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Comment by ferros | Hacker News Reader

When interviewing new candidates it's interesting to see the difference between beginner/mid and seniors. The beginner/mid group seem to have a lot more confidence in their skills and not be as aware of what they don't know. The seniors seem to be more aware of what they don't know and maybe also a little harder on themselves.

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I think this is a common viewpoint, and a misconception.

I've seen a number of juniors who were very humble, and this humility was perceived as lack of knowledge.

I've interviewed some seniors who were not humble at all (nothing was an issue).

In general, skill level has little to do with humility and other personal traits. However, we like to project our reasoning into other's emotions, and we love to pattern match, e.g. "she's humble because she has 20 years of experience".

It's another bias you should look for when interviewing candidates. This one definitely does not serve you well.

Fair comment I can see where you're coming from in terms of humility and bias. Again I can only talk from personal experience but I notice this also from self assessment exercises in performance reviews. Humility aside the more senior developers (in my opinion) are more able to accurately gauge their strengths and shortcomings. And I can't help but wonder if these skills are part of what help them develop from junior/mid to senior.

Related: The Dunning-Kruger effect[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Dunning-Kruger effect says that people with more skill are more confident in their skills, albeit it isn't a perfect correlation so skilled people underestimate themselves and unskilled people overestimate themselves relative to others.

> I think this is a common viewpoint, and a misconception.

Probably a common viewpoint, but definitely not a misconception.

I have had freshers tell me wrong answers which they know they are answering wrong with so much confidence. And you keep digging them on their answer and they would keep coming up with even more wrong stuff.

It would probably be about 2 or 3 out of 10 freshers who can say "i don't know that".

And I've had senior candidates (with 10+ years experience) do the same thing, even after throwing them a lifeline. This isn't a trait of junior-ity (is that a word?), it's a behaviour.

I suspect if you interviewed those 7 or 8 juniors in 10-15 years, many of them will continue to bolster.

junior-ity (is that a word?)

Seems so:

This word is first recorded in the period 1590–1600.

Source: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/juniori...

I have sometimes interviewed to specifically find whether a candidate could utter “I don’t know” (and ideally add “, but here’s how I’d handle it, find out, learn it, etc.”)

It’s amazing (and a little amusing) how many people literally can’t admit they don’t know something. I have “passed” some otherwise very strong candidates who couldn’t admit that and made it a point to advise them after hiring how dangerous that limitation is both when doing the actual work and when interviewing. A not at all surprising fraction of them couldn’t admit/understand they even did it, of course.

> It’s amazing (and a little amusing) how many people literally can’t admit they don’t know something.

It is a matter of culture too.

I'll take the example of the desk clerks you have to face as a citizen or customer in administrations and companies.

When I lived in a country of Northern Europe, they would often say "I am not sure, wait a minute and let me check in that book" or "I don't know, I will ask/check and call/mail you right away". And they did it and it was fine. A tiny delay and everything is solved for good. You come out from there with a smile and they have learned something for the next time they meet the case.

Now that I am back in my Southern European country, the guys (well, it's 99% women) in the same position will never admit they don't know or they aren't sure of something. They will assert whatever weird/outdated/wrong assumption comes through their mind with definite certainty. Even if you gathered information beforehand and tell them that the rule says otherwise. They feel that checking or asking for help would undermine their authority or make them look incompetent (as if anyone still had any hope about that...). And they will only call the higher up when, after 2 months and the 3rd visit for nothing except getting contradictory information and requirements, you start yelling and they feel that they are less than 30 seconds away from getting punched in their face. Then the higher up solves the problem (which should never have become a problem in first place) in 2 minutes. But they will keep on 'working' like this for 40 years, they'll never recognise that their work and service would be much more efficient if they just said "I don't know" instead of inventing wrong rules.

How do you find yourself in so many of these on-the-verge-of-a-facepunch situations?

I think the Souther Europe part covers it. That's my experience as well.

That happened in my interview for my first real programming job. One of the founders kept making the scale of the problem harder and harder, and at a certain threshold, I no longer knew what to do. I said so, and what I would try to do to figure it out. At the time, I was sure I had failed the interview. Turns out, it was exactly what they were looking for, and my life has wildly changed for the better for having worked with that company.

> I have sometimes interviewed to specifically find whether a candidate could utter “I don’t know” (and ideally add “, but here’s how I’d handle it, find out, learn it, etc.”)

I've done the same. The problem is that in a lot of companies, uttering "I don't know" is perceived as a weakness, and makes you "not a culture fit," so I can completely understand the hesitation...

That's what you call a self-solving problem. You don't want to work for these companies. :)

As another commentator said, the problem is often less the person and more the fact that saying 'I don't know' is a massive negative in most interview settings.

It was something I noticed when I was interviewing for job positions. Any time I said 'I'm not sure' or 'I don't know' and followed up with 'I'd have to look at the manpage' or 'look up the documentation' either the interviewer would express disappointment or continue to press the question in order to get even a wrong answer.

Many interviewers are looking for you to perfectly regurgitate canned answers rather than admit when you don't have something memorized.

I think this is related to relativity, one data feature missing, which is the level of job vs their previous exposure.

Basically with juniors you don’t know what they have been exposed before. In general less they are exposed, more confident they are. Ofc humility is also a factor in this.

> In general, skill level has little to do with humility and other personal traits.

Here, you're using "skill level" as a proxy to years of experience, because the OP used the term "seniority" which usually means years of experience.

So while I think you may be correct when it comes to actual skill level (though I have seen no evidence presented to support this claim), you're definitely incorrect when it comes to "seniority", unless you believe old people and young people do not present different levels of "humility" and "personal traits".

To avoid being accused of not providing evidence:

_you can reasonably presume a 66-year-old will be more conscientious, more agreeable, and more emotionally stable than their adolescent self._

https://www.iflscience.com/brain/study-reveals-how-your-pers...

_As you progress through adulthood personality becomes more stable and predictable because you fall into a pattern of thinking, behaving, and feeling._

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_changes#Change_ove...

_Conscientious-ness, a trait marked by organization and discipline, and linked to success at work and in relationships, was found to increase through the age ranges studied, with the most change occurring in a person's 20s. Agreeableness, a trait associated with being warm, generous and helpful, bucked the theory that personalities don't change after 30. On the contrary, people in the study showed the most change in agreeableness during their 30s and continued to improve through their 60s. This even happened among men, which debunks the concept of "grumpy old men," Srivastava says._

https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug03/personality

Have you got any citations for this? Because you’re stating it very definitively, given that many people experience the effect.

A way of putting it is that some beginners are fanatical in the rules they follow. I find they have strong opinions on using say, a string template, or SOLID, and be judgemental on those who don't.

The seniors can be extremely cocky, but they realize when to follow or break rules. They may have strong opinions, weakly held. They'll proudly challenge something to see if it hold weight, but back off once they're wrong. There's some special cases too, like people who are beginners in project management but experts in development, and they can have fanatical opinions on project management.

let me throw in the 'goto' statement here...

> The beginner/mid group seem to have a lot more confidence in their skills and not be as aware of what they don't know.

This might be misinterpreted though. A common advice for interviews is to underline your key strenghts.

A candidate rightfully plays their game by showing expertise and mastery of the things they believe they know and try to at least appear worth hiring.

It's up to the interviewer to try and move the conversation to a topic the candidate is not very familiar with and see how they react and handle it. In general, is down to the interviewer to go beyond the "oh yeah i know that" and ask specific question that demostrate actual understanding.

But then again, it's fair game to present your best self during an interview. You're literally selling yourself to a potential employer.

That's what I've always done in interviews. I'm confident about the things I know well, but I'm extremely open about the things I don't know and would like to improve.

Also consider that juniors are all bright eyed and full of optimism and certainly tend to idealize things at first.

Then experience, hardships, victories and org politics teaches them the 'real' game and hopefully they use that experience to their advantage. You become a cautious optimist. And not a cynical ol' grumpy bastard like me.

Aka. The Dunning Kruger Effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

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