
Interviews vs. auditions - jseliger
https://ryanholiday.net/heres-the-technique-that-ambitious-people-use-to-get-what-they-want/
======
spodek
I teach and coach people to get jobs through performance and it works.

Schools teach people to react, take tests, and show how great they are. For a
posted opening, you're presenting yourself as a commodity -- a slightly
shinier one, you hope. It's based on compliance.

Most analytical, geeky types got a lot of schooling. After decades of it, most
people have learned that model without awareness of alternatives.

If you want to avoid challenges in life and just get a job so you can retire
50 years later with nothing remarkable in between, that strategy works.

What Ryan described -- to audition -- is standard in other fields, such as
sports, acting, singing, and other active, social, emotional, expressive,
performance-based (ASEEP) fields. No actor won an oscar for his or her GPA. No
athlete won a championship for being president of a student club.

In ASEEP fields, your performance matters. Sadly, many in business continue to
think and act on a compliance-based model. Those who start from a performance-
based model find and create opportunities to excel.

I'll always remember how a client told me he met a guy running a business in a
field he wanted to move into. He told me he first got to know the guy to make
sure he'd like working with him. He then told him his passions and hobbies in
that field, then that he had zero professional experience, and then, as he
told me, "I led him to hire me."

That's leadership. The guy hired him, saying "I can teach you this field, but
I can't teach getting it and you get it." (Incidentally, what he called
"getting it" is what I taught him -- you can teach it, just not through a
compliance-based model.) So he got paid to learn the new field. Not long after
he started new initiatives in that business.

~~~
ironchef
"If you want to avoid challenges in life and just get a job so you can retire
50 years later with nothing remarkable in between, that strategy works." I
find this to be hyperbolic. Compliance and presenting yourself as having more
value than the person next you have are not deterministic in "avoiding
challenges in life" and not accomplishing anything remarkable. I don't want to
run a startup. I want to put my head down and get shit done. Does that mean I
don't want challenges in life? No. Does that mean I won't accomplish anything
remarkable. No. One should be aware that compliance and process has its place.

One could argue that the special ops schools (like BUDS) drills into you that
you are but one of many and to be compliant (even thought BUDS itself is an
audition) and that you are a commodity. Please tell me that Navy Seals avoid
challenges and accomplish nothing remarkable.

~~~
spodek
"If you want X, Y works" doesn't imply that "doing Y means you want X," which,
unless I misunderstand you, is what you were reacting to.

Speaking of SEALs, I just wrote about them in the draft of my next book, on
becoming entrepreneurial, in relation to ASEEP fields, which may be relevant
to this thread, since military training trains performance:

"Entrepreneurship is as active, social, emotional, expressive, performance-
based as any field. Most books and courses on entrepreneurship teach
entrepreneurship appreciation, not practice. They may not hurt, but they don't
necessarily develop you to genuine, authentic, free self-expression. Business
literature isn't written to help you become more entrepreneurial. If all the
business articles about Navy SEALs -- to pick one genre of entrepreneurship
literature -- helped people perform as SEALs do, SEALs would read business
literature instead of train. They train because it works."

~~~
castlecrasher2
I feel like this is something I've known about but never could quite describe
it. Do you have any books or other resources you could link or DM me? I'm
interested in learning more.

~~~
spodek
I wrote my book to fill the gap I saw between teaching _about_ leading people
and developing leadership practices.

Amazon has the preface and first chapter in the "look inside" link above the
picture of it [https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Step-Become-Person-
Others/...](https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Step-Become-Person-
Others/dp/0814437931), which develops what I wrote here more.

The movie Most Likely To Succeed
[http://www.mltsfilm.org](http://www.mltsfilm.org) is about project-based
learning. The books and articles by the guys behind it, Tony Wagner and Ted
Dintersmith, are on active education and I found valuable.

Here's a post of mine with a video of Ted and the movie director:
[http://joshuaspodek.com/another-problem-with-traditional-
edu...](http://joshuaspodek.com/another-problem-with-traditional-education-
employers-dont-want-traditionally-educated-students) and links to relevant
posts of mine.

------
jpatokal
Taking control audition style may work if you're a consultant trying to
convince a client to hire them, but you had better know their business
backwards and forwards, and unless you're in a very well defined space (like
their football coaching example), you probably don't.

However, if you attempt this at a standard FAANG job interview, it is
emphatically _not_ going to work. There's a set of questions you need to work
through and attempting to go off script is not going to be appreciated. Pretty
much the only exception is leadership roles, particularly when the brief is
"we need somebody who can turn around/10x our floundering business".

~~~
k__
"audition style may work if you're a consultant trying to convince a client to
hire them"

That's one of the main reasons I'm self employed.

Getting a job is mostly doing dumb interviews, tests and crap.

Getting a project is mostly telling the client that I can do it for an amount
of money they find okay.

~~~
chatmasta
As a consultant you are much more in control of your working relationships
than as an employee. A consultant has many clients; an employee only has one
employer. That alone provides sufficient leverage to dictate the terms of the
role, which is a major advantage of self-employment.

~~~
jaggederest
I think it's basically the same deal PG is always talking about: Nobody is
willing to pay triple for an employee which is actually three times as
productive, but a consultant can honestly charge three to five times as much
in order to provide equivalent return on investment.

I also find that in general, people who won't listen to an employee are
excited about collaborating with a consultant - even when you're the same
person making the same contributions.

I find it pretty frustrating - I have long-term views and I want to make a
significant, long term impact on the companies I work for, and being a
consultant means it's all about quarterly results. That being said, I'll take
sober consideration from day one over "time over grade equals seriousness" any
day.

------
vinayms
I only skimmed the article, but whenever I read such material I feel these
techniques are suited for jobs banking on charisma instead of knowledge and
skill based ones.

I am a software engineer. I haven't held too many jobs, and have attended very
few interviews. As an interviewee, I always gauged the enthusiasm of the
interviewer before 'unleashing my talent'. I have had my share of insipid
interviews where the focus was on API specifics instead of ideas and larger
pictures. I politely excused myself out of the building mid interview when I
realized they needed just a code monkey, albeit with experience. Seizing
control would have been a total waste.

I have also conducted my share of interviews. The biggest turn off for me is
when candidates try too hard to impress, either by listing out insignificant
contributions to FOSS they have made, especially when not asked, or wearing
their supposed geekiness on their sleeves. The worst are the self declared
nerds and geeks, who speak, look and act in a way that covers all the
stereotypes floating on the web. Its worse when, out of turn, they bring up a
cool thing they 'hacked'.

Generally, going beyond job interviews, I think the need for being alpha is
ridiculously amusing. I am no psychologist, but it smacks of overcompensation
and utter lack of self confidence. I avoid such people in life.

~~~
noobhacker
I think if you give the article a second chance, you'll see that it does not
advocate for the self-promotional behavior you dislike.

The article doesn't tell us to "listing out insignificant contributions to
FOSS they have made, especially when not asked." Rather the article tells us
to research about how we can add value to our prospective employers
beforehand.

Stated in that way, the article's message is quite "boring", but also true.

~~~
virgilp
The challenge here is that it's incredibly hard to know how to add value, from
the outside. Especially for not-very-senior positions, adopting this tactic
can backfire big time. I interviewed a guy who attempted to tell us how he'd
design our systems, and only showed a severe lack of understanding of the
domain ( _) (which is really not surprising, it takes most people at least a
few months to start to grasp it).

(_) It also smacked of arrogance - it's as if he thought he knew better than
people working on it "how it should really be done".

------
brookhaven_dude
This is basically what a good sales pitch is. Call it audition if you want. A
lot of developer jobs are not looking for this kind of drive and skill set
though. In fact, I have been told by a former startup employer to not spend so
many brain cycles on how to improve the business and just focus on getting the
code to work.

Many managers feel threatened by such people it seems. So not a good idea if
looking for a job. Good template if pitching to investors.

------
fab1an
I doubt this would work in any more structured interview process for a regular
job at a larger company (with the likely expection of VP+ level jobs), but it
could be very effective for interviewing at startups, especially when they're
small enough for you to be interviewed by one of their founders.

A good way to do this is probably _not_ to take charge immediately upon
concluding the small talk, but to simply ask whether the interviewer would be
interested to set aside some time to see some ideas you had prepared for their
business ( _shows binder_ )

------
kylnew
As an engineer I think this is best interpreted as a recommendation to ask a
lot of questions when you are given the chance. Take it as an opportunity to
demonstrate a greater understanding and care for the opportunity than just the
scope of your role. Ask about culture, about challenges, competitive
positioning in the marketplace etc.. I try to ask questions that demonstrate a
lot of compassion for team dynamics and business objectives. It’s never led me
astray.

~~~
refurb
As someone who has interviewed a lot of candidates, I would agree the Q&A is
the best place to show this.

Most of the stock questions are filters for people who can't do the job - was
this person's answer reasonable?

Where I've seen candidates shine is when they ask really good questions.
Question that indicate they've put some thought into the role. When all I get
is "How do you like working here?" or "What's the company culture?" it shows
the person is either uninterested in the role or incapable of delivering
something beyond "here's what you asked for boss".

------
mCOLlSVIxp6c
Further discussion from Ryan about this topic in a recent EconTalk podcast:

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2018/04/ryan_holiday_on_1.h...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2018/04/ryan_holiday_on_1.html)

The part about interviews vs. auditions is around the 49 minute mark. The
entire podcast was fascinating. The topic of the podcast is his recent book
about Gawker and Peter Thiel and a broader discussion about "conspiracies".

edit: separate HN thread for this
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17048391](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17048391)

~~~
adolph
It was a really good podcast. One of my takeaways is that Holiday does a good
job of not "taking sides" even though it is a seductive, socially compelling
thing to do. I think that EconTalk and the book deserve their own HN thread.

------
Ensorceled
I’ve noticed an increasing number of candidates using this kind of “take
control of the interview” approach. It’s reached the point of having
candidates talking over top of me during phone screens trying to wrest control
of the conversation away.

I’ve never hired someone who does this. I’m not interested in how you’re going
to rework my team or rewrite our software.

Interestingly, when interviewing potential peers or CEOs, I’m kind of
expecting them to do this.

~~~
davnicwil
I think that's because it's very hard to get this strategy right. In some
interviews, it may not be possible due to the way the interview process is set
up, and in particular the magnitude of information asymmetry.

I think getting it right hinges on two things:

1) Does the interviewer actually _have_ a concrete objective that you are
qualified to help them achieve -- even if they themselves aren't necessarily
aware of it or have it top of mind. 2) Can you identify that objective either
ahead of time or in the interview process, and in a polite yet direct manner
convince them that you can help them achieve it.

If neither of these are true, it is bound to come off poorly.
Whiteboard/puzzle based 'general intelligence assessment' style interviews
don't lend themselves to this. Wishy washy job descriptions don't lend
themselves to this. Hiring processes influenced by politics rather than need
(i.e. where a manager is disincentivised to hire someone better than they are)
don't lend themselves to this.

If a majority of candidates who try this strategy with you aren't able to pull
it off well, perhaps step back and take a look at your recruitment/interview
processes and see if you could actually _help_ the good ones impress you.

I'm not saying I've done this right in the past, quite the contrary. For me
the ideal interview is me simply describing a problem my team has, and the
interviewee _educating_ me on how to solve it and why they are the right
person to do so (though usually the fact they are able to do the former
implies the latter). I've tried to format interviews more like this over time
and I have personally found better results as a consequence.

~~~
Ensorceled
Exactly, if we’re in the “how would you solve this problem” or “tell me a time
when” phase, knock yourself out and be assertive.

When I’m giving my 10 second description of my phone screen process works and
I get interrupted to be told “this phone screen will be done differently” ...

------
baxtr
Well... this article is merely saying (with many many words) that it’s way
better to show up to interviews and important meetings with utmost preparation
than unprepared.

~~~
someonenice
Its more about what you are preparing for.

Generally people prepare well on the technical details (algorithms,
programming etc..) and solve the problems that are put forward by the
interviewer.

Here, you prepare well on the real problems faced by the company (say scaling
beyond a million user) and then outline the solutions that you have for that.

------
spicymaki
While I am not sure this would work in every situation, I appreciate the main
thrust of the article: treat the interview as audition, come in prepared to
talk about how hiring you will improve the business, differentiate yourself
from the other interviewees.

------
imaadrashied
I don't know if the need to have the entire program written out is most
important.

The best candidates I've hired show aptitude to ask the right questions and,
in return, ask probing questions about what led to our decisions, have we
thought of [x], this is how [x] might work, what about [y] competitor or space
within our industry, etc...

The most memorable interviews I've come out of / been a part of are the ones
in which the candidate leaves me thinking or scratching my head about why
we're doing what we're doing and whether they'd be a great fit to help us
achieve our goals.

This is all from a product management perspective so might not be the same
across the board.

------
nimbius
as an engine mechanic, is this sort of game play normal in office jobs?

When I've been taken on as an apprentice, its an interview to see my
competency...where i stand i guess and what i need to learn. Questions like
'whats the hardest thing' and 'how do you handle grumpy people' are pretty
normal.

Being hired on full-time, and having to hire another mechanic myself, The
questions are pretty cut and dry. Can you stick to a schedule, describe a 4
cycle engine, what a cam profile, give me a reference.

Once weve hired someone new, we generally know if shes going to make it or
not. we all chip in to help if theyre struggling, but we dont play weird
games.

~~~
learc83
For some reason people are deathly afraid of hiring the wrong person. So
afraid that they'd rather pass on 100 good candidates to avoid hiring one
person who doesn't fit.

It's particularly bad for programming jobs where they expect candidates to go
through up to a half dozen separate interviews. The whole process is just
completely broken.

------
trevyn
IMO, the reason this is rare and stands out is because these types of people
tend to _already_ be running their own show, and don’t need to interview or
audition.

------
fouc
Would reframing the developer "technical interview" as an audition instead
create better expectations for everyone?

~~~
frostmatthew
That's the analogy I use when people complain that whiteboarding doesn't
mimic/approximate they day-to-day job. If you're the casting director for a
play you're going to have auditions, you're not going to cast people based
(solely) on their resume and having a conversation about their acting
background. But auditions are very different than an actual performance:
there's no audience or costumes or props, the lighting is completely different
than what it will be, you're reading from a script, you may be the only person
on stage while the other roles are read offstage, you're being accompanied by
a piano instead of a full pit orchestra, you're mostly standing in one place
instead of moving to established blocking, and so forth. The point of an
audition isn't to mirror performance night, it's to get an idea if you're
capable of acting/singing/dancing/whatever. Likewise the purpose of
whiteboarding isn't to mirror the day-to-day work, it's to get an idea of your
problem solving capabilities (some might argue it's also to see if you
actually know how to code, but personally I feel that's what the technical
phonescreen is for).

~~~
nunya213
I agree with the sentiment but almost no other profession does this. Could you
imagine a Surgeon being forced to "Audition" for his job? "Here perform heart
surgery on this guy for us, if he lives you get the job."

~~~
frostmatthew
> I agree with the sentiment but almost no other profession does this

Almost no other _creative_ profession _doesn 't_ do this. Our profession is
much more similar to actors and musicians than it is to doctors or lawyers.
You also have to factor in practicality and gatekeeping (for lack of a better
word) - it's not very practical for a doctor to perform mock surgery for an
interview, whereas it's very feasible asking someone to write some code on a
whiteboard; and if you're a surgeon you have things that indicate you know how
to perform surgery at a much higher level of confidence than knowing someone
can problem solve (well) just because they list "developer" on their resume,
surgeons have to go to many years or medical school, they have to spend time
in residency, they have to pass their boards, if software development had the
equivalent of all this (and I'm not necessarily saying it should) then yes
there'd be much less need for "auditions" in our field.

~~~
learc83
>Almost no other creative profession doesn't do this.

This is only true for a very small subset of creative professions.

Actors and musicians _perform_ in front of an audience. That's their job--they
are _performance artists_. Asking them to perform in front of you is very
similar to what they'll actually be doing day to day. A much better analogue
is a creative profession that doesn't involve performance art.

Interviewing an illustrator, a graphic designer, a writer, or an architect
generally involves looking through a past portfolio of work with the
interviewee. In general they aren't expected to perform on the spot in front
of an audience because that's not part of their job.

~~~
frostmatthew
> Actors and musicians perform in front of an audience

 _Some_ actors/musicians. Movie actors never perform in front of an audience,
TV actors usually don't perform in front of an audience, studio musicians
rarely perform in front of an audience - these professions have auditions
(unless you're an A-list actor, but I'm sure most software companies would
hire John Carmack without an "audition" so we likewise do the equivalent). But
more importantly I think you missed my point, in that the audition for these
professions are under very different conditions than what you'll actually be
doing "on the job" (one of the bigger complaints with whiteboarding seems to
be that it doesn't closely mirror the actual work).

> Interviewing an illustrator, a graphic designer, a writer, or an architect
> generally involves looking through a past portfolio of work with the
> interviewee

That'd be fine if the point of the technical interview was to determine they
know how to write code, but it's not IMO. As I mentioned above it's to
determine they're capable of problem solving, because _that_ is the important
part of what we do (you should also obviously make sure a candidate knows how
to code before you hire them, but that's the point of the phone screen).

~~~
learc83
>Movie actors never perform in front of an audience, TV actors usually don't
perform in front of an audience, studio musicians rarely perform in front of
an audience - these professions have auditions

This is only true for an _extremely_ limited definition of audience.

Movie actors most certainly perform in front of an audience. There are
hundreds of people on the set. Even a small indie film has a few dozen people
on set. It's the same for TV actors.

Studio musicians also have plenty of people watching over their shoulders
while they perform, and they're expected to be able to do so on the spot
without preparation.

>As I mentioned above it's to determine they're capable of problem solving,
because that is the important part of what we do

That's the important part of nearly everyone's job. Architects, graphic
designers, engineers, sales people, mechanics, plumbers.

There's nothing special about programming in this regard. We've just convinced
ourselves that our industry is so special that of course we need weird hazing
rituals. Everyone else seems to get along fine without treating people from
new college grads to programmers with 20 years of experience like this is
their first job.

Can you solve this artificial problem that I already know the answer to right
now in this time boxed, needlessly adversarial situation situation while I
watch over your shoulder and critique you?

~~~
frostmatthew
It's a bit odd you responded to various parts of my comment but not the "But
more importantly I think you missed my point..." portion (i.e. kind of silly
for us to debate this audience straw man)

> That's the important part of nearly everyone's job. Architects, graphic
> designers, engineers, sales people, mechanics, plumbers.

Communication, like problem solving, is likewise an important part of nearly
everyone's job, but the importance of good communication skills (as valuable
as they are) are much less important to being a good software engineer or good
plumber than they are to being a good reporter or trial lawyer or public
relations professional.

I'm guessing, like most developers, this is your first/only profession - but
it's not mine (I switched careers in my early 30s), and I can assure you not
every job requires the level of problem solving we deal with on a regular
basis (and no, that doesn't make us "so special", not all jobs are identical,
some have more or less value in different areas, but one is not more special
than another because of the importance of problem solving or communication or
empathy or creativity or anything else).

~~~
learc83
>It's a bit odd you responded to various parts of my comment but not the "But
more importantly I think you missed my point..." portion (i.e. kind of silly
for us to debate this audience straw man)

Your argument was that almost all creative professions have auditions similar
to whiteboard interviews. I pointed out that that's not true because it's only
true for performance artists. You then took the discussion off topic by
arguing that movie stars aren't performing in front of audiences.

Actors are expected to perform in front of an audience, programmers aren't.
The ability to perform in front of an audience is difficult and rare, and is
completely orthogonal to the skills required to work day to day as a
programmer. Whiteboard interviews are just too far removed from anything
resembling actual programming to be a work sample test. At best you're
administering an ad hoc IQ test, but then you're adding an adversarial public
performance aspect for no good reason. That adversarial public performance
aspect is the biggest single difference between whiteboard interviews and real
programming work--it's a much bigger difference than the difference between
acting auditions and acting day to day.

>I'm guessing, like most developers, this is your first/only profession

I also switched careers after years in another field.

> not every job requires the level of problem solving we deal with on a
> regular basis

This is true. But having worked on the embedded systems side of hardware,
there are many professions that do require at least the level of problem
solving that programming does.

EEs (the majority of whom don't have any kind of certification unless they're
working in power systems), computer engineers, and even embedded developers
don't routinely go through the kinds of whiteboard problem solving tests that
you're talking about. Engineers working on real time, safety critical systems
are hired every day without a Google style 6 person interview interview.

The key differences are that these companies aren't trying to cargo cult the
Google interview process, they don't have engineers a year or two out of
college conducting the interviews, and they aren't paralyzed by the fear of
unqualified candidates slipping through.

I spend a lot of time on (capital E) Engineering forums. You don't see people
on those forums complaining about the industry standard interview. You don't
see flame wars started every time someone even mentions interviews. I've never
heard of an EE with 20 years experience being asked to solve pet problems by a
22 year old new grad. And I've never heard of an EE spending months practicing
for an interview.

Clearly our interview process is broken. Perhaps it's time to look at similar
industries and spend some time trying to figure out if we are really so
different instead of insisting that programming is so uniquely challenging
that it requires such a controversial interview process.

~~~
frostmatthew
> Your argument was that almost all creative professions have auditions
> similar to whiteboard interviews

No it wasn't. Feel free to re-read my original comment[1]. My point was not
that they _have_ auditions, it's that the auditions don't closely mirror what
they'll actually be doing if they get the gig (which is one of, if not _the_ ,
most common complaint about whiteboarding).

However, it seems your primary concern is that the whiteboarding is done in
front of an "audience" \- I can sympathize with that but there's going to be
an audience (by your definition of the word) regardless of the structure of
the interview, i.e. your "looking through a past portfolio of work" example[2]
is still discussing your work to an audience (as opposed to creating new work
on the spot) and is still very dissimilar to the actual day-to-day work (N.B.
I've never actually been an "illustrator, a graphic designer, a writer, or an
architect" but I'm pretty sure their days aren't spent just sitting around
discussing their portfolios).

> Perhaps it's time to look at similar industries and spend some time trying
> to figure out if we are really so different instead of insisting that
> programming is so uniquely challenging that it requires such a controversial
> interview process

Perhaps I'm mistaken (I'm by no means an expert on the history of our
profession) but my understanding is whiteboarding interviews are a relatively
new phenomenon (i.e. last decade or two) and presumably programming interviews
prior to that were more similar to many other disciplines. It seems unlikely
(though certainly possible) that our entire industry would move away from that
if it didn't have major shortcomings.

If you feel you have found a better way to hire developers than what most of
the industry does I would encourage you not just to use it for the interviews
you conduct but also to share your thoughts and findings with others via a
blog or maybe even a book. Either would certainly have more potential impact
than debating the issue with me in a buried thread of a day old HN discussion.
It's been an interesting discussion and you've motivated me to research the
history of software dev interviews, best of luck to you in your career and
interviews.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17046775](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17046775)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17050714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17050714)

~~~
learc83
>No it wasn't. Feel free to re-read my original comment[1]

Sorry I wasn't very clear. When I said "similar to whiteboard interviews" I
meant similar in the sense they are both different from the day to day job.

>is still discussing your work to an audience

This is true. But _discussing_ is very different from _performing_. In my
experience, standing at a white board while someone who already knows the
answers to the questions they are asking tends to have a large impact on most
people's ability to perform.

I've seen this in numerous interviews. The number of false negatives in this
type of interview process are extremely high.

>and is still very dissimilar to the actual day-to-day work (N.B. I've never
actually been an "illustrator, a graphic designer, a writer, or an architect"
but I'm pretty sure their days aren't spent just sitting around discussing
their portfolios).

But the key difference is that the work they are discussing is a product of
their normal work environment.

Despite what we like to tell ourselves about wanting to see how people think,
the vast majority of these types of interviews are going to push forward the
people who can solve the problems they are presented with. So what Google
style interviews really select for are people who happened to have recently
studied the solutions to the types of problems presented during the interview
and who excel at public performance. The end result is that we encourage job
hunters to game the system by studying a subset of problems that don't
represent the real day to day challenges of working as a programmer.

> It seems unlikely (though certainly possible) that our entire industry would
> move away from that if it didn't have major shortcomings.

The majority of programming jobs are at non-tech companies, non-tech companies
don't tend to have Google style whiteboard interviews.

A large subset of the industry has moved to these types of interviews, but
that's not an uncommon occurrence. It's happened several times in the past.
Tech hiring is very fadish. Back when MS was the big company everyone wanted
to work for, they used to ask insanely difficult brain teaser questions. By
the early 2000s every tech company was asking these stupid riddles: You are a
chef. If you had an infinite supply of water and a 5 quart and 3 quart pail,
how would you measure exactly 4 quarts?; How many cars/gas stations/piano
tuners/etc. are there in the USA? etc...

The fad was strengthened by Google because they used the same kinds of
questions. This went on for a decade or so until Google decided brain teasers
didn't correlate well with job performance. Word spread and companies stopped
doing it (a few are behind the times and are still stuck on the last fad
cycle).

Now the fad is repeating itself, but the companies are trying to emulate
Google's newer brainteaser free 6 part whiteboard interview process.

The thing is, Google can afford an insane amount of false positives. Most
companies can't, yet they still insist on cargo culting the Google interview
without really understanding why.

>If you feel you have found a better way to hire developers than what most of
the industry does

I do have what I consider a better way, but I certainly didn't invent it. I
interview developers the way people interview architects, illustrators, and
engineers. I look at past experience and portfolios, and I judge whether they
can competently walk me through the projects in their portfolio.

If the applicant doesn't have much experience, or if their portfolio is too
small (all of their work is covered by NDAs or something like that) I include
a take home work sample test.

I've also had good experience pairing the applicant with a developer to work
on a sample problem that neither one has seen (and isn't something we'll
benefit from).

>you've motivated me to research the history of software dev interviews,

Our industry would be much better off if more people were willing to look at
why we do things the way we do them.

>best of luck to you in your career and interviews.

Thanks, you too.

------
crtlaltdel
After a thick paragraph about sports history I gave up, which is 100% my
fault. The moment an abstracted "sports metaphor" becomes an actual detailed
account of sports figures (players, coaches, teams, etc) my interest in the
topic enters a death spiral.

------
hguhghuff
You’ll just get knocked back for being tone deaf.

~~~
scarface74
And if you’re looking for a position where you can have a major impact, that
tells you a lot about the position.

------
pitt1980
Seems like the key to making this work is having done the legwork beforehand
to know you're making suggestions that won't wind up being tone deaf.

That legwork probably looks like having several conversations beforehand with
people on the inside beforehand, so you actually have a basis for thinking you
know what sort of problems are relevant for the decision makers.

On average, that's probably something college students looking for their first
jobs aren't well positioned to do (especially if they're looking for their
first job through formal recruiting channels at huge corporations).

And on average, for people with a few years of professional experience, its a
matter of realizing that hanging out at conferences, happy hours, and other
informal situations where you're around other similar professionals is low
hanging fruit for these sorts of conversations, and recognizing that these
situations present these sorts of legwork opportunities is a big advantage.

\----------

I said students don't typically do that well, but I don't think that has to be
a rule, lots of advice talks about trying to do 'informational interviews'. I
think this is sort of what they're getting at, what you want to get out of an
informational interview, is to sort of be able to frame the problems a future
interviewer might have, and be able to do an interview like this.

There's probably a lot of trial and error that goes into getting this right.
And also, probably a lot of investment in having conversations where the
payoff doesn't seem very obvious.

\---------

couple book suggestions: 1\.
[http://www.svastralwind.com/uploads/2/7/2/6/2726225/the_2-ho...](http://www.svastralwind.com/uploads/2/7/2/6/2726225/the_2-hour_job_search_-
_using_technology_to_get_the_right_job_faster.pdf)

gives a method for setting up informational interviews, good read overall

2\. I've suggested this books a couple times, I think its actually really deep
when contemplated on

Spin Selling by Neil Rackham

\-------------

Let me do a quick breakdown on why I think Spin Selling is really deep.

Its basically a method for asking questions that elicit deeper responses

its breaks down all sales questions into 4 categories:

SPIN Selling proposes there are four types of questions, thus SPIN stands for
:

1) Situation Questions deal with the facts about the buyers existing
situation.

2) Problem Questions ask about the buyer's pain and focus the buyer on this
pain while clarifying the problem, before asking implication questions. .
These give Implied Needs.

3) Implication Questions discuss the effects of the problem, before talking
about solutions, and develop the seriousness of the problem to increase the
buyer's motivation to change.

4) Need-Payoff Questions get the buyer to tell you about their Explicit Needs
and the benefits your solutions offers, rather than forcing you to explain the
benefits to the buyer. Getting the buyer to state the benefits has greater
impact while sounding a lot less pushy. What these questions do is probe for
explicit needs.

The quick takeaway, is that sometimes situation and problem questions are
sometimes needed to make sure you know what everyone is talking about, but
those questions are boring for the person being asked them. The basically
amount to giving information to someone who clearing doesn't know as much as
they do.

What you really want to do, are minimize those question (probably by googling
extensively before hand), and ask implications questions and need payoff
questions, those are the questions that will lead the listener to consider
things they hadn't previously considered.

When you start asking those questions, you'll start having conversations where
you learn things other people don't know.

This is presented in the context of making sales calls, but its actually good
advice for a huge range of conversations where what you're trying to determine
"what does the other person want?" "why do they want it?"

~~~
essayist
You might also like

[1] Sharon Drew Morgen's Buying Facilitation

Its message, "buyers don't know how to buy", helps make sense of some of the
controversy in this thread. If you're hiring 100 software engineers, god help
you if you don't know how to hire. But if you're hiring your first CFO, say,
it's more likely that you "don't know how to hire", and that a commanding (yet
polite) interviewee will be helpful.

Sharon Drew Morgen emphasizes the process of questioning and the "systemic"
nature of the uptake. Again, more relevant for a "big hire" than a dozens per
year hire. If you're the first CFO ever hired, especially, it makes sense to
help the hiring team think through how the company will adjust to having that
new role and whether they've done the necessary groundwork for those
adjustments.

[2] The Challenger Sale

Similar, but with an emphasis on the content. Do your research in advance to
figure out how your type of widgets solves specific problems that most of your
customers have.

The hiring analogue again fits best for "big hires". E.g. "since this is your
first CFO, a big part of the job will be to straighten out the ad hoc
financial routines that have grown up so far. I have the necessary great
financial/accounting skills, but I'm also a great listener/researcher with the
people skills to bring people into more constraining routines."

[1] [https://buyingfacilitation.com/blog/buying-facilitation-
new-...](https://buyingfacilitation.com/blog/buying-facilitation-new-way-sell-
influences-expands-decisions/)

[2] [https://www.cebglobal.com/insights/challenger-
sale.html](https://www.cebglobal.com/insights/challenger-sale.html)

------
falcon620
I just went through a phone interview with a candidate today who did this. He
had pre-shared a 36-page presentation of his career/goals/etc.

I spent some time studying this presentation ahead of the interview and
thought he was thoughtful and that this indicated an attention to clear
communication.

Then we started the interview. I told him I had read his presentation in
detail and commended him on the homework. He then super-politely asked if he
could spend ten minutes to quickly go through it to add some more details, via
a shared screen service. "Sure, why not?"

40 minutes later I finally cut him off, two thirds into the presentation. I
came away from this thinking he was trying to control the communication,
perhaps stearing me away from probing at his weaknesses rather than thinking
he was a proactive comminicator.

Please don't do this.

