How was your latest tech interview experience?

theMysteriousWanderer said:
Do you want me to work for you or join your cult? What in the gek has my personality got to do with anything regarding my work? World-renowned companies like Google where most of the interview comprises of discussing computer science concepts. If you expect candidates to pass some sort of poppycock Rorschach test to get employed then you and your company are full of ****.
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We don't do a lot of personality tests, if any. We do however expect you to pass complex problem-solving tasks, and show your ability to grasp fundamental concepts. If you think that an employer should take a risk with you because you're too arrogant to show them your abilities, well that's all someone needs to know about you really.

theMysteriousWanderer said:
No granted I have been out of the game for a while, but if that is what employers expect of potential candidates then they are full of ****. Are these tests developed by psychologists or psychiatrists? Are they reviewed or created by anyone even remotely trained in any mental health-related field of study? No, they are just some random piece of red-tape BS that is developed by some try-hard HR graduate
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Clearly, you have been rejected by some employers for failing the very thing you seem to hate so much, and also if the employer does it properly they usually have external personality assessors who ARE mental health professionals.

theMysteriousWanderer said:
I spent most of my web development career updating and churning out WordPress sites. I did learn to develop themes and plugins just to learn that my employer could not be arsed about any of it and just needed somebody to churn out these sites on AWS and update them when needed.

It was by no means glamorous but it paid the bills and was relatively hassle-free.
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Well it makes sense now why you don't like technical interviews.
 
theMysteriousWanderer said:
What in the gek has my personality got to do with anything regarding my work?
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Almost everything. Note that personality here doesn't mean fun to go on a joll with, but rather qualities like collaboration, ability to take criticism, ego, tenacity, curiosity, competitiveness, motivation, etc.

theMysteriousWanderer said:
World-renowned companies like Google where most of the interview comprises of discussing computer science concepts.
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A huge part of the interview at companies like Google is establishing fit - that is a personality test. They're watching you to see what questions you ask, how you take direction, how you behave under pressure, or when frustrated, how naturally you fall into a collaborative pattern with the interviewer etc. You do need to get the technical things right, but that's not the primary component of the interview.

theMysteriousWanderer said:
If you expect candidates to pass some sort of poppycock Rorschach test to get employed then you and your company are full of ****.
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This is what the best companies in the world do. They need to be very selective - this generally means more tests, not fewer.

theMysteriousWanderer said:
No granted I have been out of the game for a while, but if that is what employers expect of potential candidates then they are full of ****. Are these tests developed by psychologists or psychiatrists? Are they reviewed or created by anyone even remotely trained in any mental health-related field of study? No, they are just some random piece of red-tape BS that is developed by some try-hard HR graduate
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Psychologists.
 
My company did personality related tests, was done externally, been at the company for just under a year and super happy. Hybrid work model, everybody is friendly and the company is very open about how the company is doing financially and what kind of projects are on the horizon.

I was also weirded out at first by the personality test (Also included 2 other tests that included problem solving and maths), was like wtf is this. Realised why as soon as I joined.
Everybody gets along, company culture is great, everybody helps each other, the damn CTO still helps with complex issues.

We had an amazing end of year function that included a nights stay, unlimited drinks as well :love:
Personally I think companies do it to make sure you are a great fit so they can invest in you
 
Spacerat said:
Worthless …
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Having been on both sides; yes and no.
Yes as it can give you an idea of general aptitude but don’t take it as the gospel.
Same as other testing platforms.

I prefer supervised technical assessments as have had more than a few devs hand over the work to UpWork (before GPTs where around) lol
 
You interview according to the type of job/role.

If somebody is going to be working with highly sensitive information and systems a personality test may be in order. If it's for trading algorithms etc. you probably want to make sure this person can translate the academic knowledge into efficient code.

If it's for 80% of the work out there which are websites, services calling APIs and what not then anything more than a basic code assessment and an hour or two of in person interviews is overkill.

It's fairly simple - will I be willing to go through this interview process for this type of job and package?

There's no one way to do anything when humans are involved.
 
I worked for many years as a freelance/contract .NET developer. The interview process was very different for these types of roles. Usually you are parachuted into a project at the last moment when the **** has hit the fan and needs clearing up. Interviews were typically a quick phone call, followed by a meet and greet and typically knowing whether you've got the role in a day or 2. As a freelancer I was treated more like a supplier than an employee which suited me just fine.
 
Pho3nix said:
Having been on both sides; yes and no.
Yes as it can give you an idea of general aptitude but don’t take it as the gospel.
Same as other testing platforms.

I prefer supervised technical assessments as have had more than a few devs hand over the work to UpWork (before GPTs where around) lol
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My opinion is that it is worthless as a measure of aptitude. I do lots of C# technical interviews. In particular there was this one candidate that scored fairly well in IKM, but the summary noted that he was slightly below average speed in solving problems and should not be put on a time-critical project. You know, the standard IKM statements. Anyway, technical interview rolls around and the candidate can literally not string 2 lines of code together. This was for a senior dev role. Did not know how to parse a string to a date.
So he obviously cheated (before GPT) and that is where all his time went. So no, IKM is worthless .
 
deweyzeph said:
I worked for many years as a freelance/contract .NET developer. The interview process was very different for these types of roles. Usually you are parachuted into a project at the last moment when the **** has hit the fan and needs clearing up. Interviews were typically a quick phone call, followed by a meet and greet and typically knowing whether you've got the role in a day or 2. As a freelancer I was treated more like a supplier than an employee which suited me just fine.
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Same here. Got a gig at a large FSP in exactly this manner. It was a 2 year project that had not even started 1 year in.
 
A while back, we didn't have a formal process, and hired some candidates that never made it through the probation phase after being hired. They had the skills but had the wrong attitude.

Now we we have HR that does personality type tests and we rate the soft skills and whether the candidate will fit in. We hire mainly engineers, and we need engineers with a passion for engineering - not just people who have studied engineering.

Specific skills are less important - they can be acquired on the job. The attitude of the candidate is key.

We do include a small coding test if applicable, but things like syntax are not important - we like to see their problem solving skills.
 
Spacerat said:
My opinion is that it is worthless as a measure of aptitude. I do lots of C# technical interviews. In particular there was this one candidate that scored fairly well in IKM, but the summary noted that he was slightly below average speed in solving problems and should not be put on a time-critical project. You know, the standard IKM statements. Anyway, technical interview rolls around and the candidate can literally not string 2 lines of code together. This was for a senior dev role. Did not know how to parse a string to a date.
So he obviously cheated (before GPT) and that is where all his time went. So no, IKM is worthless .
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This is what I meant. You can tell someone is cheating it because of the feedback you get at the end of the report.
Doing great but took too long? You were googling the answers.
Did alright and fairly quickly? You might be alright.

When I asked for them to be used, cut down on the number of interviews + technical ones we'd need to have also. Same as all the other testing sites tbh, know how to read the data you get back about the candidate. Don't just take it as it is.

Just finished my first technical interview today since I'm in the process again (now there shall be 2) and I had to do a PR and fix the code provided supervised (on teams, screen shared).
 
Pho3nix said:
Just finished my first technical interview today since I'm in the process again (now there shall be 2) and I had to do a PR and fix the code provided supervised (on teams, screen shared).
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My one technical interview years ago I had to write a rudimentary implementation of a red/black tree. Was fun, got an offer. Turned it down though. Could barely keep my eyes open when being interviewed by the ceo, Jesus he was boring.
 
Got atleast 4 jobs in my career without writing a line of code, in SA it's not what you know but who you know.
 
cguy said:
I expect that you’re still getting shafted, just not aware of it.
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They likely offered him a contract as his probation. Can be out the door in week if they not satisfied.
 
Solarion said:
They likely offered him a contract as his probation. Can be out the door in week if they not satisfied.
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Possibly. Even then though, hiring anyone technical without a solid technical screening suggests that the product/role/company isn't particularly valuable, which isn't great for career progression. I've interviewed plenty of people with internal referrals, and although the true positive rate is indeed better, I have had plenty of referrals who were completely incompetent (old war buddies, or something). Good thing that we always test, regardless.

It's a bit like not running any of your automated testing on some PR, because you're confident that the developer knows what they're doing.
 
Lol you guys love hating on anyone with a different world view. The point I'm making is that ZA is not FAANG-land

1. Any idiot can realize what's a good salary in ZA via offerzen or levels.fyi.
2. It's global company making > $10 billion in revenue
3. Yes I'm a nepo baby
4. If I screw up is there worldwide customer impact? Yes

If you guys are so smart you should have realized that C-level executives are sometimes placed via nepotism, it's how the world works.
 
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