Thoughts on interview questions

submitted by trident765 from self.programming

I am on an interview panel and I am trying to think of interview questions to weed out modern scum. But the question is not so much for myself, but for my teammates. I think I know a modern scum when I see one, so this is mainly for my teammates. I want to ask a question that if a modern scum were to answer, it would make my teammates hate him.

I am going back and forth on what the ideal question would be. I could ask him "Can you give an example of something you've seen other programmers do, that you think they should do differently?". Silicon valley scum are gossipy backbiters so they will have no problem thinking of some inconsequential thing another programmer did and shitting on him for it. This will make the candidate look bad to my teammates.

But I think this question will only be good for weeding out stupid modern scum. Evil, intelligent, psychopathic scum will know better than to shit on another programmer during an interview without first verifying that the people they are speaking to are also modern scum. I think the most evil, intelligent, psychopathic person I know would know how to give a feel-good answer to this question that will make him look very good.

I could also ask "Is programming an individual effort, a team effort, or does it depend on the project?" I think most reasonable people would say "it depends", but modern scum would say "It's always a team effort". I think this question is bulletproof for identifying modern scum, and that even the most intelligent evil psychopathic scum would say "It's always a team effort". But the problem is that I don't know my teammates well enough to know if they understand that "It's always a team effort" is a bad answer. To make things worse, in our corporate system we are asked to rank candidates by 3 criteria, and 1 of them is "team work", and I am worried that an answer like "It's always a team effort" will cause my teammates to give a high rating for "team work".

The tricky thing is that if the candidate is intelligent, it will be nearly impossible to fool him without fooling my teammates. So I think I will just focus on weeding out stupid scum, and ask the first question. But then again, maybe stupid scum are not so bad, since evil scum are so much worse. Maybe there is no point in asking any interview question at all?

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[–]fschmidt 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

This continues from here.

I could also ask "Is programming an individual effort, a team effort, or does it depend on the project?"

"Team" is a meaningless term. I would rephrase this as "Is the best way to organize a programming team for each programmer to take responsibility for a part of the code and team members help each other as needed, or is it better if team members share responsibility for code?".

Another possible question would be to show the candidate 2 code samples that do the same thing, one written in a simple readable style and one written in a modern unreadable style. Ask him which he prefers and why.

Of course all this depends on to what degree your teammates are modern scum. Modern culture is fundamentally sociopathic and places the highest value on charisma and the lowest value on competence.

[–]trident765[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I didn't ask a question because they loved him too much and I didn't want to spoil their fun. It looks like he is going to be offered the job.

Of course all this depends on to what degree your teammates are modern scum.

I think they are non-scum, but they are naive non-scum. They have good values, write good software, but they fell for this guy who I strongly suspect has values that are contrary to theirs, because they fell for his charisma and virtue signaling (for example, he kept mentioning how he was a "proud new dad" and included photos of his infant kids in his presentation and his resume).

In the panel interview someone asked him a question similar to the question about teams, and he responded saying he prefers software development to be "dynamic" (by the way, modern scum love using vaguely defined words) and I think by this he meant that multiple people contribute to a software because afterwards he made a joke about how he gets overwhelmed when he is solely responsible for a software. One of the people on the panel who especially loved this guy said "that's great we do that here too! We each have our own projects we are responsible for, and then every once in a while we work together on the things that overlap". Basically he "corrected" the answer for him, and moved on. He didn't dig deeper, or ask him to clarify what he meant by "dynamic", because he liked his charisma so much that he was almost afraid of prying more, for fear of finding out something that would hurt his candidacy.

When I submitted my review of the candidate, I said that I was impressed by his presentation and experience, but that I felt like I knew very little about his personality, because the panel did not ask him any concrete questions about situations in the workplace, and I recommended for the next panel to ask more personality questions. Even by leaving this I felt like I was being too critical, because of how much everyone else loved him.

I think it is horrible that my teammates allowed themselves to be disarmed by this guy's public speaking skills. Just because someone is good at public speaking doesn't mean he will be a pleasant person to work with. They should have reflected on their values prior to the interview, and then asked questions to make sure the candidate's values were values that they found tolerable. But they liked his public speaking skills so they just assumed his values were good and gave him a "freebie" in that aspect of the interview.

[–]trident765[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I sat through the interview I confirm he is 100% a modern scum. He even had a psychopathic gaze, and he was charming and charismatic. All my teammates loved him. I felt bad about the idea of asking a difficult question because they loved him so much, and I didn't want to be seen as negative by being the only person to ask a negative question. So I remained silent and did not ask my question, even when I was asked. He breezed through the interview and no one asked him any difficult questions, like they asked me when I had my interview. They just assumed he was a good guy because he was charismatic. The team members were so impressed by his charisma that the interview was more about impressing him than about vetting him.

They haven't discussed him yet, but I think it is 100% settled that he will be offered the job. My teammates just loved him too much. I regret so much that I did not ask my question. I want to cry.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Interviews are not necessarily a true reflection of a person's nature, it's a game of deception to acquire a position, interviews are dishonest from all directions. Perhaps the candidate will show their true colours and sabotage their future, or they could turn out to just be a decent applicant who was doing their best to get a job in a difficult time to seek employment. Time will tell, it may have been best not to project any loaded questions or to dig too deep into their personality.

[–]trident765[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This gives me some comfort. I hope what you are saying is true.