Re:Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting...
by erik_seaberg on Monday February 18, 2019 @05:26PM
(#19195064)
Knowing what good work looks like is a plus, but I wouldn't be convinced by cherry-picked successes. That doesn't tell me how much you struggled with them, how many others you failed, or how much of the work was actually yours.
Re:Harder programming questions do a worse job of predicting...
by castlecrasher2 on Monday February 18, 2019 @05:54PM
(#19195231)
I think most of your concerns could be answered fairly quickly in a conversation, though. I can look over a Github repo and check out its history and ask specific questions about changes and why they were made or why design decisions were made.
The cherry-picked successes thing is certainly a problem, though, and not just for coding. Maybe it's the candidates I've asked it but when asked "tell me about when you made a mistake in a project" they tend to answer with a strength and try to re-frame it as a weakness. "Oh, I worked too hard on this project and it made me tired" isn't a weakness. "I worked too hard on this project and that made me neglect business requirements since I was too myopic to notice" is a weakness.
Sorry if that's a tangent, it's been a pet peeve of mine since I started interviewing that not many people are humble enough or have thought enough about what their weaknesses actually are, and how that affects the success of their work.
Unfortunately, people in general rarely try to first understand what the candidate offers. It's more often ONLY about whether candidates uunderstand the exact way the company uses certain technology.