I beg to differ by a mile and more. If all you have to choose from are mediocre candidates then choosing the ones who hustle by preparing for inane interviews is maybe a barely acceptable option. But you instantly discount any great candidate who doesn’t interview well. A great candidate who also interviews well will have the pick of the lot and unless your org is OpenAI I doubt they’ll come to you. So it’s probably in your interest to try and find the hidden talent in the bad interviewees.

> But you instantly discount any great candidate who doesn’t interview well.

I never said that. I said it's a very important factor, but there are other factors as well. Also, not interviewing well doesn't necessarily mean that you didn't prepare anything. Preparing also means reading up about the company, putting some effort in your CV etc. What I'm looking for, again just as one of the indicators, is that the candidate has put some effort.

Most great candidates don't live in SF, so OpenAI isn't an option for them.

>And if a candidate obviously has put a lot of effort in preparing for the interview, then this indicates that he/she is motivated to get the job.

In case someone doesn't see the absurdity of this situation, let me make it clearer:

We all have 24 hours in our days. Given that fact, whenever I'm at the crossroads between "practicing my interview skills" and "diving deeper into <insert language/framework/specialization>" then it makes sense that I should be prioritizing the former because prioritizing the former implies that I will be motivated enough to learn and work with the latter, and nothing more.

Why not just learn the latter in the first place?

This is not absurd. You're not a <insert language/framework/specialization> drone. Being good at your job requires many more skills than that.

I'd argue that interviewing well is strongly correlated with skills that are valuable for a SWE role. It's not perfect, but overall I do feel like there is signal there.

I don't know, why should we have to be "motivated" to get a job, when the company can just get rid of us at any time? What's the point?

Seems like a double standard.

You could also leave the company at any point, so why should they hire you?

There's got to be some give and take in a relationship with an employer. If you're feeling exploited, you're not in the right role. And that will show in the quality of your work. Work can be fun and interesting, and someone who enjoys what they do will relish the opportunity to learn. I know that for me interviewing, though tough, has always been an opportunity to solidify my basic understanding of the field I'm in. Maybe figure out what you enjoy, and find an employer who respects you equally?

That’s a luxury only affordable when there’s a wealth of choices available. If my choice is between a boring job from an employer I don’t respect, or no job at all, I’m taking that job.

> If you're feeling exploited, you're not in the right role.

I mean that's a good attitude, but really some industrues and some fompanies are exploitative.

And I am not talking Cobalt mines or McDonalds. Look at the game industry- really good developers, much more skilled than average web dev, and they get shit pay and long hours. Why does anyone work there? People exploit their passion.

So they are orthogobal concepts - maybe you are passionate, and someone takes advantage of that

> Why does anyone work there?

Ask them. They are choosing to work there. They have options.

Also why is McDonalds an example of an exploitative company?

> Also why is McDonalds an example of an exploitative company?

Because we (in UK) are paying in-work benefits to help people who work there survive. So the taxpayer is subsidising the labour costs of this business. If we didn't, there wouldn't be enough people willing to work at McDonalds.

We should only pay benefits to people who are unemployed, a job has to cover costs of sustaining employees. The same pronpem is faced by british farmers - they can't exploit romanian students with schemes where they pay them below minimum wage by charging £50/day for libing on the farm in a tent. And there arent enough british folks who want to break their back for minimum wage.

You aren’t subsidizing McDonalds labor cost. If McDonalds paid them more, they would be paying more than the revenue that’s attributable to them, and creating a net loss by hiring them and they simply wouldn’t do it.

As a society we have decided that people deserve a livable wage. That is a good thing. Minimum wage laws are a distorting way to accomplish this because they put a cost that should be borne by society (no-skill workers should have a livable wage) and force it on industries that employ workers with no skills. Subsidizing the income through government transfers is frankly a more equitable means of achieving that goal.

That being said, in such a regime however minimum wage laws are necessary, not because McDonalds is exploring the workers, but because they are likely to exploit the government.

> If McDonalds paid them more, they would be paying more than the revenue that’s attributable to them, and creating a net loss by hiring them and they simply wouldn’t do it.

That only happens when McDonalds is paying exactly as much as the value they get back. Which is doubtful. If forced to pay more or shut down, your average McDonalds would prefer to pay more. They wouldn't be losing money.

Fwiw I’m an employer too and I strongly disagree with this. In fact we try very hard to see if we can separate “interviewing skill” from “real work skill” because we only care about the latter, and with programming roles there is little overlap between the two skills.

The idea that someone investing time and effort into being a smooth interviewer somehow shows that they’re “motivated” seems like a weird tribal dance to me. Who does it benefit?

In my experience (200+ interviews conducted), it's very rare to see somebody with an obvious "interviewing skill". Actually, I should qualify that. I've seen a lot of people try. But giving wrong answers with conviction and enthusiasm is not really a skill. Among smart candidates, I haven't seen much fakery.

What I'm looking for, and that's also what I wrote, is that candidate has put some effort. This can also be in getting to know about the company or in updating his/her CV. There are candidates that are so fond of themselves and their perceived technical skills, that they act like diva's and don't find it necessary to put any effort. I'd rather not have those as my colleagues. I'm not saying that not preparing automatically means the candidate is such a diva, there can ofc be many other reasons, but it's an indicator to be alert for.

And again, this is not the only indicator I'm looking for. A candidate who didn't prepare much but can tell very enthusiastically about some project or technology is obviously motivated as well.

Needing to pay the mortgage is a HUGE motivation, but it doesn’t necessarily correlate with job performance.

What I would say I look for in software developers is people who are genuinely interested in software development. You don’t need to be a committer on 4 open source projects, but show me that you actually like the work (the fun parts at least.) If you’re also interested in the business domain that’s not necessarily required, but a huge plus.

>And if a candidate obviously has put a lot of effort in preparing for the interview, then this indicates that he/she is motivated to get the job.

Well, yes, desperate people are going to be "motivated" and work really hard to get the job.

But remember this cuts both ways: people who aren't desperate with have no problem leaving you you for the next big thing. Being an employer doesn't put you in some default superior position. You need workers and workers need work.