pretty much the same, and are easy to prepare for if the candidate
knows what to expect. I want to help people know what to expect. It'll help
people find better jobs for their skill sets, and will spare hiring managers
from painful interviews.

------
codyb
I haven't yet read the article but wanted to point out that the first link is
broken.

It links to [https://www.kickstarter.com/jobs/product-
manager](https://www.kickstarter.com/jobs/product-manager)

which is a 404.

However [https://www.kickstarter.com/jobs](https://www.kickstarter.com/jobs)

and

[https://www.kickstarter.com/jobs/product_designer](https://www.kickstarter.com/jobs/product_designer)

both work. Just wanted to check out the job description. Good luck.

------
cryoshon
I'll piggyback onto this article with a few mistakes I made in the past.

1\. Correcting the interviewer. In one of my interviews, an MD/PhD was
explaining to me his experimental design, which involved training a cohort of
people to do a task, then afterward subjecting that cohort to electrical brain
stimulation while performing the task in order to compare results on the task.
Concerned, I mentioned that the experiment wasn't controlled for people merely
becoming better at the task as they had more exposure to it. The person in
charge didn't approve of this, and perceived it as an attack on their
experiment. Clearly, this was the point at which I "lost" the interview.
Lesson: the interview isn't the place to tear apart problematic projects.

2\. Being honest with the interviewer. In another of my interviews, I was
discussing various volunteering projects that I had undertaken. The woman who
was interviewing me was old enough to be my mother, and seemed to be approving
of my extensive list of volunteering opportunities, which she had inquired
about. This lulled me into a false sense of security, leading me to disclose
one of my volunteering projects which involved video-game-based mentorship of
disadvantaged youth. This immediately raised her hackles, prompting her to ask
if I "played video games a lot". I said yes, being young and stupid, assuming
it'd be absurd to hold something that I did in my private time against me. I
"lost" the interview" with that admission, even though I'd been golden up to
that point. Lesson: the interview isn't a place for anything other than
pushing the interviewer's buttons until you get exactly what you want.

3\. Asking questions for which there is no feel good answer. In yet another
interview, I started to get a whiff of desperation from the interviewers
regarding workflow from manager to employee. I probed the issue, then asked
directly, "How is success measured here?" suspecting that I'd get an answer
like "completed projects per week" or something else which would come off as
overly controlling to employees. I was told there was a quota based system.
This turned me off immensely, and turned the interviewer off as well for
having to admit such an embarrassing thing. I still got a job offer after this
mistake, but I ended up rejecting it. Lesson: don't embarrass the organization
you're interviewing for by making them admit weaknesses.

4\. Permitting bad behavior from the interviewer. In three (3) separate
interviews for different organizations, the interviewer arrived 10-15 minutes
late with no apology. In the first of these interviews, the interviewer's
beeper went off, causing a flurry of cussing and an interruption of the
interview for an extended phone call. This happened again later in the
interview. I "lost" the interview because of the constant interruptions by the
interviewer's other commitments, and didn't get the job-- maybe a bullet
dodged here. In the second of the three late interviews, the interviewer
notified me beforehand he'd have to stop in the middle in order to check his
son's scores, as his son was in some sort of sports competition at that
moment. Sure enough, the interview was in a state of anti-flow due to his
constant pausing and checking his son's scores, at times cheering quietly. I
"lost" this interview because of blatant disrespect-- maybe another bullet
dodged. The final late interview was spared any interruptions, but was instead
occupied by a bizarre egotistical rant based on the interviewer's past
accomplishments, detailing how the interviewer had presented his research to a
crowd of many people and made a name for himself. This was irritating, but
tolerable. Following his ego-trip, the interviewer then went on to compare me
and the other (not present) candidates to his son, saying how his son was the
ideal candidate and that everyone in my generation other than his son was
extremely entitled and should really lower their expectations because of how
hard he had it when he was coming up. I can't make this shit up. I lost the
interview when I failed to behave like his son. Lesson: don't be afraid to
stand up and walk out of an interview if the interviewer isn't prepared to
take you seriously.

~~~
army
It sounds like #3 was a good thing to happen - you learned a lot.

------
zerr
> Fall 2005, Princeton – “Do you have any questions?”

Before I get to this question, I've researched the company so much (products,
monetization, even approximate salary ranges), that I've to play like I don't
know and ask something... :)

------
bitwize
Real world recursion: "Lather, rinse, repeat."

More elaborate example: Most human languages are recursively defined, with
sentence or phrase units able to be part of bigger sentence/phrase units.

~~~
wtbob
> Real world recursion: "Lather, rinse, repeat."

I think that's iteration…

Interestingly, while trying to think of real-life examples of things that were
either iteration or recursion but not both, I realised that any example of one
could be considered an example of the other. I'd already known & been
comfortable knowing that they are equivalent, but now I understand it in a way
I didn't before.

~~~
asgard1024
I thought about it too. Most biological systems that grow are examples of
recursion (like trees). Most human manufacturing systems are examples of
iteration (production line, building with a crane floor by floor).

------
sethammons
While the author is focusing on the PM role, I feel you should take the same
advice when applying for a developer position.

