Comment by scottlamb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scottlamb | Hacker News Reader

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As usual, you can do a thing relatively well or poorly. The post is describing the dumbest version of it and attacking it.

iirc, Google recruiters used to (still do? dunno) ask people to rate themselves in a bunch of areas.

* Why are you asking? So we can pick interviewers knowledgeable in the same areas you are.

* How should I rate myself? Here's a reference. 10 means you are the world expert, maybe invented the thing I just described. 9 means you literally wrote the authoritative book or are on the standardization committee. 8 means you wrote a book on it or the like...and so on.

In general, you should expect that you will discuss the things you rate yourself the most highly on with someone at Google who knows them better than you do, or at least (if you really are the world expert) one of Google's most confident people on that subject.

I think this was a useful practice, at least in the context of Google where they have a very wide interview pool and actually sometimes do interview people who literally wrote the book on something.

> * How should I rate myself? Here's a reference. 10 means you are the world expert, maybe invented the thing I just described. 9 means you literally wrote the book. 8 means...and so on.

This is exactly what I'd do, ask what constitutes a "10", and if the interviewer can't answer that question why are they even asking?

I do the same thing at AWS, except use a 100, 200, 300, 400 level scale. I am just looking to see what the candidate thinks they are strongest on and weakest. If the candidate says they have never heard of AI/ML topics, there's no point in quizzing them on it. Not everyone can know everything, it wouldn't be fair to judge someone based on not being able to answer questions for a domain they don't claim to have any experience in. Or worse yet, waste valuable / limited interview minutes on fruitless questions.

But it's still a useless question isn't it? If someone literally wrote the book on the subject then you should probably know that if you're interviewing them. And anything below 8 feels meaningless. How do you differentiate a 5 vs 6 vs 7? Why can't the answer just be "what do you know about X" instead of having to use an arbitrary number?

If someone scores a 10 or 9, yeah, ideally the recruiter knows that rather than having to ask, but people are imperfect, and regardless the recruiter will be entering the 10 or 9 into the interviewing system to find the matches.

How do you differentiate a 5 vs 6 vs 7? I don't remember the guidance they gave, but you certainly give yourself higher numbers on areas you know better, and this gives you the opportunity to significantly influence what you will be interviewed about and by whom. Google mostly was (is?) hiring generalists. They assumed if you know something well, you can pick up other things too as needed. But if you bomb the thing you say you know best, that's not so good.

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