Rethinking the Technical Interview

I think about interviews too much. I haven't done many lately, but everything I've been hearing scares me, so it was time for a rant.

S/O Mir for the awesome edit 🙏

[musamutetwi]

I support this 100%. Tech interviews are heading towards a bad direction. I'd rather someone is tested for what they applied for rather than slapping leetcode questions and using that as a measure for prowess.

[Unc]

I interview at startups in London UK quite often, Im very pleased to see the trend of everyone ditching the traditional interviews in favour of "walk me through a recent project" or "explain a piece of tech you enjoy working with to me like I'm 5" and my favourite "let's talk code". Hope the rest of the industry follows.

[armaandhanji]

This video represents exactly the kind of paradigm shift I think we should be seeing more of in our industry. Leetcode has it's place and I'm not one to go as far as saying it offers no value, but companies are missing out on hiring potentially fantastic engineers by optimizing for leetcode mastery rather than testing on-the-job tasks. (Hiring a react engineer and exclusively interviewing them on algo problems is just sad). As you said, set your developers up for success, including the ones you're interviewing. Great content.

[IamSinghJaskaran]

This video is what we need right now. Instead of explaining things people keep on coming up with Algo this Algo that.

[thedo]

I find it amazing that this isn't more the norm.

When you interview at the company I work for we do

1: Informal 1-1 with a dev. No "tech" questions from me. Lets talk about culture, tech-stack, background, ideas, directions. I always encourage people to ask more questions. I lay out the full process going forward.
2: Technical interview (where they already know the format). We do 3 questions - some bad code to refactor, some code with a bug and a small problem to code from scratch (not algorithm-y). This is what we do day-to-day - fix bad code, fix bugs, write new stuff. We allow stackoverflow/google with no penalty. We pair. No one ever leaves without successfully completing this - even if they are not successful. Hopefully they leave with a good feeling.
3: The boring HR stuff. I don't go to these.

I never would give a take home question (anymore).

Even tho I'm pretty happy that the above is _better_ than the norm, I still think its imperfect. Social people tend to shine, introverts tend to clam up. Almost all processes tend to people who are better at social interactions.

I really like the "bring your own interview" idea.

I interviewed at a FANG company a few years back - lots of algorithms, etc. I asked the question - how often do they solve these problems. He laughed and said "never". I dropped out of the role as it prevented me from knowing how I would fit in the role.

[shacharronzohar]

Holy shit that last part hit me hard. I'm interviewing for a first "real" programming position for the first time, currently working in the general field, and I've had 2 major interviews that reached high stages, one where I reached the HR stage after like 5 interviews, and one where I reached the CTO stage after 4, and both of them ended on "we all really liked you, you have a great vibe and is a great fit for the role, but we still won't accept you".
When I asked for feedback, both of them basically told me to go fuck myself.
Aside from the ego hit, it's really demoralising to reach final stages without even being given the minimal amount of info - why you didn't accept me...

[Xe]

Wow.. you are so well spoken and you really nailed the point you made. Thank you for the advice at the end and providing a solution to a big problem in tech. I hope this video goes viral.

[faizanahmed]

Thank you Theo for such amazing content! Need more such videos!

[Cameron-hsry]

This is such a breath of fresh air, I wish I got an interview like this. When I get asked Random Terminology Jeopardy or Leet Code Style I am always stressed because I may have missed a question thats not commonly asked or fail to identify the correct algorithmic approach in time, but if you put me in front of an actual code base I can show you I can shine

[marcelloprattico]

This is great, love the idea of allowing the interviewee to choose the path. I am going through various interviews and they are all over the place. Some leetcode, some take home. It is hard to really prepare as a front end dev since you can expect just about anything.

[Mischu]

I talked about the interview process with my superiors and their reaction was more on the lines of "wait, that was an option?". I am pretty sure they won't change a thing because "they know better", but what I took from that exchange is also what you said in the video "you can make a guess on the company culture based on the interview process".

[ahmedAltariqi]

How great the world would be if everyone adopts your mindset!

You're my role model and I learn a lot from you <3

[Symuality]

Dude, Theo. I just have to tell you that you're incredible. I feel so stuck and I hope I figure it out because I just want more than anything to be a really good engineer. I hope I can get out of this Vanilla JS role and be working with cooler technologies and growing towards developing in a more modern way soon. I appreciate the way you go about assessing a potential candidate for hire and I hope you inspire people in hiring roles to do the same.

[TheGravegiver]

This is the best implementation of technical interview options I have ever seen the Realist choice is my personal favorite because this is exactly what you are being hired for to begin with why not have a dry run of the day to day to see where the individual aligns with someone already working at the company.

[Ohmriginal]

Creating options for how you want to interview is amazing and I love it

[asagiai]

This is a lot better than most tech interviews.

I think the best part of this, is; it allows better communication between the interviewer and interviewee.

[torsneyt]

I think this is a great idea! My favorite question to ask in interviews is what's your favorite programming language and why. It gives them a chance to explain how they think about building a project, difficulties they run into, and how their language can help address them.

[nicoburniske]

This video is incredible. Strongly agree on

- If your interview process sucks and strong candidates drop out, that limits the quality of engineer you can hire

- Letting the interviewee have some agency over how they can best showcase their skills and themselves. Love the idea that they can “bring their own interview”

- Letting candidates know why they got rejected

[lordofthebrooms]

Setting up for a success is the most important takeaway. I often ask just one question: "describe your passion project" and it filters pretty well those engineers that are really passionate about development and even a bit product management, as a manager i can filter out the most important aspects and validate if they were described enough

[singlethreaded]

I appreciate that you’re not just criticizing the current process but also providing alternatives for that process. Offering potential solutions is really important because the vast majority of companies don’t actually put any thought into interview processes, they just copy paste and change some variables. So it’s actually viral to give people something to copy pasta if you want to drive change.