My dad designed jet engines and nobody made him design a jet engine on the whiteboard. So you are starting from the right place.

We are here where we are today because we spent too much time thinking that acting like the right kind of nerd meant you were a good programmer. There’s nothing wrong with going to a job, working hard, and then doing something else. I know very productive engineers who don’t have a favorite science fiction book who were great to work with.

Given things lately, I think it’s healthy that a lot of people have had to take a step back and realize that their employer would totally harvest their organs for profit if they could get away with it. Providing people the right “tech subculture” cues has resulted in a lot of people working themselves to death and never seeing any income windfalls.

I actively hate a bunch of my old science fiction books from when I was a kid because they were written with what is, to my adult mind, a not-very-subtle fascist bent. There’s, obviously, some great novels out there that expand your mind … but at the same time, there’s a lot of the science fiction canon where I’d probably hate working with people who took those books seriously.

And, likewise, there’s a lot of people who simply don’t have time because they are smart people actually trying to get into the lucrative field of computer science and a good scifi novel reading session is a luxury they just don’t have.

“Tell me about your favorite science fiction book” is pretty much a textbook case for how to have good intentions but conduct an interview that’s, when you step back and think about it some more, biased. It’s checking for subculture-fit in ways that have nothing to do with how they are at work.

On the other hand, whiteboard tests are also useless.

If you want to make a better interview, I’d suggest you have an interview guide. Not a manager? Just write your own for your interviews and keep to it. This protects you from unconsciously giving the person who looks the part easy questions.

If you want to check for culture fit, talk about things at work that matter. Are you worried someone is going to talk down to a junior engineer? Make them talk about a time they had to mentor a junior engineer. Did they succeed? What did they do? Ask them about the best project manager or doc writer they worked with. Are you worried that they aren’t serious enough about getting shit done at work? Talk about the worst incident they ever were part of, but not the technical parts, just how they made sure it got fixed. Are you worried that they aren’t a good team player? Ask about their best collaborations. Or how they organized work on a large project. Or the time that they took one for the team. If you think through how the last crop of yuppies pissed you off for a while and break it down into questions that they’d not have a good answer to, you should be able to make a nice set of behavioral screening questions and a set of attributes that you want the person to display in their answers.

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.

The fact that you even weighed the pros and cons of your proposal puts you light years ahead of most hiring managers.

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.

I’m often very much in the same boat as you. I’m the one in the team interview who afterwards is like “pleeease let’s go with person B, because person A just, y’know, … bad gut feeling?” And I wish I could ask more personal questions in the interview itself. However, I’ve been lightly warned (and subsequent web searches confirm this) that it’s a legal grey area to ask about personal stuff in interviews. If they bring it up, or maybe you drop an obscure ST:TNG reference and they pick up on it, by all means, they’re “one of us” so go for it. But on the flip side, you might hear something that, say if you don’t end up hiring them, could be grounds for a discrimination lawsuit.

These are two separate questions. Is the person into sci fi and is the person an asshole because they think people in lower ranked positions are inferior as people.

If you asked me my favorite sci fi and I said it was the Black Science comics, or Atomic Robo, is that a yes or a no? And how does it tell you whether I’m an asshole to people in junior positions? I work with a set of diverse people who are all pretty cool but I don’t think that most of them are, well, “like me” in a standard cultural sense. In fact I know they aren’t.

I had a boss who would interview people with relevant questions but most of what he was looking for was people who were not afraid of him, lol. He was a very intense person and you had to be able to push back if you thought he was wrong.

I think if you made it funny it might be ok, it is a question that would put me, personally, at ease, but how are these yuppies sneaking through your screening at all? It’s not evident in the interview?

@[email protected] looks like you want to promote a mono culture? a lot of brilliant people I work with don’t read scifi, or anything like that. It is still a pleasure to work with them.

Also, working for money is exactly what we all do, it is great to do what you want but some people just care abour their paycheck and that is fine.

Finally, IANAL, but I suspect it could be a discriminatory practice to select people who like things that you like.

I interviewed for a gig that explocitly stated “Must have a strong preference for Marvel over D.C.” Got the job, been on it going on 14 years now.

As others have commented, it could be a discriminatory thing you’re stepping yourself into.

For example, what about dyslexics, or those with ADHD who can’t focus on books but enjoy coding or other sci fi media?

You do you, ultimately, but using that as a qualifying factor when hiring feels like a slippery slope.

That question is likely illegal to ask. Only ask questions relevant to your job. Culture fit is will your form a book club together, it is can you work with this person and then go home. If you are regularly doing such social activities with everyone you work with outside of work hours you need to get a life. (it is okay to make friends with people you work with, but that isn’t a goal.)

This seems terrible.

• Weeds out a lot of people since half of Americans don’t read books at all.

Is that always a good thing? What about people who don’t read much but listen to audiobooks and go to the theatre a lot?

• Theoretically filters out people who love this kind of tech subculture from people who are just in it for the money

One of the best programmers I ever worked with was ‘in it for the money’. He was what Goldman Sachs used to call ‘long term greedy’ though which meant he had an eye on the success of the project above and beyond his own responsibilities and his own code. That’s why he was one of the best programmers.

I think you could get the same info from opinions on movies.

Interest in coding doesn’t necessarily imply an interest in science fiction either.

The ladder climbing type are easy to route out, just ask them if/how they engage in synergy outside of work.

I like to ask candidates to tell me about a design pattern, or a framework, or a coding principle that they really appreciate and which changed how they think about or write code. It’s an open-ended way to show me they care about the craft.

People who find the field interesting and somewhat fun (AKA not just lucrative) usually have these kinds of preferences or paradigm-shifting moments / learnings. People who can’t come up with anything for this question tend to be real junior or just in it for the wrong reasons. Or so I tell myself, anyway.