Interviews

I was crafted by the Waterloo co-op program in the late eighties. Part of that experience was a crazy large number of interviews, so I got pretty good at them. Since then, I’ve worked for over a dozen companies.

For one interview (for my all-time favourite job), I was really young, so I got asked rapid tech questions and had to bring printouts of my older code with me. That was fine, it was a systems programming job and really competitive, lots of people desired it.

For another interview, at the turn of the century, I just went for dinner and drinks. Definitely my favourite interview.

I’ve had a couple of interviews in coffee shops; they were usually successful. The casual atmosphere really helps to connect.

Once I got ganged up on. I think it was six of them crammed into a little office, but the questions were product, process, and feature-related, not coding, so it was fine.

Often, I was at the interview because a friend I had worked with in the past was trying to pull me in. That generally made them go pretty easy on me.

I’ve had some bad interviews, though. Usually, when applying for advertised jobs.

Once I showed up, they put me in a big room with a bunch of other people and gave us a written test. I took it, sat down, and just signed my name. Then I got up, handed it in and left. No way I was going to work for them.

Another time, I was grilled on tech that I told them I hadn’t used for twenty years. The kid interviewing me was annoyed that I couldn’t remember some esoterica. Seriously?

One time, they gave me an online coding test. An editor embedded in an online chat. The first question was okay, but for the second question, they wanted me to correctly code something huge. I explained the actual theory behind it and why it wasn’t trivial, but they didn’t understand and told me just to grind it out in a little bit of ‘approximate’ code. I hemmed and hawed for a while, then said I wasn’t going to finish. They told me to try anyway, so I sat there quietly until the interview timed out. I was hoping awkward silence made my point.

After one interview, one of the executives proudly told me that I would have to look after his “hobby” system. I turned that down without a second thought.

For another, it was going well, but then I started making jokes about live locks. Turns out the interviewer did his master's thesis on that topic. Opps.

One time, they said my take-home coding test had too many functions. I just laughed.

Another time, the interviewer started in with tricky little puzzle questions. I had seen them all before, so I could have answered, but I was already having a bad day, so I blew up. I got really angry, and the interviewer tried to calm me down. We agreed to meet in person, which went really well. I was sent across the country for a round of second interviews, but I was told I had a bit too much personality for them. It was still fun, and they paid my expenses.

One time, one of my co-workers showed me the tests he was going to use for interviews. He said to find the one problem, I pointed out a whole bunch of them; he got mad at me. Lol.

I often interviewed candidates, too. If we were multiple interviewers, I’d get the others to ask the tech questions, and I’d focus on personality. I like to see that people are curious and keen to learn. If they had that and I could get them talking about something that excited them, I generally accepted them. That had a pretty good track record of finding good people.

I usually expected a long ramp-up time and the need for training, so I was rarely looking for prefab employees. I saw them as longer-term bets, which tended to pay off better.

For one company, since the code was brutal, I used a technical question that I was pretty sure the candidates couldn't answer. I just wanted them to try to work through the problem. I would help, but not give it all away. If they were stumped and started pitching ideas, it was perfect. I had some pretty good hires from that.

For that round of interviews, one of the senior candidates got insulted and said he wouldn’t take the test. I obviously sympathized, but for that type of work, it wasn’t optional; it was our daily grind.

Overall, my hiring track record is iffy. Some great hires, but also some duds. Usually, though, the duds were caused by scarcity and/or my not trusting my own instincts. Sometimes the candidates are too limited; there is not much you can do about it.

I really hate the big, long, stupid interviews, particularly when the questions are way out of whack with the actual work. Seems like an ego problem if they’ll test you on stuff that you’d never have to do. They’re trying too hard to be cool, and I really hate the taste of Kool-Aid. If the interview makes you uncomfortable, the actual job is probably worse. I never felt bad when I just walked away, but I usually wasn't desperate either. That helps.

Only once did I really have to take a job that I didn’t want. I stayed for a while, but some days were hard. The irony was that many of my later jobs were with people I had met at that early one. The job wasn’t great, but the contacts turned out to be awesome. That's why it's important to keep a positive attitude even in a negative situation.

I’ve always figured that if you got the world’s ten greatest programmers all together on a project, they would spend their days fighting with each other and nothing practical would get built. A less impressive team that works together really well is always better. It’s too bad modern interview practices don’t reflect that.

If you’re interviewing these days, be patient, stay strong. It’s a numbers game. Win a few, lose a lot.