The Dreaded Technology Test

[jayspec]

A recent post on Coding Horror about “Non-Programmer Programmers” kind of terrified me. Not because I think that my job is going away, and not because I think my skills aren’t up to snuff, but because the technical interview terrifies me like nothing else.

Jason, with performance anxiety? Yes, it’s true!

As a performer, I come from the world of

Comments

[minstrel70]

In the nine years you've been in your position, I've worked for six companies (and interviewed for perhaps a dozen more that didn't hire me or failed to beat a better offer), so I've done a few tech interviews. Rule #1 is there is no shame in saying "I don't know -- but I know how to find out!"

I try to make it clear in an interview that I'm largely self-taught. Went from Junior Sysadmin to God-Architect-of-all-WSJ-Infrastructure in a year on nothing but sheer curiosity. Amazingly that still holds some cache.

The worst thing you can do to yourself in a tech interview is fear the I-Don't-Know. The second-worst is to fake knowledge.

Lately, I've been involved in interviewing candidates (our turnover has been pretty shocking given the employment picture), and I find myself scoring humility and intellectual curiosity very, very highly. Know-it-alls? Not so much. I work with some. I wouldn't hire them if I could go back in time and make that decision. Smart, curious learners? Give me twenty!

[planga]

How do you feel about a cocky learner? Hearing that something was "impossible" told me "here's a challenge" and a month or two later we launched a system that performs the "impossible" feat of allowing a remote website to dynamically access local files through JavaScript and Flash.

So on the one hand I was all "pshaw, you don't know what you're talking about" but on the other I was "wow, I have no clue how you might do that... this seems like fun!"