Interviews as Hazing Rituals

Aggro Interviews Making Up for Um...

I started this blog as a tongue in cheek kind of play on the fact that I'd been so out of the web world for so long that when I came back to look at the web, everything was so fresh and minty. Well, it turns out that that's not the only thing that has changed since I took my long snooze. I've been putting myself out again to look for a new job and I've been pretty shocked at how awful the interviewing process has become. It's become a hazing ritual straight out of your local frat house.

At some level this shouldn't be a big surprise because the entire industry -- at least what I'm seeing here in SF -- is being taken over by brogrammers. Call me old school, but I really don't want a keg on every floor and I don't see it as a feature that you use more space for ping pong tables and other toys than you do for space for your employees to work, assuming that they ever do that. And what's up with using 8' banquet tables with two people per table? It makes me want to look for severed fingers in my software because I'm surely looking at a sausage factory instead of software development.

The Greek System

But back to interviewing. One of the biggest changes nowadays is that everybody seems to be using keyword filtering software. This software doesn't appear to be especially bright as it just seems to do an intersection between the job requirements and the words that appear in your resume. If it isn't an exact intersection, you're rejected. It doesn't seem to discriminate between required, strong preference and nice to have either. If there isn't an exact match, then you're dropped. This seems especially prevalent at big companies where they force you to fill out an extensive questionnaire because, I guess, their filtering software isn't even smart enough to do the intersection function using your raw resume text. Worse, I've seen some that require you do that before you can see their job listings. I mean, seriously?

 

The net effect is that it's fairly useless to actually apply for a job because it never gets seen. Because, of course, there does not exist somebody who actually is an expert in the 99 things that you put on your listing as "requirements". So the unfortunately lesson here is that just dropping a resume off in the job inbox is a complete waste of time.


First, drink 10 beers


The biggest cancer -- and the subject of this rant -- are tests in the form of programming tests and puzzles. This is nothing more than a hazing ritual dressed up in all sorts of self-righteous excuses. The justification is that candidates might be lying about their programming prowess, thus it needs to be conclusively proven that you can write code on the spot. Never mind that this is extremely uncomfortable for the interviewee. Never mind that what is invariably given to be written you'd be fired for reinventing rather than just googling for the answer. Never mind the fact that most interviewers can't actually explain the problem they want you to solve. Never mind the fact that once you solve it, they want you "scale it up" whatever that means.

None of this matters because the point isn't to find out if you're a great programmer. The actual point is to convince the interviewers that they're great programmers. And superior to you in every way. Unless, I suppose, you look like them and have an affinity for drunken programming. The best part of this is when they tell you "we just want to see how you think". Call me crazy, but the only part of my thinking process you're going to understand after one of these tests is how good my rote memory is. I mean, when is the last time you've been asked to write a program to enumerate all permutations of a number? When is the last time you coded up a binary tree (no fair if you've been interviewing recently).

The absolutely worst are companies that use their hazing rituals -- like frats -- to prescreen pledges before they even a) talk to you and b) give you any clue whether you want to work in their sausage factory. This is abuse, pure and simple. And the larger joke is that it's been shown that it serves absolutely no purpose other than making the frat boys judge their penises large and manly. This google paper really drives this home, and I felt very vindicated.

We're not sure if you look like a Theta Tau

Every company has a "culture". Every company is completely convinced that their culture is the best. The interviewer's job is to make certain that the wrong element is not let into their restricted and exclusive frat ("exclusively what, and restricted to whom?"). You better be, well, top drawer just like Bunny Bixler and Muriel Puce.

Now there are cultural reasons why you may not be a good fit, like it being a stressful job where the interviewee is looking to destress (and vise versa!). But let's be real here for a second: every company says they only hire the "best and brightest" but not a one of them is located at Lake Wobegon. How, exactly, does that work? Or is "culture" a dog whistle for "looks-like-me"? And didn't Enron pretty much prove that hiring exclusively for "best and brightest" isn't a guarantee of success? Which isn't to say that trying to get good people should be downplayed -- not at all. It's just that looking into your sausage factory I have to assume there must be some third world country where everybody is white, male, 25, and dresses in skinny jeans to escape poverty by being exceptionally smart. At companies who do exceptionally amazing things like making sepia filters for .jpg's, and virtual row crops for e-farmers.

The PI-Thon Frat House

Computer languages are tools. Often complicated tools to be sure, but tools nonetheless. They do not describe your life essence. The ability to use them is not written into base pairs where some people inherit them, and some people don't. You do not need to give blood and do a PCR test to determine whether you are Java negative. If you're worth anything as a programmer you can and will pick up lots of languages over your lifetime. Some of them may actually be pretty awful and will make you apologize (hi PHP!). Some of them are more applicable to some problems than others.

The same thing goes for platforms and packages/frameworks. The current rage is to silo you based on whether you're iOS or Android, but it's no different than when they used to do that between M$ and Unix. Now true enough it takes time to learn a new language or platform or package/framework so it's a valid consideration to judge how much time a candidate might take to come up to speed. And true enough, there isn't much that you could do to convince me to waste my time learning .NET or some other piece of crap language/platform/package that I have no interest in learning. So, yes, thank you for putting down all of the buzz words so that I can filter too.

But where you go wrong is thinking that the lack of 7 years of mobile experience (seriously, I'm not making this up; edit: remember this is in 2013) means a priori that an otherwise competent person can't pick it up. In fact, part of the fun of a new job is getting exposure to new and different ways of approaching problems. Competent people break free of the frat they pledged to. Really.

Will nobody think of the code?

One of the most shocking things I've found interviewing is that -- except for the filters -- nobody seems to read your resume. And because they haven't read you resume, they obviously haven't seen anything online to validate your skill. The great thing about the net is that there are so many ways to show what you've done in the past, and whether it's a piece of art or a piece of crap. And since it's a given that the interviewer is smarter than Donald Knuth (even if they don't know who he is), he should be able to instantly assess whether your code is written well and whether the design choices were appropriate. Right? I've had exactly one interviewer ask me for code.

Now I understand that people lie, but it seems to me that using their own purported code to see how well they really understand what they claim they've written would be an immense help to ferret out the fakers. Much better than a real time rote memory test of coding up 2-3 tree or a lalr parser. Now this isn't failsafe because it can be perfectly legitimate for a person to not have an oeuvre that is publicly available. But to not use it as a resource when it's available? That's craziness. 

I'll pass on the spanking conga line

The Google HR guy's interview (and this one too) which says that the only thing that makes much of a difference in interviews are behavioral questions was quite a relief. I hadn't actually woken up in the alternate world where Spock and Kirk wear beards. Of course their revelation hasn't filtered out to the larger tech world, so there are still plenty of fucked companies with all of their interviewers who are looking for reassurance about their manhood. Oddly enough, it's the way I've always interviewed people too so it's doubly comforting that something I did by instinct was actually the only thing that seemingly works worth a damn. 

The last thing I'd like to say is this: instead of being paralyzed by making a mistake, do the obvious. If they can't program after you hire them, then... just fire them when you figure it out. It usually doesn't take too much time to find out somebody who interviewed well was a complete joke once on the job. And no, don't require they initially "consult" or whatever -- you're going to lose good people who view that as game playing. That and get rid of the kegs. Seriously.