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Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



you're right that it's kind of dumb in that you really shouldn't need a "method" or an acronym that says "hey actually answer the question" but some people are really bad at talking to humans and it helps them i guess :shrug:

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Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



i am a moron posted:

i would like to be judged by the cosmic content of my character, an unassailable set of qualities only known to me. i cannot account for any actual actions i have taken

:same: except i want you to view me as i want to be seen, not as i actually am

urea
Aug 18, 2013

Idk when i talk to people i just respond to their questions without thinking about whether my response rigidly fills x,y,z criteria as if it's being checked by a machine

urea
Aug 18, 2013

If my answer doesn't have some information they want, they can just ask for more information ie have a conversation?

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



i mean if you can't hit all the points without "thinking about whether my response rigidly fills x,y,z criteria as if it's being checked by a machine" that's kind of on you

i am a moron
Nov 12, 2020

"I think if there’s one thing we can all agree on it’s that Penn State and Michigan both suck and are garbage and it’s hilarious Michigan fans are freaking out thinking this is their natty window when they can’t even beat a B12 team in the playoffs lmao"

urea posted:

If my answer doesn't have some information they want, they can just ask for more information ie have a conversation?

oh

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



urea: *says a bunch of things*
interviewer: "ok....so what was the reason that this was happening? what was the......TASK?
urea: I AM NOT A MACHINE CAN'T YOU JUST ASK ME FOR MORE INFORMATION??????

urea
Aug 18, 2013

🙄

4lokos basilisk
Jul 17, 2008


Achmed Jones posted:

so you can tell me about the question you ask, but you can't write down what kind of answers a good hire would give, and what kind of answers a bad hire would give for some reason? you can't figure out what features make a response better than another response? if you cant even figure out that simple thing, how is the question actually useful to you?

can you somehow not figure out how to have a conversation that focuses on a specific topic to get information about that topic?

i'm imagining you trying to, like, grade a student essay and just melting down about it being impossible lol

for a concrete example, if i asked the question "could you describe me how an api request works? pick any layer or technology and go as deep as you want", what i am expecting is that the candidate gives me an overview of how some api request works on some technical level (depending on the candidate's strong points). and from that point we can have a drill-down conversation where either they explain me some technical stuff or i correct some details.

i am basically expecting these conversations to go differently depending on people - some clam up, some start talking, some get stuff completely wrong, and some are brilliant but since its an open ended question, i cant imagine having expectations concrete enough to be able to compare the answers to other similar interviews

idk its probably showing that i have not been in the role of an interviewer a lot, and my personal work experience seems to be that the less standardised the job interview felt, the better i actually suited for the team and had more fun working (and this is true for a 10 person small shop and a 25k headcount megacorp)

and yeah if i can help it i dont ever want to learn to "crack the coding interview" and if a potential employer expects me to do that i take it as a red flag

urea
Aug 18, 2013

The "what was the task" is the normal human conversation. The interviewers expecting you to prepare answers that fit the STAR 1.2 spec that include buzzwords from the Corporation Core Values Handbook and how they relate and marking you down if you don't is the machine part.

Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice
idk, star is a dumb acronym but it's not a bad way to answer questions fully. i was answering questions this way long before i even knew what star was:

describe the problem ("we only had one bagel left and two devs hadn't eaten yet")
describe your role ("as an outside management consultant in charge of ensuring the devs were well fed")
describe the solution ("i directed the two devs on my team to fight to the death")
describe the final result ("the superior underling ate the bagel AND i successfully reduced headcount without having to fire anyone")

outhole surfer
Mar 18, 2003

honestly you *really* have to gently caress up on all the behavioral questions to get rejected on that basis.

people are loving weird, and any halfway decent interview process is going to leave a lot of leeway for weird awkward people.

i'm still cringing about my response to "tell me about a time you worked on a team to solve a problem". instead of describing any of the times I worked with a team to successfully solve a problem, I rambled a bit about my own shortcomings in other instances of teamwork. finally i realized i hosed up and instead of correcting course into a more flattering answer, I abruptly ended the response with a pause and "...I guess those are my thoughts on teams"

got the job, but goddamn is that awful response going to forever be seared into my memory

outhole surfer
Mar 18, 2003

edit: sigh. quote button is not edit button.

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



4lokos basilisk posted:

for a concrete example, if i asked the question "could you describe me how an api request works? pick any layer or technology and go as deep as you want", what i am expecting is that the candidate gives me an overview of how some api request works on some technical level (depending on the candidate's strong points). and from that point we can have a drill-down conversation where either they explain me some technical stuff or i correct some details.

i am basically expecting these conversations to go differently depending on people - some clam up, some start talking, some get stuff completely wrong, and some are brilliant but since its an open ended question, i cant imagine having expectations concrete enough to be able to compare the answers to other similar interviews

idk its probably showing that i have not been in the role of an interviewer a lot, and my personal work experience seems to be that the less standardised the job interview felt, the better i actually suited for the team and had more fun working (and this is true for a 10 person small shop and a 25k headcount megacorp)

and yeah if i can help it i dont ever want to learn to "crack the coding interview" and if a potential employer expects me to do that i take it as a red flag

yeah they all go differently, but they all have similar qualities we can write down. it can be pretty vague and tbh that's ok - where the rubric is vague you can lean on examples. you start out vague and then narrow it down

code:
* candidate demonstrates understanding of what an API is
* candidate correctly describes API of their choice
* candidate isn't an rear end in a top hat
and that's better than nothing. and then you get more granular:

code:
* candidate demonstrates understanding of what an API is
    * candidate describes difference between web/network-based APIs and software APIs
    * candidate explains choice between RPC-based and REST-based APIs
* candidate correctly describes API of their choice
    * candidate correctly describes how request is authenticated
    * candidate correctly describes request payload
    * candidate correctly describes response payload
    * candidate correctly describes how errors are handed
    * candidate understands PUT vs PATCH semantics
* candidate isn't an rear end in a top hat
    * when corrected, candidate shows willingness to learn, lack of defensiveness
    * when teaching interviewer, candidate treats them as an intelligent peer
       * candidate does not condescend
       * candidate asks appropriate "do you already know BACKGROUND" questions
sometimes you won't get a signal on a line, or it's not applicable or w/e. "n/a" is ok. if they don't hit a particular topic you have in the rubric, either 1) they're talking about something else that gives you good signal, you add it to the rubric as a possibility for next time and now you're a better interviewer or 2) you prompt them to talk about something you care about so they don't spend all their time jabbering about stuff that doesn't actually give you a signal

all those lines under "..describes API" could be optional and you only care that they talk about idk 3 of these things and these are examples. you also don't have to bring this in to the interview with you and check it off. just, like, take notes about what they say and make sure that the content you want is there

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



urea posted:

The interviewers expecting you to prepare answers that fit the STAR 1.2 spec that include buzzwords from the Corporation Core Values Handbook and how they relate and marking you down if you don't is the machine part.

yeah and that's dumb, but doesn't reflect anything on the methodology, it's just people being dumb

so you don't hate the star method, you hate bad interviewers. ok, so does everyone

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



Cold on a Cob posted:

i was answering questions this way long before i even knew what star was

human spotted

or robot spotted

idk any more

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



gently caress it achmed claims the quad

urea
Aug 18, 2013

Then it seems all behavioural interviewers are bad
but it''s ok, i know how to interface with their ABI now

urea fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Jun 9, 2022

dioxazine
Oct 14, 2004

raminasi posted:

lol if you mean the aws thing that's dumb as hell, what specific thing were they asking about? even the stupid aws cert test that covers that service doesn't ask anything about it

it was about endpoint setup, storage, and granular access via sgs. i assumed it was just the standard best practices for each line item, but the interviewer wasn't buying it.

i was right though

KirbyKhan
Mar 20, 2009



Soiled Meat

Achmed Jones posted:

you're right that it's kind of dumb in that you really shouldn't need a "method" or an acronym that says "hey actually answer the question" but some people are really bad at talking to humans and it helps them i guess :shrug:

Oh man, speaking to humans is not common. It blows my mind how people can get away with speaking with only familiar people for like decades. Like pulling teeth getting anything out of folks so far in their shell.

Idk, I did toastmasters in my teens. Jackbox Party Discords are basically that.

bob dobbs is dead
Oct 8, 2017

I love peeps
Nap Ghost
its sales

nothing more nothing less. selling rented toucher for 6.5 figs/year. of course touchers hate it

spin sales would work fine, challenger sales would work fine. peeps dont wanna do that poo poo tho

Quackles
Aug 11, 2018

Pixels of Light.


Achmed Jones posted:

gently caress it achmed claims the quad

achmed takes the fifth?

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



Quackles posted:

achmed takes the fifth?

i can only wish i were that cool...maybe one day

also, hi quackles!!

my homie dhall
Dec 9, 2010

honey, oh please, it's just a machine

nudgenudgetilt posted:

got the job, but goddamn is that awful response going to forever be seared into my memory

don’t worry, it’s forever seared into the memories of the people who interviewed you too and they occasionally think of it to themselves, condescendingly :twisted:

Captain Foo
May 11, 2004

we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

Cold on a Cob posted:

idk, star is a dumb acronym but it's not a bad way to answer questions fully. i was answering questions this way long before i even knew what star was:

describe the problem ("we only had one bagel left and two devs hadn't eaten yet")
describe your role ("as an outside management consultant in charge of ensuring the devs were well fed")
describe the solution ("i directed the two devs on my team to fight to the death")
describe the final result ("the superior underling ate the bagel AND i successfully reduced headcount without having to fire anyone")

i laughed

Trimson Grondag 3
Jul 1, 2007

Clapping Larry
I’m doing some mentoring stuff at the moment and watching poor 20 year old uni students melt down when I ask ‘tell me about yourself’ or ‘tell me about a time when you used data to make a decision’ when we do practice interviews is very illustrative that this sort of questioning is not natural to people. they usually have the stories but just aren’t able to connect them in a natural sounding way.

Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice
i mean if interviewing was easy and natural for everyone we wouldn't have these threads vOv

Jabor
Jul 16, 2010

#1 Loser at SpaceChem
like the whole point of star is that when you're talking about something you've done, which is the thing that the interviewer is actually asking about, it's not something that happened in a featureless grey void, there's a whole lot of social context around that situation which then influences why you did what you did.

the star method is literally just "give the interviewer the relevant parts of that context before telling them what you did". that's literally all it is.

it's often very tough for people straight out of education not because they can't figure out how to give context before talking about what they did, but because they don't think they have good enough examples for times that they did the things being asked about.

Trimson Grondag 3
Jul 1, 2007

Clapping Larry
star also helps people bring their stories to closure instead of just rambling interminably when asked an open ended question.

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



no method can prevent me from rambling and free associating. i will not be stopped

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

Achmed Jones posted:

no method can prevent me from rambling and free associating. i will not be stopped

that’s called adhd and adderall probably can

Achmed Jones
Oct 16, 2004



gently caress

KirbyKhan
Mar 20, 2009



Soiled Meat
I love talking about my favorite thing in the world: myself

Qtotonibudinibudet
Nov 7, 2011



Omich poluyobok, skazhi ty narkoman? ya prosto tozhe gde to tam zhivu, mogli by vmeste uyobyvat' narkotiki
drat, did a rather unsuccessful coding interview between forgetting a bunch of basic syntax crap (i never memorize it because i look at something similar nearby and as a "right, array brackets on left" trigger) and thinking I'd failed to fix mismatched braces/walking through checking them manually, which ate a ton of time. kicker was that i hadn't mismatched them really, but had somehow pasted an extra } on the last line of the file at some point, so none of the others would autoformat like they normally do when correctly matched, so i walked through several times desperately checking matches that were fine 🤦

only got through the very basic first three things, more complex things i got bogged down in ^ and managed to design and draft out something i think worked for the problem, but only got to the point of fixing it for one of the more complex tests. ah well

Kazinsal
Dec 13, 2011



c not quite interviewing s: if you are in canada and are a datacenter/network toucher I need someone to replace one of the worst coworkers I've ever had

Asymmetric POSTer
Aug 17, 2005

Kazinsal posted:

c not quite interviewing s: if you are in canada and are a datacenter/network toucher I need someone to replace one of the worst coworkers I've ever had

how was the coworker so bad?

post hole digger
Mar 21, 2011

getting ready for an interview im conducting this afternoon and tried to pull up the person's linkedin because resume the recruiter sent me was formatted weirdly. googling their name returned several news articles about a DUI hit and run arrest earlier this year :whitewater:

4lokos basilisk
Jul 17, 2008


got rejection feedback today - apparently the quality of my coding-whiteboarding results was not good enough.

my dear dudes, next time don't say at the beginning of the interview that the point of this exercise is not to get the most optimized solution, but to get an idea of how i solve problems and iterate. if you want super optimized solutions, that's not going to happen in a lovely web IDE with me talking and explaining stuff at the same time

im going to chalk it up to a bullet dodged - i probably would not have liked to work there anyway

on the plus side they did do a video call with me to actually share the feedback which is not something that happens often

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

quality does not necessarily mean algorithm, but being vague like that sure isn’t helpful

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4lokos basilisk
Jul 17, 2008


hobbesmaster posted:

quality does not necessarily mean algorithm, but being vague like that sure isn’t helpful

oh the feedback mentioned that the solutions could have been more optimal performance-wise, so i take this to mean that i focused too much on talking and not enough time on crunching out the fastest fizzbuzz

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