Welcome to Yoyodyne! We're proud of our relaxed, low-pressure engineering culture where we value thoughtful, collaborative solutions over heroism.

Now, for your interviews you'll be wrestling a series of sharks, against a clock.

Inevitably: "yeah that's terrible, but here at Trioptimum, we work really hard to put interviewees at ease"

I don't care if you have beanbag chairs and a fucking relaxation fountain, if you are asking someone to complete a challenge in 45 minutes that's more pressure than they will EVER face on the job if the job is as advertised.

I offer "rubber duck" sessions where people pay me to spend 45-120m with them. In that time I have to hit the ground running, understand their project, and help them out in a way that justifies my price.

That shit is normal FOR ME. It should not be normal for your eng org.

"Works well under stress" is what most interviews are actually testing for, no matter how "laid back" they claim to be.

You wanna know who already has a higher ambient level of stress than anyone on your white boy dev team? EVERYONE ELSE who your D&I team claims to be trying to hire.

I am tweeting about this right now because I am FUCKING ANGUISHED at the number of private messages I've received over the months I've been talking about hiring that say 1) "Thanks, I thought it was just me"; and 2) "I'm thinking of getting out of tech altogether."

The people saying it's driving them to leave the tech industry? It's never the white cis hetero men.

"Oh, but OUR big-name tech co doesn't interview like that"

TRUST ME, THEY DO

"Interviewing is just a game, you have to learn the rules and play it"

Gee, where else have I heard that... oh right, every social system that has ever been set up to tacitly exclude "Those People" without being visibly racist or sexist.