Embedded - 51: There Is No Crying in Strcpy

Episode Date: May 14, 2014

Jen Costillo (@r0b0ts0nf1r3) joins Elecia and Christopher to discuss their experiences interviewing (both as interviewer and interviewee). Elecia did an hour long webinar on how to conduct technical interviews. In this show, she mentions a good post-interview ratings system. Google discovered that their brainteasers are not a very effective way to interview. Despite the news that swearing is good for you, we tried to bleep everything. Also, it is minesweeper, not minefield. What were we thinking? It was obviously all Christopher’s fault. Though we should have stood up to him.  Elecia's book has more interview questions but from the perspective of how do you ask a question and what do you look for in a response.

Welcome to Embedded, the show for people who love gadgets. I'm Elysia White. Today we have Jen Castillo back and Christopher on another mic. This show is going to be about interviewing, both sides of the table. And that was our new show name. It may not be in your podcast players yet, but I think we are switching from making embedded systems to just the embedded show. Hi, Jen. So I guess you aren't that annoyed from EE Live.

No, and I tried to correct that on Twitter, but I think I failed. Just a little. Just a little. I think... Only because I don't... You know, we record these a little bit before they air. And so when you respond, I'm like, huh?

What was that about? Were we mid-conversation? And for me, it happened three days ago. Right. So pretty much the only thing I can say is like, it's really hard to do a teardown and sound smart and I guess try to be funny at the same time. So no, I wasn't actually annoyed. I was just really focused. I didn't same time. So no, I wasn't actually annoyed. I was just really focused.

I didn't think so. So how's it going? Things are going okay. Bea still hasn't found funding, so I'm... Bea is your sport watch. Bea is a sport watch. Bea is this company that I've worked for for the last 10 or so months.

But since we haven't secured funding, I've been looking elsewhere. We weren't supposed to talk about BIA other than to mention that you've been interviewing, and that's why we're talking about this. Yeah, I remember now all the things I hate about interviewing. Last week, I mentioned the fridge question that you first told me the the one about how do you QA a fridge was asked to you by Kevin Shaw many years ago of sensor platforms. Yeah, right. That is absolutely true. What did you answer that first time? I think I picked everything but whatever would commonly get suggested.

I think, you know, the obvious one is like poke a hole in the side and videotape it or stick your head in there. And this is, the question is, how do you tell if the refrigerator light turns off? Right. I answered, put a amphibian of some kind, some sort of cold-blooded animal and put it, because it will always go to wherever the warmest part of the refrigerator is. And if the light is still on, it will go there. It should go there. I mean, what else do you have in your fridge that's warm? Otherwise it's not a fridge.

Yeah. I suppose, yeah. And it does show a level of creativity, which is what that question looks for. I think I put in also some photosensitive paper. I suppose, yeah. And it does show a level of creativity, which is what that question looks for. Mm-hmm. I think I put in also some photosensitive paper. Oh, I like that. I don't think I've ever thought of that one. Yeah. And photosensitive paper is pretty cheap, so it's easy. Yeah, and you don't have to punch out a hole in the back or anything like that.

But I guess you can measure the current and other stuff. The other variation that I've heard of this question that I usually ask QA people is how do you QA a salt and pepper shaker? Because most people know what a salt and pepper shaker are. So how would you? Well, I guess you turn it upside down, you shake, and if nothing comes out, then that's an indication something's wrong. Yeah, but QA people should also know how to have a measured metric associated with success. Yes, it could be coming out, but it should be coming out at what rate. Right. One grain every year is not actually shake or success. Unless you're really going for low sodium diet objectives. I don't know. What's the best question you've been asked in this round of interviewing?

Have there been any really good ones? Honestly, no. That's kind of sad. How many have you been to in this round? Now she's going to have to count them by name, but we weren't going to talk about who's been asking her questions. Well, she doesn't have to say the name. I would if I were her.

Yeah, there were, I would say, you know, it's been more than a handful. We'll just leave it at that. But yeah, I'll be honest with you. I've been a little disappointed with the questions in general. Not a lot of what I consider technical questions, or I verify that you've done what you said you've done or you know how to do this. Things like implement string copy.

Yeah, I know that's your favorite. Yeah, that's my favorite. So yeah, so very few programming questions, which I think is weird. It makes me worry about the company. You get even less. You get very – and what's interesting is it varies tremendously with whether it's a contract consulting type deal versus full-time. Oh, the interviews for contracting are much simpler.

Yeah. Because they can fire you after an hour. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well, you did what you needed. You can't do it. Leave, please. So the thing that I really liked recently was I was talking with one company,

and they basically gave me a take-home test, or they just delivered it to me online. And it consisted of two parts. They were very easy and straightforward. They were supposed to measure my ability to be a firmware engineer, but I don't really think that they tested much of that because it was such a narrow con you know they didn't they didn't necessarily want you to think about can you um you know is this re-entrant will this work with multiple tasks um what happens if it happens volatile etc etc so um so the first part was it had you had to download visual studio

2013 express for desktops which is free although pretty big how many hours do you probably wouldn't get past that step yeah i mean i'm not gonna give a about that but uh it's a way to deliver such that everyone's on an equal playing field. But the other thing that I – so that was the sucky part. The interesting part was like so the first test was doing moving average, and they had a map file. So they had a – to me, I think you started running your program that would basically give you fake data values over a map file. A mock. Yeah.

And so you could write exactly the driver code that you needed, and it would map in there. And, you know, it was just doing, you know, register, memory register mapping reads and writes. And it was all simulated right on your Windows machine. And I thought that was great. That's pretty nice. Yeah. Because it's what we should be doing. I don't think we do do that.

It's certainly not in an interview. And then the other part of it was then use FreeRTOS and implement a task that'll do some more things. That's not too bad. I mean, that means you had a little bit of coding and they can read your code. It was enough coding that you can believe that you wrote an actual, you couldn't have tried really hard to make it super spiffy for that long. I mean, for five lines of code, you can really make it quite beautiful and spiffy but once you get to like a hundred or a thousand then you're you're no longer able to maintain the perfect style and you revert back to right normal so i just end up i end up putting a lot of

assumptions in my comment in my comments i'm like yeah because i don't know what you're going to do with this code i don't you know if it's only going to do this or i don't know what you're going to do with this code. I don't, you know, if it's only going to do this, or I don't know if the throughput is going to be reasonable or not. Or if you're trying to balance the battery, you know, should we be, you know, shouldn't we sleep here at some point? And I'm not even going to bother getting into, like if I have two different data streams, if I have to bother making, synchronizing them enough to compensate for if they're out of sync,

if they're too far out of sync, then. So you totally overcomplicated the question. Right. And I, then I said, you know what, I'm just going to put my assumptions here, do what you asked. If you care, we can, we can, we can talk about this later. But, um, but yeah, I thought that I liked that. I thought that was, that was a nice way to do it. The other thing that I would really like to see would be, I don't know, more interaction, like more onsite like that that where you're forced to program like that. Well, I don't mind the small coding questions. And I don't even mind the larger quizzes that are take-home. Although if it takes more than two hours, I get paid by the hour,

so you don't get free work, really. Not that much. An hour worth of free work, maybe two, okay. But four, no. I just don't have the patience, and I don't think that companies learn much more from a four-hour coding test than they do from a two-hour coding test. Yeah. Agreed. Haven't you had a couple of backdoor fix this problem for us as part of your interviews?

I seem to remember that you had one or two things that you came in and you were doing an interview and you fixed some bug that they had. Yes. I did. There was one toy company, not LeapFrog, where I did work, but some other toy company I interviewed with. And they were doing cartridges. And they needed a better way, they couldn't figure out how to deal with the system when you're replacing part of the memory. And I just, you know, talked about how you have headers and what you do and base ROM versus flash ROM and all these things. And it wasn't that hard. And he said, you know,

we've been working on this for two months. and this architecture looks like it's going to work. And he just was so surprised and shocked, and I'm like, the problem you're solving has been solved by lots of other people, and I didn't mean to actually do any work during this interview. They didn't hire me, but that's okay. Why? They were done. That wasn't why they didn't hire me, but that's okay. Why? They were done. That wasn't why they didn't hire me. Have there been any particularly good or bad interviews?

At least this time around, there's been some interesting ones. Now, I didn't have any problem during the technical. Technical, I never have a problem with. Usually, what took me by surprise was the behavioral personality assessment. You told me about this, that they gave you a web link to go log in and ask you all sorts of weird questions. Well, I mean, maybe they're not weird for you. I'm trying to remember some of the things that it asked me. It asked me to rate these statements according to most to least preference.

Well, some of them, I just, you know, the universe is beautiful. I don't have an opinion on that. I really don't. That's such a biased statement. I don't even know where to begin. Wow. I mean, is that a drug test right there?

Were you interviewing for a cult? Well, I'm not going to say who it was. So they believe, so I met with their lead HR person, who was very nice. But she felt that I did not take the test right. You gave me more details than I would agree with her. You bet. I put my name, you know, there was a lot of required things that were on this test. Just to even get into the test, there was, you need to put your name.

Fine. Apparently, you also needed to put your sex, which was, it wasn't even male or female. I think it was man or woman. But anyway, and that was required. And that annoyed you. That annoyed me. That's just, you generally don't ask people what sex you are. I don't even, is that even legal? There's a lot of things that aren't legal.

I'm not sure if that one is part of it. That one I think they're allowed to ask you, but it sounds like from some of these other questions they asked, like, how do you rate whether the universe is beautiful or children are wonderful? Yeah. Would kind of indicate whether or not you had children, which is a question you're not supposed to ask. Yeah. So it had questions about, you know, what do you do with your leisure time? Well, I couldn't answer and then take these things and arrange them from least... Oh, you meant art, gardening? No, no. No, no. Because I put myself as a man.

I see. It asked me, it was financial planning. Financial planning is a leisure time activity. Yes, according to the... Wow. I need to make best friends with that person. Some sort of, I think it was hiking or something, and volunteering, and I don't remember what the other one was, but none of them fit any of my leisure activities. Not even...

There was no running. There was no making weird little felt gadgets with furry animals around them or inside. Don't make fun of Milford. That's what you named your felt cat? I did. That's great. Sorry, Jen and I were doing what is known as crafting before the show but really it's just an excuse to sit around and chat with large needles in our

hands my hands are very punctured but she did much better so okay and and it was partially because i spent the morning electronics yeah so so anyway so the point is, is that the questions, which were deemed to like kind of feel, to suss out how political you were, how open to feedback you were, and a bunch of other things, as I was explaining. Just, I was like, okay, I don't know, you know, I don't know what you're trying. So a lot of them I actually put in like not answering because they either weren't relevant to me in some way or I couldn't possibly answer them in a way that I just couldn't answer them. Like you're asking me to choose whether the universe is good or bad. I'm like, how does one answer that? Or ask me about my feelings on prostitution. Yeah, this is all not okay.

This is just, I mean, I'm listening to this. And how do you answer that in a like like, one to four sort of way? Right, right. Well, the prostitution was actually the 20 statements I needed to arrange from most to least. And I'm like, you know, you're at, I mean, obviously someone's knee-jerk reaction is going to be prostitution is bad. But there's a lot of different, maybe I'm revealing too much about myself. There's a lot of different, you know, it's not everything's black and there's a lot of different... Maybe I'm revealing too much about myself. There's a lot of different... Not everything's black and white on a lot of these things.

So did they explain to you what their goal was with this? Or was this just a mysterious, hey, take this test. We're not going to tell you why we want to ask this question. So I was supposed to take it before I actually arrived on site. And they were using that as a way to guide some of their behavioral questions okay and because i didn't i didn't take it the way that they wanted me to take it because you you marked male because you wanted to know what the questions were because we live in a tech industry so there's a decent chance that the questions are different between men and women.

You're going to be able to deal better with the men's questions than what color fluffy bunny should you make next. Now, to be honest with you, that may mean that they asked the same question in a slightly different way to pull that information out of a female applicant versus a male applicant. I don't know. But it was not explained to me why it was germane that male and female. You can't put not applicable on that one. Yeah, apparently you can't put that. Which is kind of weird in the Silicon Valley. Right. San Francisco Bay Area.

Or not specified or decline. Yeah, decline to state. Decline to state decline to state yeah um because you can certainly put that on on your like you know on the what what gender are you what uh are you latino black african the um the race question yeah the ones that they use to collect always optional it's always optional but um but yeah i i told I didn't, I was either overthinking it. Which is kind of true. That may be true. But also, I think that they thought I was trying to be a pain in the ass.

And I, to be honest with you, not really trying to do that. I just, I couldn't answer a lot of your questions. I couldn't. Not in any sort of, I mean, But this is what happens when you have an engineer who... Were any of you guys good at taking multiple choice questions? I don't know.

Probably. It depends. In the way that they tell you to be good at it. Which is, one of these answers is fake. And don't fall for the fake one. But this doesn't sound like there was a right fake. Yeah. And don't fall for the fake one. Yeah. But this doesn't sound like there was a right answer.

Right. Well, maybe to them there was a right answer. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, that just feels funny. If I was faced with that, I think I would just say, thanks, but no thanks. Right. You people are a cult, and I don't join cults. I did pull up the 11 common interview questions that are illegal.

And don't see anything that really matches what you're saying, but it's like, have you been arrested? Are you married? What religious holidays do you practice? Do you have children? What country are you from? Is English your first language? Do you have any debt?

Do you drink? Some of those you can get through the background check. They can kind of circumlocute through these questions. You know, do you like children? Well, maybe they have children. Maybe, you know, if they're asking a woman if she likes children, well, maybe she's going to get pregnant and leave, and then we can decide not to hire her. So there's a lot of stuff that's really...

Yeah, but the truth of the matter is, we as applicants, we give up a lot of that information all the time. We do. Yeah, I interviewed with a company and we went out to lunch and the guy really just wanted the social question, so do you have kids? And I looked at him and said,

you know that now you have to offer me a job just because you casually asked that. You can't do that. And he turned white. And they actually, I left the interview shortly thereafter because of other reasons but they didn't seem to understand that there are things you can't ask okay so so we've we've discussed things that seem like red flags um in an interview weird personality questions so the follow- up on that is when I went

through and talked with each of the people, I talked with the CTO of the company, VP of engineering. I mean, I had an hour long conversation with the VP of engineering before I even arrived on site. Shouldn't they have had better things to do? That's what I would have thought. But it's a small company, sure. I think they were very excited. But I talked with everyone, you know, most of the technical staff, and including the CTO, the personalities. What they were looking for were people who were good team players who weren't going to be assholes. Which is a fine thing to look for.

I think I would love to work for a place that does not have a ****. Are you going to bleep that? I just hope he doesn't make it the title. No one wants to work for a bunch of ****, right? And maybe if you do, maybe it's because you are the ****. I don't know. Well, everybody's definition is different, too. Everyone's different.

Certain teams, certain different people might be the odd man out here. I got along with everyone during the interview, but everyone was kind of kind of bland. Kind of. People who passed these tests that involved whether or not the universe was beautiful.

I don't know. My impression was that if they that if they needed to stand up because the company was going down the wrong path, I wonder if they would stand up. I wonder if they would say anything. I think different personalities have a place within a company, you know, because you have different group dynamics and they each have their important part. Oh, please, please, please set me off on my soapbox about diversity. This is going to be great. Nobody ever like starts me off that way. But yeah, no, I totally agree. It's not about diversity of gender or skin color or age, although those things are all important. It's about diversity of thought.

It's about having all the perspectives around a problem. And you tend to get those by having diversity of body types and backgrounds. And so it sounds like they're building a monoculture, whether they're intending to or not. Right. Which is sad for them. And a good escape for you because now you don't have to go there and sweet. If they, I wish them all the luck in the world. They are still searching for that person though.

It's like a dating game. Well, if they want them to come in and launch an entirely new product line, then they need someone who has some leadership skills. What I got out of it was we want you to be as bland as possible, which doesn't necessarily constitute a strong leader in my mind. So you were talking about diversity. Yes, I was, but I could

go on and on about that, and mostly I said what I wanted to, which is diversity of thought. So let's take this back. So there's like, we've talked about stuff that was kind of eh. Let's talk about like awesome interviews, like awesome interview experiences. Then what is your dream interview?

I can't say it quite the way that Chris would say it. What? I'm not quite sure how Chris got into this. Oh, yes, Chris. Chris Chris what is your dream interview? You're going to have me repeat this? Oh yeah that was hilarious Let me see now It would involve Disneyland

We'd go on all the rides And then we'd probably eat at that restaurant By the Pirates of the Caribbean The one that's over the water And get spaghetti And then after that It's kind of really well planned Pirates of the Caribbean, the one that's over the water, and I'd get spaghetti. And then after that... It's got a really well plan. After that, we'd sit down in Club 33 there, which you can't get into unless you're really special, but they'd get in because obviously this company

is super awesome, so they have a membership. But it's not Disney. Yeah, I was going to say, but it's not Disney. Oh, no, no, it's not. Well, it could be Disney, but it's not Disney. And then, you know, they'd work hard to convince me that their company was the best without actually asking me any difficult questions. And then after trying to, you know, raise the compensation throughout the entire interview, they'd finally give up and just offer me 51% of the company and a controlling interest without, you know, actually having to do anything. Wow. That is a dream.

You did say the dream interview. I did. Not a realistic interview. Okay. So that's, that's on par with, oh my God, we're driving our house to Catalina. We have to get off this boat. That was a nightmare. So I'm just going to, I'm going to,

I'm going to bring your dream back to reality. That's fine. And not actually expose any of my dream interviews. So no technical question to me is like a big red flag. Of course. I want to earn my right. It happens a lot, though. It happens a lot.

Yeah, it does. I want good technical questions because the companies I've been to that I actually went to after kind of eh technical questions those were terrible places to work

okay so I know what I think of as kind of good technical questions but without getting into like this is a specific one yeah what do you guys think of

as a good technical like category of questions types of questions to ask? Specifics is a lot easier. Well, okay, you can be somewhat specific. I mean, every chapter in my book has an interview question, and of the nine chapters, they are suggested interview questions,

and the 10th chapter has one, an anti-suggestion. But I used to ask string copy, please implement string copy. And that shows they know pointers and they know variable names should be dust and source and not A and B. Everybody forgets the null. So, you know, can they take a little hint? And then did they manage to malloc something in there, in which case, oh my God, please stop? Or did they somehow do it recursively, which again, oh my God, please stop? And so I usually have a really tactical hands-on question. And I don't care about syntax, but Jen, you said you do care about syntax. I totally care about syntax. And I know that you and I go back and forth about discussing whether, you know, whether how much slack you should give to somebody when they're doing programming on the whiteboard. But I think that when you're at an interview, you're trying to show your best.

I don't think I necessarily ask very difficult questions. They may be time consuming. Yeah, string copy, I don't think of as difficult. But if you forget, you know, if you forget good syntax, like if you, I maybe I'll forgive like one time that you forget a semicolon, but I expect there to be a semicolon. Otherwise, you're just showing me pseudocode. Yeah. So I do have a short technical question. I usually lead off with that so I can read their resume while they're struggling. And then a longer interpersonal-ish question. Like, I don't ask what your greatest strength is because being a workaholic is, of course, the only right answer.

I'm too passionate about my job. What's your greatest strength? Cookies. What's your weakness? Cookies. Cookies. What's your weakness? Cookies. But I will ask, can you tell me about a time when you've had a problem, a difficulty getting things done and how it was resolved? Because there's so many people who will say, I tried to make the world better. I tried to make the build system work more efficiently. And nobody would take it on.

Nobody would do it. Nobody would finish it for me. And so it just died. And I walked away, stormed away, threw a temper tantrum in my cube for six months and finally left that stupid company. And I wrote a novel. I wrote a novel.

Yes. I mean, so many people tell stories about themselves that make them sound like little babies, that that's a great question for weeding people out. And I just like the, you know, tell me about a time when you failed and what you had to do differently. And that's not what is your greatest weakness. That's if you haven't failed, what are you doing here? I mean, whether it's failing a test or failing a class or failing something more horrific. Well, there's a couple of things that you get. Like if someone

doesn't think that they've ever failed. So I've interviewed people who have had successful Kickstarters, they delivered on the Kickstarter, but they're, they're looking for a job because it, you know, for whatever reason, they're closing up shop. And I ask them, so tell me one thing you would do differently, you know, in this case. And they can't think of anything. Get funding sooner? I've had the blank stare on. It all went fine, but your company failed. Not my problem.

I'm just an engineer, which is... You're the CEO of the company. Come on, dude. And then usually I have a longer technical question. I used to use Stoplight. Draw a Stoplight and say, can you pseudocode up the state machine for this and see if they could figure out a good way to handle north and south

and east and west or even if they would name it north south east west the problem is much harder if you name it one two three four once you start thinking in cardinal directions oh it's so much easier um and then noting that east and west are the same problem and so you only have two and it it's not that hard once you start recognizing how everything goes but it's not a puzzle i'm not you know did you get the twist those are the ones i hate those are the ones i hate well that's the one in my book that i make fun of so are you saying that like you know implement you know battleships if, implement the game Battleship or devise a strategy for Battleship. No, it's as easy as,

tell me how you would keep the board state for Battleship. That was a very common one in the Amazon world to see. How would you deal with that? I got asked uh to implement conway's game of life which wasn't that hard except i went bitwise initially and he said oh no don't worry about it and then later when he asked me to optimize i didn't go back to bitwise and i think that that didn't make him happy but it was just because he'd already told me not to go down that path and i thought he

wanted something else yeah um but yeah i think that was a fair question i think battleship's a fair question um or mine or was it minefield what's the game that you get on oh the microsoft minefield yeah i love that game i don't know why that's another show a whole show about why den loves mine field um well and and for that you know a a strategy how do you make a play right but but let's i mean okay so we're an embedded show this is the embedded show. These questions are not necessarily that embedded on the surface, unless you poke them and say, like, hey, the lights have to change altogether. You can't have red and green active at the same time. You can't have it in one direction.

When I was interviewing to hire people, I usually covered that during phone screen, which I really liked. Some of the other managers hated doing phone screens, but I really hated bringing people on site. You have to do some. Yeah, it saves, especially if you're getting a large pool of candidates. Oh, good Lord. Yeah. You can't get enough from a resume because I've had some stellar resumes and you meet the person and they can't they can't actually tell you what anything about what's on it it's like this is for a different

person so phone screens take care of that kind of fraud I almost want to say but I think it's confidence though in that case usually no you don't? I would ask, can you tell me about how you would implement an ISR over the phone and then play bingo? Do they manage to say interrupt at any time during the answer? Word bingo? Yeah, it was totally word bingo. And do they say latency? Because that's a good one. And do they understand floating point calculations?

That would have been minus points, of course. Remove a float. Return from interrupt versus return from function. You return a double. I just yanked my chain. I would do some of the embedded during the phone screen. But also, Stoplight ends up being kind of embedded. Yeah, it is. But a lot of times I get people like, can I program this in Java?

Oh, no. Well, this is an embedded position, which typically uses C. But as a hiring manager, you should, you know, if you have five people interviewing and you have talked to all of your interviewers, you can actually see the whole progression. You don't want everybody to ask string copy or one person to ask string copy and one person to ask string reverse. You want someone maybe to ask bits in a byte sort of question, even if it's reverse the bits in a byte. No, it's not. Unless you're working on TI, in which case it is. Well, let me tell you, I had a server engineer try to tell me

that there are 16 bits in a byte. Only in the C2000 family, which is so annoying. Yeah, that's why you have to say, you know, how many bits are in this integer? It depends. No, it's how many bits are in this car. Char, whatever. Car? Like the automobile?

Or the car-kitter-kitter lisp? Anyway. Anyway. Yeah. So we talked about the failure stuff, and we talked about technical questions. Well, you didn't answer what your dream interview was about.

Oh, what my dream interview? I mean, we kind of got off topic with technical questions. So I don't know if I have something that can top Christopher's. Mine is not realistic, so I'm assuming. He's heavy on the dream. He's like, and then I don't know how you're going to get into Club 33. I think you can only get in there if you work for Disney. But anyway, so my dream interview would involve doing some hands-on, like, either pair programming or, like, you know, here's. And this is you being interviewed.

This is me being interviewed. Okay. And I'm going to pull from some of my favorite interviews, things that I thought were – I wouldn't say blew my mind, but were just like, that's a nice touch. That made me really excited. Made me think that the people there cared and were smart. And that was a couple instances where people would bring in objects to the interview and they say what do you think this is i think it's creative there was like some weird jar that had like cutouts all over it um and apparently it was some sort of percussive instrument um i think that's one thing

the other one was when i was interviewing at a motorcycle company that makes electric motorcycles. And, you know, you go in there, they give you a demo of the motorcycle. It took a couple of minutes to boot up because it was Linux based. And then they just plug this Ethernet cable into the side, right? So they and they spun it up, let the throttle go. I was really excited because, you know, I love motorcycles. And then we walked back into the interview room. And he's like, okay, here's a computer. We're plugged into the motorcycle. You know, tell me how the system booted up. Tell me, you know, what processes are active.

You know, basically hack on this thing. Tell me what processes are active. Basically hack on this thing. Figure out how things are working. Okay, so PS to make sure to check the processes. And then maybe that might tell you what the lock was. What the logs were. You can look at the logs. Just go through the proc file system and have a ball. Well, yeah.

I mean, you don't even have to do that. I mean, you just look at initrc. Okay. And that's usually where everything kicks off. So that's it. You know your way around Linux. Yeah, pretty much. But that's totally applicable still even to Android.

This was pre-Android. But I thought that was so awesome just being able to, and you can look at the different properties. Because you were working on the thing you were going to work on instead of working on string copy or stoplights for things that have nothing to do with this. I'm sure I would have had to implement a string copy or something like that in that system. But I didn't have to implement Battleship. I didn't have to figure out a crazy way of figuring out how to maximize my points

and scrabble with my random letters. I didn't have to make a table reservation system or design it or talk about classes. I didn't have to do any of that. It was totally germane to what was happening or what was going to happen in the job. And it was exciting. I mean, come on. Who wouldn't love doing that no that would be totally fun yeah and the hard part would be stopping i mean i even had i mean i was really hoping they were gonna let me take it out because i even had like my my ether my

helmet i had my helmet and my jacket riding jacket in the in my trunk just in case i didn't have it but i think you had to wear the mitt in order to get that. No, I think I probably got bonus points. A lot of the people in that company also rode. Makes sense. But anyway. To me, that one was very dreamy, you know? You get to really immerse yourself in the product itself. You get the demo.

No one's being secretive. I'm also a huge sucker... I get tired of people being, Oh, I'm sorry, I can't tell you anything about what you might work on. Yeah, yeah. That's BS. That's why I can't work for Apple. It would drive me nuts. What's the worst thing to happen to you in an interview?

When you were the interviewee. When they don't feed me and they keep me there for seven hours. Oh, yes. I had an interview and it was after lunch, but it was like four hours after lunch. And he wanted to keep talking and chatting and I was doing the best I could. But then after like a 45 minute let's chat, he wanted technical skills. And I was like, you have to give me sugar first. But then, of course, you can't say that.

No. And then there was one where they didn't know where the ladies' restroom was. That was awesome. Made me really want to work for that company. And so it cut into my next interview. And my next interviewer was really annoyed because he only got 30 minutes because it took them 20 to figure out where I could. Did they have to go find a lady to go ask her where the bathroom was?

No, they just wandered around lost going through each. It was really, really, and everybody thought everybody else would know. And so they would ask each guy would it was so you had a nomadic group of men roaming the hallways trying to find a bathroom for you and of course that is thoroughly embarrassing to me like what i really need is for all of these people in this building to know that right now i need to relieve my bladder before i can answer more technical questions that's going to be a show title depends on how the rest of the show goes i mean only the best podcasting here the question we were supposed to be on was uh worse things no best things oh and somehow we got back to worst because i guess that's more fun to

talk about oh totally oh yeah um best things yeah so that i mean those sound like really interesting novel you know they thought about how they wanted to how they wanted to interview people instead of just going through the usual script of okay we're gonna have these five people and you all get to ask a technical question and then you go through their resume and ask about these projects and that's you know that's everybody falls back on but Yeah. I like it. You know, I try to bring in examples of my work when I go to an interview.

It always bums me out when people don't let me use them. You were the first person I knew who put together a portfolio and take it with you. Yeah. To show. I still do. I never take it out. So how do you do that?

I mean, most of the things I've worked on are completely. No, no, I understand. Most of the things I've worked on are proprietary. I can't, I understand. Most of the things I've worked on are proprietary. I can't, you know, I don't take them with me out of the company. Well, working at LeapFrog, I would occasionally take my LeapFrog toys in. That's a different thing. Because it was very transportable. So you're talking about taking...

The final product. The final products, not code. Right. But you take code. I take my own code, not from the company. I write my own code because that's why I have side projects. So that you can write your own code. That makes sense.

Yeah, and I bring the side project hardware that I designed. And I totally think that for people who aren't doing what they love right now and are looking to switch careers or move into something else, you have to do that. It's part of your professional development. You have to have a side project. Yeah, we got a listener question from last show to this show where someone whose name I don't recall and can't search my email that fast, asked about getting back into being an EE

after a while outside of being an EE. And he was concerned. But I think that's how he asked for advice for getting back. And I haven't responded yet. But when I do, Matthew, now that I recall his name, it will be find a project. Look at Hackaday, look at SparkFun, spend $100, make something fabulous. And that becomes your new credibility. And you can take it wherever you go and it's yours now.

And you don't have to hide it because it's somebody else's code or somebody else's project or someone else's hacked hardware. So, and I remember speaking with Jerry Ellsworth about this a long, long time ago is that she would also do the same thing. She would bring in her baby, plunk it on the table, and people would just look at her. But I think these days it's much more acceptable to bring in your work as long as it doesn't take up the entire table and and use it as a jumping off point for talking about how i did this that or the other because usually you know there's been some companies uh sensor platforms in particular that will have you come in and do a little presentation about anything as an as a hiring manager actually both as as an interviewee and as an interviewer, I love the 20-minute presentation before the interview starts.

Everybody in the team can participate and not just the five that you are on your hiring team, but everybody. And then you get a flavor for what the person's going to be like. Maybe it's just because I present and I don't find it too intimidating. But I like giving that presentation and I like getting it too. I think it's just a really smart way of getting one, can the person communicate about something that's so personal? It is about communication.

I'm becoming more and more of my opinion as I get older. One, can the person communicate about something that's so personal? So much of our job is about communication. Yeah. I'm becoming more and more of my opinion as I get older, a lot older, is that it's not enough to be technically competent. I mean, you could be the best person in the world technically, but if you can't explain what you did, how you did it, how to use it, if you can't explain it, if you can't communicate it to the rest of the world, it's worth it. It really is worth it. And what ultimate is going to mean is that you will be stuck doing that same job forever. You will not grow.

You will not. Because everyone's just going to go like, oh, well, only he knows how it works. We can't take him off of this. He has to be there. Documentation is important. Yeah. Actually, on last week's Amp Hour where they were talking about the Hackaday Prize, which, you know, was one way that I got information about the Hackaday Prize despite the fact that I'm a judge. They said that people should enter projects that are open and well-documented. And even though there are some fantastic things already there,

if they don't end up being reproducible or they don't end up being reusable in part, well, innovation's only one... I mean, the definition of open is that somebody can reproduce what you've done. Well, let's talk about... I mean, it's okay to have some secret sauce. But for the Hackaday Prize, innovation is part of it, and openness is part of it, and reusability is part of it, which means innovation is only one part. One wedge.

And people should consider that openness. So let's talk about that for a second. So you have Android. Totally open, right? sort of but you know there's no bloody there's hardly any bloody comments in there right linux is the same way i've been doing a lot of linux kernel work lately and you know it's it's like entering a dark forest sometimes i just remember like one of the times when I was porting, this was a long time ago, kids, XModem protocol. Hey, I was doing that only 10 years ago. Oh, I was doing it longer than that.

But do you remember how they were using I-L-K-J-M? Yeah. No one wanted to name a freaking variable to save their life or explain how things were working out. So you just print it out and you're like, okay, this is I'm figuring it out. But anyway, so going back to documentation. So yeah, in my portfolio, I have documentation for my projects. I have, you know, product specs for my projects. Why? Because if I'm working with someone else, they need to know what my vision is. Otherwise, they're going to go off and do something completely different. But now I have something I can show. This is how I document stuff in my spare time. Yeah, I don't only hack on code. I also make it work and make it able to be talked to by other people.

It's real proof. Most of the time when I've interviewed people in the past, they don't bring anything like that. So you're taking their word, and maybe they're just a good talker. And a lot of, you know, that's happened. Somebody's been a really good talker. They've managed to answer the technical questions, and they turn out to be completely useless. So did a company you work at really hire someone named Beef Wellington?

I believe that is at least 85% true. Like, you know, there's a 15% chance that that's been telephoned over the years, but I think that is true, yes. And he was a good talker. I don't recall exactly. I do remember he was arrested by the sheriff, holding a shotgun, and escorted out of the building. These are the people we don't want to hire, so this is why we interview. Wait, wait, out of the building that you were working in?

Oh, yes. He was an engineer. Apparently he had some outstanding warrants from Colorado. Oh. Oh. So, Beef, if you're listening to this, I'm sorry. But the thing that's blowing my mind here is like, when I think of Beef Wellington, I think of just deliciousness.

And now all I can think about is like, I'm pretty sure that that was a nickname. Okay. So let me tell you the nickname. No, these are the real Americanized names of people I've dealt with in a technical support capacity. Action Tang, which is by far my favorite name. What? Action Tang.

His name was Action. His last name was Tang. That sounds like a deodorant spray slash sports drink. And the other one's Big Fox. That's nice. Yeah, but that sounds like he's on a CB radio. Actually, action Tang sounds like when you add caffeine and vodka to Tang. I know what we're doing after this podcast now.

Do you have Tang on hand? No, of course not. Okay, so Beef Wellington. Where were you headed with that? I don't know where I was going with that. I guess I brought it up. Oh, but I was saying about... Oh, good talkers.

Yeah, good talkers. Being able to show evidence of your competence and willingness to document, because I hear all the time, like, so you're willing to document? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm real good at that. Yeah, I got the whole language thing down sweet I am so over this checkbox I just pull out my book right I mean it's not that hard I feel like such an arrogant jerk when I do that when you pull out your book oh oh as opposed to your portfolio you're just like I wrote I literally wrote the book on it. Oh, no, it's really fun.

Oh, you want me to do that? Here, let me look up in this book I wrote and show you the picture and diagram. No, that doesn't come across as arrogant at all. You did want that job, right? Usually I don't. That's the problem. I totally agree with Christopher about the dream job is at the end, we agree that you just pay me money and I don't. That's the problem. I totally agree with Christopher about the dream job is at the end, we agree that you just pay me money and I don't work for you.

That's basically paying you to go away, which I don't want to be the one to say this sounds a lot like, you know, which the adage is like, you know, you don't pay her to stay. You pay her to go away. That's what a prostitute is. I did not call you a prostitute. Ouch! Really elevating the discourse today. I'm sorry, that's, I didn't mean, I didn't, that's not it all the way.

That's the second mention of prostitutes 40 minutes apart in this podcast. That's excellent. Does that mean that we're almost out of time it is and we've we haven't even gotten to the other side of the table oh yeah all right let's move this along then okay no because i had a terrible experience interviewing and it was when um oh please be the story i'm thinking of it is it's the reason i didn't get the toy job. Oh, yeah. Despite the fact that when the first person walked in, I was playing with the toys on the table. And he sat down and said, okay, we should just hire you. Because, you know, I was doing the little puppets and they were playing with each other.

I like toys. You're like a beta tester. And then the second guy, I solved his major multi-month bug. And the third slot was a pair interview, a very experienced older guy, double E, but knew enough software. Brought in the new hire that he had been working with, a young woman who had a master's degree in EE. And she had looked up online

what questions you ask embedded software engineers. And so the first question was, how do you reverse the bits in a byte? And I gave my standard answer, which is a 256-point jump table, and she said, okay, implement it. And I looked at the other guy, and he's like the old guy, and he's trying not to laugh.

And so I do, and I put some dot-dots in my list of the numbers. No, you have to write out each one. And then I wrote the function, and it was a a line and she said, that's not right. And I looked at the old guy in the corner and he said, oh no, I think it's fine. And she looked at him and she looked at me and she got perturbed. But of course I hadn't done it according to the way she'd memorized. And, but she went on, she's like, okay, fine. He'll explain to me later. I'm going on. And then she asked me about polymorphism. And I said, do you use that in your code? I'd be

really surprised. The embedded system you've described so far really wouldn't use that concept. And she said, oh, so you don't know what it is. I'm like, okay, let's just say I don't know what it is and get on to your next question because I don't think I can explain it in the context that would make sense. And so she asked about recursion. And I explained recursion and I said, but I would never do this for an embedded systems.

And she asked why and I explained about stack. And the whole time she's, I'm trying to really teach her something and be helpful. And then she asked about multiple inheritance. And I talked a little bit about that. And again, I said, this is not a good embedded systems question. And the guy in the EE and I have bonded. He has not really talked to me, but we have completely bonded in the interview. He's fully amused. He's engaged. Occasionally, he belches up a little comment to help me and usually against her. And it's become this battle. And then she breaks into tears. So as an interviewee, I have made an interviewer cry. And it was absolutely

the worst interview that I've ever had. And I didn't get an offer for the job. And I shouldn't have because I did reach the point where I was having a good time hanging out with a double E and torturing his little protege. And that was bad of me. And so I didn't deserve a job offer. No. But, man, yes, that was the story you wanted, right? Me making the little girl cry in an interview. Yeah, but you didn't tell it the funny way. It sounded more sad, so now I'm bummed.

Now you're just sad. Yeah. It is sad. I mean, okay, so. But that is a team fit thing, right? That is a team fit thing. right? That is a team fit thing. You didn't fit with that team. Well, and I apologized later and I talked to her

and I suggested some interview questions and I even emailed her my little, it was before the book, so I emailed her my little ball of, these are some questions and here's what you look for in the different paths that can go down. But no, she hated me. It's sad.

No, I wasn't a good fit for that team except everybody else liked me. Yeah. And that was just sad. And the worst thing to happen to me as an interviewer was the same thing. You'd think I'd learn. Are you sensing a pattern here? It was another young woman who cried when i interviewed

her but to be fair that time i wasn't mean um or i wasn't any meaner to her than i had been to any of the other 60 people i had interviewed already uh for these like five positions and i just had a very fixed pattern because i hate interviewing. But at some point, you're just like, okay, I'm just gonna start doing it the same way each time. And then I'll have baseline done. And this young woman, I don't know what was up, but I told her she missed the null in string copy because Because everybody does. No problem. Going to go on to the next question.

And she just started crying. And I asked her if she needed a minute. And I escaped before I started crying. There's no crying in string copy. There's no crying. What are you talking about? There's no crying in interviewing. That's in the wall loop.

Yeah. Have you ever, so you have also been on the other side of the table. Yeah, I've been on both sides of the table, but I haven't succeeded in the crying part. It's not succeeding. Making someone cry. I have had a lot of, I have, even on the phone screen, what is typical is you use a piece of software. It can be Google. It could be CollabEdit. There's a bunch of different ones out there right now. And you will basically sit there and watch the person type in code to whatever.

I don't even bother with that on the phone screen. But I've done it that way. And I like it. I mean, I like being interviewed that way. Yeah. I guess some people can't handle the pressure because I've had multiple. Well, very experienced engineers claim that they cannot program while people are watching. I've had trouble with that. It's hard to type when people are watching. Well, I'm not even in the same room. They're in Canada somewhere.

No, I've done that remote collaboration interview thing, and it was tough. You know, just type onto another file and cut and paste to make it look like you're some sort of fantastic burster well you know what it doesn't work very well in opera which is my browser of choice go ahead you can laugh if you want but still make that yeah they still make that stuff you oh you know sometimes i use links so it's fine no you don't i like links you're both trying to sound cooler no i are. No, I do. I totally use links. There was a time period when I couldn't, you know, I could. Was it 1996? No, it was later. It was 2004, I think.

Because like my, they wouldn't let me go to LiveJournal directly on a web browser, but they would let me SSH out to my, you know, to my host. And so then I would links in. Anyway. Going back to the topic. Okay. When you're interviewing to hire. What do I look for?

What do you look for? Not crying. I agree. And actually, we hired that person. And that happened often. Yeah. So what I look for when they're junior, I look for solid basics for programming. And I don't expect to be perfect.

I expect them to be able to take direction. Like, you know, I said, oh, well, you forgot this. Or what if you need to do – if they take the nudge that you're giving them and can act on that, great. I don't care how many nudges I need to give, but can they take direction? Are they open? Yes. Are they open to new input? As people are more experienced, I expect them to be stronger and not need as much guiding. When I consider them senior,

I expect them to have opinions of their own and be able to offer up different options. So not only is it like, hey, yes, you can use a lookup table or you can do this, but I don't know enough about where this function is going. You have options. But then also if they have opinions about project management or code reviews or code review software that they particularly like, I expect them to have opinions. I want them to have opinions but not religions. I think it's hard to discern between that at times, but agreed. Well, sometimes I will disagree with a very senior person who gives me their opinions

just to see if they mind if I disagree. Yeah. And it won't always be like, you're wrong. It'll be just like, well, I understand Emacs is really awesome. But when that's not available on a system, like you come up to a Windows system and you just need to use it for 10 minutes, what do you do? And if the answer is download Emacs, then I'm a little unhappy with that inflexibility. So, yeah, no, I like them to have opinions, but I don't want it to be the only way they know how. Yeah.

I don't know. I don't need too many people who are that staunch on editors in Windows. More so on Linux. Point taken. The most important question is tabs versus spaces. I hate it when my code reviews get declined because I have too many. I've tabbed instead of spaced. Ugh. That is an entirely separate show.

We're not going down that rattle. I don't think that's a whole show. Or the people insist that each indent should only be two spaces. That's very important. I know that this show is not about indenting your code.

Indent your code! Indent it all the way to the edge! If you've indented and now you can't see your code anymore on your 80 wide screen. Do you do ratings when you do team interviews? If you're leading a team? What do you mean by ratings?

At Shotspotter we had a 1 to 10 rating where 10 meant team interviews if you're leading a team? What do you mean by ratings? At Shotspotter, we had a 1 to 10 rating where 10 meant if you don't hire this person immediately, I will quit. And 1 meant if you do hire this person, I will quit. And 9 was like rock star, will be able to contribute

immediately. I think 6 was this person will be a net positive over time but is unlikely to contribute in the near term. And so what I always wanted to do was have people write it on a piece of paper, flip them all over at the same time. And if it was all sevens and above, we hire the person and if there were any ones, we just just and then we could avoid that horrendous meeting where you talk about the person until well what did you think of tom i thought tom's shirt was really good you can't talk about that in an interview in a in a that is exactly how the

inner the oh yeah well and then the last person would just take all the feedback and see which way the wind was blowing and then change their answer, which is why flipping over the scores, you know, at all the same time is important. So I can tell you how a certain large company does their thing, their post-interview meeting. And before you go to the meeting, you need to have all your feedback and voting in their electronic system beforehand. Yeah, I think that's good, because it's really easy to say, well, I thought he was kind of weak on strings. And somebody will say, oh, no, I asked him about that. And he was fine. And then that changes my opinion. And that's so good. Yeah. So and you also can't see what anyone else voted until you put in your feedback.

Then you go to this meeting with everyone who interviewed them, including the hiring manager and a separate person. And that's where people, they go around, they say, hey, this is how we voted. And then you can say a little bit about the pros and cons, particularly if it's a divided room. If everyone's in agreement, it's easy. I've had hour-long meetings where everybody was in agreement, and I never understand those. Yeah, if everyone's in agreement, go home. Yeah. But everybody wants their say.

And honestly, if you like the guy and you want to work with him, I don't care what you have to say about him. Yeah. But I don't know. Sometimes those meetings don't go well. Like, for example, the lead, not the hiring manager, but the lead hiring supervisor, I don't know what to call that person. They would, sometimes they're the people who are most critical. The HR person? No,r is separate on this it's like a separate technical engineer who's been trained to to to figure out how whether this person's going to be a match oh okay um in in the company um and sometimes those people are very critical and not in a nice way they i, sometimes their biases show just as well as anyone else's, like talking about hair coloring, talking about clothing, everything that you're instructed not to talk about.

You know, what's funny is when you get people in a room to discuss whether they're going to hire someone or not, a lot of our own biases come out inadvertently. Like, oh, that person took too long to program that function. Oh, he couldn't answer my question very fast. Oh, he stuttered a lot. Or I didn't believe him when he said that he did this. There's a lot of things that people say in those meetings that aren't really germane to what's going to happen. How many times am I going to say germane this podcast?

I think that's one. No, it's like the third. Third? Wow. Yeah. Secret word today is germane. Sorry, Pee Wee. How did you learn to interview? Well, I do a lot.

You mean on which side of the table? Either one. I think you become a better interviewee when you start giving more interviews. Absolutely. I've just interviewed a lot. But do you remember the first few? Yeah, when I was in college. One of those I did cry.

No, no, when you were an interviewer. Oh. I don't think nobody ever teaches how to do this. I don't think so. Most of them know. So maybe you get to a big company. I think I had one team interview. Even at HP, I only had one or two where it was multiple people yeah and then after

that i was on my own i i to be honest with you i i i learn a i think i've learned a lot about interview how to interview someone just because i've been interviewed so much yeah if somebody asks me a good question i will totally mooch it from my which is which is totally why i love the refrigerator question from kevin shaw yeah because i mean it was like. Which is totally why I love the refrigerator question from Kevin Shaw. Yeah. Because. I mean, it was like, oh, this is so good. I like the way it, you know, it gets you thinking in different ways and it really gets to see if someone's just like, hey, I'm a double E. I'm going to just give you double E solutions to this refrigerator problem. That's fine. I love it for QA people because it just makes so much sense

that they're going to keep trying to solve a problem. So I want to see creativity. I want people to think that I'm creative. I want to see that everyone has something to offer at the table. If I'm coding circles around you and everyone else is not asking me very difficult questions, I'm going to be bummed out. I'm going to find another job because I'm not challenged. Or I feel like I have to carry the entire team. I don't, you know, I don't think that's ever happened. I don't think so. But, you know, I also want to feel like I've earned my spot in a company. I want to feel like

the person I'm bringing on board is going to add a new dimension, is going to be respected. So you just pull someone in who barely passed the interview and everyone kind of knows it. That's a terrible spot to be in. And they're not junior. Either we're paying them bad or something else. It's just not a good feeling for anyone to not bring someone on and have strong admiration or respect for them. Somebody explained it to me like buying a car.

If you're not excited about hiring them, you shouldn't be excited. And if you're not excited about this car and it's a new car, you should not buy it. Right. Absolutely agreed. You know, I've interviewed somebody and it was a face cake person. He was a firmware engineer on face cake. I was so excited to... Face cake? Yeah, you know when you go to the bakery, when you love someone very much and you have a picture of them and you go to the bakery and you get their face emblazoned

on the cake, that's face cake. Oh my god. This is like when I turn into a zombie, what I want to do is eat your brain, so I'm just going to put it on a cake. Right. I mean, I guess, yeah. If it's brain cake with a face on it. Wow. So, I had something.

Was it zombie related? Well, I mean I didn't get face cake. This is all well and good. And I like, I like what you're saying about, you know, what kinds of things to look for. And, and you, you know, you don't want to hire somebody who you're not excited about,

but I have real skepticism about the whole interview process. Period. My next question is Google proves that interviews don't matter. Okay. Before we get there, I don't think that's before we get there. A lot of times in the matter, but before we get there, I don't think that's before we get there. A lot of times in the matter, you go through an interview, everybody likes the person, they come off

well, and then... They're dicks. Or terrible at their job. You know, they might be really great people and just not good coders and you've only got a half an hour to an hour per person to evaluate an entire body of work and to predict how they're going to fit in

and work in your company. And it's a real challenge. And I think a lot of people put so much weight on interviews that it's almost, I don't know, they get so locked into these processes of interviewing and this is just going to guarantee us a good hire. And it's just a lot of times it's not true. No, definitely not.

I know that we've passed on good candidates because it didn't work with someone. I mean, one person on my interview team just didn't like them. And so it didn't matter how well they did or didn't do on their technical questions. When you push in, you say, well, what did he answer? Answer can be correct, but it was like, oh, but he took a long time to get there, which is so subjective.

Interviews are so subjective. A lot of times people feel threatened by a candidate. I've had that happen a lot. I kick those people off my team as fast as I can. I've never felt that. I've never felt that way. So it always surprised me. Like, oh. I kick those people off my team as fast as I can. You can't. I've never felt that. I've never felt that way. So it always surprised me. I was like, oh, they feel threatened by, I'm like, don't you want to have kick-ass people

on your team? Don't you want? Not if they're going to expose you as a terrible, terrible person who's been coasting the whole time, which for small teams, that happens. But I still want to hire the kick-ass people because... Oh, of course you do! Because you... I mean, that's always the right thing to do. But there are

people whose insecurities, they're going to be the ones who are, like you were saying, the one person on the team coming up with excuses why they don't like it. Do you remember the guy who actually said, we should stop trying to hire A people, they're too expensive, we should try to find some nice stop trying to hire a people they're too expensive we should

try to find some nice c people to hire some nice c level not yeah not c programming c like a c grade yeah yeah but let's let's okay so let's talk about this for a second in the valley it's it's hard to find qualified candidates people don't your job is important you need to go do your thing but the people that you're inviting in are also they can't sync how many days are they going to sync into interviewing across a bunch of different companies

and does a second day interview really get you that much more information than a first day interview? no, but I'm saying from a candidate's perspective if I'm saying like from their from a candidate's perspective if I'm like, if I'm on the job market do I want to go through, you know Cisco, Apple

Google, I mean how many days out of work am I going to be gone looking for another job before someone's like, hmm, they're dressed very nicely and they're gone most of the time. They've gone to the dentist a lot this week. Clearly the dentist is very fancy too. They've gone to the dentist a lot this week. Clearly they're interviewing or having an affair. The dentist is very fancy too.

They wore their best shoes. And yet I think sometimes those companies would do better letting their people go off and interview a few times because you do gain understanding on how to interview by interviewing a lot. And knowing that everybody else's team out there is just as screwed up as yours is kind of reassuring sometimes. I just, I think, I don't think most people have put in that much thought in it.

All they know is they need, they have a need for people, somebody to take whatever load off of them as possible. I don't think people in the Valley think very long term. Certainly not past like two years. Yeah, two years seems to be the mode these days. And what's the point? I mean, the person will leave.

If it doesn't work out, they'll just go find another job. Everyone's just kind of like... And what's the point? I mean, the person will leave. If it doesn't work out, they'll just go find another job. Everyone's just kind of like... And that's why we end up with dysfunctional teams. Because people don't trust each other or people are bitter or what? Short-term thinking and let's just build a team. And like you said, it's difficult to find candidates. And sometimes you just got to take someone. Otherwise, your team's not going to be big enough to handle the workload.

The crap, the onslaught of crap. And yet, having a bigger team does not mean you have bigger capacity. Nope. Right. If that person doesn't add the skills you actually need, they may just be decreasing your capacity. And maybe they're adding other things. Maybe they're adding robustness, which is possibly entirely worth it, but it's not always pure capacity per headcount.

So I guess what I'm wondering is like, you know, is, is maybe some of the problems in teen dynamics that engineers are experiencing or coming out of, you know, the, I know you've already covered imposter syndrome and like insecurity and stuff like that on other podcasts. Was it coming out of that? Is it coming out of stress that we're expected to like turn over things so quickly as a team? Or is it just because we're just horribly antisocial assholes as engineers? And we just don't know how to get on with people who don't share our exact feelings about Buffy, the vampire slayer and, you know,

char size. I remember when Nate was here, he had a question that was different than that, but in the same vein that our engineers pushed into being solo cowboys and rock stars. Sometimes you read these job descriptions and they want a rock star or a code ninja or something. And it's like people actively want you to be a prima donna? Seeking non-team players for very special work in a big team.

Should never bother to refill the coffee maker, even when it's their turn. Yeah, well, I think, yeah. No, I think technology becoming a desirable place to be rather than a nerd kingdom has led to some of that where now you've got people who are, you know, famous engineers who've, you know, you've got Zuckerberg out there who created Facebook and look, he did all this on his own, right? And nobody helped him.

That's so not true. Come on. You didn't detect the dripping sarcasm there, but... I'm sorry. I'm sarcasm amazed. There are a lot of engineers like that who, you know, get a name in a particular field or industry, and you work on a team with them, and they're the ones who everybody perks up and listens to. I've worked in these groups, and that's really detrimental because people who have some insecurities are not willing to challenge them. And yet you have to because they're not always right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you're really asking a lot of human engineers in that regard if you expect them to rise up and say, hey, maybe this isn't the best way. Hey, Mr. Famous person. Yeah. Hey, maybe this isn't the best way to do it. Yeah. You're asking a lot because, I mean, let's look at history.

Man, we are so far off the reservation of interviewing. Let's look at what humanity has done. Really? We're going to get into building major buildings now? I think Jen's gone back to her quiz.

We as engineers I feel are so deep into our own specialty that we don't look up and like look at what impact the technology has on some of us on on on other systems that our stuff is going into i think we if we do see a problem we're not we're not prepared to stand up and say, hey, you know, we should really reconsider this. This could have this impact on society or on the environment or any other, you know, subsystem or institution you'd like. I don't know, Jen. I'm not willing to go that far. I'm not willing to go that far.

I think there are a lot of instances. I've worked with people who have been the person who's spoken up on technical situations where somebody could get hurt because management wants or some other technical lead wants. Oh, let's do it this way and it'll be just fine. Let's put a 12-volt battery inside of this toddler teething ring. Why do we have to spend all this time on these safety systems? This particular thing is never going to happen. And, you know, I remember saying a lot of times in meetings, you know, I don't look good in orange and I'm not going to do that. So, you know, I would hope that there,

and that's another thing to look for on teams is do you have people with ethics? Yeah. And I think, I think what you're saying, and a lot of recent things in the news, companies that start with Git and end with Hub, you hear about things that are ethical violations, and we don't know the details exactly,

but it seems like something fishy was going on, and maybe the wrong people were there. But sometimes the wrong people are the ones who founded the company, so there's not much you can... Yeah, except leave. Yeah, do except leave. Leave and expose, but anyway. So we're off the reservation. Are there shuttles to take us back to the reservation?

Yes, let me see if I can find a shuttle here. So I mentioned earlier about Google discovering that some of their interviews were not as effective as the prevalence of their use would indicate. And you disagreed, Chris. I thought that when I read that article, which was a while ago, so I'm not fully up on it, it seemed to me that they were saying that basically there was no correlation between interviewing and the quality of candidate they got. Was that your interpretation? That was what I remembered, yeah.

I find that difficult to believe. How so? Well, it's basically stating that interviewing is useless and a random selection of candidates will work just as well as ones that you've vetted. I don't know. I think as far as I can tell from Google that they want to hire generalists, generalist CS type people. And again, I don't know and if you want to do string copy string reverse and answer a bunch of interesting

and I think fun but puzzle questions that I will probably never get the right answer to but I would love to try anyway I kind of agree give me an idea of what I'll be doing day to day yeah but that's for you that's for me I want to idea of like what I'll be doing day to day. Yeah, but that's for you. That's for me.

That's for you. I want to know what the hell I'll be doing day to day. And I want to see, I want to tour the lab. That's what I, in my fantasy, I want to see the lab. Because if you're cheap and chintzy on your equipment, and you're going to make me work my ass off to debug this hardware, then, yeah, take a note of that. Then let's, you know, then I don't a note of that. Then let's, you know, then I don't think I want to work

there. But if people are excited to be in the lab and there's good lab equipment, they practically have me. If you want me. Alright. I think with that, I think with that, we should wrap it up wrap it up uh do you have any

last thoughts you'd like to leave us with uh no i don't i think she's i'm out of thoughts but you have an offer on the table that you intend to take so you're not actively looking and people shouldn't email you if if they want you work for them. I don't care if people, if you want to pass on emails to me, I'm always excited. I suspect you're going to get some. Oh, good. Please email Jen with all your jobs related queries. It's Jen at Mailinator.com No, I'm sorry. It's not Jen's real email address. Mailinator is awesome if you don't know what it is.

I guess hit the contact link on embedded.fm and I will be passing things along to Jen. Or I will just publish her Twitter address and you can talk to her directly. Is it hard to find my Twitter address when you and I are talking pretty regularly? Oh, no, absolutely not. So if you're stalking people, you can find her.

Yes. It'll be awesome. It'll be lots of fun. Christopher, do you have any closing? I can't contribute anything further. Nor does he want to. My guest has been Jen Castillo. Thank you for being on the show.

Thank you again. And thank you for listening. I hope you feel better prepared for your next interview, whichever side of the table you're on. Do hit the contact link at embedded.fm or email us at show at embedded.fm. We do like to hear from you. And thank you to producer Christopher White, who now has a microphone. Will be using it more often. And final thoughts. Final thoughts are coming from my book, which is Making Embedded Systems. And I mentioned earlier, every chapter has an interview question.

This one was one of my favorites. Describe the architecture for this. Pick up an object in the room. Act like you're considering it for the first time describe the architecture for this conference phone and then see how far they get. Is it a block diagram? Is it some code? It's pretty fun. In fact, try it on your children.