I’m a software engineer who sometimes interviews other software engineers. I’m not given a script to go off of, I get to ask them whatever I want. Usually we just talk about technology and coding from a high level. I’m not a big fan of whiteboard tests.
I’ve noticed, however, that a lot of people applying to software engineering jobs feel very alien to me. I started coding when I was 12 and spent most of my teenage years on technology forums. A lot of people applying to these positions are very much ladder-climbing type people who got into the career for the money. Working with these people is an absolute drag.
We also interview for “culture fit”. I would like to add in a single question to my interviews to assess that: what is your favorite science fiction book. You don’t even have to have read it recently, you just have to have read one and formed an opinion on it. My thoughts
Pros:
- Weeds out a lot of people since half of Americans don’t read books at all.
- Theoretically filters out people who love this kind of tech subculture from people who are just in it for the money
Cons:
- It’s unfair to people who enjoy fantasy novels, or any other form of fiction
- Being motivated by money probably shouldn’t be a disqualifying factor (I certainly wouldn’t do this job for free), I’m just tired of working with yuppies and lashing out at poor unsuspecting Jr Devs
I’m half-hearted on this. I see why it could be considered unfair but I’m really tired of the kinds of people I work with.
If you have the authority to try to make a good company culture; hell yes you should. Even if they don’t often read novels, or they read something other than sci-fi, it’ll help you understand their personality and weed out people who suck. If someone says they prefer reading sci-fi manga or playing fantasy ttrpgs or any other possible nerdy thing they are probably leagues better than a ladder climbing type.There are plenty of places for a soulless corpo to go work for, if you can keep them away from you and yours you’ll have a much better and healthier company and (more importantly) life in the long run.
Yeah but at the same time I feel like it’s kind of privileged to be able to work in tech because you love coding. I mean everybody should work in jobs they love but I’ve met a huge number of people who were making slave wages in other fields and moved to coding to make more money. Why should I punish that? Because I find their water cooler conversations to be boring? What if they’re the first person in their family to graduate college and they’re just trying to feed their family and are actually really good at coding, but their real passion in life is Football? I want to work in a workplace with people I would want to actually hang out with, but it seems petty to penalize people for not liking the same things as me and not having the advantage of a great salary to be able to turn their real passion into a career
So you can ask them what they are passionate about outside of work. Something like:
I’m really into reading sci-fi books. Is there anything you are passionate about outside your work?
That’s not exactly what I want to select for though.I guess leaving it open ended lets them convince me of the culture fit rather than just trying to check a box. Maybe they don’t give a shit about science fiction, but they’re really into science or art. That’s cool, too
No.
You say that a lot of people applying feel alien to you. Why not attempt to bridge the gap instead of forcing them into your persecption of what a software designer should be like in their free time. I’m sorry that you don’t work with people who have the same passion, but people shouldn’t be punished because they’re just trying to make money. It’s a job, not their family or friends. Wanting to climb the ladder is not a bad motivation to work.
Try and take a step back, maybe even put the shoe on the other foot. Would you feel okay if you weren’t hired because you didn’t partake in a certain hobby? What if the person hiring you thinks you should be a Star Trek fan of the highest order, or that they think you need to be up to date on philosophy. That’s just not a reason to deny someone a job imo and it’s not fair. I low key see it as boomer behavior to include something like a hobby as a factor in hiring.
I feel that if we only hire purely based on technical ability, we are creating dysfunctional and unempathetic workplaces. If we all see our jobs inherently transactionally, it breeds discontent. Employees are less likely to stay more than a couple years and institutional knowledge becomes weak with a constantly rotating roster of hot-swappable engineers. Obviously, this requires the employer to treat the employees well; if someone is a good performer then they should get more than a cost of living adjustment every other year. We are creating economic engines and not cultures worth spending 8 hours a day in
Your employer doesn’t give a fuck about you. You only exist to make them profit. Just pick the most talented individual and stop discriminating based on bullshit.
I don’t think you need to do it purely on technical ability, but I think the question seems to align too much with your personal opinion of how the employee should be and that makes it seem like you’re looking for a duplicate of yourself/another employee versus just a good fit. I think “tell me about yourself/what you do outside work” is a question that could get you the same information without it being so pointed. Asking about a specific genre, show, etc. automatically puts anyone with a different genre, hobby, etc. at a disadvantage based off of something that doesn’t appear to corelate to their talent or fit. I think even without knowing it, you could make assumptions if you don’t like the answer, or if they just don’t enjoy reading.
low key in my feelings cause I don’t read Sci fi lolMaybe not scifi, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want to hire people who read.
You know what, I can get behind that. Rock on
not that you needed my approval lmao. 👍🏾
This doesn’t correlate with good developers at all in my experience. If I was to ask one question it would be “tell me about your passion project” or “What’s the last thing you nerded out on?”
It’s not 100% about getting the best developer, it’s about team culture
it’s about team culture
If you’re interviewing for something like team culture you’re going to end up with a bunch of people in your own demographic, because shared life experience is the biggest predictor of team culture.
People say we don’t need DEI because they aren’t racist. And you’re not racist. But this is how accidental racism sneaks in. It’s nefarious.
If you asked something relevant, like “how many servers are in your basement?” Or “what open source projects do you contribute to?”, you’ll not be leaning on culture, but it tells you more about them than coding ability.
Not sure why you get downvoted.
Culture fit, is what makes a team holds together. And it’s different in banking or in a R&D company.
That said, what is your role during the interview. Culture fit is more for the HR and manager and less for the expert conducting the technical part of the interview.
you may want to be careful how you word this; if you focus too hard on a specific culture then you inherit that culture’s biases. I don’t think english language sci-fi novels are known for their racially and sexually diverse fandom, for instance.
You’re not interviewing for friends. “Team culture” in this case seems like shorthand for “someone just like me so I don’t get challenged”. I would suggest spending some time thinking about why scifi books in particular and what that says about you.
Look up any personality+leadership theory, DISC is a common one I’ve seen. Teams with a mix of personalities and backgrounds are more optimal than a team of basically the same person. Yes, even “ladder climbers” can be good for a team, provided they have other positive traits that go with it.
Look up any personality+leadership theory, DISC is a common one I’ve seen.
Ew. Personality tests are a terrible way of building a working team, and the idea that every need field needs the same kind of people is just demonstrably stupid
Not that I said “read theory” not “make applicants take personality tests”.
“Needs the same kind of people is demonstrably stupid”… yet OP is headed in that direction and doesn’t appear to be stupid. Just lacking in exposure to other ways of doing things… thus reading about them is a way to close that knowledge gap
Leadership type books aren’t to be followed 100%. They are written for a person to take the 10% that best applies and is helpful to them. It’s why they’re so damn repetitive and obvious the more experience you have.
The takeaway is not “build a team of four people with these four styles”. That’s way too literal. It’s “see the value in a mix of people, and recognize strengths in others that you don’t have”.
I speak casually but my aim is just to find out if they have the technical skills necessary for the role. I find little social things come up by happenstance.
I’m gonna be real fucking honest with you here. If the question you’re asking doesn’t have to do with the actual job, it’s a stupid fucking question. The fact that you’re even asking about a subjective hobby like this in an interview tells me that maybe you aren’t the best person to be deciding who is qualified to be working with you.
The fact that you even weighed the pros and cons of your proposal puts you light years ahead of most hiring managers.
Haha I’m afraid every time I interview someone. I know that I personally hate being asked whiteboard algorithm questions, and I don’t think they’re very useful either. When I interview people I ask them two main questions:
- What is your hottest take on coding? It can be controversial or not, it just has to be a strongly held opinion. For example, if you despise Windows, tell me why. If you are a zealot for Vim/Emacs, rant at me. If you think that dynamically typed languages are the worst thing ever, prove it.
I don’t actually care about what their opinion is (though I think it’s good to hire people with a lot of intellectual diversity), I just want to see if they can extemporaneously rant about coding for 10-15mins
- What is a technology (an API, a cloud service, a programming language, a new kind of algorithm, etc.) that you are excited about and that you want to be able to use at work some day
Again, the actual tech doesn’t matter too much to me, but this indicates that they read up on the latest goings-ons of the industry they’re in. I also think that it’s a good character trait to be someone who desperately searches for problems to apply a novel solution to. I don’t think it’s always a good idea to ACTUALLY create a solution looking for a problem, but I think it’s a good intellectual trait to have
Interesting, I posted a top level comment to you but you’re already doing some similar things to what I posted.
Those are both great questions.
Agreed. Hiring manager green flags for sure.
I interviewed someone today whose hobby was poetry of the African diasporia, for a position relative to logistics.
While I know very little about that specific poetic oeuvre, hearing them talk about their passion gave me an insight into their personality.
Perhaps ask questions about what they’re into rather than if they’re into thing.
Perhaps ask questions about what they’re into rather than if they’re into thing.
This is great advice! Asking about something specific is off-putting and could lose a great candidate.
Asking an open ended question about their hobbies can get the same positive result, and will catch candidates who wouldn’t have anything to say about science fiction.
Dumb idea I’m afraid. Although to be honest I did once give someone a paid internship because they had a line in their CV that read, “Hobbies: Daft Punk”.
They did fine in their technical assessment too I guess.
When dating people, I often ask “name a book that’s not Harry Potter”. Doesn’t even have to be one you’ve read. Pick any book at all (other than Harry Potter) and tell me why you thought of it.
I’m not gatekeeping people who do or don’t read books, and i don’t care if it’s sci fi, fantasy, fanfic, nonfic, whatever. what i do care about is that you are aware of at least one book and care enough to remember what it’s about. That’s a low bar, but not as low as you might think.
The “no Harry Potter” clause isn’t specifically due to jkr being a terf (although that too), but because it’s such an overused answer. Yeah, I do remember the books that were so popular that they had their own brand of jelly beans. I have run out of things to say about them. Pick literally anything else.
50 shades of grey, because its another horrible bookseries.
what does that say about me?
I imagine being in a date and my mind panicking and coming up with the Kamasutra first.
@shortrounddev@lemmy.world looks like you want to promote a mono culture? a lot of brilliant people I work with don’t read scifi, or anything like that. It is still a pleasure to work with them.
Also, working for money is exactly what we all do, it is great to do what you want but some people just care abour their paycheck and that is fine.
Finally, IANAL, but I suspect it could be a discriminatory practice to select people who like things that you like.
I think we already live in a monoculture in the tech industry. I think having some kind of cultural similarity is important for organizational cohesion. I think empathy helps
@shortrounddev@lemmy.world the tech industry is kind of big, but if you think so 🤷♂️ then you wouldn’t have those “weird” candidates would you? I just think mono cultures are toxic, but good luck with your candidates
I see what you’re getting at, but maybe broaden it to just their favorite book. I also certainly wouldn’t disqualify based on not having read books (sci-fi or otherwise), because maybe they read short stories online, or maybe comics or something similar.
I like to ask folks what they do for fun, gives me a better general idea of who they are
I interviewed for a gig that explocitly stated “Must have a strong preference for Marvel over D.C.” Got the job, been on it going on 14 years now.
Do you have a strong preference for Marvel over D.C. or did you you lie lol
I dodged. “All I’m going to say on that is I met Stan Lee at San Diego Comic Con in 1995 and got his autograph.”
I would try to leave it more open-ended when asking what their hobbies are outside of work, and then ask whatever follow-up questions you can think of that would let them express what they’re passionate about.
As a tension softener, I tend to open interviews with: What’s the best movie ever and why should I love it too?
It helps me tell how good they are convincing someone else of something while also it helps them relax a bit, as a softball before we start pitching curved ones.
I prefer doing this rather than asking for hobbies as the interviewees tend to gave prepared corporate-grade answers.
I tend to finish asking to give us a song recommendation, which sets a better mood (hopefully) to end it.
I just hope there’s nobody out there still trying to figure out if they gave us the wrong recommendations.
Oh that’s so stressful. I actually hate sharing my song and movie recommendations because I usually like weird indie shit that nobody else enjoys (as pretentious as that makes me sound). I get extremely self conscious about my taste in stuff and would 100% worry that I gave the wrong recommendation.
Oh god just thinking about this is giving me anxiety.
I want someone that’s pleasant to work with and can pull their weight, but that’s just my preference.
Echoing this. Even as someone who does read sci-fi, I think leaving it open ended is better. Hobbies is a good angle; it could also be “What show, book, or film did you enjoy recently?” then follow it up with “Why?” and work from there.
What this shows:
- They live a balanced-enough life that they have time to do relaxing stuff, aren’t money-focused tryhards like OP is trying to weed out.
- Allows them to demonstrate explaining a topic unfamiliar to the interviewer.
- Shows how they respond to unexpected questions outside the normal, practiced interview set.
- Follow up questions can still weed out people who are viewing it “just because”, they heard it was popular, or whatever.
I’m often very much in the same boat as you. I’m the one in the team interview who afterwards is like “pleeease let’s go with person B, because person A just, y’know, … bad gut feeling?” And I wish I could ask more personal questions in the interview itself. However, I’ve been lightly warned (and subsequent web searches confirm this) that it’s a legal grey area to ask about personal stuff in interviews. If they bring it up, or maybe you drop an obscure ST:TNG reference and they pick up on it, by all means, they’re “one of us” so go for it. But on the flip side, you might hear something that, say if you don’t end up hiring them, could be grounds for a discrimination lawsuit.
