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**Angelica Hill:** It gives me joy every time I see you with me. |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** I'm very happy to see you every time as well, Angelica. |
**Angelica Hill:** I never get sick of it. And aside from Natalie, we have two other wonderful women; we have the lovely Emma Draper, whose pronouns are she/her, and she is an engineering manager at the New York Times, based in Arizona. Hi, Emma. How are you? |
**Emma Draper:** Hi. I'm doing very well. |
**Angelica Hill:** How are you doing? Good day, excited? First time on Go Time... |
**Emma Draper:** First time. I'm very excited to be here. Thanks for having me. |
**Angelica Hill:** Always a pleasure. And then we also have Jonas, who is a technical enablement manager at Datadog, and who is based in Denver. How are you today, Jonas? |
**Jonas:** I am great. Happy to be here with you all. Thank you, Angelica. |
**Angelica Hill:** And what is a technical enablement manager? |
**Jonas:** So primarily, I focus with customers on how to be more effective and successful with Datadog through trainings, workshops, both public stuff, custom stuff... Teaching, enabling, as the name implies. \[laughs\] |
**Angelica Hill:** We're very excited to have you on as well. Not the first time, but you haven't been on in a hot second... So great to have you back. So we're gonna dive right in. So how do you interview as a software engineer? What are the different interview stages? How do you do it? Jonas? |
**Jonas:** \[04:08\] Sure, yeah. So most interviews follow this typical format; I think every company can be a little different, so you'll want to always check with that company, but I think the flow tends to be you will have generally some sort of recruiter screen to start. And that's either if you applied, or maybe a... |
And then from there, you usually go into what's considered like a panel, or like on-site, although we're in a virtual world, so obviously, that has a different meaning... But from there, you usually have a chunk of interviews that focus on technical capabilities, as well as usually some team collaboration/communication... |
**Angelica Hill:** And are all of the interviews run by fellow engineers? Who typically does the interviews for software engineers? |
**Jonas:** Yeah, I think once you get particularly to the technical screens and the on-sites, you will generally be with engineers. Sometimes you will also - depending on the teams, you might be meeting with product managers, designers, other people that you would be working with on the team, particularly around things... |
**Angelica Hill:** And then I know that you have a combination of both technical in terms of "Code this thing. Talk to me about system design", but you also have, I guess, technical in the sense of leadership, technical strategy, especially if you're interviewing for a management role etc. I'd love to hear a little bit... |
**Emma Draper:** Yeah, I think it highly depends on the role that you're interviewing for. I think at different levels of engineering you have different impact that's measured. And how that can be measured could be what is the impact and the scope in which I'm being involved, and bringing the team along on my immediate... |
**Angelica Hill:** It does. It does. So I know you touched on this, Jonas, that it's semi-different at every company... I'd love to hear from your experiences what parts are fixed, and where is there room for you to curate the process for your specific team, the specific role that that person is interviewing for. |
**Jonas:** \[07:50\] As the one who's hiring, as a hiring manager, again, I hate to say "It depends", but what I have experienced is that at maybe a more enterprise, a mature company, you will probably be following a very standard system much more. And that's because at this point the company has built this system over... |
Now, I've hired at much smaller companies, where it was just "Go hire people. Good luck." And then you're pretty much creating the whole thing yourself. So I think it can be -- definitely, that's a difference, I think, in terms of size of company and maturity of company, is how structured you're going to be as a hiring... |
**Angelica Hill:** Okay. But when someone's thinking about interviewing as a software engineer, they can overall expect to have some system design, some kind of leadership and strategy, some kind of cross-functional collaboration... So cross-functional, we mean like with a product manager, project design, depending on ... |
**Emma Draper:** I guess I would say from my perspective it matters what company are you interviewing for, what role are you aspiring to be hired at, and then what is the composition of the team currently? And that will help structure what those interviews look like. So the roles and expectations will craft what types ... |
**Jonas:** Yeah, I would just echo... I think everything you touched on is right, Angelica, in that if you just know you're going to be interviewing, that's a good way to start studying and preparing.. But then very much to Emma's point - talk to the recruiter, talk to the hiring manager, because everyone will be poten... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** I really agree with you, and I think that also, even sometimes I read that as part of the job description, and that's a great thing to include there... So that you know how much effort you're going to have to put into that. You both agreed on what the steps are that are the same everywhere... W... |
**Emma Draper:** Yeah, I've had mixed feedback on the different tools. If you're considering them, definitely do research on it. I know I've used some that seemed kind of helpful, and some that have been dropped, because you just don't get very good signal from them... In a perfect world, I would like to never use them... |
**Emma Draper:** \[12:07\] I haven't. I don't have a lot of exposure to -- I mean, in terms of how you can automate the hiring process, I've used a centralized ATS, which I think is really helpful, like Greenhouse. So what candidates are applying... You can then move them through, which I think is great... But in terms... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** So you both agree that this is not -- like, use with caution is the thing that you would both say? And is this your answer for automating any of the steps? Or are you in particular opposed to automating the first interview, or the technical? Or is there one that makes more sense or less sense t... |
**Jonas:** Yeah, I've only seen these used in the very first step. And that's the only place I would. And again, it's because you're really just trying to -- if you get a ton of applicants and have a limited pool of people that can actually do that initial screen, then it can be a helpful tool just to help quick-filter... |
**Emma Draper:** I also can think of it -- again, I haven't interviewed and it be automated, I haven't gone through that process, but I almost would say it's like when you call and the service is just putting you through these prompts, and you're like "I just want to speak to a person..." From an interviewee perspectiv... |
**Angelica Hill:** I've had that... I've had really terrible experiences with automated interviews. Not in the software engineering space, but in my prior life in Academia. I had a whole interview that was an hour and a half long, and it was just a robot asking me a question and then getting me to record a video of me.... |
So we've talked through the high-level at different stages, but I'd love to hear a little bit about the difference of interview process depending on the level, i.e. if someone coming in as associate, a staff, a mid-level, a senior - what are the key differences at each level? |
**Jonas:** I've seen different ways that's approached. At some companies the interview process is still very much the same, but the rubrics, and they cater the questions a bit different for leveling. So that's one way I've seen it done. Others, there is an actual different inner flow, where you might have maybe a bit l... |
**Emma Draper:** \[16:19\] No, I think you touched on the main key things that I've seen, which is it'll likely be a reduced and shortened process for junior engineers or associate-level engineers... So you'll just have, again, perhaps the same interview structure, but there will be interviews that you're not going to ... |
And then I think the other primary thing that I'll just echo is evaluation criteria I think is really important. So how you're evaluating that individual is going to be different, and the things that you're looking for at a staff level or a principal level, going back to impact, is going to be different from what my ex... |
**Angelica Hill:** So do you feel like it would be a fair statement - slash I'm looking for a reaction from you here - to say that you can give a little bit more leeway to hire someone and they can learn on the job when they're more junior, but maybe you have less of a tolerance for like knowledge gaps as we get higher... |
**Emma Draper:** I look for ability to learn, and that self-starter initiative in any level. I think that that just speaks highly of what type of learner the engineers are... And that when they get on the job, they're gonna face -- even if they have tons of experience, there's gonna be a whole new problem set that they... |
**Jonas:** Yeah, I would agree that -- yeah, ability to learn I think is pretty important in any role, because of the nature of tech... But yeah, really as you start to go more senior, it's where that ability to really lead and provide that expertise from experience to lead and guide a team - that becomes really import... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** Definitely. I very agree with you both also that you should probably not apply to a job where you mean 100% of requirements or you'll just be bored. |
**Jonas:** Yeah. |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** So it makes a lot of sense, what you all say... |
**Break:** \[20:09\] |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** What are your thoughts on interviewing at a startup, versus at the corporate? |
**Jonas:** I'm curious -- I have not worked at a ton of startups. I have worked for very small organizations, and so I will say, you might be interviewing with very few technical people, because they may not have a lot. I interviewed where I was the first technical person. That was a weird interview, because no one kne... |
**Natalie Pistunovich:** "How do you self-evaluate yourself? On a scale of 1 to 10..." |
**Emma Draper:** It's like grading... It's like, "How well did I do on this exam?" \[laughter\] |
**Jonas:** "I was great!" So my sense is probably startups, you may have some of that; it's probably not always gonna be a structure, because it's a small company and you might be one of the first engineers getting hired; you'll probably interview with like the CTO, or the CEO, which in an enterprise if you're intervie... |
**Emma Draper:** So I worked at a small startup, and that interview process, when I was going through it I did interview with the CEO. So speaking of just when you have really small organizations - the pool of people able to conduct an interview is much smaller. And that interview was intense. I mean, I think it was 20... |
**Angelica Hill:** \[24:01\] And then as people are thinking through how much time it's going to take to interview - how long does a typical interview process take? If you're working at your current job, and you're saying, "Oh, I kind of want to find myself a new job..." what are the expectations around the length of t... |
**Emma Draper:** I think that there's a difference between how long the job search takes, and then the interview process. So I would delineate between those two things. If you think that you've hit a ceiling at your existing company or in your existing role and you want to start exploring, I would give yourself a lot o... |
**Jonas:** Yeah, I think that's right. It can definitely range on the type of company and what their goals are for the hiring, and their process. I mean, I think in terms of the overall time you spend interviewing, I think it's about six to eight hours of actual interviews; that feels about the norm. But yeah, there ca... |
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