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JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

Fiedler posted:

are you basing this on the resume? if so...

yeah step 1 is the same as always, figure out if their resume is a pack of lies

where would they be joining your org? senior on your team? in your management chain?

assuming step 1 goes well and you're not able to grill them technically, i've focused on behavioral questions. "can you describe a time when a junior engineer was stuck on a problem, and what steps you took to help them?" and interpret the answer as 'what if my boss did X'. it's totally okay to say "no hire, could code circles around me but is a jerk and wouldn't be a culture fit with our org"

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JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

Rex-Goliath posted:

if he was at a level where it’d be enforceable he wouldn’t have to wonder about it. they’re almost always bullshit
"at a level"?

did you miss the sandwich shops getting into giant lawsuits over noncompetes a couple years back? cousin of mine in texas basically switched careers after leaving one place

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...
i dunno what fantasy world you're in where wage slaves have lawyerbux to even mount a fight against something like that, but jimmy johns had egregious non-competes in their sandwich artist contracts up thru 2016

the non-poaching (i work at mcdonalds A, i want a job at mcdonalds B, company won't let me even think about it) BS is just getting struck down now

like you could be giving really lovely ruinous advice and handwaving away legitimate risk depending on the state,, idk maybe sort that out

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

Bloody posted:

how the gently caress do i do a phone screen im supposed to screen someone this week

the only question you're answering is "is it worth flying this person out and burning X hours from Y engineers/managers for an onsite"

the bar can be really low. you want some of the normal "is this resume a pack of lies"

I've done all of the following on systems phone screens:
1) function to convert big-to-little endian
2) shared code pad, simple coding exercises like popcount/word count (note that word count is not counting spaces)
3) shared word doc, drew up a block diagram for a fitness tracker

at the end of 30~60 minutes, you need enough signal to justify bringing them on-site or ending the process

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...
i had healthcare as employee #1 at a startup that laid me off later, what kind of circus isn't

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

Blinkz0rz posted:

you must be a delight to work with jfc

idk is the exact proper cynicism level that easy to nail? i go back and forth

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...
at the FLIR hackathon, milling around outside the building before anyone was allowed in, the first words spoken to me were "are you a programmer"

so yeah you've got a good shot

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

Bloody posted:

i could probably pivot to being a systems engineer but that feels like an extremely pigeonholing move to literally just aerospace and defense

Janitor Prime posted:

Also telecom
yeah, the other systems folks i know write wifi mesh router FW, web-scale CDN stuff

think how many systems engineers places like fitbit, jawbone, sonos, etc. have

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

Bloody posted:

to be clear when i say systems engineer i mean this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_engineering

aka requirements, verification, FMEA, MIL-STD-###, DO-### style poo poo

uhhhh how do you think CE products supported by huge backend systems come into being without requirements, verification, FMEA....

like im sorry i insulted you with the low-grade trash im involved with, but this is absolutely a role that every CE company has if you can't stand those two industries

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...
i interviewed for a systems engineer at fitbit, it was the FW folks and EE folks basically asking "are you gonna gently caress me over with lovely HW" and a lot of poking at block diagrams. the worst was power analysis, the bad cop was on a video link from san diego and gave zero feedback until the very end when he joked "lol you've obviously done power analysis before, but your #'s for BLTE chips are X years out of date and that's easy to learn"

honestly the further i stay from PLM systems the happier I am, so

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...
there'll be a NDA

probably a ridiculous one, like signing away your rights to ever work on anything in the 2.4GHz spectrum ever again because once you hear their idea for, idk, a concert badge that tracks participants with UHF semi active RFID tags you'll obviously go make all the money with it

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...
correct

any yes/no is less cost to them than unanswered spam

one of my biggest fans uses the line "PLEASE, indicate either "interested," "maybe later," or "no thanks" to this message, so I don’t bother you again if you're not interested."

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...
this week i've gotten 2 cold calls, one from goog and one from

I'm helping Matternet, one of the only FAA-approved drone companies, grow their engineering team. They use aerial drone technology to deliver medical supplies to developing parts of the world with no access to hospitals or emergency medical assistance.

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

ThePeavstenator posted:

I'm only planning on taking this job if they give me an obnoxious raise.

ThePeavstenator posted:

Got an offer...for like 2/3s of what I get now in every aspect of compensation.

ThePeavstenator posted:

Turned down the offer. They didn't want to budge on pay and also the employment contract included things like waiving my right to sue and only settling disputes through arbitration. I haven't seen that in an employment contract before and it set off some internal alarm bells. I've seen non-competes and "we own your intellectual property unless you put every idea you've ever had before working here in this box" clauses, but is waiving your right to sue normal?
what was the impetus for even reading that far? sounds like you knew it wasn't a fit before those flags

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...
idk there's a lot of non-obvious stuff i've been coached on that i doubt i would've stumbled on through interview volume?

"tell me about yourself!" give yourself 30s, max. make it punchy, memorable, and cut yourself off before you bore them to death with minutia. they should want to know more

on those open ended questions just give a barrage of goofball conditions. the one I remember is "if you're in a boat and throw a rock overboard, what happens to the water line on the side of the boat?" and just listing off ridiculous assumptions that had to hold. you're assuming the boat is floating, the water is liquid, the rock is more dense than water, etc. etc.

that said I wouldn't pay for a coach

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

Doom Mathematic posted:

"Haha, I got you! The water line was actually an ice line!"
it was in the context of a post-silicon position where you're debugging marginal issues, so "maybe the cache blew up" was reasonable. for most software folks it required out-of-the-box thinking

ostensibly, that's what the question is looking for. the wrongest answer is digging your heels in, with all those unstated assumptions lurking about, and insisting on the one up/down answer that'd be on a physics test

that style has fallen out of favor but unstylish folks often have jobs with money, so

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

qhat posted:

I guess my sticking point with this role in particular is it demands a couple years experience, mostly because this company really does not need any more junior devs or people with little understanding of basic things like testing and best practices.
if you can't take a junior, don't take a junior. sideswiping bootcamps along the way is wholly unnecessary

qhat posted:

Networking, distributed systems, advanced databases, security, cloud engineering to name a few big ones that I really wish people at this company had even a cursory understanding of.
one of these is tangentially related to my job, the others would all be useless

my degree contained none of them

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

Pollyanna posted:

I also can’t justify why we shouldn’t ask the knights tour problem with anything other than “I hate it”

do you actually arrange knights on a chess board in your day to day? if you're hoping the candidate wrangles a graph problem out of it, why not just ask a graph problem that's relevant to your work

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

Rex-Goliath posted:

i can’t believe i never realized this but having a candidate write tests for a piece of your already existing code would be real good interview material

sounds like an unpaid internship

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...
uh, can you tell us about a time that you got direction from above and how you responded?

like i've heard awful, awful answers to behavioral questions. i dont think "lying" is strictly required, but take a sec to dress up something in agreeable language

bad: "yeah those wankers tried to get me to use 'version' 'control' but i laughed in their faces. when can i start?"
good: "while our relationship was not stellar, they did recommend a tool that i hadn't previously incorporated into my workflow. i reluctantly investigated it, but determined the velocity of our release schedule couldn't accommodate it"

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

hobbesmaster posted:

if you’re actually good at it you should jump over to management or technical marketing/sales

lmao with talking to people and deliverables? no thank u

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

meatpotato posted:

鬼神 hire ‘em all 1099

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

meatpotato posted:

ahh, to feel wanted

congrats :)

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...
why are y'all asking for feedback

what's the best case result from that

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

CPColin posted:

You get to laugh at the dumb reasons they give?
seems a lot more bitter than that

Ploft-shell crab posted:

any qs you should be asking to interviewers that are specific to consultancies?
is there a necessity to stay above a certain amount of billable hours, can you bring clients in or work with them on the side separate from the consultancy

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

qsvui posted:

that reminds me of someone in a coc thread saying that was perfectly reasonable. lol indeed.

they went hog wild with it, that tangent was ridiculous

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

Ciaphas posted:

anyone who wanted to hurt me could probably figure out who and where i am without any effort at this point

probably true for 90% of posters itt

that said, point taken, nevermind, i'll go without

god 20 bootcamp grads do it daily in the gray forums version, you can probably redact your own info

if you're legit concerned (idk anything about clearances) feel free to PM me or send it on slack

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...
ahahaha yeah who doesn't want to obsess over shoes on the subway, real mystery here

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

dipshit business people obsess over shoes in the midwest, too. you're being judged whether you notice it or not

if you wear vans to work every day you're the adult equivalent of the kid who eats paste. of course he doesn't think there's anything wrong with it

weird how this went from being "some rando senior dev in the midwest" to being personally addressed to me, this sure has the hallmarks of a good-faith discussion and isn't you just blasting your insecurities out at anyone who'll listen nope

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...
yeah, lotta folks hate their WA income tax and move to NYC to avoid it

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...
hey if u hate property taxes lemme tell you about this sweet deal we've got in CA

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

Bloody posted:

a manager i really like is interested in having me switch teams

downside: the job is c++
i and/or the relevant managers botched multiple internal transfers at intel, AMA

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...
lol

MononcQc posted:

yeah basically you can see remote work in all kinds of variations from "babbi's first remote" to "full blown remote":

  • cross-team projects in corporations with multiple offices: this can be remote work (i.e. your teammate is far away and there is no way to physically talk to them), but it is relatively rare since people will more willingly collocate projects entirely within one office and pay for travel. This can in ways happen within the same city when you have larger campuses and floors. Babbi's first remote team experience.
one of my companies did a survey and found the "average" project was split into 6 sites. there was a big initiative to slim that down, and this was after a bunch of smaller international offices were shut down. at the design/test conference there was an entire paper on "we put folks working on the same thing on the same floor and it was great!!! same aisle, even better!!!!" and they were just breathless describing it

the one area where it really worked was 24h debug. we'd work 8 hours, hand off to somewhere in yurop, they'd work for 8 and hand off to malaysia, we'd wake up and the problem was 16 hours ahead. like magic.

KoRMaK posted:

I'm very open to that idea, but I don't think I was a dick about offering. I was always really supportive of helping them. I was very very patient with them, but I will say I wasn't absolutely perfect. It was a very trying relationship. They didn't know anything about how like classes or instances worked, or how variables and their scopes were defined, which means they basically misrepresented themselves in the interview. So anyway, whatever it was I was tooooo much of a dick from his perspective. But for me, and the other devs that had to work with him, they said I demonstrated really good patience.
can't find original but it does sound like it was on the other person in this case. but if you want a 80's management buzzword that pattern matches close you want Set up to Fail

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

Gazpacho posted:

which makes interviewers panic

oh totally

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

Cold on a Cob posted:

- when was the last time you missed a meal with your family or a personal event because you were stuck at work?
Translation: variation on the “do people have good work/life balance at your company” type question.

Cold on a Cob posted:

yeah i need a more oblique and less aggressive way to ask that

e: aggressive is the wrong word but i think you get my point
"meal with your family" is presumptive/normative and invites answers that don't have any bearing on you e.g. "we haven't eaten together since my wife deployed"

Rex-Goliath posted:

yeah this is what the ‘how does the team react when it becomes clear they won’t make a deadline?’ is for
this gets at the same issue without those drawbacks, but you might need to direct the answer or make more pointed questions as it comes

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

pointsofdata posted:

Just saw "the bulk of turnover is voluntary" as an hr response to a glassdoor review about high turnover

the volunteering will continue until morale improves

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...
the pros just ship their RSA token to china

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

FMguru posted:

if your tech chops are good enough to work in gaming, theyre good enough to work in an industry that doesnt have all three of those characteristics
i had a friend in college go into gaming, so it kinda sucked watching from afar as his dreams were ground into a fine paste, he got out soon after his first game wrapped

he mentioned the game he worked on and i bought it, his reaction being "god im sorry, i hope you didn't pay full price"

JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...
it's a shame all these interview processes railroad The One True Resume thru the entire length of the process without chance of deviation

like imagine if at some point you talked to a hiring manager and could say "ahaha oh that's just SEO to get past HR, here's a simpler tech-focused one for you and your team"

too bad no humans exist, anywhere, and it's all robots

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JawnV6
Jul 4, 2004

So hot ...

ratbert90 posted:

I have been asking the question: "I have a 100Mb/s internet connection, how long will it take me to download a 100MB file?" for the last several months to candidates.

I think that question has around a 40% correct answer rate. :smith:
lol even google knows

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