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Technical Interviews Reject the Wrong Engineers

https://fagnerbrack.com/technical-interviews-reject-the-wrong-engineers-a8e78ca04b2e
23•fagnerbrack•1h ago

Comments

techblueberry•1h ago
> The deeper issue is tacit knowledge. Most of what a skilled engineer knows is not something they can articulate on demand.

Why is it that everyone says that soft skills can be more important than hard skills, that engineers talk to people they don’t sit in rooms turning requirements into code, but then, it seems like one of the criticisms about the interview process is “well, engineers can come up with good solutions when alone in a room”

That’s not the job. Articulating technical details when in conversation with your colleagues is.

dijksterhuis•15m ago
eh, my take is that you’re kind of going off in a specific direction when reality is actually behind you little here.

i cannot explain why it’s not possible for us to fling the flange if i don’t understand how both the flange flanges and the fling flings.

being able to talk about it is a downstream effect of knowing about it.

BugsJustFindMe•15m ago
Articulation is not the issue; the reasoning and consideration process is.

If you step back a bit from the words on that page and squint, what you might see is something like "Most of what a skilled engineer does is recognize, sense problems, and feel things that may not be obvious."

The discovery of the right path forward for the goals of the organization comes after that and takes time and planning.

mixmastamyk•13m ago
One returns in a week with a fully articulated solution, not at point blank. Famously, Archimedes came up with his in the bathtub.
a-dub•13m ago
here's an idea for an "experienced" technical interview structure. "we care about x, y and z. you have forty five minutes to convince us that you will meaningful help us achieve our goals. we then will take 30 minutes to push on technical details as we see fit. you will be judged based on technical content, choices, taste and your overall approach and strategy for moving us forward and convincing us that you're the right person to do it. good luck!"
paulluuk•10m ago
I wonder how many great engineers with stage fright you would lose this way, though.
BugsJustFindMe•7m ago
> we care about x, y and z. you have forty five minutes to convince us that you will meaningful help us achieve our goals. we then will take 30 minutes to push on technical details

This part is very good.

> as we see fit. you will be judged based on technical content, choices, taste and your overall approach and strategy for moving us forward and convincing us that you're the right person to do it. good luck!

This part is confrontational and will lead to worse outcomes.

zipy124•11m ago
The main problem is good engineers have no need to sit through your 12 step process. It actively selects only for the most desperate or money driven people (if you pay very well).
dangus•3m ago
This point gets repeated a lot as if we are supposed to coddle engineers by making interviews wildly easy.

At some point as an employer you do want someone who is motivated enough to take some time out of their day to prepare for an interview.

Do you really want an employee who gives so little of a shit that they refuse to use their brain to get a job?

This isn’t exactly a hot labor market in tech. Companies have a good selection of quality talent available right now.

newtonianrules•1m ago
I don’t want to put my future coworker through six rounds of interviews. If it takes more than three rounds + a phone screen to figure out if someone is a good fit then the process is broken.
ninininino•46s ago
> an employee who gives so little of a shit that they refuse to use their brain to get a job?

Many many folks are the type that is willing to hard grind/suffer short-term to get through a hoop, but as soon as they are inside they turn that 'optimizer' mindset towards 'how can I do the minimum necessary to coast and collect my paycheck'.

And many many folks who are highly motivated to work hard every day at their job are not highly motivated to prepare for jumping through a hoop like a circus clown.

IshKebab•8m ago
Of course. This isn't a secret. But nobody has come up with anything better. Doesn't seem like this guy is proposing anything either.
kadhirvelm•5m ago
We’ve added collaboration and communication as big facets in our hiring loop rubrics, and reduced the complexity of our questions. We also tell candidates this ahead of time - been honestly working pretty well so far, it indexes more on those soft skills and gives us just enough insight into the hard skills to make a call.

We’ve also been increasingly finding very few candidates know how to solve a complex question these days without LLM support lol. How are other folks changing their loops these days?

root-parent•2m ago
>> few candidates know how to solve a complex question these days without LLM support lol

Please tell me you are joking.

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