I’m a software engineer who sometimes interviews other software engineers. I’m not given a script to go off of, I get to ask them whatever I want. Usually we just talk about technology and coding from a high level. I’m not a big fan of whiteboard tests.

I’ve noticed, however, that a lot of people applying to software engineering jobs feel very alien to me. I started coding when I was 12 and spent most of my teenage years on technology forums. A lot of people applying to these positions are very much ladder-climbing type people who got into the career for the money. Working with these people is an absolute drag.

We also interview for “culture fit”. I would like to add in a single question to my interviews to assess that: what is your favorite science fiction book. You don’t even have to have read it recently, you just have to have read one and formed an opinion on it. My thoughts

Pros:

  • Weeds out a lot of people since half of Americans don’t read books at all.
  • Theoretically filters out people who love this kind of tech subculture from people who are just in it for the money

Cons:

  • It’s unfair to people who enjoy fantasy novels, or any other form of fiction
  • Being motivated by money probably shouldn’t be a disqualifying factor (I certainly wouldn’t do this job for free), I’m just tired of working with yuppies and lashing out at poor unsuspecting Jr Devs

I’m half-hearted on this. I see why it could be considered unfair but I’m really tired of the kinds of people I work with.

  • shortrounddev@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    23·
    1 day ago

    Haha I’m afraid every time I interview someone. I know that I personally hate being asked whiteboard algorithm questions, and I don’t think they’re very useful either. When I interview people I ask them two main questions:

    1. What is your hottest take on coding? It can be controversial or not, it just has to be a strongly held opinion. For example, if you despise Windows, tell me why. If you are a zealot for Vim/Emacs, rant at me. If you think that dynamically typed languages are the worst thing ever, prove it.

    I don’t actually care about what their opinion is (though I think it’s good to hire people with a lot of intellectual diversity), I just want to see if they can extemporaneously rant about coding for 10-15mins

    1. What is a technology (an API, a cloud service, a programming language, a new kind of algorithm, etc.) that you are excited about and that you want to be able to use at work some day

    Again, the actual tech doesn’t matter too much to me, but this indicates that they read up on the latest goings-ons of the industry they’re in. I also think that it’s a good character trait to be someone who desperately searches for problems to apply a novel solution to. I don’t think it’s always a good idea to ACTUALLY create a solution looking for a problem, but I think it’s a good intellectual trait to have