"It's not enough to be a mediocre engineer for a mediocre paying job. If you want to play in the local tennis league, you better be Roger Federer (without his pay)"
I think software engineers should counter-question the interviewers. Interviewers should be allowed to judge the candidate only if they can answer the candidate's questions to them. If the interviewer cannot, he/she is not qualified for the job of interviewing.
- They might be afraid of someone who might outshine or compete with them.
- They might not want to train or mentor someone.
- They might think they don't need help.
- They already have someone they want to hire and are just going through the motions of "looking".
Exactly, even when you show them (through a mostly well-done interview) that you are up to the job.
(Oddly enough, she (a construction engineer) was never asked to solve a few PDEs on a whiteboard or calculate a beam deflection over the phone)
If the candidate asks a relevant question that the interviewer cannot solve in time, the company failed at its own game because the candidate proved that he/she is better qualified than the company's representative, given the rules of the game.
What excuse does the company have for not hiring the candidate now?
Many companies hire to fill in expertise, so the person who you are interviewed by may be less experienced than you in a particular technology.
In that case, these companies should be ok with registering their names in an online registry saying they rejected a candidate for someone who is better qualified. For the following 6 months, they cannot complain that that cannot find qualified candidates.
> Many companies hire to fill in expertise, so the person who you are interviewed by may be less experienced than you in a particular technology.
So the interviewer should be asked a question by the candidate in that particular technology and if they can't answer, the candidate should be hired.
The goal is not to hire the first "not worst", but rather the reasonably best, where reasonable is a function of time and money, among others.
Sure, it's true if you become an employee or contractor... but til then they're speculating (as are you).
They'll feel the heat and hire a reasonable candidate.
But if you're asking questions to determine if this is a company you might want to work for; you ask them how they work, how they're organized, how they handle specific things, what tools they use, etc, then you're simply doing your job as an interviewee, and I've found it doesn't turn anyone off; they just think I'm well prepared and honestly interested in the job.