[watwut]

"Half the people don't even tell me what they are thinking."

Maybe they are introverted or simply need to think before they talk. Around 50% of people are introverted (less in usa). Many people are like that and simultaneously quite skilled. Moreover, some environments punish errors, so people who worked/studied there tend to be conditioned to think before talking.

"And no matter how many times I try to work with them, act like their buddy, or w.e. they just kind of shut down."

You are not buddies, you are interviewer about to decide whether they get hired. Many people shutting down might mean that they are not comfortable juggling "buddy" social role and expectations and "serious job interview" social expectations simultaneously.

[rnprince]

"You are not buddies, you are interviewer about to decide whether they get hired. Many people shutting down might mean that they are not comfortable juggling "buddy" social role and expectations and "serious job interview" social expectations simultaneously."

Very good point.

[kafkaesq]

Right -- you don't need the "act like a buddy" part for this technique to work.

[_0ffh]

I'm not sure about introverted. I am, but when I get excited about a topic, I can be as loud as the next person. As long as I feel I have something to contribute, that is. I can rant for two minutes straight and then suddenly and unexpectedly shut up when I've made my point. People are sometimes surprised and ask why I suddenly stopped talking. I'll answer: "I've made my point."... :3

So my bet is on error avoidance.

[flukus]

I'm pretty similar, but solving a bug in an interview question is hardly something I'd get excited about.

[_0ffh]

I agree. Still, the point I was trying to get across is this: While introverts do not strive to take center stage for its own sake, they are perfectly capable to do so for any good reason. Introversion is not shyness.

[wyager]

Being an introvert isn't an excuse for poor communication. Regardless of its cause, poor communication is bad in a work environment, and it makes sense for interviews to select against it.

[jroseattle]

This is significant, and can be more so depending on the company and environment.

I've had my own team members tell me they aren't engaged, don't speak up in meetings, etc. because they are an introvert. Like it's a condition we must accommodate. Bullshit.

Communication is a skill. We value clear communication in our company. If you join our company, you may not be an expert in communication, but you will grow that skill.

An interview is a different scenario, but still -- you need to be able to communicate with me. If you can't, we will pass on you as a candidate.

[watwut]

"don't speak up in meetings"

People should speak in meetings when they have something to say. Not just so they speak - that just waste everybody time.

The more important point is that if 80% of people shut down while they are talking to someone, maybe has more to do with that someone then 80% of population being uncommunicative.

[jroseattle]

We're not quite that naive and clumsy. I'm the first one to make sure we keep discussion on-point and actively shutdown the monologuers of our team.

So let's clarify -- "speak up in a meeting" means when a senior person doesn't provide input at a time that would provide better direction, identify issues earlier in a process, etc. If you're a senior engineer, I need your input to ensure we're doing the right thing(s).

The forum of a group meeting isn't always in the wheelhouse of someone who freezes up when speaking in front of others. It's understandable -- I used to be one of those people. It can be out of your comfort zone, and doing so feels super-risky as well as plain frightening. It is still just a skill to be learned, no different than building muscles through exercise.

In our group, we talk a lot about trust and support. Everything we do is in the spirit of making each other stronger. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses -- share your strengths with the group, and build your weaknesses from the strength of others. It sounds pie-in-the-sky, but as the head of my group, I make sure we take this seriously.

So we don't have 80% of our group shutting down -- nobody talks over the top of anyone else, and we don't allow it. We need the input of the best of those, and sometimes that involves speaking up. If you're on my team and that notion makes you nervous, I understand. But as I've always explained to my team, we're going to help you build skills, and communicating is one of them.

[wolco]

If you want diversity you try to accommodate different personaility types. Otherwise you end up with a mono culture.

There is value in silence and limited communication.

[jroseattle]

Communication is a behavior and act, not a personality type. The suggestion here is that it's ok for someone who doesn't communicate well to be accommodated in the name of diversity. The notion of "poor communicator" as a personality type doesn't jive with me.

Replace "communication" with "data modeling" or "project management" or "reading". There are plenty who don't necessarily possess those skills.

Should we expect that others shouldn't develop skills in those areas (assuming they are important for their role) in the name of "diversity"?

[spoiler]

While I don't fully agree with the parent of your reply, I think they're right about communication being a skill. I am an introvert myself, but I've learned not to let that get in the way of me communicating with my colleagues or friends.

[dkersten]

Not speaking up in meetings doesn't mean they don't have this skill though. Some people (like me) don't like to add on-the-spot opinions on something, but prefer to go and mull it over, look into it etc before providing feedback. Doing it on the spot often leads to a lot of wasted time and overly long meetings. Meetings and other synchronous communications are, in my opinion, very wasteful and expensive.

[watwut]

Thinking in your head before talking is not poor communication through. Not being able to explain yourself is, never talking is and shooting every half baked idea loud while others concentrate is.

The fact that someone takes time to put together ideas before opening their mouth is not bad sign. Bad sign would be if they don't share result once they have done thinking.

[bluGill]

This is interviewing 101 though: establish a report with the interviewer if at all possible. If the interviewer tries to be a buddy that is in your favor to go along.

[ice109]

rapport

[jalanb]

TIL Rapoport's rule, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapoport%27s_rule

Oh I do love the interwebs.

[kccqzy]

I'm an introvert, hates social gatherings, etc. Yet I've found the ability to think aloud extremely helpful. Sometimes just vocalizing my thought makes the thinking clearer, almost as if hearing myself again makes the brain think over every thought once again. In a collaborative situation (such as pairing) this is even more helpful.

[michaelcampbell]

I believe it does exactly this. The rise of "rubber duck" debugging is a tool to extract this sort of thing, in fact.

[graphememes]

Generally to get candidates who are like this to open up, I simply assert:

"Tell me what you are thinking about right now"

"What is jumping out at you for you to be stalling?"

"Did you see something?" --> "Why?" --> "You seem to be quiet and deep in thought, what are you thinking about?"

etc...

[sundvor]

Yeah, that's great if you're NT and all that, but if you're interviewing someone who is anxious about the situation this might only add to the pressure, creating a melt down situation making it impossible for them to think.

In a normal work environment where he or she is left to think freely the the same candidate might excel.

[valdiorn]

I'm sorry, but this is an interview. It's entire point of existence is to allow communication.

If the candidate would like some quiet time to think about the solution, I expect them to respond with "I think I'm forming a solution, just give me a couple of minutes to think about it before I present my case".

If they can't even do that, then I'm sorry, but they are no good to anyone. You can be the smartest and best developer in the world, but if you're completely incapable of representing yourself and your ideas; to have a dialog about your work, you are effectively worthless as an employee.

Some companies might have a place for that special someone, who you can lock in a room for a month and he will later emerge with an amazing new piece of code that will solve your problems, shielded from all the problems of the outside world, but companies where that is possible are very rare.

[dkersten]

Some companies might have a place for that special someone, who you can lock in a room for a month and he will later emerge with an amazing new piece of code that will solve your problems, shielded from all the problems of the outside world, but companies where that is possible are very rare.

Also, being able to develop like that is very rare because in the real world, requirements change or are vague and need to be clarified, or your software has to interoperate or integrate with other software. There is simply no way to avoid regular communication and still produce something that works how it needs to. Problems where you can shut yourself away for a long period of time certainly exist, but in the grand scheme of software jobs, they're few and far between.

[davidbanham]

And on a normal workday in normal surroundings that person might do just fine. An interview is a totally abnormal, high pressure situation.

The point is that with this kind of make or break style of candidate vetting you're probably leaving a lot of great talent by the wayside.

[sundvor]

Thanks, yes, that's exactly my point.

[graphememes]

Unfortunately interviews are brief, the point of this isn't to add pressure its to relieve it. Silence for too long in such a short period introduces pressure. Letting them use me as a sounding board we can create a connection that opens dialogue and allows ideas to flow.

The whole point is to make them comfortable and that takes the highest priority. Being able to read the individual and react to them is key, not everyone is the same, hence why there are a multitude of responses, and the ones given are just a starting point.

[sundvor]

Ah, I read you now, thanks. I may have reflected on one interview that went particularly badly, being somewhat reminded of it. But with the extra information, that is a great approach if I understand you correctly - especially the silence adding pressure part, which is absolutely true.

I.e. if stuck at something, even if seeming trivial, it might pay (to go back or have a chat around it, even guide him/her a bit so as, etc) to get the candidate loosened up and feeling safe which should then yield better responses after.

[vacri]

You can bikeshed interviewing processes that leave out this or that potential candidate forever. And any candidate who bombs in any kind of interview could turn out to be the next Einstein.

There is no one-size-fits-all interview technique; if there was, it would be used all over the place. Good interviewing techniques are about playing the numbers, not leaving no programmer behind.

[flukus]

That sounds awful, you are actively sabotaging someone by ruining their concentration while they're trying to solve a bug in unfamiliar code under time pressure. This is like having a manager requesting status updates every 10 minutes when you're trying to fix a production failure.

Even if I solve the problem I'm walking out of that interview with a very negative opinion of your company.

[dpark]

If you completely shut down during the interview and don't communicate, you're probably getting walked out from the interview. If you cannot or will not communicate, then the interviewer is unable to evaluate you.

I also don't think he was advocating nagging either, simply asking questions to get the candidate talking. If you "go dark" for 10 minutes, you're pretty much definitely stuck. Talking to the interviewer might get you unstuck. Staring at the whiteboard quietly probably will not.

[graphememes]

Yep, totally not nagging, giving them room to think and then jumping in to get them talking is definitely what you want to do here.

This also isn't your day to day job so you have to keep in mind that these interviews are generally held to an hour length and you can't really give them 30 minutes for a single problem that wouldn't give you much insight into the person.

It also heavily depends on the culture of the company as well. So being able to communicate effectively and act under pressure is something that goes with pair-programming and code reviews.

To note, I have never had anyone ever leave an interview feeling bad about the company or our process, the interview is about the individual.

[watwut]

In one interview, I was left in a room alone with coding exercises. The involved frameworks I did not knew and I had internet available. Then they came in and we talked about solutions.

I still think it was pretty cool way of interviewing.

[IanCal]

You might be over-estimating the complexity of the kinds of problems generally used for this.

You're not bothering people while they're taking an expected amount of time to look at it. You're stopping a several minute silence after handing someone a basic loop and if statement.

For most positions we're talking about, this should not be a major problem. I found when doing something similar people either looked at me like I was crazy for giving them such a basic problem and after being reassured there was no catch answered simply and clearly, or just couldn't do anything. Followup questions about the code then went terribly (e.g. a JS contractor asking for £500+/day who didn't know what the difference between global and local variables was, why you should put var in front of things, etc).

These things are often good to weed out the incredible number of people who seem to have little to no coding ability at all for jobs where that's an obvious pre-requisite. I've also had people fail to solve a basic problem (roman numeral generator or reader) at home in whatever language they wanted, not even getting vaguely close. One person even sent in their broken version pasted into a word document.

[maxxxxx]

If someone can't express himself, most likely that person won't work well in the team.

[barrkel]

Some people take a bit of time and familiarity to warm up.

[maxxxxx]

True. I am not sure if I want to take the risk though. I don't want to be a friend or tell jokes but i want to be able to talk technical stuff.

[delazeur]

There is an enormous difference between a person taking a minute to collect their thoughts without speaking and a person being unwilling or unable to communicate. I can't be sure, but it sounds like at least some people in this thread are talking about pushing back against the former as well as the latter.

[maxxxxx]

I am fine if they think about it for minutes or need a while to sort thoughts out. But at some point I would like to get some response. What else can I go by in the interview? And even if that person can write great code I am not sure things will work in the long run if he can't explain himself.