Advice to Tech Interviewers: Focus less on general questions and more on fundamental understanding and match.

I've recently had the chance to participate in multiple tech interviews, and I've noticed a recurring theme. Many interviewers seem to expect candidates to voluntarily divulge specific details about theoretical concepts or practices. The problem is that no matter how the question is framed, many qualified candidates don't mention these things, either because they assume it's common knowledge or because they typically recall such information in a work setting. In an actual work environment, these candidates would naturally apply the very practices they are expected to discuss during an interview. Furthermore, even if they're not familiar with a particular term, abbreviation, or practice, their strong foundational understanding allows them to quickly look it up or consult resources like GPT for clarification.

A more effective interviewing approach is to focus on identifying red flags, such as cultural and technological mismatches, or fundamental misunderstandings of technology. These are the aspects that can't be easily Googled or quickly rectified. By doing so, you'll avoid the pitfall of having to later educate an adult team member on basic concepts.

A few production performance suggestions from Elon Musk 👏

1. 🧠 Make your requirements less dumb

• Requirements made by you or given to you most probably are dumb
• It's particularly dangerous if a smart person gives them to you as you might not question them enough

• If you're not adding back, then you're not deleting enough
• Don't add requirements just in case - don't hedge your bets

• Don't optimize if it shouldn't exist

• But don't go faster if you haven't worked on the other 3 things first, which means if you're digging your grave, don't dig your grave faster

I'd like to share a confession with you, as well as a very controversial conclusion.

When asked how to justify initiatives for emerging enterprises, I used to advocate for creating a Business Case document. A simple, straightforward, clear one-pager that explains why the project should be started and how expensive it will be. I was wrong. At least in terms of specifying the total project cost. Estimating the amount of work is pointless.

Douglas Hubbard discovered in his research that project costs have no significant information value. [https://lnkd.in/e55N-X6T]

In other words, it almost doesn't matter how you estimate the project.

What truly matters:

👉🏼 Whether anyone will use it at all (and pay you money for it)

👉🏼 How quickly the system is rolled out. What is the cost of delay? (Let's talk about that separately.)

👉🏼 Whether the project will be canceled

And in the end, the cost of delay—how much it costs you per unit of time to not deliver the feature.

Yeah, that's hard to swallow for those of us who used to estimate projects before they started.

But if you think about it, it makes perfect sense.

Instead of making large investments, regardless of the cost of the big picture, we need to invest in small batches of prototypes, interviews, and tests of the hypothesis that people will use it and are willing to pay for it. The product should be designed to create value from the very beginning and get validation from the corporate or external markets.

If you're interested in Customer Experience / User Experience, I can highly recommend this expert, mentor, and author of the book "Customers know you suck".

#userexperience

#customerexperience

https://lnkd.in/dR5dNnxi

Fun fact on corporate values and employee involvement.

Some CEOs from my circle will find it disappointing but don't be.

A survey conducted by Gallup in 2016 found that only 27% of U.S. employees strongly believe in their company's values, while 40% were ambivalent, and 33% disagreed or strongly disagreed. This highlights the need for organizations to better communicate and reinforce their values among employees.

Another survey conducted by PwC in 2018, called the "Global Culture Survey," included responses from over 2,000 professionals across various industries. The study found that 63% of the respondents believed that their company's purpose and values were important to them personally. However, 27% of respondents felt that their company's values were not consistently lived out by leadership, which can affect employees' belief in these values.

Speaking of the second one, from how it is formulated, I believe many of those professionals, when answering corporate values, are important personally, actually meant that they are personally influenced by a corporate environment, which is obvious. This means it will not be 63% but somewhat less, closer to responses from the first study.

From my practice, it very much correlates with interest in Personal Development Plans and real, not simulated, interest in the improvement of Team Performance Improvement. So, it's all about not-prioritizing their work environment over outside work matters.

A few years ago, I came to the conclusion that it is just fine.

Some people are not on the right curve in their life, and some people are not generally interested in the company or their personal growth (but they still create value. That is why they still work with you, aren't they, right? Right?).

There are a variety of opinions - I know many managers speak about the "extra mile" their employees must go. Still, they risk (and some of them got there) creating activity imitation values as a part of so-called "accidental values". That's a huge danger.

More about this later, if you be interested.

Others are just getting disappointed. But the reality is - you always have this proportion. This is an interesting metric, but I would like to discourage you from focusing on the direct improvement of this metric. Fighting with feedback does not make much sense.

In short conclusion, I would like you to find a sense of peace with this information. 🙂

📕Don't worry if you do not remember the details from the books you've read. They've already become a part of you.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/06/20/books/#:~:text=Dear Quote Investigator%3A The well,so%2C they have made me

Suppose you are a music lover and business manager and are interested in the best practices of Agile Methodologies, Design Thinking, and Service Design with Branding and Organizational Change. In that case, you may be interested in a fascinating framework I recently stumbled upon.

The guys offer the Music Thinking Framework🎶 as a mindset for inspiration and collaboration within the business.

I stumbled upon their Proposition development map template in the Miro library, and they immediately caught my attention with such a creative approach.

#Technology

#Innovation

#DesignThinking

#MusicThinking

#ServiceDesign

#Recommendation

"All models are wrong, but some are useful."

George Box, 1976

If you do not listen to your customers' pain, then they will do the thinking and make demands about what the solutions should be, no matter how impractical. Once those demands are voiced, it's hard to walk them back.

Matt Mochary