I’m a software engineer who sometimes interviews other software engineers. I’m not given a script to go off of, I get to ask them whatever I want. Usually we just talk about technology and coding from a high level. I’m not a big fan of whiteboard tests.
I’ve noticed, however, that a lot of people applying to software engineering jobs feel very alien to me. I started coding when I was 12 and spent most of my teenage years on technology forums. A lot of people applying to these positions are very much ladder-climbing type people who got into the career for the money. Working with these people is an absolute drag.
We also interview for “culture fit”. I would like to add in a single question to my interviews to assess that: what is your favorite science fiction book. You don’t even have to have read it recently, you just have to have read one and formed an opinion on it. My thoughts
Pros:
- Weeds out a lot of people since half of Americans don’t read books at all.
- Theoretically filters out people who love this kind of tech subculture from people who are just in it for the money
Cons:
- It’s unfair to people who enjoy fantasy novels, or any other form of fiction
- Being motivated by money probably shouldn’t be a disqualifying factor (I certainly wouldn’t do this job for free), I’m just tired of working with yuppies and lashing out at poor unsuspecting Jr Devs
I’m half-hearted on this. I see why it could be considered unfair but I’m really tired of the kinds of people I work with.
Dumb idea I’m afraid. Although to be honest I did once give someone a paid internship because they had a line in their CV that read, “Hobbies: Daft Punk”.
They did fine in their technical assessment too I guess.
Other pros:
- You might filter out people who want to Create The Nexus of Torment from Hit Sci-Fi Novel Don’t Create The Nexus of Torment
Cons
- they’ll get hired by Microsoft instead
I mostly read manga. But for sci-fi books the freshest one in my memory is Dune.
Would you hold that against me?
No
I interviewed someone today whose hobby was poetry of the African diasporia, for a position relative to logistics.
While I know very little about that specific poetic oeuvre, hearing them talk about their passion gave me an insight into their personality.
Perhaps ask questions about what they’re into rather than if they’re into thing.
Perhaps ask questions about what they’re into rather than if they’re into thing.
This is great advice! Asking about something specific is off-putting and could lose a great candidate.
Asking an open ended question about their hobbies can get the same positive result, and will catch candidates who wouldn’t have anything to say about science fiction.
Stop discriminating on pointless metrics that may actually be harmful
- people from minority backgrounds are less likely to have had access to libraries and reading resources growing up. Thus less likely to read for pleasure.
- Men are more likely to favour Sci fi than women.
Other Cons:
- Keep in mind a lot of people don’t read much, if at all which is sad. Meanwhile, you still need to hire people.
- We’re all motivated by money. Like you said you don’t work for free. Neither would I. A job is a job and for most people it means sacrificing very precious hours of their time (time they will never get back, no matter how well they get paid) in exchange for that money. It’s nothing but a contract which can be summarized as this: you give me money, I give you my expertise/willingness to sweat on my part of that contract. End of the contract. We’re not family, we’re not (yet) friends (and we never be), as an employer you have no say in what I do outside of work (no matter how it’s becoming the norm to think the opposite), and what I like to read is none your business as my employer. Obviously, we may both be willing to talk about it but that’s a personal choice. I just re-read P.K. Dick’s Ubik, have you read it?
I’m gonna be real fucking honest with you here. If the question you’re asking doesn’t have to do with the actual job, it’s a stupid fucking question. The fact that you’re even asking about a subjective hobby like this in an interview tells me that maybe you aren’t the best person to be deciding who is qualified to be working with you.
I speak casually but my aim is just to find out if they have the technical skills necessary for the role. I find little social things come up by happenstance.
When dating people, I often ask “name a book that’s not Harry Potter”. Doesn’t even have to be one you’ve read. Pick any book at all (other than Harry Potter) and tell me why you thought of it.
I’m not gatekeeping people who do or don’t read books, and i don’t care if it’s sci fi, fantasy, fanfic, nonfic, whatever. what i do care about is that you are aware of at least one book and care enough to remember what it’s about. That’s a low bar, but not as low as you might think.
The “no Harry Potter” clause isn’t specifically due to jkr being a terf (although that too), but because it’s such an overused answer. Yeah, I do remember the books that were so popular that they had their own brand of jelly beans. I have run out of things to say about them. Pick literally anything else.
50 shades of grey, because its another horrible bookseries.
what does that say about me?
I imagine being in a date and my mind panicking and coming up with the Kamasutra first.
I see what you’re getting at, but maybe broaden it to just their favorite book. I also certainly wouldn’t disqualify based on not having read books (sci-fi or otherwise), because maybe they read short stories online, or maybe comics or something similar.
No. What? No.
Unless you publish sci-fi novels as a business, I suppose. Then maybe. But no.
I don’t have anything against “culture fit”, but that means that if you think someone will make your life miserable by sharing a space for eight hours it’s okay to go with someone else. It’s not a blank check to audit people’s Spotify histories. Job interviews aren’t dates.
If you have the authority to try to make a good company culture; hell yes you should. Even if they don’t often read novels, or they read something other than sci-fi, it’ll help you understand their personality and weed out people who suck. If someone says they prefer reading sci-fi manga or playing fantasy ttrpgs or any other possible nerdy thing they are probably leagues better than a ladder climbing type.There are plenty of places for a soulless corpo to go work for, if you can keep them away from you and yours you’ll have a much better and healthier company and (more importantly) life in the long run.
Yeah but at the same time I feel like it’s kind of privileged to be able to work in tech because you love coding. I mean everybody should work in jobs they love but I’ve met a huge number of people who were making slave wages in other fields and moved to coding to make more money. Why should I punish that? Because I find their water cooler conversations to be boring? What if they’re the first person in their family to graduate college and they’re just trying to feed their family and are actually really good at coding, but their real passion in life is Football? I want to work in a workplace with people I would want to actually hang out with, but it seems petty to penalize people for not liking the same things as me and not having the advantage of a great salary to be able to turn their real passion into a career
So you can ask them what they are passionate about outside of work. Something like:
I’m really into reading sci-fi books. Is there anything you are passionate about outside your work?
That’s not exactly what I want to select for though.I guess leaving it open ended lets them convince me of the culture fit rather than just trying to check a box. Maybe they don’t give a shit about science fiction, but they’re really into science or art. That’s cool, too
The fact that you even weighed the pros and cons of your proposal puts you light years ahead of most hiring managers.
Haha I’m afraid every time I interview someone. I know that I personally hate being asked whiteboard algorithm questions, and I don’t think they’re very useful either. When I interview people I ask them two main questions:
- What is your hottest take on coding? It can be controversial or not, it just has to be a strongly held opinion. For example, if you despise Windows, tell me why. If you are a zealot for Vim/Emacs, rant at me. If you think that dynamically typed languages are the worst thing ever, prove it.
I don’t actually care about what their opinion is (though I think it’s good to hire people with a lot of intellectual diversity), I just want to see if they can extemporaneously rant about coding for 10-15mins
- What is a technology (an API, a cloud service, a programming language, a new kind of algorithm, etc.) that you are excited about and that you want to be able to use at work some day
Again, the actual tech doesn’t matter too much to me, but this indicates that they read up on the latest goings-ons of the industry they’re in. I also think that it’s a good character trait to be someone who desperately searches for problems to apply a novel solution to. I don’t think it’s always a good idea to ACTUALLY create a solution looking for a problem, but I think it’s a good intellectual trait to have
Those are both great questions.
Agreed. Hiring manager green flags for sure.
Interesting, I posted a top level comment to you but you’re already doing some similar things to what I posted.
I would try to leave it more open-ended when asking what their hobbies are outside of work, and then ask whatever follow-up questions you can think of that would let them express what they’re passionate about.
As a tension softener, I tend to open interviews with: What’s the best movie ever and why should I love it too?
It helps me tell how good they are convincing someone else of something while also it helps them relax a bit, as a softball before we start pitching curved ones.
I prefer doing this rather than asking for hobbies as the interviewees tend to gave prepared corporate-grade answers.
I tend to finish asking to give us a song recommendation, which sets a better mood (hopefully) to end it.
I just hope there’s nobody out there still trying to figure out if they gave us the wrong recommendations.
I want someone that’s pleasant to work with and can pull their weight, but that’s just my preference.
Oh that’s so stressful. I actually hate sharing my song and movie recommendations because I usually like weird indie shit that nobody else enjoys (as pretentious as that makes me sound). I get extremely self conscious about my taste in stuff and would 100% worry that I gave the wrong recommendation.
Oh god just thinking about this is giving me anxiety.
Echoing this. Even as someone who does read sci-fi, I think leaving it open ended is better. Hobbies is a good angle; it could also be “What show, book, or film did you enjoy recently?” then follow it up with “Why?” and work from there.
What this shows:
- They live a balanced-enough life that they have time to do relaxing stuff, aren’t money-focused tryhards like OP is trying to weed out.
- Allows them to demonstrate explaining a topic unfamiliar to the interviewer.
- Shows how they respond to unexpected questions outside the normal, practiced interview set.
- Follow up questions can still weed out people who are viewing it “just because”, they heard it was popular, or whatever.
When I’ve interviewed candidates for software engineering positions, I have never asked any questions about them outside of work. I don’t personally feel that it has a lot of impact on how they perform at work.
