Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 112: Disinterested Interviewing and Layoff Fallout

Episode Date: June 18, 2018

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Is it common for developers to take an interview without real interest in a job? Is it common for a company to reject a candidate because they think candidate is not interested in a job? Recently I had an interview and I was rejected even though I though it went really well. From internal channels in that company I learned that the interviewer thought I wasn’t really searching for a new job and was just doing interviews for fun or to improve my skills. That was really frustrating. And also, well, flattering. But still, I don’t understand what signals I may have given. I asked questions about the company, processes, etc. I prepared really well. And I asked for a salary that’s quite significant for our market. The only reason I see is that I always worked remotely and this is position in an office. By the way, LOVE your show! What happens when a wave of engineers leaves your company? I work for a startup that went through a brutal round of layoffs, before stabilizing. We’re building the engineering team back up, but the core team members that built our platform are gone. How do we approach maintaining things, adding new things, technology decisions, etc?

It takes more than great binary search balancing skills to be a great engineer. This is Soft Skills Engineering episode 112. I'm your host, Dave Smith. I'm your host, Jameson Dance. Soft Skills Engineering is a weekly advice show for software engineers about non-technical topics. So not the thing you said. Did you say binary search balancing skills? Binary search tree balancing skills.

Okay. I mean, yeah, it's technical. We're done. We want to thank our wonderful supporters of the show. thank you so much to arnold engelen uh for for contributing this one thank you also to nick canter dimitro and neo nila david jackson chris fitkin sean clayton and dustin coats thank you to everyone who contributes to our patreon we really appreciate it we're in the midst of doing some design stuff so you should see that coming out in the next weeks or months

we'll have some new stickers some new fancy other stuff if you want to support the show you can go to our website softskills.audio and click support the show and it'll take you to our patreon where you can win the fabulous or not win i guess you pay for it you can pay for the fabulous prize of us saying your name on the air and saying thank you we can be bought we can it's not very expensive but thank you so much we really appreciate it should we get to our first question yeah should i read it please okay this comes from a listener named misha who writes is it common for developers to take an interview without real interest in the job? Is it common for a company to reject a candidate

because they think the candidate is not interested in the job? Recently, I had an interview and I was rejected even though it went really well. From internal channels in the company, I learned that the interviewer thought I wasn't really searching for a new job and was just doing interviews for fun

or to improve my skills. That was really frustrating and also, well, flattering. But still, I don't understand what signals I may have given. i asked questions about the company processes etc i prepared really well and i asked for a salary that's quite significant for our market the only reason i see is that i always worked remotely and this position is in an office by the way love your show that's love in all caps thank you misha we love you too uh yeah it sounds so you interviewed somewhere you thought it went really well didn't get the job found out was because they thought you weren't serious and then maybe a couple other

things i the first question is is it common for devs to interview without real interest in a job i have definitely done that i kind of just cast a wide net and in fact the job i have right now was it originally part of the wide net it was not on my list of places i thought like this would be a great fit for me in a place i really want to work but it was more in the interest of exploring lots of options and trying some different things did you did you interview specifically thinking you would not accept a job there no i didn't think i would not accept it i was just not i wasn't planning on it all working out i guess i wasn't thinking i'll string these suckers along it was just like walmart labs eh well i don't know we'll see how it goes and every step of

the interview made me more and more interested basically yeah but i feel like i've done that most of the times i've interviewed too where i've just if there's something that conceivably could be interesting i just did it because i don't know why not well i have i have a funny story about this back in 2004 i got an email from a recruiter for a company called vonage and do you remember vonage jameson they're a phone company right yeah they were one of the first voice over ip companies that would replace your landline with a little box that would use the internet to make phone calls anyway they sent me an email they invited me to interview and they were in new jersey i was in salt lake at the time and they flew me out there and i was totally not interested

in the job and definitely not interested in living in new jersey but i wanted to go check it out so i went but that's not the funny part of the story the funny part is they asked 2004 is the most hilarious year so that part was funny the funny part is i they asked me to fill out a job application and so i they needed me to like print it or fax it or something i can't remember you know this was before the internet so um so i was using my company's printer or fax machine to get it you know done and i was there and i was like running late for a meeting and i couldn't get it to work so i just walked away from the machine and then while i was in my meeting it printed out the application anyway

with all my all my info and then my boss's boss just happened to be wandering by the printer and he saw that and he saw my name on it and that it was a job application so my manager like pulled me aside later and was like uh hey dave my boss is like kind of panicking like what's going on i was like oh don't worry i was just checking out that company don't worry not quitting huh so anyway don't uh if you do this don't print out the application on your company's printer yeah that could have gone a lot of different ways oh yeah they could have just been really mad and fired you or stabbed you even and instead they just hit me with a bat it was i got off easy we've mentioned on this show advice to just kind of periodically interview to see what's out there

I think you've said that you've done that before. I don't really do it periodically. I do it more in targeted job, not targeted, in job searches. But I will throw in a few places that I think like, oh, I'll just see how it is, even if I probably don't want to work there. I have very rarely interviewed at a company where I wasn't actually looking for a job.

Certainly I've interviewed at companies and thought, it's pretty unlikely I'll take this job. And I do think people can sense that. And I also think it reduces the chances of them making an offer i really do yeah um is it common for a company to reject a candidate because they think they're not interested yeah it sounds like you're saying yes yeah it is it is for me suspicious having been on the other side of that table where i'm uh have to make a judgment call on whether to make an offer i've definitely declined a couple of candidates after

consulting with the interviewers based on primarily the grounds that they weren't that interested there's usually a few questions that they ask what are you excited about what do you think about our mission like I feel like I can always detect when it's the question that's like do you actually want to work here and you just kind of learn if you want them to feel like the answer is yes what answers to give to that I mean if you know stuff about the company if you know what products they build you can talk about those you can talk about how you're interested in the people you get to work with I feel like you can if you know that that's a signal they're looking for you can figure out how to give that signal oh yeah and honestly or dishonestly it's very easy signal

to give because people love hearing that you're interested in their job yeah like they want it to be true so you don't have to try very hard usually yeah i i think i have probably done the opposite thing where i'm less interested but i'm like too polite to communicate how disinterested i am so people think i'm more interested than i am um usually in those cases though there will be like some extra steps that i don't go through because i say in the interview in the moment i don't usually say i don't think i want to work here but like i go home and then they ask me to do another thing and i say no thank you yeah um to try and avoid leading them on the have you heard of this missionaries versus mercenaries thing yeah i have heard mercenaries usually pejorative

right yeah it is it's usually like we want people that believe in the mission of the company and it gets thrown around a lot with talking about passion and commitment and stuff and i think i don't totally agree with that because there's a lot of room for people that go to work to earn money to live and then go home to use that money to live and they can still be productive employees no no i just go to i just go to work for personal satisfaction reasons i do other things to earn money yeah i build this erp thing because i really believe in the mission of this erp thing and i drive ubers to make my make a living yeah yeah so so disclaimer is like don't let people take advantage of you because i think that's what it gets used for a lot to ruin your work-life balance

but companies do want people that want to work there right like especially now when the job market is so hot for developers um there's this paranoia that like people will always leave and if you hire someone that doesn't actually want to be there and hasn't shown that they wanted to be there they're just going to bounce at the first opportunity which is very costful it's or very costly so i think they're trying to avoid that they're trying to avoid people who who will not want to work there for long enough for them to be worth paying yeah for sure there were a couple of possible red flags that i caught in this question as well that go beyond just not being interested because i think if a company told you or if even a back channel told you that

the job was not offered because you didn't seem interested uh that might have been a red herring I think there could have been real bigger reasons here such as it says here you asked for a significant salary for the market and maybe you came in so high that they just thought well we can't come anywhere near that so we're not gonna not gonna make an offer is that possible yeah I think so that could also reflect on the they don't really want to work here thing I have had interviews with a company that I wanted to work at and then the salary was a lot lower than what i wanted and i didn't want to work there enough to take that salary so like to some extent uh it was true i did not want to work there you're such a mercenary jameson i am yeah i it turns out

i would like to earn money in return for my labor and i mean it it's like a developer's salary right like how bad can that be in the in the united states at least they're generally pretty well paid but um asking for more money in some cultures than they're comfortable paying could be a signal that you don't you're not interested enough in the actual work and that could be a negative signal to some people to some cultures like it's fine that it's all about i would like the largest dollar amount that you can pay me and that's that that would be great and to some people that could be a red flag yeah the remote thing i don't feel like there's enough info there i'm not sure if that means the question asker was asking to work remotely or if they just there were concerns

about their ability to work non-remotely i don't know yeah maybe it didn't come up and they're just saying i i put you know i didn't mention that but this is what i would want so i don't know hard to say on that one yeah it's it's a delicate weird dance like all of interviewing you have to communicate that you really want to work there you don't want to um you don't want to give away all your leverage if you if you are just dying to work there then you can't really negotiate very hard for salary if that's a thing you're interested in because you'll want to be a missionary it turns out those people don't get paid very much often if you if you it's like the game development industry right um people want to do it so many people want to do it that the working conditions are a little

bit worse and the salaries are often a little bit lower than people of similar skill in other development industries less entertaining industries i mean once you get in there i don't know how entertaining it is but yeah i've heard not very entertaining yeah so yeah you need to communicate you're interested you'll be a great employee if you work there also there are things that you want that would help you be committed to it i guess it's kind of the the balance you're going for if if this um happened to me i would not feel bad about reaching back out to the hiring manager or whoever my contact is and saying hey you know i just want to let you know i'm super interested in this job you know i love the

company's mission i want to work with you and i would love to take this to the next step if the only reason you ended the process was because you thought i wasn't interested i just want to set that straight i don't think there's any problem with that at all that'll at least put the ball on the court and um and see if that really was the only reason and if it was then maybe you'll pick it back up and resume yeah i think i maybe made it sound more complicated than it needs to be to demonstrate interest that might often that's all you need to do is literally say i am interested in working at this company i think it would be cool to work here and and that's that's it all right have we answered the question i think so good luck okay i think it's your turn i will

read the next one yeah this is from an anonymous listener what happens when a wave of engineers leaves your company i work for a startup that went through a brutal round of layoffs before stabilizing we're building the engineering team back up but the core members that built our platform are gone how do we approach maintaining things adding new things technology decisions etc have you ever heard of um like a really pleasant round of layoffs just a soft delicate enjoyable yeah so we had a great round of layoffs this week we that's that's how like the hedge fund managers talk about it the private equity people that buy the companies and lay everybody off what an exquisite layoff

you can just taste the tears and they're like swirling their wine glass full of tears oh my gosh exquisite your brain is exquisite um yeah i've actually been in this situation well have you been in this situation um i've never been in a situation where a bunch of employees were laid off and then we got in a pinch like this but i feel like this is the effects are not all that different from almost every high growth company i've ever been a part of where even though the original people aren't gone they effectively are gone because the team has grown so much that you don't have access to them anyway yeah let's talk about that part of it first the technical part you the people who

built it are gone either to another floor in your building or to a better place or maybe a worse place. What do you do? Yeah, I mean, it is a tricky situation. But, you know, as an engineer, you need to develop the ability to come into a foreign code base and learn how to get productive without necessarily needing someone to hold your hand. So this could be an opportunity in disguise for you to flex those muscles. Well, what I do, Dave, is I read the detailed and accurate documentation that's been written by the previous people what's that noise you're are you laughing that sounds totally reasonable um yeah it's it's it's interesting because it's a it's a very different skill set to like go

spelunking through an existing system and figure it out versus build something on a system you understand or a new system and i actually kind of like it i i enjoy the challenge of figuring out how stuff fits together and pulling it apart and seeing where it explodes and then figuring out like oh that line is important or this weird why do we have four databases that all talk to each other oh that's why or whatever the weird thing is um a thing that i have found helpful is writing documentation to myself and like maybe it'll accidentally be useful to other people but i just try and i try and create the documentation that i wish existed when i started trying to figure it out so like as as you're spelunking through the code base you're

simultaneously documenting it is that what you're saying yeah yeah yeah whatever part i'm looking at so if i'm looking at how we deploy i'll write a thing up and it'll probably be dumb and wrong and then i'll i'll kind of correct it and add to it as we get as i learn more details about it it doesn't really have to be bottom up of like or top down i guess of like here are the big pieces and how they fit together and then diving down it's kind of how it would be nice to have it if it existed but that's not really the way that i learn systems i have to poke into the individual pieces and then i can put them together after that but i just i just document that and documenting it kind of clarifies what i understand and what i don't understand if i'm writing about deploys

and i realize oh i don't know how we handle migrations then i go like poke at that a little bit or and one of the side effects is sometimes it's helpful for other people not always but sometimes yeah yeah oh i i remember also back in the stone age 2003 time frame i was on a team of three engineers and for whatever reason our manager gave us this big steaming pile of corba infested c++ and it was like hey learn how to make it do xyz and the team who had originally developed this was in another state and they were not interested in us at all and we were supposed to like bend their code to do this new thing and i gotta tell you it was super demotivating for me i actually just utterly failed you know some of the other team members were able to jump in and

really explore it and learn it and understand it and i just could not engage it was really really hard that's a bummer i have failed at that i guess i had a project in college i worked as a research assistant and my professor gave me this task to integrate this this big gnarly c library with this other big gnarly application i didn't know very much about either of the applications or c or the build tooling or the environment and i actually bombed out pretty hard on that too i gave up what did you do um what did i do i went and got it i got a different job that's what i did too i was i just did different stuff after that i don't know we can talk and talk about what we

could do but here's what we've actually done quit this job yeah i didn't have the skill set or the support or the time to do it there one wrinkle is the process i described of writing documentation. That does not involve adding new features, right? So it takes a lot of time. And if the business or team is not supporting you in it, if you have this tight deadline to learn the system and crank this feature out, it constrains the amount of time you can spend exploring and understanding. Another thing that I like to do technically is I like to figure out how to smooth out the onboarding process to whatever piece of software this is because generally it's a pain in the butt to set up like that's just true of all software

basically and that's also an important piece getting it set up and running locally so you can poke at it without destroying things yeah it's not always possible but if it is possible making that process smoother can also teach you a lot absolutely i mean the bus has hits right people talk about the bus factor all the people that had a bus factor of one are gone so there's a bus factor of like zero does it go down does it underflow and now it's a bus factor of infinity i guess it is because technically any of you could be hit by a bus and it wouldn't affect how much people know about the software oh yeah yeah you're all completely dispensable now yeah perfect but it it can be a good thing because it can feel it's scary because the people that know stuff are gone

but also the people that you get to try a lot of new things right the people that can tell your idea is dumb for good or for ill or gone so no one can tell you don't try that thing because it's dumb oh yeah but no one can tell you don't try that good idea because it's like risky or different from my idea or whatever yeah so it can be a little freeing and it's also exciting to well in the right circumstances besides the two bad ones that dave and i talked about it can be exciting to get this like new world opened up to you yeah yeah definitely what about the morale side so starting a new job you generally don't feel really sad if a lot of your colleagues get fired or laid off you generally do feel really sad that feels a lot different to me how do you deal with

just the the personal effects of it or the social effects of it oh yeah i've never been in that situation frankly i've never worked for a company that's had layoffs in 15 years wow work with dave yeah i'm invincible that's the message yeah i worked at a company that had layoffs and it was really sad i mean i was friends with the people that got laid off and i was super bummed out and i wasn't as much concerned about getting laid off myself but that was partially just because i was dumb and didn't think bad things could happen to me partially i felt like it would have happened already if it were going to happen to but it was um it was definitely a shock to the team and it definitely hurt us there was this wound that took some time

to heal we were mad at the people that did the layoffs and mad that they hadn't done something different earlier that would have prevented it and we were it caused some distrust between the developers and the rest of the organization and there were definitely ripple effects that it just took time to get over time of the people who made the decision demonstrating that they were trying their best and made it in good faith and time of us to just like get distracted and move on and not yeah sad anymore i don't know that i had any specific techniques i use beyond just like still doing work yeah that's a good idea well they they already fired everyone they're gonna fire so now is your best time to slack

off is that what you're saying what are they gonna do lay you off they already did their layoffs yeah yeah you can only do one you definitely definitely can't do a second round oh man this this all happened at once though i haven't been through waves of repeated layoffs that would that would be brutal i don't know how to handle that i would probably if the market were good i'd probably just quit and go work somewhere else honestly oh you know i realized actually when i was working at novelle as an intern there was a round or two of layoffs and i had to watch people go through that but i was such a clueless disconnected intern that i didn't really they didn't really sink in you know yeah so there you go that's my layoff story

just don't worry about it just be 21 and it'll be fine be 21 and stupid 21 and cheap and it's okay so one idea i had not not related to layoffs but related to getting acquainted with this new code base to bring your team up to speed is to set up a little seminar series where you assign different areas of the code base out to different team members and you tell them your job is to do a presentation to the rest of the team on how this part of the code works what are its inputs what are its outputs what are some of its quirky behaviors what are its dependencies and how does it behave and then you know you could come up with a bulleted list of questions they're supposed to answer about the code and then they have to go in and dig in and try to answer all

those questions and present that back to the team and i think that would help me a lot because it would give me something concrete to focus on rather than just saying okay learn all this you know which is like too big of a task for anyone to really take on and super demotivating as i've experienced firsthand but by putting this little bit of an assignment on them now now you know the team is counting on me to share with them how this part of the code works and bonus points because everyone else doesn't have to do that deep dive into the code and they can still come up to speed in short order at least you know not as deep of not as good of a speed but they can still come up to some level of functioning knowledge yeah this is also where you hope that

your systems and processes are good because if your deploy setup is pretty seamless you can get away without knowing it and if it's not then you're screwed and like if if everything is kept from lighting on fire by the the tireless efforts of these people that know everything like you you're in for some trouble because you don't have those tireless efforts anymore you have the efforts of people that don't know everything but guess what so you're about to learn yeah yeah but this is this is where um careful engineering can really pay off is if someone did it if someone invested the time to make these things uh possible to operate and use without knowing everything then that can really help and if not you'll you'll experience a lot of slowdown you should also

So try and I think if possible, you should try and communicate that to the business people to have them understand, hey, it's not just if we laid off a fourth of the team, that doesn't mean we will go one fourth slower. Depending on the fourth, you could actually go faster, I guess. But especially if it's the fourth of the team that knew everything, like, oh, yeah, it'll have a lot of effects on velocity and amount of stuff you get done. And and the reliability of the software, you might break it a lot more in the short term or medium term. Plus, if anything goes wrong, anything at all, even if you make some overt obvious mistake, you can blame it on the layoffs. You probably have a good six months of scapegoat material.

That is true. Yeah, usually when I leave jobs, I tell people like, please blame all this on me. I'm happy to take the blame when I'm not around. Nice. All right, have we answered the question? I think so. Good luck.

Sounds tricky and challenging. Yeah, I hope it works out well. i hope you you make it through this challenge and then someday you get laid off and leave the challenge to the next generation the circle of life yeah all right where can people go if they want their own questions answered dave go to softskills.audio and click on ask a question you can leave as much or as little detail as you want and if we've answered one of your questions in the past please write in and let us know how it went did you take our advice did you not we'd love to hear about it yep we're going to give you some homework too please write us a review on

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