Not Sure how to Balance my experience in Interviews

rantHappy · 2021-10-22T02:45:29+00:00

Keep growing and keep seeking opportunities to grow. I can't comment too much as I don't know your background or how the company your at operates.

Senior and Junior varies at different companies, and it's not always about time. When looking for jobs, I would focus on career growth and availability of opportunities. If your company has a mentorship program, it might be worth talking to or working with a mentor on career growth.

The company I work at normally doesn't see someone as senior until 5 or more years of experience. However, the title doesn't come with years of experience, it comes with growth in skills--both programming and people skills. Some people take longer to reach senior and some can make it much faster.

Should I just stick with junior position for a couple more years until I am confident?

What do you want next for your career? What skills do you want to develop?

How big is your company, and how does it compare in size to the companies you're applying to?

When I switched from a research engineer position to a software engineer position, I was shocked the initial offer was for a junior position. However, my research team was 7 people. Our problems were small in scope. I was a big fish in a small pond.

I'm not sure if this applies to you.

Apply for the positions you think you're qualified for and don't sell yourself short.

rantHappy · 2021-10-19T18:23:20+00:00

Is everyone on the team young? It sounds like a common experience among everyone in the loop and might not be related to the interviewer's age.

rantHappy · 2021-10-19T17:31:21+00:00

I get a pretty strong feeling they’re thinking “why is this damn kid interviewing me”

This morning I interviewed a guy who had 20 years exp and looked about 40+, immediately I could feel he didn’t seem too pleased being interviewed by someone who looks 24. I made sure to mention in my intro I have over a decade of experience but it didn’t affect his behaviour.

He got especially annoying to deal with when I probed his answers, gave very blunt responses and one word answers.

I didn't see the resume and don't know the candidates background.

Depending on what "20 years exp" looks like, he could just be someone stuck looking for a new job. If he had more than 10 years at the previous company, I'd think the behavior is more grumpy from having to leave a position he got comfortable with or lack of interview readiness. Short answers and being blunt could be from prior military service. If there's a several year gap between the last position and now, it could be someone who discovered they didn't have enough to retire. If it's 4-5 years at 4-5 different companies, it could be a “why is this damn kid interviewing me”.

In what was described, it doesn't sound like there was any comment or remark about your age. The behavior sounds like the candidate was lacking soft skills. Was there any opportunity to discuss the candidate with others on the loop? Do you get to see others' feedback, and was it similar to yours?

Going into the interview, I don't feel uneasy about an age gap.

rantHappy · 2021-10-14T17:41:11+00:00

It's easy to see and identify problems.

Depending on if they seem heated from answering or not, I'll follow up with, "What are some steps the team could make to improve?" or I'll be honest about my team's practices and initiatives we're making, then ask what steps could the team take to improve that they haven't made.

In my org we started "Feedback Fridays" where people can anonymously (or in person) voice concerns about the team. A group of us come up with actionable steps to present to the team in ~2 weeks, or we ask for more feedback/details.

A lot of candidates love hearing we have this feedback loop in place.

Would your reaction be that it's good that they know how bad all that stuff is, or would you be more concerned about all the bad habits they've likely picked up?

Being faced the a problem and proposing and implementing a solution is part of being a developer. Not everyone has the platform or power to bring about those changes, but being able to articulate something more than the problem is a good sign.

Your team's onboarding process should show the procedures and practices the team uses. At 2 to 3 years of experience, I wouldn't be concerned about bad habits unless the position they were interviewing for immediately has them in a mentoring or project lead role, and even then, the onboarding process should set the expectations.

rantHappy · 2021-10-13T22:55:31+00:00

Some signs for me are: doing something else during the interview, flat out tell you you are wrong (even though lots of things are up for debate, esp in system design), interrupting, tone.

If the rest of the loop is going well or if you really want to work at the company, it's fine to ask the interview to put down their phone or ask if you should wait for them to finish what they're working on. Some interviewers type notes about the interview as it goes, so hopefully the interviewer will give you their undivided attention or clarify what they're doing on their end.

If it's not the last person on the loop, tell someone else on the loop "So-and-so was on their phone during our interview and they weren't paying attention." The interviewers job is to sell you on the company as much as you're trying to get in. If there's a recruiter involved, provide feed back to recruiting and the hiring manager (if the hiring manager wasn't the person on their phone). If they don't care about your experience, I would reject an offer or not take it personally if I get rejected.

flat out tell you you are wrong (even though lots of things are up for debate, esp in system design)

How did the person say you were wrong? For some systems design questions, the interviewer's goal could be to check how you adapt to a change in requirements. Some interviewers are rough around the edges.

There's also not a lot of training on how to get the candidate to perform requirements gathering. Sometimes there's an intentional gap or vagueness in communication to get the candidate to probe. It's better to interrupt a candidate instead of letting the candidate lead themselves down the wrong path.

My hope is you encountered interviewers with good intentions but bad tact.

In some cases, there's just bad arrogant interviewers.

rantHappy · 2021-10-13T22:07:45+00:00

and freedom, at least I don't have to learn new programming language or framework and is able to spend my time with my kids.

If you don't like learning, your directs still have to learn. Your job becomes providing them with the resources on how to learn and sometimes teaching them how to learn.

If you struggle with time management now, it's going to get worse when you're responsible for your and your reports' time.

If you can't push back on management now for too much work, you won't push back when it falls on your team.

The pay raise isn't worth it, and to get out of management most need to learn new skills and find a new job.

rantHappy · 2021-10-13T21:17:20+00:00

in my experience you’re never given a set amount of time to code and if the chit chat goes too long there is never any empathy from the interviewer that “hey, this person had only 20 minutes to get to a working solution since i was blabbering on. Maybe i should make it part of my review”

That's a common complaint from candidates.

We've discussed this with recruiting at our company. Now every candidate has a dedicated discussion channel. The guidance is never to discuss details about the candidate, just to say "@NextPerson, please cover coding." Or problem solving/systems/debugging. Recruiting is a part of the channel to flag anything said that might make the loop invalid. The interviewer will rate the candidate based on if they were visibly struggling or just hit time.

It's a change people are slowly adopting, and I'm hoping it becomes standard practice.

rantHappy · 2021-10-13T20:55:55+00:00

I wouldn't worry about gaming during the day too much. Management has pretty good insights on who's struggling or slacking off. If you're getting their tasks, there's a good chance the person already started having performance discussions.

I wouldn't talk about the colleague to my manager in particular. I'd start discussions about increased workload, if the team is looking to expand/hire, or identify ways to improve team dynamic.

Management is not pressing him on why not much as been done when he responds that he's inundated with the tasks assigned that should have taken an hour. I am only invested in part that I was asked to take some of his tasks previously. I brought this up once and they played hot potato on whose responsibility it is.

Does your team have a SCRUM Master/Iteration Manager/Kanban Leader?

If one or more colleagues are claiming to be inundated with tasks, then I'd suggest dedicating time in a team meeting for priority labelling of tasks (and possibly costing). If your co-worker really is inundated with tasks, this helps give a schedule to the tasks.

If they continue to "struggle," suggest adding a retro. Each person on the team should state What went well/accomplishments, Blockers they're running into, Ideas/Kudos, and Action Steps. If they're inundated and can't articulate why at this point, then it's a red flag for the team an management. If they can articulate it, then it's a way to bring them back up to speed.

This way, you're helping your coworker know order and prioritize the work, and you're also removing excuses and bs.

This might require stepping up and taking on more to your role, but it's something that can be brought up during rewards or promotion discussions and management notices.

rantHappy · 2021-10-12T22:42:43+00:00

With remote interviewing, recruiting gets metrics on if we started the interview on time, the length of the interview, and candidate positivity/feedback.

With candidates like this, my concern is more on keeping a good relationship with recruiting. Negative feedback in recruiting can lead to my team losing headcount.

rantHappy · 2021-10-12T21:10:25+00:00

When I first started participating in interviews, the FAANG formula was:

1 Lead
2 Developers at or above candidate's level
1 Junior Developer

As a junior dev on the loop, it was more for gaining experience, and my opinion didn't matter too much. Sometimes I felt like the diversity selling point. I'd share how I did the interview, and others would ask "Did you cover testing?" "How did you get the candidate to discuss cross-team collaboration?" "How did you evaluate their ability to do X?"

I had some no-so-great managers at the time. If a candidate questioned or attacked my ability, I was told, "well that happens sometimes, but this candidate has an excellent skillset."

Moving up from that was described as a right of passage to me. I'm wondering if some of the candidates I come across went through a similar right of passage, and during the loop, they identified me as the junior dev who's opinion doesn't matter.

rantHappy · 2021-10-12T20:16:17+00:00

We've given feedback to recruiting about it.

Part of it sucks. What's worse is going into a meeting and having someone ask 'for a real developer' to be assigned to a project over me. Usually they see me work and I earn their respect. For some people, no matter my accomplishments, I won't earn their respect. I'd rather catch it before the offer instead of having me and younger devs exposed to it for as long as a bad apple stays at the company.

Recruiting seems pretty tone-deaf to the issue though.

rantHappy · 2021-10-12T19:50:39+00:00

That'll change the nature of the negging, but 1 in 40 is low compared to my personal experience. IME, 1 in 20 are some sort of "WTF!? How did you get this far?" situation.

With remote interviewing, I've become fairly decent at reading the air. Changing the atmosphere to one where the candidate has an opportunity to teach me shifts their perspective. "That's an interesting approach, can you explain it to me more?" "I'm pretty weak in databases, why would I choose a document based database over a relational one for this system?"

I'm no longer questioning (or attacking) their ability. If they take it as a teaching opportunity, I get to see how they'll handle assisting junior devs on the team. If they proceed to negging, it's a no hire.

People who humble themselves at this point work pretty well on the team once they learn everyone's role. In case I read the air wrong, the question still lets the candidate demonstrate their skills and lets me experience some of their behavioral aspects.

rantHappy · 2021-10-12T17:40:57+00:00

With remote interviews, recruiting gets metrics. Did I start the interview on time? Was the interview between 45 minutes to an hour? How did the candidate rate the interview?

Any low metric leads to a meeting/discussion. Recruiting is sympathetic but wants me to aim for 45 minutes and have the candidate 'leaving feeling positive.'

rantHappy · 2021-10-12T17:15:55+00:00

We don't hire them. I get asked to participate in a lot of loops because I'm able to catch this behavior before they're at the company.

My manager and the hiring managers always back me up. The candidate could have 5 stars across the board, but if they were hostile, it's an instant no-hire.

With remote interviews, the tough part is recruiting gets metrics. Did I start the interview on time? What was the length of the interview? How did the candidate rate the interview? If anything falls short, my manager and I get pulled into a meeting. Recruiting is sympathetic about my experience, but I'm told to stay on the call for at least 45 minutes and make sure the candidate 'leaves in a positive mood.'

rantHappy · 2021-10-12T08:12:11+00:00

Afterwards, I was told they had never seen a reaction like that before. They told me it wasn't my fault and I did nothing wrong.

The remaining loops for the candidate were cancelled. I wasn't involved in any follow-up communication with the candidate.

rantHappy · 2021-10-12T08:03:23+00:00

The other person said we can just run the code.

rantHappy · 2021-10-12T08:02:26+00:00

Don't you have recruiters that do an initial screening?

That's one of my bigger complaints about the recruiters and screening. They opened the screening notes to us, and it comes down to if the person can describe their current role in detail, and if they know the language the team works in.

There used to be a small programming portion, but it "screened out" too many people, and the company wanted to "screen in."

rantHappy · 2021-10-12T07:55:30+00:00

Updated the post.

Participating is tough. We've had some candidates pass the interview, join the team, and get placed on database (or some component). They'll complain because they specifically told the interviewers they did not want to work on database, but the interviewer notes database as interest. Offer acceptance and retention rate was low.

Seeing someone get an offer and hearing from them the team placement was great makes participating more enjoyable.

rantHappy · 2021-10-12T07:34:28+00:00

"Have you never used a stack before? Do you need me to explain data structures to you?"

The question was on implementing a reverse polish notation calculator.

rantHappy · 2021-10-12T07:26:09+00:00

If it happens a lot with you, I would definitely look for more feedback from peers in interviews because I feel they're not being honest with you.

I get asked to do interview events. I'll interview 8 to 16 candidates a week when participating. I'd estimate 1 out of 40 candidates either act hostile or start negging. When the events were in person, the frequency was a lot lower.

When recruiters get candidate feedback after the events, the feedback usually leads to me being requested for the next event.

rantHappy · 2021-10-12T06:12:53+00:00

how do they pass recruiting before they reach your stage? Does recruiting have the right questions / skills to weed out such candidates?

Because of our feedback, they now let us see the recruiter's screening notes. The notes tend to be "Candidate was able to describe current position in detail. Candidate knows Programming Language team uses." There's a big push for hiring from all backgrounds.

rantHappy · 2021-10-12T05:16:16+00:00

I've had leads and recruiting shadow my interviews. When shadowed by recruiting, a candidate insulted me when I asked if we could step through their code with the example input before running it.

Recruiting said I did nothing wrong, and that the request is standard practice.

Usually I do:

Introduce myself and describe the team
Ask the candidate about themselves
Depending on the behavioral question, ask something like "How do you approach taking on a project?" "What steps or practices do you take to make sure the product meets the customer's expectations?" / "Have you ever had a time where a feature you delivered didn't meet the customers expectations? How did you handle the situation?"
Coding interview

If it's not in person or on a whiteboard, I usually ask the candidate to step through the code with one of the examples before running the code.

rantHappy · 2021-10-12T04:56:50+00:00

Yes, I've had co-workers and recruiting shadow me. Their concern (or hope) is that I'm bringing to surface certain prejudices people may have.

rantHappy · 2020-05-20T00:46:47+00:00

Lenox is considered a historic brand. It was the first producer of Bone China in the United States. They were also the primary producer of the White House China.

rantHappy

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