logoalt Hacker News

OJFord • last Sunday at 4:04 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

I wonder how many of them would do fine not under pressure though. You're not (necessarily) weeding out experienced people who can't find actual problems in a 50 line class full of glaring issues, you're weeding out those who can't under pressure in an interview setting.

Replies

maccard • last Sunday at 4:21 PM

I don’t necessarily disagree but anyone who is a c++ programmer and sees

    class foo { 
        public:
        foo() {
            ptr = new other();
        }

        ~foo() {
            
        }
    };
And doesn’t immediately question it doesn’t instil confidence.

Interviews are inherently high pressure situations for the candidate, the only way to avoid that is to just let people try out on the job and fire them if it isn’t working out. That’s unfair to everyone.

➕ show 2 replies
tshaddox • last Sunday at 9:19 PM

How could you ever know whether that’s the case? Obviously it makes sense to try to conduct the interviewer with a low-pressure tone, and perhaps make accommodations for people who seems especially nervous, but at the end of the day I don’t think a job interview has meaningfully higher pressure to perform than, say, the first few months of a new job.