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Comment by skc | Hacker News Reader

I've never understood why techie interviews aren't simply replaced with the sort of discussions programmer co-workers have amongst themselves daily.

I've taken to honing on a candidates CV that might say for example, experience with Vue and React and simply ask them to compare the two, what do you like about one over the other etc. Or have a look at the projects they've worked on and ask them how they solved problem X and why that particular approach rather than Y etc.

Being this casual I feel that you get a really good feel for how someone works, how they think, how they approach problems and most importantly how well you might get along with them day to day as you work together. They end up being much more relaxed and honest.

I have a hard time believing that someone incompetent can slip through the cracks this way. Hasn't happened yet.

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> I've never understood why techie interviews aren't simply replaced with the sort of discussions programmer co-workers have amongst themselves daily.

I think the answer here is simple: scale and trust. The smaller the company, the more likely you are to get this sort of "just a chat" interview. But larger companies invariably feel the need to standardize their hiring process across huge numbers of people. And it's just very hard to trust the "just a chat" format at that scale, and can seem much "better" to build a bank of questions with answer keys.

The solution: work for smaller companies!

Studying for 100+ hours and doing 3 full-day interviews in groups and one-on-ones must be a Silicon Valley thing. Which is understandable given how many potentials would do the pilgrimage each year to join a pre-IPO. It's the 2021 version of the gold rush.

Compare that to Melbourne (Australia). Every interview has been how you've described. I've had interviews in cafes, restaurants, pubs, and food courts. All informal chats, and only remember one white-board interview that went for about 3 hours.

Thinking about this more now as I type this reply, clearly, the interview over lunch doesn't scale so making candidates run gauntlets for Valley jobs actually sounds logical.

> I've never understood why techie interviews aren't simply replaced with the sort of discussions programmer co-workers have amongst themselves daily.

Because of an attempt to standardize the questions so as to rank candidates based on their answers? Notice how many times the word bias pops up in articles complaining about the interview process? Bias this and bias that? Well, having a freeform chat with a candidate is just inviting bias.

I recently interviewed at some place which did exactly this. Their first round of interview was a 30 min (or 1 hour) candid talk with the hiring manager which involved around technology (and the role). Although I was deemed not fit for candidacy in further rounds, that first round help me express myself more rather than how would you do X in Technology Y and so on.

> I've taken to honing on a candidates CV that might say for example, experience with Vue and React and simply ask them to compare the two, what do you like about one over the other etc. Or have a look at the projects they've worked on and ask them how they solved problem X and why that particular approach rather than Y etc.

The most lazy programmer I ever seen, to the point where he rarely finished anything and where everything took absurd amount of time excelled in these. There is sort of person who is smart, reads blogs/hacker news/journals a lot, have all the right opinions and can theorize about this or that solution easily.

Everyone, especially developers, who was not on his team thought how genius he was. (Imo, largely because he is also completely immersed in tech-culture projecting all the correct work not related social signs of genius developer. )

Because this is highly subjective, prone to bias, and isn’t a repeatable process when companies interview hundreds or thousands of people every few months.

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