If you think technical interviews are just made up garbage, you should see how bad CVs are, or how shockingly good some people are at talking about things they can't actually do to any level of competence.
If you've never tried to hire technical people it can be surprising how difficult it is. I have not come across any foolproof method but the normal shape of the technical interview is the way it is because it is trying to solve a genuine and difficult problem.
Now some organisations do it in ways that are objectively wrong, but everyone knows that even when you're doing it right you'll have false negatives and that is the price for trying to squeeze the false positive rate down.
Failing an interview shouldn't make you feel bad, because there are all kinds of reasons you can not be progressed that aren't that you are objectively bad at what you do, but it can be a good moment to think about if you could communicate your skills even better next time and what that would take.
You should also always try to get feedback about what they didn't like. Nobody likes to give that feedback, but it's surprising how often a candidate will have the wrong idea about why they didn't progress, and it's bad manners for a company to use that much of your time and not give at least minimal feedback.
> You should also always try to get feedback about what they didn't like. Nobody likes to give that feedback, but it's surprising how often a candidate will have the wrong idea about why they didn't progress, and it's bad manners for a company to use that much of your time and not give at least minimal feedback.
To be honest, most of the times when I did get feedback I found it varying levels of patronizing, bewildering, or even downright rude. Most: not all. There are exceptions. But as a general rule, I think candidates are better off without feedback because most of the time it's just going to be garbage.
Other than this fairly minor point I agree with you. Over the years I've worked with several senior developers who have needed hand-holding every step of the way, sometimes for the most basic of stuff, on everything they do. Furthermore you don't just want to filter out the incompetent but also the assholes, which is an even harder problem.
>If you think technical interviews are just made up garbage, you should see how bad CVs are, or how shockingly good some people are at talking about things they can't actually do to any level of competence.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think I'm terrible at my work or anything, just slightly above average, while I'm a good order of magnitude better at interviews.
I don't know why, I just love them and I'm really good at weaving a story about myself and my fit with the company. (Don't worry, I'm never lying, just accentuating the commonalities.)
If you've never tried to hire technical people it can be surprising how difficult it is. I have not come across any foolproof method but the normal shape of the technical interview is the way it is because it is trying to solve a genuine and difficult problem.
Now some organisations do it in ways that are objectively wrong, but everyone knows that even when you're doing it right you'll have false negatives and that is the price for trying to squeeze the false positive rate down.
Failing an interview shouldn't make you feel bad, because there are all kinds of reasons you can not be progressed that aren't that you are objectively bad at what you do, but it can be a good moment to think about if you could communicate your skills even better next time and what that would take.
You should also always try to get feedback about what they didn't like. Nobody likes to give that feedback, but it's surprising how often a candidate will have the wrong idea about why they didn't progress, and it's bad manners for a company to use that much of your time and not give at least minimal feedback.