Ask HN: Are there software jobs that don't require a technical interview? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are there software jobs that don't require a technical interview?

15 pointsabtinf13 comments

I've been looking around for new job opportunities, but in a slow and deliberate manner because I'm mostly okay with where I am.

Because I'm under no pressure to find a job quickly, I've come to realize something about the engineer job hunting process: I abhor technical programming interviews.

I hate the quizzes. I hate the variations on fizbuzz. I hate the gotcha algorithmic questions. The whole process is excruciating and demeaning.

I'm a veteran programmer who has written and deployed a mountain of code (backend, frontend, low level, high level, etc), led a number of teams, hired and mentored junior devs. I can, if desired, go into deep detail about any past projects I've worked on. I will happily chat about software and programming all day long.

I've talked to a number of friends about this and know that I'm not alone on this issue. Several have said they would engage in a new job search themselves, but don't want to deal with the hassle of technical interviews.

Are there any companies out there that replace technical interviews with, say, a you-will-be-fired-after-three-months-for-failure-to-perform? Most companies already operate in this manner anyway, except with a 1 year timeline instead of 3 months.

I've personally seen "senior devs" who literally couldn't program a for loop in any language of their choice. Let's put it this way: would you hire someone without a technical interview?

Most companies hire to minimize false positives, not false negatives. It's far better to overlook a good candidate vs. fire a bad one. (The hassle, the headache, litigation, project is delayed, etc.)

Go freelance. Clients don't give you technical quizzes to test your qualifications. They care about whether you can deliver and have you delivered before.

To be honest, the majority of interviews I've had for software jobs were non-technical. Once I reached a certain level of experience, talking about past work seemed to be enough for people to validate that I knew what I was talking about. That's not to say that technical things were not discussed in the interview, but it was more of a conversation, rather than a quiz.

That being said, most of these jobs were at engineering companies (e.g. device companies that employed several types of engineers, software only being a part). Not your Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. The few times that I have been interviewed by pure software companies, that's when the quizzes happened. So maybe there's a cultural element to it.

Feel free to post some contact information and what you are into tech wise.

I can tell you my interviewing style is over tea/chocolate/coffee and I prefer to talk about a candidate's experience.

I've spoken with other startups who do hiring and it is the same.

What exactly do you consider a technical interview? Whiteboarding sucks. I hate making people do it and I hate doing it myself. I've never had to make someone whiteboard code out to assess their technical competency. Just really open ended questions like:

  What do you like to code in?
  What have you made? What made it hard?
  Do you like XYZ tech? Have you played around with it?

Etc.

I understand and can relate to your situation. I also dislike the gotcha algorithmic questions.

However, I strongly believe that there should be some form of technical element to the interview process. I have participated in a few interview processes where a task was given to do in my own time which related to the job. These were no more than a couple of hours and were very simple tasks. I find this type of technical test much better than the algorithmic ones. Examples of ones I know about; scraping a website for specific values, creating a basic web proxy, rendering data into a chart on a webpage, programmatically mapping out points on google maps.

I am currently recruiting for .NET developers and I get everyone to code up a task that relates to the job. There are no gotchas or edge cases, it is just a very simplified version of something that they will have to deal with in the job.

I find this extremely useful as quick feed back into the style/competency of the candidate and you can quite easily see where they are coming from. I also use the result of the task as a discussion point during the on site interview process. Having a concrete example to discuss has proven very useful as it leaves no room for ambiguities or misinterpretation. I personally would be very hesitant to join a company that had no step involving anything technical.

Regarding your "you-will-be-fired-after-three-months-for-failure-to-perform", it is standard over here in the UK that you go through a probation period. This can be anything from 3 months to 6 months and during that time either party can end the employment with a shorter notice period. I am not sure where you are based but at least in the UK you will find companies doing exactly what you are describing.

If you are that good, it shouldn't be that hard for you to learn how to perform in technical interviews. Personally, I'm not so fond of the shakey-hands parts, or how you need to connect with the interviewer on irrelevant topics "wow you like to surfing! I do too!" or smile and pretend you're best pals, but I've learnt how to do it.

I.e it's just a skill that you should easily be able to acquire.

You don't have to be fake in an interview - if I see that in an interview, it is a warning sign, since it erodes trust in what the person is saying since I don't believe in what the person has said.

My own approach to interviewing is generally being honest and respecting disagreements/avoiding creating controversy & arguments (I will point out any technical disagreements I have though).

I have had many interviews without a technical or problem-solving component. I think you just need to keep looking. Try being up-front about it, and tell the prospective employer that you would rather they dig into your past work than force you to endure the typical interview routine.

Personally, if I am not challenged to demonstrate my skills during the interview, I consider it a "red flag", potentially signifying low standards in their hiring process. If they are not verifying that I'm capable, the developers at the company might not be capable. It sounds like you are far more experienced, however. In your case, it would make more sense for a company to skip the technical quizzes based on the merit of your more extensive portfolio.

Between the startup and big-org ends of the hiring spectrum, I've found the latter to be far less demanding, at least when it comes to newer technologies.

(They have to be less discriminating to attract talent away from the "cool" jobs, and they may lack the in-house capability to assess the very skills for which they're hiring.)

Or as another poster suggested, try freelancing and/or starting your own company.

One of the interviews I had just had me write some code before hand and then we talked about the code I had written during the interview. I kind of liked that format. Basically whoever game up with best algorithm got the interview. It saved everyone a lot of time and they gave you GC for just doing the assignment.

I've found that it varies based on how we (the candidate and the hiring manager) crossed paths. If I (the candidate) approached them out of the blue then I'm probably going to have to jump through some hoops like technical-interviews and such. But if they approached me then that stuff rarely comes up.

I didn't do a technical at my last two jobs because I had previous work experience with the hiring managers. I did have coffee with some of the guys so they knew I wasn't a total moron.

I've had to deal with a technical quiz 2 times in the last ~9 years, one of which was when I was applying as an intern.

I'm an SAP guy and the enterprise space pretty much hires exclusively off prior experience and not on technical merit (for better or worse).

As an aside, the 2nd quiz was while applying as an expert in a (at the time) very niche UI technology. The nature of the questions were such that immediately after the call I got in touch with the recruiter and hiring manager and told them I felt insulted by the triviality of the questions and was no longer interested in the position. Consider that my small contribution to ending this practice of asking technical gotcha's that have little bearing on one's competence.

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