> How do you communicate bad news? How do you identify, communicate, and mitigate risk? How do you plan large tasks at at appropriate level without over engineering the solution?
Like these can’t be prepared for? I think there are now whole chapters in those interview prep books/courses on how to answer these.
Even if there weren’t this is a good way to hire people who sound very professional on slack and in meetings but don’t produce any actual code (unless you got very lucky)
I’m suggesting that it’s better to test these in your coding interview. What’s not worth testing is factual knowledge that you can look up.
You would be absolutely stunned how many people cannot give you back the correct answer even after you literally give it to them. If you don‘t know some programming and I give you code and explain what it does, that still doesn’t help you.
There’s some tiny signal of your ability by asking you to memorize and regurgitate something; and maybe a tiny bit more signal in this question by implicitly testing “how do you respond to unexpected technical details in a high stress situation”. But they aren’t worth the trouble. You could measure both much more directly. You’d get more detail about their coding ability by directly asking about code they’ve written and know well.
My life experience has been that it's much easier to spot someone has a prepared answer to a soft question than a technical one. I immediately feel like I'm not having a conversation with them. That's why even in technical interviews, I try to stick to broad, conceptual questions that serve as a conversation starter.
Like these can’t be prepared for? I think there are now whole chapters in those interview prep books/courses on how to answer these.
Even if there weren’t this is a good way to hire people who sound very professional on slack and in meetings but don’t produce any actual code (unless you got very lucky)