[digitalgangsta]

this. Worth interviewing with someone you know and see how you do. I interviewed a gent once who was very smart but talked my ear off, including cutting me off multiple times. After 45 mins of this, I stopped him and bluntly gave him this feedback. He was stunned and then thanked me as he realized he had been failing interviews because of this and no one had told him. I didnt hire him, but he was very appreciative and he took the feedback for his next batch.

[busterarm]

One of the best engineers that I've ever met is fundamentally unhireable due to the severity of his personality. He's not even a bad guy -- he's very helpful always but unfortunately everything he says just sounds smug or sanctimonious. He can't help himself.

It's been sad watching his career struggles and knowing the quality of his work if you can just keep him away from stakeholders and meetings in general

[gopher_space]

One of the nice things about the old "nerds-only programmer's pit" style of team leadership is that it provides a refuge for people that want part of their world filtered out to get work done. Quite a bit more mandatory social engagement as an engineer these days. Lots of requesting your face.

[pixelrevision]

It was also better for the really quiet ones. There’s some really great programmers who can put out amazing stuff if you can keep them away from the agile/stakeholder circus.

[gopher_space]

I mean how many of us have a door we can close and no movement in our peripheral vision when we're in the office?

[quickthrower2]

Would him explaining this to a team before he works on it help. So they don’t take it personally. External stakeholders is different but most of the time devs arw shield from them (for better or worse).

[quickthrower2]

That is a good story of the power of candid feedback. More people should do that and treat developers as a wider community, helping people succeed even if you don’t hire them. He might come back to interview in 3 years too as you will be the company he will remember.

[itake]

> I didnt hire him

Seems like if he took the feedback well, he could be a good person to hire, unless there were other issues with his interview.