Hacker News Reader

Comment by jarsin | Hacker News Reader

I'll never understand why these companies are letting inexperienced employees take any part in interviewing people with significantly more experience.

If I owned a company I would never let some inexperienced fresh grad interview a senior engineer. They are letting some kid take part in one of the most important parts of their business.

It's yet another area of software development hiring where all logic and reason have gone out the window.

View on HN

I find perceptive junior employees extremely useful in judging candidates. The way people act with someone they perceive as inferior is very telling about their personality and how they'll work with others. People are in my experience a lot more likely to drop their guard and show their true selves when they think no one important is watching. Soft skills matter and someone senior is both capable of providing great value and doing great harm to a team.

That belief can be true, but its not enough to make me want to have a guy 2 years in interviewing candidates. I wouldn't want experienced developers walking away.

In general, I prefer to lose potential candidates than hire someone bad since bad hires tend to become expensive. Moreover, if an experienced engineer walks because they got interviewed by someone junior then I view that as a bullet dodged. Assuming the junior engineer has been coached in the questions to ask and so on. It should be an easy win interview that will teach you a lot about the company since junior engineers tend to be worse at knowing what not to talk about.

I find it hard to believe that anyone with any real experience would advocate having a Jr. interview for experience candidates. Are you sure you are not self-righteous Jr. yourself.

No disrespect, but what you are saying borders on unreasonable. You would trust a Jr. developer to interview a more senior developer? That is laughable. Think about that in the context of a law firm, or a federal agency, or the military, or basically any other context.

I started interviewing candidates (including senior level) about 3 years after starting there. Despite being one of the youngest people on the team, the management knew that I had a good grasp on what the people we are interviewing should know to be successful at the company. I'm never the only person interviewing them, but I do have a strong say about whether someone moves to the next round.

Its all context dependent of course. If you are at a place for three years doesn't mean you can't interview. Three years at an organization is a long time. I've seen people interview after 6 months at an organization. Depends on the organization. Having a person start interviewing people after three years development experience total is probably not a good idea - depending on what you are interviewing for.

I also did my first interviews around 3 years into my career (almost 2 decades long so far).

It was too early - I didn't have the technical expertise yet to judge someone else, but much more than that, I didn't have the soft skills or indeed any idea how the hell to interview another dev. I shouldn't have been doing it, but at the time I was the only dev at the company. I look back now and cringe at my naivety.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com