Some thoughts on hiring

As I was looking for a new job these last couple of weeks, I did a bunch of interviews with different companies, tiny to large. It is interesting how different the interview process is. Some companies are super rigorous, others just invite you to their office to see what it’s like.

Roughly the hiring process falls into 3 kinds of categories:

• Technical interviews + some soft-question interview.
• Take home exercise + walkthrough.
• Simple one on one with someone who is hiring with little or no technical quesitons.

I did all of the above in the last couple of weeks and I still like the first option the best. You can find endless discussions on Hacker News on the benefits and shortcomings of algorithmic style interviews. Often the main point of opponents is that knowing fancy data structures and solving a problem in a certain time complexity doesn’t tell much about how good of an engineer you are.

Let me tell you why technical interviews are still my preferred route to getting hired. Compared to a takehome exercise they take a lot less time, but that is not the main point. When I get interviewed I get to know as much about the interviewer, and thereby the company, as the interviewer gets to know about me. It should never be some exercise that you either solve or fail at, but rather a two-way communication The company wants to know if the interviewee is skilled. I am interested to get to know my potential new colleagues and if they are technical well versed.

The best interviews I had, were interviews where the question started simple and which one could discuss without code at first. The problem then became more difficult and might even end in something that is open-ended. Somewhere along the way one would start coding. The discussion was at no point a one way monologue. It was always a dialogue on the same level. At the end it felt like I have had a interesting discussion with a peer where I learned something new about computer science.

The good thing about the takehome exercise style interview is that in the walkthrough you also get to know some potential peer. So there is the interactive part. The problem with this style is that information mostly flows from you, the interviewee, towards the company. They get to know how you would have solved some problem. You get little to no knowledge about the technical abilities of your new colleagues.

The last style is kind of a bit like a shot in the dark. You can of course get a feel for the people you work with and that is as least as important, but their skills will only be revealed after you have spend some time on your new job. Nevertheless, don’t throw these kind of opportunities under the rug, often small companies and startups don’t have a very set in stone hiring process and they are often the ones that offer the most interesting work.