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Comment by grandalf | Hacker News Reader

I've found that the best predictors of a good hire are indications of the following characteristics during the interview/vetting process:

- adaptability -- can this person deal with situations that are spontaneous and unplanned without losing his/her cool.

- openness -- is this person instinctively scornful of new concepts/ideas or energized by the chance to be exposed to something potentially interesting.

- resourcefulness -- has this person found ways to keep learning after college and has he/she continued to up his/her game.

- desire to ship -- does this person have a deep desire to produce work that will be used by others.

- desire to grow -- does this person have clear career growth goals. Ideally these are not tied to titles or bossing others around, which are negatives.

- rationality -- can this person admit to being wrong and speak about it authentically... can I imagine this person admitting to being slightly wrong and even very wrong about something and handling it gracefully.

- territoriality -- does this person seem territorial or speak about issues of proudly defending turf in previous positions? Doing so is a negative.

- poker face -- does this person seem to be playing it close to the vest in the interview or otherwise have very low levels of openness? This is a big warning sign and an instant do not hire.

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> - rationality -- can this person admit to being wrong and speak about it authentically... can I imagine this person admitting to being slightly wrong and even very wrong about something and handling it gracefully.

I think this is a super important characteristic for a great employee to have, but I don't know how reasonable it is to expect to see much of it in an interview. In an interview setting, the candidate is under a lot of pressure to come across as "perfect" in the sense that they want to appear to meet all of the expectations the interviewer has for them.

Asking about mistakes they have made, or putting them in a position to make a mistake during the interview itself can just be really stressful. Candidates that think you want them to make no mistakes will feel they are doing poorly. Candidates that know you want them to be comfortable being wrong—whether or not they actually are—can easily game this.

> - poker face -- does this person seem to be playing it close to the vest in the interview or otherwise have very low levels of openness? This is a big warning sign and an instant do not hire.

One of the things I've heard from HR/recruiting folks is that it's not a good idea to use body language as a signal. There's a lot of cultural and personality variation around it. You can end up with an unfairly biased opinion simply because they come from a culture that is not very demonstrative, or they are introverted or otherwise have personality traits that lead them to not display a lot of emotion or energy.

I agree with all of the characteristics you list here. It's a great snapshot of what I like in a good coworker. But, man, accurately detecting them in an interview seems super hard to me. But maybe I just don't have much confidence in my own interviewing skills.

On the rationality point, I've definitely been one to talk openly when asked about times I've failed / would have done something differently. I've looked at it as a no-loss scenario: if I'm talking with a company and they can't accept that no one is perfect, then I'd rather not work for that company anyways.

Interviewing in a sense is kinda like dating, one way to really screw things up is if you're both looking for different things. If you're both trying to get into a fling, then yeah I guess lie your pants off and have unreasonable expectations of each other. If you're looking for long-term match, just lay your cards on the table and if you match, you match.

There is one rather big key difference in dating versus interviews. You only get once chance to find out _everything_ about a company during an interview. Whereas dating has many "meetings". This is the real problem with interviews. They're an all or nothing.

Dating only has many meetings if you don't tank the first one.

First dates are probably most analogous to phone interviews. It's a testing of the water. If you've met the barrier of entry, you'll probably make it to the next one unless there is no chemistry whatsoever.

Interviews are like blind dates, you need to be in the social circle to have an idea of what you're getting into before you go to the interview.

Many selective companies have many phone screens and coding projects, plus hours of on site interviewing. Google's process notoriously takes months. Some companies interviews likely take 10+ hours all in all. That's more like 3rd date territory in terms of hours spent together, and plenty of time to evaluate a hire, not some one shot thing.

Google's process consists essentially of 2 meetings - phone screen, and onsites. You don't get engaged to someone after the second or third date. It's not about hours spent, it's also about hours spent reflecting on the relationship.

So right here is the mysterious reason why perfectly qualified people don't get hired at Google - they didn't spend hours reflecting on the relationship!!!

Oh, so that's why.

Here I thought it was their high false negative rate. I should have known it wasn't the google process.

I realize you're trying to mock me, but you've totally failed because that's exactly my point. If your interview process consisted of a 6 month work trial period for every single candidate (and assuming no candidates dropped out), you would pretty much be able to detect nearly every single qualified person. Of course, this is not feasible in practice, so we settle for interviews.

Google's process is absurdly slow.

> If you're looking for long-term match, just lay your cards on the table and if you match, you match

This is an excellent point. If someone does this I view it as a signal that they are intelligent, rational, and honest.

A key distinction is that daters who are really good at identifying the right life partners are rarely on the market.

At the company I work at when we interview we tend to ask tougher and tougher questions until the candidate either starts spouting BS or replies that they don't know. BS is a no-hire.

An ability to state "I don't know that" without shame is a strong positive signal of intellectual maturity, but I'm not sure that I'd want to press it out of a candidate by asking an impossible question, if it had to get to that point. The process that you describe isn't one that I would feel comfortable using, but I like the objective.

No one said "impossible". Just harder and harder. I think this is okay, especially if the interviewee knows that's the plan. Make sure they shed the notion that they're expected to know everything that is asked of them, let them know that your plan is to challenge them.

A developer who can't accept a challenge that stretches his/her boundaries a little bit is probably not a developer you want.

I completely agree that I want to hire programmers who want to constantly learn and improve, but I'm not sure that I should expect them to do so during a stressful high-stakes interview.

I've had good success when we introduce the conversation with "We're going to ask a bunch of questions across a variety of problem domains. We don't expect anyone to be strong in all these areas, but we want to get a feel for where your strengths are, and then we'll drill down into those areas"

But, once you do that setup, everyone is eventually going to say that they don't know what they don't know. It's exceptionally rare for someone to be able to delve into the implementation details of a couple of different programming languages (of our choosing), cryptography, distributed systems, relational modelling, CS theory, and a variety of algorithms and data structures.

So "I don't know" ceases to be much of a signal, since everyone says it a few times.

In fact we prefer to see the opposite, where people are willing to tell us the bits of info that they do know. Even if you don't know how two phase commit is implemented, knowing what problem it's trying to solve will allow you to research it when the need arises.

Because an interview situation is so unlike a normal workplace environment, I don't know any reliable way to translate their willingness (or otherwise) to say "I don't know" in the interview, to on the job behaviours. Either you'll coach everyone into it, or you'll be letting the interview pressure (potentiality) distort their behaviour so much that it's too hard to derive a signal from.

The thing is, at the edges of people's knowledge there are two issues.

One is, people want to demonstrate what they know about the topic, even if they can't answer the specific question. If you ask me to explain elliptic curve cryptography, I can tell you that it's useful because it uses smaller keys then prime based RSA crypto, and that's something I'd want to mention to indicate that, despite the fact that I'd need to look at a book or writeup to actually implement elliptic curve cryptography and I'm not sure I can verbally explain the math behind it, I at least know something about it.

The second is, at the limits of my domain knowledge, I may not know what I know and don't know. Limits are fuzzy, and I may feel like I have a pretty good understanding of a linux file system from a user perspective (permissions, inodes, etc) but I couldn't implement one off the top of my head and I'm probably missing some important components. As an interviewee, I may have incorrect or incomplete knowledge, but not know that. That doesn't mean I'm bullshitting intentionally, I'm just trying my best to answer the question I think you are asking.

Also I have to think that other developer cultures may have different values around these ideas then my own. Maybe the cultural expectation is to show confidence in my ability; I know that confident individuals are more likely to get hired or even apply for jobs, and that often job requirements are a screen for confidence.

Sure, I'd love if I knew every gap in my knowledge and every mistaken understanding I have, but I don't know how realistic it is to suggest a deliberate deception on the edge of a person's knowledge.

And that's setting aside whether the interview process is a good predictor of workplace behavior... I think we all know people who are excellent devs that can't write on a white board for shit, or who sit down for a good think for an hour and then come up with a perfect solution but aren't going to be able to write and simultaneously talk you through a solution to a 15 minute data algorithm question.

Knowing what you don't know is pretty important, because then you know when you have to go look something up rather than rely on your memory. When I have to call mmap(2), I know that I have to read "man mmap" first, because I know that I just can't remember the order of the five arguments, or if that's even the right number. I've been working with UNIX type systems for 30 years or more, and have worked on the guts of three different kernels on many different architectures, but when I say that I know UNIX, I think that I mean that I really know where the stuff I need to know is described in the man pages.

It's important to have approximate knowledge of many things, including how to look up and figure out the shit you don't know.

That said, I think you balance assumptions vs knowledge in order to be effective. Like you assume that it's in the man pages, and the man pages describe the code that is being used on your system, but it's entirely possible that your version of vim or whatever is different then the one described in the system wide man page.

If you're going to do this level of hazing, save yourself some time and just have the candidates compete in a big Jeopardy match. Those that don't know will stay silent, those that know will answer correctly, those that don't know but answer anyway will be punished more than if they stayed silent.

Personally I'm pretty tolerant of a lot of BS, depending on the person. Sometimes it's just a cognitive quirk that someone uses BS to search around their brain see if they can trigger some association that lets them remember, or discover that they really don't know. Saying "I don't know" immediately is often the wrong thing to say (especially in interview settings) when the real answer is "I don't remember, let me rediscover / look that up", but not many interviewers let you look things up or will mark you down if you say you'd need a reference for X though you studied X some years ago in college like everyone else and might work it out (after wading through a bunch of BS and false-starts in general) if you had unlimited time and no pressure...

This is basically how PhD qualifying exams work, as well as the defense to an extent.

You're welcome to guess or describe how you'd think about something, but you should be willing to clearly state when you're really out of your depth. It's important to note, though, that this isn't done adversarially; it's usually just a natural conversation that goes down a particular rabbit hole.

As you said, interviewing itself is a very stressful environment. I've been asked a time I've failed by one of the HR person and I talked about it. Was basically sending emails to real people from my test environment...

I talked about it openly but he kept pushing. In the end my feedback was that my "time I've made an error" was not very impressive.

Like... wtf? I find these questions very weird. I never know what they're expecting as an answer.

Imagine you start a job painting houses. You would not paint them the same way on your first day as you would after a year of experience or 5 years of experience. What have you learned? How do you work smarter/better now than in the past.

What experiences triggered that learning process, or did you just take orders from someone else with a more problem-solving oriented worldview.

The same applies to technical work. We're not perfect robots, we are given the freedom to figure things out, so the goal is a refinement of the "program" in our minds. The more effective/sophisticated that program is, the more rational we are.

Why don't you just ask for their self-performance reviews / retrospectives for the last n years of their current/previous job after you've filtered by resume? I suspect that unless they were expecting it (which isn't unreasonable since a lot of interviewers have variants) "remarkably unsentimental" people like John Carmack would blow this part of the interview. Why do you care about the step-by-step process of my programming journey, which is irrelevant to whether the current me can help you out right now? If you're trying to test for passion ("why'd you start house painting anyway and what drove you to keep doing it for so many years?") or self-awareness there's probably a better way.

I would consider asking for that too invasive. I think the important thing to get a sense of is how they look at problem solving as a function of expertise.

In other words, it's possible to be smart but not act smart, and it's possible to act smart while not being exceptionally intelligent.

I'm basically looking for self-awareness of one's own cognitive limits and evidence of a meta-process that seems likely to result in better decision making than whatever the raw intellect would offer.

I don't get how that relates to the question asked to me? I mean, it was a time I had a problem / failed that impacted production environment. That was the only one I had in mind, the guy looks like he was expecting a time I've put the servers on fire. It simply didn't happen.

Another thing is that my current environment IS very CTO pushy taking order and doing his view. Why stating this counts against me? It's not like everyone can take leadership in the tech stack / implementation.

I am a 100% sure that I would get into his (big) company and just follow orders as well. Of course having my implementation and my personal touch every now and then but still I wouldn't get to make architectural decisions or choose the tech stack.

Unless you're working in a 100% microservice architecture with hundreds of small people team deploying separated stuff I don't see how that can happen.

Just to clarify, I do not suggest asking about mistakes a person has made. That is both a hint that I'm looking for a flattering narrative and not quite true. I'm looking for someone who can think back and identify the things he/she was wrong about. What were the false assumptions, how did those come to light, how would you solve a similar problem differently after that experience, etc.

In other words, is the candidate someone who has a rational meta-process going on about his/her decisions and is able to refine his/her approach based on learnings. I'm ideally looking for small things that show clear evidence of that kind of thought process.

As for body language, I agree, and I think my choice of the term "poker face" was a bad way of describing a certain kind of evasiveness which can indicate bad motives or bad people skills, either of which can make the person a bad hire.

> I think my choice of the term "poker face" was a bad way of describing a certain kind of evasiveness which can indicate bad motives or bad people skills, either of which can make the person a bad hire.

As a practical matter, how do you detect this kind of "evasiveness", and differentiate it from (say) plain old introversion or nervousness?

Good point. I certainly require more than a few moments where I sense it before I feel confident in considering someone's behavior evasive.

Suppose you're having a conversation with someone and in 15 minutes one of you chosen at random is going to have to trust the other with his/her life. What kinds of signals indicate that the person is trustworthy, understands the potential future, and is accurately representing him/herself?

There are some people where I never feel the kind of connection I'd want to feel in that scenario, and others where I feel it fairly early on in the interaction. Just a kind of straightforwardness, not extraversion or social comfort.

Seems like an easy way to end up picking a lot of people like yourself. After all, it's a lot easier to feel connected to someone like yourself.

> people like yourself

That is certainly a risk with any notion of "culture fit", but any time someone who cares about culture is interviewing someone that fit is being evaluated to some extent.

I worked in an organization where we used behavioral interviewing techniques to get to the core of how someone operates.

"Tell me about a time in which you..." works very well. If they resist answering the made mistakes questions we prompted them to understand that an honest answer is important. If they could not do that then they were not considered.

These were not developer roles but most were very technical / analytical roles for an organization that paid well and candidates knew up front they would be interviewed this way. In addition some jobs were "cased" where you had to solve a problem and talk about how you solved it to the interviewer. Great fun when I went through the two days of interviews. I ended up doing maybe 200+ behavioral interviews over 6+ years for the company. I saw this approach work time and time again.

Some people could not answer for themselves: "the team did..." "They did...". When pressed we usually discovered that the candidate did not have the ability to get the job done themselves.

I find your last comment interesting!

From my experiences with employers in many parts of Europe, they value partial contributions to teams more than complete individual achievements. Talking to much in "I did..." sentences instead of "We did... (...and I helped with...)" can come across as self-centered, which often is considered a negative trait here.

So noted. We asked follow up questions to get to a person's contribution. It is valid to move the team forward. It is not valid to ride on the contributions of the team without putting your own contribution in.

This is exactly where biases creep in to evaluation. It's really, really hard to assess these signals objectively, and not use them to justify your snap judgements or prejudices. So maybe when the guy with a college sports background and a military-style buzz cut talks about how 'the team' did stuff, you mark it down as a sign of being a great team player and sharing credit. But when a guy with long hair does it, you assume he didn't make any individual contribution. And if a young woman talks about 'I' did stuff, you interpret it as confidence and evidence of personal contribution, but an older lady with kids does it and you dig in hard for evidence she's taking credit for others' work. Not personally accusing you of these specific biases here - just trying to show how these vague 'personality' judgement signals can be unconsciously misjudged by an interviewer, without them even knowing that's what they did.

> "Tell me about a time in which you..." works very well.

These types of questions probably cause me more stress than any other. Being asked to think of a situation where you felt a certain emotion or had a certain mental experience is not actually that easy for everyone. My memory is terrible at that kind of thing.

It's like my memory lacks a necessary index for what you are asking. I can start going through every major work experience I've had in sequence and filter out the ones that fit, but we might be sitting there in silence for 2-3 minutes which gets awkward enough in itself.

And it's not an inability to remember mistakes specifically, I mean the old "tell me about a time where you solved a problem with no prior knowledge of the domain..." gets me. I solve problems like this ALL THE TIME. That's a skill I have. Fetching those times from memory is not a skill I have.

Luckily I've had these questions in enough interviews that I generally try to have some examples in mind.

Hah, I'm exactly the same, and not just with this, with everything. I just have a hard time retrieving things by index when prompted, and I envy people who can just recall interesting/funny things that happen to them. Things happen to me too, I just have to be reminded of the situation to recall it, I can't just go "funny thing? Ah yes, I remember X".

I have the same problem. I couldn't think of these things on the spot for the life of me. So awhile back I googled 'Top Personality Questions on an Interview" and filled out prompts for each question way in advance, and then I review it each time before right before I go into a an interview. Made the rest of the process much simpler.

Exactly, same here !!

I've got one particular project that usually fits these questions. And if it doesn't, I can tell enough interesting stuff about it to satisfy the interviewer anyway.

Incidentally, behavioral questions are common in nontechnical interviews, since the entire interview is spent analyzing a candidate's skills in the abstract.

How will I know if this person is good at, say, sales or biz dev in a vertical with long lead times? I can't vet that skill set directly; I can only ask the candidate about it. Behavioral questions give me something to cross-reference in the absence of on-the-spot performance data. So do case questions, which (at least ostensibly) tell me how a candidate thinks, and how she organizes her thoughts. (And of course, domain-knowledge questions help me assess the depth and quality of a candidate's experience in the field.)

Behaviorals aren't perfect, though. They can be gamed. It's not too much of a stretch for a candidate to memorize a half-dozen anecdotes to trot out in response to any question that begins with "Tell me about a time when..." (Nevertheless, you'd be surprised by how few people do that sort of prep work.) Canned responses are especially common with candidates straight out of school or grad school, where they are often trained in how to answer behavioral and case questions.

As a rational person, I'm going to be honest in an interview, and if the interviewer doesn't value that, then they can just suck a turd. :)

>I think this is a super important characteristic for a great employee to have, but I don't know how reasonable it is to expect to see much of it in an interview. In an interview setting, the candidate is under a lot of pressure to come across as "perfect" in the sense that they want to appear to meet all of the expectations the interviewer has for them.

I would never hire someone who couldn't honestly speak to making mistakes and being wrong. We're human, and your ability to be self critical and learn from your mistakes is one of the single most important aspects in continued professional (and personal!) growth.

It should never be difficult to speak to a time you've screwed up. No one rational thinks we go through life with a perfect record, and no one has done it. Be honest.

A big long list of relevant but subjective traits is a perfect vector for bias to creep in. Take what you call "poker face", for example - how do you measure openness? By how well they make small talk? What if they're just nervous because of the interview; what if they experience social anxiety; or what if they're just an introvert, and don't tend to be open around new people?

For a less trivial example, take "resourcefulness". To a large extent, resourcefulness is determined by access to resources. Continued learning after college takes more than curiosity: it takes a bunch of free time to burn on reading, hacking, debugging, etc. What if the interviewee has been spending their time outside of work raising a family instead?

I agree about the possibility of bias creeping in. On the other hand, humans are biased, so understanding how to hire for success within your own (or your organization's) biases is useful. Some people would want the opposite candidate to the one I described.

Resourcefulness is more of a mindset. New parent? OK, what have you discovered about childrearing that you didn't anticipate? What will you do differently next time? What is your ideal work/life balance? These are all relevant things, and sometimes the young parent is a superb hire and may read very interesting books in anticipation of having more time to hack in a couple of years.

FYI asking people what they do outside work is often a big HR no-no because it can easily fall into illegal but accidental discriminatory questions that are unrelated to the job which can be unnecessary PR and legal risks for your company.

I like the attributes you're probing but I'd keep it within the context of engineering and programming if that's what you're hiring for. That's part of the reason open source and github projects are such strong signals in hiring.

True. I typically ask about technology related interests.

> New parent? OK, what have you discovered about childrearing that you didn't anticipate? What will you do differently next time?

These are extremely inappropriate questions for a job interview.

I would not ask those things, my point was that whatever a person is focused on can indicate the characteristics I mentioned. Obviously some things are personal and cannot be asked about, but may be volunteered by an applicant.

Why give a question you wouldn't ask as an example?

But if that topic is verboten in the job interview then you cannot learn anything from it. You cannot hope or expect people to volunteer it

Yikes! Asking about what they've learned as a parent is walking yourself into a nice big lawsuit. Don't do it!

There is essentially no way to you can ask or solicit for information about their family status. Don't even go there.

Not only a lawsuit it's just totally inappropriate, invasive, and rude.

That's true. But companies tend to listen when you say "If you do that, the person will sue you and win!"

>- desire to grow -- does this person have clear career growth goals. Ideally these are not tied to titles or bossing others around, which are negatives.

Can you give an example of what you WOULD like to see here? There's some selection bias among the kinds of developers who tend to hang out on online technical communities and learn new things, but what IS the right long term goal, and how is this different from "desire to ship"? Sure, I'd like to work on meaningful projects and have enough breadth and depth of knowledge to design and contribute in a meaningful way in them, but if we're being totally honest my career goals are absolutely "make enough money to pay the mortgage, go on the occasional vacation, and save for retirement". I'm not in this to be a rock star who works 100 hours a week for the chance to be a multimillionaire, and I'm not in this to achieve fame in the developer community. I'm in it to get a paycheck doing work that is intellectually stimulating while still having enough free time to do things OTHER than work, but it's long been obvious that you're not allowed to say that in a job interview, so what ARE you looking for people to say?

To put it another way, in the title terms you don't want to discuss, I have no desire to be a principle architect or C*O. I'm perfectly content being a good-to-great senior-level engineer who's a solid team contributor if not in control of everything. I'm on board with your other qualifications - continual learning, adapting, and gaining exposure to new technologies is great - but is there a limit to career growth? Based simply on number of positions in existence, it's impossible for everyone in the field to keep growing and advancing indefinitely.

Well, I ideally like to see some interests that are on the edge of the candidate's current skill-set which indicate that he/she is aware that technology is changing and that we must all plan ahead a bit to remain relevant and employable in 5 years. Not trend-tracking, but deepening and broadening the skill-set.

Why do you care how good a candidate will be at getting a new job after yours?

Because I'm going to be in the game for at least another 30 years and who knows how many opportunities to work together again might exist.

Also, the idea that an employee is a specific cog that will indefinitely fit into the mechanism in the same way is an outdated relic of using a machine as a metaphor for a firm.

While some employees reach limits, others will continue to evolve, particularly those at the beginning of their career. I have not ever been in a position where I prefer a less ambitious/promising candidate out of fear they will leave after a few years, though I know some people in HR look at the world that way.

I've been doing the same work for 15 years. Everything old is new again.

Linus is right, a plus for C is filtering out developers.

I think I can totally make that impression now. I totally couldn't when I was younger - and when I would have provided you much more value for the money (meaning, I'd work my ass off for peanuts.) I would have failed on numerous grounds:

* desire to ship: more like "I don't care who uses my work, I just want a job"

* desire to grow: more like "I don't know what people grow into, I just want a job"

* rationality: I dunno, I might have tried to fake understanding something when I didn't out of fear

* poker face: I dunno, probably I'd have "very low levels of openness" because fuck, I really really need a job and I'm super nervous

In general, usually the guy who appears nice, sensible and calm is indeed a great hire, but they cost a fortune because they're actually quite rare. A very simple way to hire pretty great people cheaply is opening the doors for the hordes of somewhat-mentally-imbalanced people.

Those are good points. You're right I'm describing a fairly rare kind of hire, and a solid process must take into consideration the reality that not everyone is that strong or interviews that well, yet may have other highly valuable traits.

Perhaps an appropriate measure for interviewing is to do some psychological profiling to spot where a candidate is imbalanced, and then incorporate into the remainder of questioning. As an interviewer, you're always going to be biasing towards your own strengths and downplaying weaknesses, and although there are personalities that pose more or less danger to others, there isn't a perfect personality overall.

>> - poker face -- does this person seem to be playing it close to the vest in the interview or otherwise have very low levels of openness?

By nature I am pretty open, and not especially competitive. While my credentials are not great, I have been praised by certain mentors for other desirable attributes in this list: open mindedness, humility, pragmatism, adaptability, willingness to collaborate, and “growth mindset.”

The problem with these attitudes is that they can work to your disadvantage around non-technical authority figures.

For example, a little while ago I was invited to meeting with possible collaborator in another department. After being introduced, I asked few general questions about his project. He probed for clarification until I finally said something he found technically wanting, and then made a great show of grandstanding at my expense in front of the group, but didn't answer the question. My (non-developer) boss was very impressed with him, but other employees that had to work with this guy were not as impressed. I wasn't invited back, although maybe that was good thing.

Obviously it's not good to seem evasive in interviews, but in general I have had to learn the hard way that not everyone at work wants to be my friend.

How do others here deal with this sort problem?

Edit: I guess I'm not sure how far I have to go in the direction of measured answers before it might seem evasive in an interview. Because of these experiences, I'm probably inclined to give more measured or carefully considered answers in general to people I don't know well. I'm not sure what degree of this sort of behavior will seem evasive. My last boss told me once that I was generally "very careful." Maybe that's a hint?

So what I mean to ask is: how do others calibrate their degree of openess to a given situation, in an interview or otherwise?

Not everyone wants to be your friend, but everyone SHOULD want to work together towards a common goal. The trick is in getting the two parties involved to see that common goal and why it's in their own best interests.

It sounds like the person you're talking about was using the conversation not as a way to acquire help, but rather to demonstrate that he didn't need it, probably in an effort to boost his own status in his social group. You're better off not working with that type of person.

That's definately true. The problem is figuring out how to avoid situations like that without hesitating to speak up around people you don't know well.

I won't pretend to know the answer to that, but my personal approach would be to gather information about the people involved beforehand. If I can avoid as many surprises as possible going in, that puts me on (more) equal footing with the other players.

The scenario you describe has happened to me as well, and it's one reason I've come to value the attributes I listed. It is very common for non-technical people to be impressed by that kind of bravado.

It's usually a sign of a corporate culture where some of the wrong characteristics are valued across the board. Do you really want to "win" in that culture? I know I don't.

>> Do you really want to "win" in that culture?

Nope. OP has a good reminder about not seeming evasive in interviews, and maybe this is more of a problem if you're in the wrong place anyway.

"not everyone wants to be my friend" a very kind euphemism for backstabbing bastard.

I feel like the whole "poker face" thing has been my achilles heal. I AM guarded with a lot of my personal information; in my experience for good reason.

So what do you do in your free time? FUCK YOU. If your answer isn't play softball and train for marathons, it's a way-ahead/way-behind scenario. Maybe you get lucky and interview with someone who has shared interests.

> I really like movies. I watch a lot of modern movies just for entertainment, but I also watch a lot of classics, even boring ones, to try to fill out my knowledge. I would love to make a short film and get it accepted to a film festival. < Huh... which means: so you're, like, not very social? And you don't seem very serious about your career if you are trying make movies or whatever. Good luck getting into Sundance, whatever the fuck that is.

I once, only once, made the horrendous mistake of telling two interviewers (they were doing the old gang-fuck) that I was passionate about Starcraft II (it was 2011 or something). I thought, what the hey, the truth will out. If I'm just open and genuine at least that will come across as a positive. They actually openly ridiculed me and subsequently told me that they weren't the kind of company that extended much free time or control over schedule to their junior employees, which I thought was especially interesting (frustrating) for two reasons: 1) Why the fuck are you asking me about my free time if I won't have any? 2) They just got through explaining how their company didn't have any hierarchy. So what the fuck is a "junior employee" in a company with no hierarchy?

On non-personal subjects, saying "I don't know" has never worked as well as everyone claims. Oh, just say, "I don't know". That shows maturity and confidence. WTF? Whenever I said, "I don't know" in an interview, the interviewer kept pressing me for an answer until I produced some garbage that I'm sure sounded rather like BS, because it was.

If they openly admit they give no free time, then it wasn't a place for you. Meaning that it was a good thing dropping SC2 into the discussion.

Ultimately, I agree. It's complex though; every job I've ever had has left a sour taste in my mouth, yet I still need to eat and pay bills. And despite the difficulties I've encountered actually getting jobs (interviewing), my employers have always said I was doing great work.

It's telling that in your list you never once mentioned "Actually possesses the technical skills required to do a good job."

Skills become obsolete. Aptitudes don't.

Exactly.

I just had this discussion at work... I think that it is implicit in this context that a minimum amount of technical ability be met. Otherwise we'd just be hiring "nice people". Obviously we don't do that.

Regarding your last point... sometimes, it's a matter of being professional. You don't want to go on a diatribe about all that was wrong in a former position or company. It depends on context of course, but in the end, sometimes there are reasons not to be completely open.

In my personal life, I try to live unfiltered. Not mean, and work more to filter on sensitive subjects, but I mean that let thoughts, even incomplete ones flow. Otherwise, I personally tend to stay in my head, and not let much of anything out. It's a balance.

I can't speak for others, but would say that your interpretation on the last point may not always be the correct one.

I think this is a valid point. My characterization of openness in my initial comment was a bit narrow. I think the most important aspect is openness to new ideas and experiences, and willingness to put one's self out there a bit.

Great points, though out of curiosity, could you expand on the last point?

As someone who has always topped performance ratings, gotten along well with colleagues (many of my past co-workers are close friends now), and provided meaningful to significant contributions to all the projects I've worked on AND has a reputation for having a poker face, I'm a bit concerned that it would be as bad as an "instant do not hire"

Not the OP, but I would have used the word "caginess" or "excess self preservation".

You don't want to hire a shark who's going to work against you.

Exactly. I realize now that the term "poker face" came across as too literal, and what I was really trying to describe was exactly the sense of caginess or unwillingness to put one's self out there.

> - poker face -- does this person seem to be playing it close to the vest in the interview or otherwise have very low levels of openness? This is a big warning sign and an instant do not hire.

You do realize many people are just naturally hard to read right?

I'm so hard to read people have made comments about how, if I was going to a wedding, they couldn't be sure if it was mine based on how neutral my delivery is.

The only time I'm easy to read is when I'm visibly irritated and/or angry.

This is also part of why people think I have a temper, they miss literally all the warning signs for weeks/months/years so to them it comes out of "nowhere" despite the fact I've verbally expressed unhappiness to varying degrees. However, the neutrality of the delivery causes them to assume I don't care that much [so they continue, repeatedly].

Any tips on how to find out about (some of) these in a quick (phone) interview?

I usually ask "What are you interested in?" and just let them speak, then ask them to elaborate a few times. People who find this frustrating are usually low-openness, as are people who become noticeably indignant after being asked to share more.

Also, I ask what are the most important things they are looking for in the team they will be joining. Some people are interviewing because they dislike their current job so this is a good clue about their morale and what kinds of situations can lead them to give up and start interviewing.

By this point, after talking to someone for a few minutes I usually have a sense of whether they are easy to talk to or whether the conversation was draining for me and a notion of how smart I think they are. If both of those feel good I focus on selling the team and what it offers so they bring their A game to the in person interview.

Can you offer some advice to people who are low-openness and don't see why that's a problem?

The reason why it's a problem is because when a coworker is always in his or her own little bubble and you know nothing about them it is harder to get along with them and thus harder to work with them. And by the same token, if you like and get along with the people in your environment, then you'll be happier and thus more productive.

I don't believe in this at all. Some of the most effective people I've worked with were people that quietly worked in their own space for 4 hrs before lunch and 4 hrs after lunch. Some of them socialized with coworkers after hours, some didn't. At least in engineering field I don't believe it is important to be that open with people unless maybe you're in sales and need that social vibe all day to keep in state. Engineers can be highly effective staying in their own space unless communication is required and omitting the usual everyday small talk BS that wastes 1-3 hours of your day

Sure, those people who keep entirely to themselves may be highly effective programmers. But they will likely not be effective communicators, and unless they are their own manager and work on teams of one, they are going to be less effective overall than someone who can communicate.

ahh, I get it. It's the openness while interacting, not necessarily eagerness to initiate interaction. I agree with this.

This attitude is why so many people bemoan the "frat house / in-group" culture of companies. Why can't you have a pleasant conversation about the problems you are trying to solve at work?

I'll be more specific about openness. It's not bad to be socially introverted. Many of us are somewhat, especially in comparison to the average member of the population.

But imagine you're at a restaurant with your team and someone orders a dish you've never tried. Do you simply decline to try a bite? Or do you try a small bite in case you might like it? I find that openness to new experience correlates highly with good problem solving skills and team cohesion.

Many group/team interactions are essentially minor culture clashes, and being able to navigate them requires being open to different points of view, etc.

Replace dish with drink (or worse, joint). Do you still think people who "decline to try" have a problem? That they should try in case they might like it?

I'm really NOT keen on trying chocolate-cover ants, thank you.

Nobody should try anything they are uncomfortable with, and I think involving substances in the workplace (except in moderation) can be risky.

But why not try one ant? I'd try one.

Some people are vegetarians. Others are Muslim or Jewish and only eat halal/kosher foods.

Many groups are discriminated against (historically or presently), and members of those groups may not be too keen to open themselves up to unfair stereotyping. I've dated a girl who would never tell a prospective employer she was Jewish; she just wouldn't eat a pork dish and would probably seem evasive to you.

That doesn't even account for those who may just be squeamish or petrified of insects. Still others have embarrassing dietary restrictions.

It's hard to fathom when you have mainstream traits and limitations (it certainly was for me), but many people who consider themselves others are reluctant to give away information that could later be used to hurt them. Sadly, this reluctance is often justified.

Good points. I was initially thinking a food metaphor was a good one, but it isn't due to the examples you gave.

Food is so so so personal and cultural. It's insane to believe someone not eating/not eating a particular food has anything to do with workplace performance.

> It's insane to believe someone not eating/not eating a particular food has anything to do with workplace performance.

True, I meant it as a metaphor for the kinds of new experiences/ideas one encounters day to day in the workplace.

As metaphors go it's actually pretty good: people often have very specific, very individual, and entirely valid reasons to not eat something. Just as they can have the same for experiences under different conditions. Change the conditions, and you might get entirely different outcomes.

What I'm saying is, the one-shot impressions from interviews are horribly inaccurate. There is simply not enough data, plus the measuring instrument (interviewer) is flawed also in nonreproducible ways.

A simple thought experiment: let's say I build a machine that measures confidence and ability to read the room. Would it select different candidates than you?

I wouldn't. I don't really like food that much. It's easy to ignore when you've had something a million times, but it's harder to ignore when it's a completely new, unpleasant sensation.

But, I understand that other people do like food. And that's ok.

> I usually ask "What are you interested in?" and just let them speak

I've tried that a few times but never really got any decent results out of it. (Disclosure: I conduct ~100 interviews a year.)

The question is too open-ended, so IMO it's akin to asking a child "what did you do at school today?". The answers for that are just non-specific and often the candidate falls back to describing what they currently do at their work. Hell, if they are interviewing for a new job, they are looking for a CHANGE, and I learned just one thing they probably don't like. Instead in preparation I go over the candidate's CV and try to gauge what kinds of technologies, environments and problems they have been exposed to. And then I pick the most interesting and/or longest ones as items of discussion.

Most of the times I find that the candidates are happy to tell about their experiences and voice their opinions. This has the dual benefit of allowing the candidates to better relax, and gives me a glimpse into what kinds of details catch their eye. The very best experiences are those where the candidate forgets they are in an interview and end up treating me to a wonderful lecture on a topic that I have not known enough about. When that happens, I always feel cherished.

re: poker face - I would reword this to "communication style" - does this person communicate in a style that I (and my team) can understand?

Being open may depend on cultural norms, more than a "poker face." It's definitely a warning sign that Bad Things might happen in the future.

poker face - is super cultural thing, I work with several Asians, most of them (not all!) sits _with_ poker face whole day. It is kind of hard to read people and understand if they got it when I'm explaining something. They are not even nod or smile. I'm European and sometimes it is super frustrating to not receive any body lang feedback. But when we close office doors they starts to chat, nod, laugh and what not.

On other hand there are two Japanese who acts like Europeans all the time - nods, talks, etc even though they left Japan ~2-3y ago. I thought initially that they already adapted to this Western style.

I've talked with them all about this and they just said that they just do what they did in their countries.

Fun fact: There is a word in Japanese -- aizuchi -- for "meaningless nothings which you say during a conversation to let the other party know that you're actively engaged in the conversation."

Sitting with a stone face during a meeting in Japan would be very not normative. Your counterparty would assume that either you're totally checked out, repulsed by what is on offer, or so ridiculously above their social standing that you didn't even have to go through the motions of pretending to care about what they had to say.

Your periodic dispatch from Asia Is A Big Place; Consider The Possibility It Is Populated Mostly By Humans.

My experience with Japanese people (I used to work in a Japanese company and attended a lot of meetings in Japanese) listening to someone else in meetings is a lot of "Aaaa, sou sou sou sou. Sou desu. Wakarimashita. Hai. Wakarimashita. Mmmm. Mmm Mmm. Sou desu." I eventually did some of it myself. Seems like a lot of aizuchi to me :P

How would you translate this sentence in English? Sounds like mantra.

And how open to be is also cultural. Americans appear excessively cheery and excited all the time to Irish/British people. It sounds so extreme, that it sounds forced and fake.

Everything in America is awesome, people are super excited to work with you, etc. British people might say "cheers" to say good bye in a shop, but Americans wish each other "have a great day!".

It might be because the US is such a spread out country, we're sometimes deprived of interaction with people and not just cars on the highway. When we meet other humans, especially those with similar interests we're genuinely excited.

I think mentioning these points upfront is a great way to give potential employees some idea about what kind of environment they should expect and whether they will be a good fit or not.

To me, at least, having this kind of information would immensely help me narrow down my list of possible employers.

In addition to these being great things to look for in a candidate, these are also great things to strive for as a coder.

Adaptability - being able to look at a change in direction/target market/etc as an exciting challenge keeps you less stressed

Openness - always learning keeps your brain's plasticity up, keeps you happier, and helps you be ready for whatever new concept/language/whatnot will be useful next

Resourcefulness - being able to be a combination of self-sufficient and knowing where/how to acquire the resources/skills you need when they're needed helps keep the stress down

Desire to Ship - if you haven't gotten the chance to deliver something to real users, do it. Somehow, anyhow you can. Whether at a 9-to-5 or doing open source stuff in your spare time. Seeing how the work you do can affect others, make their jobs easier (or even possible in the first place), make their lives better, etc is a game-changer if you haven't done it yet. And if you're working on something you don't care about shipping, you're probably working on the wrong thing/for the wrong company.

Desire to Grow - Several of the above help with this and the whole "keep moving forward" thing. The more you learn, the more experience you have, the more you can build and ship useful/interesting/fun/cool things.

Rationality - You can't grow, adapt, and gain new resources without screwing up. We all do it. Follow that with admitting it, analyzing it, and learning from it. Sometimes you learn the most about a situation like this, often about yourself and your own inner-workings. That gives you the knowledge to be able to start working on improving those inner-workings.

Territoriality - Turf wars are always a mess. Whether at a company or in an open source project. So, figuring out ways to let things overlap and allowing different groups to help make each other better helps you in the long run. And it's always gratifying to take a win-lose and turn it into a straight win.

Poker Face - Be honest with your interviewer and expect the same from them. Why would you want to keep things close to the vest and wind up in a company/team/situation that isn't the best fit for you and doesn't fully allow you to adapt, be open, grow, ship, etc?

All the above will help with growing and enjoying tech. You'll still have to deal with interviews/companies like the one posted here, unfortunately. I'm learning that now as I'm exploring getting back into working for a company full time.

Those are great qualities to filter for.

Yet out in the rest of the world, come interview time, it's... "So, how would go about sorting a quadrillion integers?"

These are all great, but I think you're missing something much more basic: commute time. All of the above are great, but if someone's commute time to work (and home again) are intolerable, they will not last.

these are all great traits, but how do you determine them in an interview? for example openness. Everyone will say they are open and interested to new ideas, maybe accept few odd cases. how do you test for rationality? do you wait to catch them on something and keep drilling until they admit defeat?

I've found that people who are open usually think of the interview as a way to learn new things and to determine whether it's a good fit. They will ask questions and seem to enjoy gathering knowledge.

Rationality is more of a value than a litmus test. Those who value rationality will understand systems thinking and will tend not to focus highly on authority (either being authoritative or deferring to someone else's authority).

thanks sounds like you've done your share of interviewing. It would be great to hear more about your experience if you ever want to write a more lengthy blog post on this subject. I still find it very hard to predict who will make for a great employee.. provided they do ok on technical side it's still more of an intuition thing rather than process.

I should do that sometime. For some reason I'm much more inspired to write my ideas in a forum like HN than I am in a blog post or writeup.

How do you test for these in an interview ?

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