Interviews make us drink

Published April 14, 2016

In order to work professionally as a front end developer, there is always an intense interview process. In this episode, we share our experiences and thoughts on the interviews we’ve done in the past. Not only have we had experience being interviewed, we’ve also had a lot of experience interviewing other engineers for jobs at our companies. We share things we’re looking for when we interview candidates to join our teams.

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Ryan Burgess
Welcome to the fifth episode of Front End happy hour, I can't believe you've already made it to five episodes. I wanted to take a minute to thank all of our listeners for all the feedback encouragement you'd receive. It's great to hear people are enjoying the show, so we will continue to do it. As a front end developer, one of the most difficult things to deal with is the interview process. In today's episode, we will share our experience and thoughts on the interview process. If you've listened to any of our episodes previously, we like to pick a keyword and every time that keyword is said, We drink to it. So what's today's keyword? candidate, candidate?

Derrick Showers
Awesome.

Ryan Burgess
So every time we say the word candidate, we will take a drink from now on, you don't have to take a drink yet. And also we encourage our listeners to drink along. I know we've all had a lot of opinions on to share on interviewing. Before we do, let's quickly go around the table and give a brief introduction of each of our panelists. Along with introductions. I'd also like to share the weirdest question I've ever been asked on an interview. I was once asked what HTML element would you be and why? So I think I would love to hear what everyone would answer that question. Ryan, you want to start? Where are you? And what HTML element would you be?

Ryan Anklam
I'm writing a poem. I'm a UI engineer at Netflix. And I would probably say I'm a div tag, just because I'm kind of ambiguous, but I'm pretty useful.

Derrick Showers
Nice.

Jem Young
Pretty good. That is good.

Derrick Showers
I'm Brian Holtz. I'm a junior senior engineer. And I would definitely be an iframe. Because I would like to do sandboxing the world only occasionally maliciously reaching out to messenger. Nice.

Ryan Anklam
I don't want you touching my don't talk to my dog.

Jem Young
It's true. I'm Jem Young. I'm a senior engineer at Netflix.

Derrick Showers
I was elements,

Jem Young
I wouldn't be a blink tag.

Ryan Burgess
You got to explain why you'd be

Jem Young
great. I, I wish they hadn't taken it out

Sarah Federman
because he's appreciated. Oh. I'm Sarah. I'm a UI engineer at LinkedIn. And if I were an HTML element, I'd be a definition less because nobody knows what it is or what to do with it. But it's technically and semantically

Derrick Showers
correct. I am not prepared for this.

Ryan Anklam
Let's just talk about Sarah's sticker on her laptop right now because that is the best sticker I've ever seen. She has the left pad and pen sticker.

Ryan Burgess
It is great.

Sarah Federman
It was free.

Derrick Showers
I am Derek showers. I am a UI engineer at LinkedIn. And if I were an HTML HTML element, I would be a UL tag because the jumbled?

Jem Young
I don't think I've ever used ever

Ryan Burgess
really you should. What if you want an ordered list?

Derrick Showers
No, it's always on order. I'm

Augustus Yuan
Augustus Yuan in front end engineer at Evernote. And if I was in HTML element, I'd be in SVG tag, because I personally would not show myself on older browsers.

Ryan Burgess
That's great.

Derrick Showers
And just to be clear, everyone else saw this question before.

Ryan Burgess
With Eric didn't pay attention to Slack before. I'm Ryan Burgess. I'm a UI engineering manager at Netflix. And if I was in HTML elements, I would probably say I'd be a button because I think one of my biggest pet peeves is everyone who puts a Class button on a diverse fan take use a button tag, it

Sarah Federman
works better. But you have to strip all of a salesperson. Sure, yes.

Ryan Burgess
And why Brian? I want to hear Brian's swag. He's accessible

Derrick Showers
to everybody. Yay. Nice. Let me do so you have to.

Ryan Burgess
Alright, alarm along with the panelists here today. I'm sure everyone has had good and bad experiences with interviews. I know I have. But let's start the discussion on more of the positive side. What has been The best interview you've ever been on what made it so great?

Derrick Showers
Once it started out?

Jem Young
I don't my, my canned answer should be Netflix was the best interview I've ever had. It was really good. But my best interview ever was giffy based in New York, that was an interviewer I walked in. And they're like, We know all about you, because we actually looked you up beforehand. So we know your code, we know you can code so we're gonna ask you some, like, general questions. And they're more abstract about, like how you architect things rather than, like, insult me with a FizzBuzz question or something like that. And I think the interviewer that gave me like a nice swag bag, and then they brought me back for an onsite dimethyl team, we had lunch together and they asked me like, you like play softball, like what sort of things you into. And I like I felt really part of that team. Ultimately, I had to turn them down for a different offer. But fantastic interview, I like it to this day, even though I turn them down, I still recommend people in New York, I'd like to interview they're good people. So like, that's a good point of like interviewing, like, don't burn your bridges, because I've heard everybody's heard now he's gonna say something either good or bad about you. So just top tip.

Ryan Anklam
I guess I'll I'll do the

Derrick Showers
biased answer and say, LinkedIn, or PAL. I mean, I took the job based on the interview experience. And because I been at Apple at the time, and I really was only there for five months and didn't have a huge desire to jump ship. Just the interview experiences, like it's kind of the same lines as what you're talking about. Jam is like, a lot of, you know, there's obviously technical questions. And, you know, a lot of that are in the pre screening, but the on site interview was a lot of like, grabbing lunch with somebody grabbing lunch with one of the principal, developers and time and, you know, just chatting about technically related cultural questions. And I think that that's very important. And something that gets forgotten about a lot of companies at least.

Sarah Federman
I kind of like fullington interview too, especially since you interviewed me.

Ryan Burgess
So Derek, is good to you in the interview?

Sarah Federman
Yeah, he didn't make me feel that. My think my other favorite one might have been Yelp. Actually. They started with a code pen interview. And then they managed to go through on my Skype interview, just all through like, in three questions just completely go over my JavaScript knowledge, like closures and like MapReduce, and like, also, it was fun.

Derrick Showers
I really liked interviewing at Evernote, but actually one of the interviews I was really impressed with was, have you ever I interviewed at Uber once, and their tech screen was just like, really well thought out and planned. What they did was they asked me a question that started off small, they had like a small task for me to do create something. And then they slowly added more to it. And I started to realize that like, depending on the route that I went, in the beginning, I might have, it might have been more difficult to tackle on the future tests and the problem. And I could immediately tell that it was like one of those kind of problems that really assesses if you're the type of developer that will go back and fix to like, address the new story or whatever problem that's at hand. Or if you're the type of person that just like the hack on things. And I also liked how the interviewer was just like, really professional. He didn't give me like too many hints. He was just like, hey, you know, this is what you have. And he was like, kind of to be frank like no bullshit, you know, he like, it was very clear what he expected of me. But he also like, gave me the stuff that I know, like, you probably just look this up. So I'm just gonna give it to you. This is like something that you could use, like, how would you use it? And was just like, really chill and super, super professional? Yeah, I

Ryan Anklam
think the one that stands out for me was probably Netflix. It was gonna take a lot to get me to move out here in the first place. I was in Wisconsin, we knew we had all family, their policy market was really good at the time, or cheap compared to the Bay Area. But you know, Netflix was great. We came out here, they had me to solve that UI problem. And you meet with a lot of higher ups in an organization to make it through the first part of the day. And I thought that was pretty cool. And I really appreciated that. So

Ryan Burgess
actually, I like that about the interview too, is that you're you're meeting a variety of people. It's not just meeting with engineers doing coding challenges, you're meeting with some designers and you're meeting with our HR and there's definitely a variety of people that you meet with and like a director like it's great because you actually get to meet different people that aren't doing the same thing that you may be but you get to meet a wide variety.

Derrick Showers
haven't interviewed a terrible amount and most of them that I've had have been pretty, pretty bad. pretty terrible.

Ryan Burgess
So you'll have the good stories to share in the bad section.

Derrick Showers
I have plenty of bad stories to share. Netflix was pretty good. I mean, despite one part of the interview with with one particular person it was really awful.

Jem Young
Writing

Ryan Burgess
feedback is like don't

Derrick Showers
hire that guy. They value your opinion here. No, actually I did like it even Ryan's are despite his best efforts It was heard. And when I did, it was difficult enough to show knowledge that I did have. I think there's always flaws in everyone's interview process. I don't think anyone does it well yet. So yeah, all the whole further speaking until we talked about that story. It's gonna be like the rest of the podcasts in your 30 minute rant. Brian,

Ryan Burgess
Brian Holt rants. So I'm sure we've all experienced the pre screen material, basically getting questions, coding challenges before you actually do an on site interview, or even sometimes a phone screen. What are your thoughts on actually doing those coding challenges before you actually interview? What's everyone's experience been like doing them? No,

Derrick Showers
I'm still torn on this. Because I think that the feel like it goes kind of anywhere from build an app to maybe like a phone screen with live coding, right? There's kind of like two extremes. Whereas phone screen with live coding takes a relatively short amount of time building an app takes probably a lot more time. My wife Sarah was on the show. Not too long ago, she she has she's going she was going through the interview process before she she landed at Apple. But so I was like, able to witness a lot of this stuff. I think, you know, it's interesting, because I think the building an app is more in line with what we do on a daily basis. So I like that part of it being on a 45 minute phone call and trying to relinquish everything you know, is very difficult. And it's not sometimes not a good reflection of what you know, because nerves or whatever, whereas an app or doing a code challenge, you have more reflection of what you know. And because you're it's a more of a natural setting. Yes, it's more indicative of what you're actually doing on a day to day basis is like you're cool, and you're able to look everything up, you're able to like the flip side of that is do do people have time to spend days on building an app for an interview? And for a lot of people? That's not the case? I know. That's a big argument.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah. When I think I've actually given candidates, you know, yeah, both. So we've given those tasks for different interviews. And I've always tried to keep it fairly light in the fact that I don't think anyone should have to spend more than two hours actually coding an exercise, I think you can build a good enough exercise to get enough feedback how the candidate does to actually tell whether or not that worked or not, I don't think you need to be doing like a six to eight hour challenge or days of challenges. That's too much is asking way too much that someone's like, that's a full time job basically doing it one,

Ryan Anklam
I interviewed with Envision app when I first decided I wanted to be a front end engineer, instead of a full stack developer and what they did is they give you are a little apps build that actually pay you to do it. So interesting. Yeah. So that totally Yes, despite being a candidate for them, but I think I would still

Ryan Burgess
have, I would still have troubles with that, in the sense that deal, you're probably doing a full time job. And so even Yeah, you get the added incentive of getting extra money, but you're still having a lot of extra time, you can set the

Ryan Anklam
you know how long it's taking based on the requirements, you can say I'll have an invite, so they're not gonna have it the next day or whatever, they're, they're really chill about it.

Derrick Showers
I mean, it's pretty much a token to say, like, be recognized as valuable. Yeah, exactly. One of

Sarah Federman
my favorite pre screens was actually googly. They did like a take home quiz that was a little bit of coding and a little bit of like, discussion questions like, when would you use a CSS animation or JavaScript animation kind of questions. But they also, once you got to the onsite stage, they paid for like your fly out, and your hotel and whatever. But they also paid you for freelancing for that time. It was like a three day project, which I thought was actually pretty cool. Yeah,

Derrick Showers
I was just gonna say when I was in college Bibi came to her school. And they did like a combination of those two things where they gave a project. So people who came here and said, Hey, if you build this, we'll pay you some money, and we'll fly you out. And then you get a WordPress and freelance for us. So that was like a really interesting strategy. And I think the other good thing about that, too, is, let's say that you're you're interviewing for a company that is using Angular, and they want you to know Angular, I think it's cool that like in rescreen, like it more, because I think it's more valuable to have somebody come in know, that is able to learn a new technology or a new framework, or whatever it be, then somebody who knows it, right? It's

Ryan Anklam
a really good point. I wonder, what do you guys think about interviewing for a specific framework?

Ryan Burgess
I actually think it's the wrong idea. I'd rather see. Yeah, I'd rather see someone know JavaScript than necessarily write something in Angular or react. You can learn that any you know, anyone who gets on board on that, but knowing the fundamentals of JavaScript isn't the most important thing. I'd rather see that and knowing how to write react. I completely agree. For one of my interviews here at Netflix, there's a guy that didn't really know vanilla J S, but he Angular really well, so he asked me to do it. And I was like, Yeah, sure. And he is a simple UI problem that I get most candidates, but he solved it in like five minutes an Angular, because all that's there built out, but I didn't want to see him, you know, engineer how easy it is. It's an awkward time in

Derrick Showers
the interview, we're like, I guess. Then I just had to kind of be engineering museum, you know, jsem little hands and stuff. But it was interesting interview. So I wanted to talk a little bit about the dark side about take on problems. Yeah. So I've a really good friend that recently got a job in the front end community. And he got his take home problem, and he brought it to me, we sat down, we architected together, I helped design it out, I did, like I did a huge code review forum. I built an API proxy server forum, like a bunch of stuff that probably wouldn't have been able to achieve on his own time. But I did a forum because I don't give a flying pocket they think he's qualified or not, I just want to get a great paying job. So Right. So okay, similar situation, because my, my wife is new into the community. And obviously, it's my vested interest for her to find a good paying job, right. But I think that maybe that's a little bit different scenario. But I think even in our day to day, we're doing that, right. We're reaching out to others for help. And I guess I'm kind of exaggerating the situation. Like, I understand that there's someone emaciated, but that's the issue that everyone brings up is like, oh, yeah, can somebody else do it for you? And obviously, that you, you have to balance it with a real interview. I think like using your resources,

Ryan Burgess
I think asking questions and like looking at, hey, can you look at this, like almost as a pull request. It's like, Hey, can you look at this and tell me what I could improve on? I don't think that's bad, maybe doing someone's mind. And you're right, though. And yeah, you don't care, you're helping your friend. And that makes a lot of sense. And so but I think it's up to the company to also evaluate that, too. Is this exercise or challenge was done really? Well, we're bringing the candidate on site. Yeah. So you're bringing, you're bringing them on site after it. And you have to interview them? Well to understand if they actually knew what they were solving, or if someone else did it.

Ryan Anklam
I've seen a couple of candidates that we had take home interviews, some amazing code, and then you get them on site. Something that just isn't adding up. And you can tell they've probably had a little bit of help with their with their take home. That's the other thing too is

Derrick Showers
that the take home tests, or the Take Home app, or whatever you want? It's, I think it's cool that you could then as an interviewer people, can you bring that candidate in? And talk about their code? You know, because a that gets rid of the issue that Ryan brought up, be like they have something that they spent the last however many days or hours on, they're very familiar with it, hopefully. And if they're not, and they shouldn't want it? Yeah, that's always the first part of a interview me hang out with take home usually have something go in and go over there. Yeah, so kind of funny story. At Evernote, we do a coding challenge. And we actually have this thing with the candidate. So it turned into this turned into this project, and it looked awesome, had unit tests was building Angular and look great. And then I notice he left his yo RC, it was all generated with yoga. And how much of this is legit? So I had like a huge debate with a bunch of people about it. We were like, well, you know, he, I guess he has to kind of know what's going on it's application, you know, add the unit tests and stuff, because all the unit tests were right. And so like, let's bring him in. So and yeah, it was actually kind of shocking, because he didn't turn out as well as we thought like coding, channeling, and he just kind of maybe just got nervous or something. But yeah, so I think it's really important that there is like some code, like live coding interview, that happens. Interesting. You could you could look at, especially if you require them to do some sort of a Git workflow, you know, right. Yeah, you're looking at like, how long? Because they're not gonna, I would assume the normal candidate is not going to think about that kind of thing on there.

Sarah Federman
As long as it's not a hacker rank test.

Ryan Anklam
How big of a issue do you think nerves aren't interviews? I know some people that I've worked with them and they're really strong coders. They just have trouble interviewing because nerves, it gets the best of them. Yes.

Ryan Burgess
You're also doing something that you're not normally used to doing. You're putting yourself out there and having to explain code that you've written on the spa. You know, people are judging you. It's not a matter of being someone like your peers that you're like talking to a problem or having something on like a PR that you're like, Oh, hey, yeah, you could do this better. You're like, oh, okay, cool. Like you're showing you you don't feel as guilty

Ryan Anklam
gem judges me every day. I don't think

Derrick Showers
it's inherently a confrontational process, that you're asking people questions and you're expecting them to say something intelligent that I think doesn't inherently confrontational and there are people that don't deal with compensation.

Ryan Anklam
Jem did a great job. I remember we interviewed Jem, we all have we all sat down room afterwards. And like,

Derrick Showers
we have a few with.

Sarah Federman
You could argue that being able to deal with like a confrontational situation is a skill that is required for the job.

Derrick Showers
I think it is, I think you're right. I wasn't actually thinking about that. But I think it's also one skill. So like, you could be really bad at that one skill and completely blow interview because that's the one skill. I'm not very good at new social interactions. Like, as soon as I get to know people, I've opened up more but more beer. Actually, that's super interesting, because recently, we had a candidate who was really, really good at talking, like he

Ryan Burgess
just did like

Derrick Showers
the catch. He was really, really good at talking. He was able to express his thoughts really well. And he could architect stuff really well. But you can never get them to code, which is really interesting. Who just never want to code you're like, oh, what code was right? Oh, well, I would just you know, this class by hand wavy. Yeah.

Ryan Anklam
Yes, exactly. I've interviewed the hand wavy guy.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, definitely seen those people. Blah, blah, blah, rants, we'll get it done. Yeah, it's like, don't worry. I'm gonna pull the Hot Topic thing or keyword and just say it in stellar. So, yeah. Alright, so now let's move on to maybe the more negative side of some of the interviews, I want to start off by saying, Have you ever wanted to walk out of an interview? And like, what made it so bad that you were just like, I'm, uh, Has that ever happened to you? Maybe you didn't actually walk out but felt like it was just not a good interview. Maybe it was you didn't do well, or you just were like, I don't want to work with these people.

Derrick Showers
Okay, yeah.

Ryan Burgess
I've been waiting for Brian, this is gonna be the Brian hold.

Derrick Showers
So, hands down the worst interview that I ever was being interviewed in. I walked in, I was interviewing for a front end position. And they sat me down. They said, Okay, we need you to program. Well, first of all, they had two candidates interviewing at the same time separated by curtain. Oh, so I could hear the other guys interview going on. He was a fresh, fresh grad. And they sat us down and said, All right, here's your coding test. And they just handed it to us. And they hand me a laptop with Eclipse open. In front end position asked me to program a fellow in Java. Wow, actually, it was like a whole series of the last things up. Hello. Okay. And so it's a board game.

Jem Young
I'm referring to the players

Ryan Burgess
to make the Shakespeare play Othello in Java.

Sarah Federman
Side note. Maybe it was Hemingway, Hemingway,

Derrick Showers
from Angus. So I sat down I got through for the problem. I couldn't even use Google and in the five years, I got through for the problems. Successes by Nicolas Powell. I was like okay. Hello, 20 minutes in Java. See, I came to this like, Well, you didn't do anything. I was like, fuck you.

Ryan Burgess
What did I waste my time here for Yeah,

Derrick Showers
I was like, here's the logic is like if we're doing JavaScript like the position you want me to do then this be great. It'd be done. But you have you do it in Java you modifier.

Ryan Burgess
So what happens if one lot of front end engineers don't know job? That's a fair statement to say. And another what happens if you didn't know the game? Othello?

Derrick Showers
That's some bullshit explanation for I don't so and I didn't. So anyway, down the line, like, maybe four years later, after this interview, I got called this company again. Okay, you want to interview? Yeah, I do want to interview. So I go around to and, like, this was just like meeting with the CEO on a separate note for a different position. And he's like, okay, he's like, Well, we're, like, prepared to offer you these kind of things. Like, by the way is like, I interview with you guys before, this, this and this, and the CEO was just mortified. He's like, Oh, my God, like this. Like this is not even going to happen every now it's probably not. He's like, Well, we have fixed our interview process that helps me as I still sore from that so that I didn't walk out of that I should have because what the hell I'm not gonna write Java. So

Ryan Burgess
fair enough. When you're going for a front end position, I don't suck you should be

Ryan Anklam
writing Java.

Jem Young
I had one worthy. I walked in, sat down. The senior senior in Engineering Manager. So like the guy in charge, he's like, okay, you know, some JavaScript, like some basic stuff is really easy. Then he's like, yeah, I really hate JavaScript, language. And like, right there, I'm like, Well, this is what I'm gonna be writing. So if you hate it, then what am I doing here? It's like, no, no, no, no, you know, you gotta use it, right? That's like, yeah, that's pretty good. He's like, can you tell me what this does? And it was array plus array, like, just the bracket equals one. I forget. I think maybe I forget. Exactly. Who knows that. I said, Well, I don't know. Cuz I wouldn't ever do this. Like, how is this relevant? Anything but should have walked out there?

Ryan Anklam
Because watching one too many what? And

Derrick Showers
this is the truth. And it happens so often. I have a specific story, but it's just the trivia questions. You know, and I think that I was gonna say, I think it's just that is an easy way to evaluate someone, I guess, right? Like, it's like, oh, they didn't know what this. They don't know that low levels of JavaScript. It's a comparable, right? You feel like you can measure that. Look at the know this. Answer this.

Ryan Burgess
And it's probably some, like some of those things even like the array equals array. When are you using that? If you didn't know that? Does that mean, you're a bad JavaScript engineer? Yeah, yeah, we're going wrong, kind of wait, what does that again,

Derrick Showers
it's those questions are easily answered by going to chrome and open up the console.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, but in the interview, do you have the chance to do that? Right. You don't actually have probably the computer or chrome. I'm just saying, but Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. Is Oh, and if you're, if you're dealing with that, in your day to day job, you can Google that and Stack Overflow or wherever you want to go to will tell you the answer. And you'll put that in into whatever you're programming. And that's okay. Sure. And

Derrick Showers
I guess I guess it's like you as a interviewer, evaluate the answer, as the way candidate is thinking through it. Thank you, Jem. Then that's different. I think that, you know, trivia questions are fine if you as an interviewer are evaluating how candidate answers the question. We all say, what is Ray plus Ray? And we're like, Oh, what is that? And we're all trying to figure it out as intelligent human beings and like trying to even if we don't come up with the right answer, it's just important that I think just looking for that skill that they're able to problem solve.

Sarah Federman
Yeah, there's a balance. I mean, like, some trivia questions, you could consider like the whole hoisting questions to be trivia questions. But those are things that you're going to have to deal with almost every day. So I don't mind those. I think probably one of my worst interview experiences those. I had just gotten this interview for a career fair. And I was like, purely design nature at this point. But I was like, you know, rear end to learn front end development and get an internship. And I walked into this interview after talking to this guy at a booth, and he was all like, grilling me on this one project that I built. And so I went back, because I was totally BS in this whole conversation. I went back and I stayed up the whole night, and I fixed this project, thought he was going to ask me about it. Because in design interviews, they asked you about your portfolio. I walked into this interview, I didn't even know what whiteboard interviews were. And he just sits down, he doesn't even say hi, or good morning, it was like eight o'clock in the morning. And he's just like, so I'm your client, write me the CSS scroll points API on the whiteboard. And it was just the most ridiculous thing I've ever had to do. And obviously, it takes hundreds of lines to do properly, which is why they're very intense polyfills for this purpose. And at the end, he was just like, so I guess I should introduce myself now. I think he smiled once. And it was one I like complimented his new JavaScript engine being faster than Google's.

Jem Young
So I've seen that a lot. And it's something that really irks me, and it's something I work on personally, is you get a lot of like developer arrogance, like, oh, you should work for us, because we're like, the baddest thing, and I don't have to be nice to you. Because you're the one coming to me for a job rather than like, it's a dialogue. There's winners, we should be it's just, oh, yeah, we're a big tech company. And you know, you don't have that

Ryan Burgess
bothers me so much is that you, as coming in to interview with a company, you're also interviewing them? Do you do I actually want to work here and I think that's super important. And even 10 times all actually talk to a candidate. And I typically suggest that ask, you know, ask us like a lot of good questions and see if you actually want to work here because I think that's super important. I want someone that's going to come in and be very happy with what they're doing and want to be with it.

Derrick Showers
I mean, it's us evaluating them, but they're also evaluating us. It's kind of reverse psychology in a way to is like, I go into an interview, and I don't even introduce myself or say anything. And that candidate and that candidate still wants or she still wants to work for, you know, the company that I'm working for. That's, that's a red flag. I can't imagine walking into an interview, and just sitting down and asking a question you just can't imagine.

Jem Young
I, so I've worked with enough talent coordinators, over the years, and they they get to the final say, it's an offer. And then the person turns them down. And they're like baffled, because it's down more money or something like that, but they never actually questioned. Maybe the interview was terrible. Maybe they got away through it, because they're just really good. But they decided they want more for your company, because the interviews, and no one ever thinks about that. It's always like, Oh, it's funny, or they wanted like a different language or something. But I

Ryan Burgess
think if you have a good recruiting team, though, too, they typically ask those questions. Not not that every you know, every person is going to provide that information after an interview. But if you can try and get some of that it is good, valuable feedback for you and your team to like understand that not that every recruiting team is doing that and not that every candidate will actually share that information.

Derrick Showers
When a candidate. I think that's super important, right? It is normally candidates will just say all the money,

Ryan Anklam
or I've got it better. I didn't realize the word candidate.

Sarah Federman
On the topic of like candidates, actually evaluating companies, there is something to be said, for interviews being too easy. I mean, I've had interviews that were just, I got a FizzBuzz question was, and this company ended up making me an offer. And I was just kind of so turned off by the interviewer being too easy, to the point where like, when they gave me this FizzBuzz question they were and I like kind of laugh a little. I was like, Hi, I've never actually got an interview. And they were just like, Oh, you've seen this before? And I was like, Yeah, this was before. This like shit. After that,

Ryan Burgess
it was. Wow. Now, you were actually turned off from it being too easy. Too easy. Does that make sense? That

Derrick Showers
definitely makes sense. Yeah, I think that you, you know, going back to the whole game challenge thing, I think it's good to be challenged. Do you need to get everything exactly perfect? And solve every answer, you know, exactly the way that the interviewer wants you to now I don't think that's should be it should be an intelligent conversation.

Ryan Burgess
So as we've talked about some of the negative experiences, do you think it's okay, as a candidate in an interview, to actually walk out of the interview? Is that okay? Does like or maybe not walk out? And just like not say anything? But is it okay, if you're not feeling the interview? Is it okay to say, look, this is just not going to work out? Like, you know, at some point that you may not want to work at this place? Is it okay to just kind of stop it at some point, say, Thanks for the time. Thank you. No hard feelings. Does that okay? Yeah.

Derrick Showers
Honestly, it doesn't, it should be, I really think it's the most professional way. Because there have been times when I felt like I was wasting their time, or they were wasting my time. It just ends up being a waste of everyone's time. So it really should be like the kind of acepted thing that hey, like, you know, this just isn't gonna work out for me. Thanks for taking time. Please. Do I actually encourage like companies to do that, you know, they should just walk out interviewers they know that aren't going to make it. You know, I think it's just like saves everyone a bunch of time?

Ryan Burgess
Well, it is it's a lot of time and effort on on both parties, and you get real feedback, because that could prompt why why like, what,

Derrick Showers
what about this company? Is that right for you? And you're never going to get that question, or you're never going to

Ryan Burgess
get that either. Yeah, I think it is something that could be practiced more for anyone interviewing. If you're not feeling a company, it's okay to say, hey, you know, it's not gonna work out. You know, not seeing myself here and letting them know that it's a lot of effort been there, you've probably taken the day off from work, why not have the rest of the day to go do something better? Quick,

Sarah Federman
privileged check. I mean, not everybody is able to do that. Like, we do need jobs at some point. So yeah, this is probably

Derrick Showers
second job. Sure. Not first job. Yeah.

Ryan Burgess
No, that's that's a good point is like you do need experience on the resume. And so that can be important. But if it's a if it's really bad, do you want to work for that company?

Derrick Showers
Yeah. This is my first job. You might I might do that for the first job. Yeah.

Ryan Anklam
How about how lucky we are to be funding engineers at this time? Because we're in a position where we can actually say no jobs. This is true. I mean, how many people out there are just looking for any job? And

Sarah Federman
it's so great because it's such an accessible profession. I mean, like Anybody can teach themselves how to do it.

Ryan Burgess
You don't actually have to go to school for it necessarily. It's just, you know, and we've talked about this on a previous episode of how to learn and the schooling behind it is that you don't necessarily need that. So yeah, you could actually learn this and we are in demand. And maybe Yeah, like that point is that we're at a bit privileged in the sense that we do have those opportunities. And we have the opportunity to say, this isn't the right job for me. I'm going to look for another one. And I know there's a million

Derrick Showers
I can use my LinkedIn autoresponder.

Ryan Burgess
LinkedIn, how does 400 is awesome.

Ryan Anklam
It's funny when you complain on Twitter, from bad recruiter emails, booking it, because it's kind of most people I follow that follow me are all engineers, but if I try to play on Facebook for you,

Jem Young
yeah, exactly. On your six figures,

Ryan Anklam
sorry. People knocking down your door, they offer you a job who? Fuck you.

Derrick Showers
Switching gears a little bit, I think another interesting but kind of same topic is What if you're a interviewer, he and you kind of feel the interview isn't going? isn't going well, if so, so jumping into kind of bad experiences that say candidate? Candidate 111 Interesting. Interesting experience I had interviewing someone, he told me that, you know, this interview isn't going well. I think we should just stop here. But he but he said he wanted to stop the interview. I maybe it was a sucky interviewer, I don't know. But at least what he told me was that he just felt like he was inadequate for the it was really awkward at that point, because it was actually a phone interview too. And this clearly isn't going well. So let's just end things here.

Ryan Burgess
Oh, oh, wow. It didn't explain or anything?

Derrick Showers
No, he was just so nervous and so embarrassed. And it really actually wasn't going that early. But he, he thought it had

Sarah Federman
Yeah, don't ever do that. I mean, if it's like, if it's like a cultural fit, or like, you don't like the style of the interview, like, walk out. But if it's like, you don't think you're good enough. There's always something to learn. I mean, yeah, you'll lose a little bit of space. But like,

Derrick Showers
Yeah, I think, yeah, to build on that. I think at that point, it's up to the interviewer to decide that it's not really up to you to decide, oh, I don't feel adequate, like what the interviewer decide that. And then, you know, like for you like as a candidate, you should be looking at this place as a good culture fit. You feel like you're going to grow in this position, and then let the interviewer decide if you're actually qualified for this position.

Ryan Anklam
Yeah, it's perfectly okay to ask the person who's interviewing you. Can I have some help? Or can you give me some pointers and guidance here? I mean, it's not, that's not a deal breaker for me. If someone is stuck on something, and they ask for help. I actually like that. That means if you're stuck on a problem in a real world situation, you're not going to sit there and grind on it for a couple of days. You're gonna go

Ryan Burgess
holy, yeah, one to that point even to hide also look to someone to ask him about his like, even if you do bombed the interview, ask for feedback, how you could do it better. I think that's super important is each interview you do is a learning experience. And even if you're not getting the job, I mean, that sucks. It does. It's hard to hear that hurt on your ego it is. But it's like, why not ask like for the feedback? What could have I done better? Where did I fall short? Yeah. And so that you can work on that.

Sarah Federman
I definitely use something that I learned. And you were my first interview of Beyonce, and I used something you told me and like the fourth interview of that day, like it's worth it to stay around this one.

Ryan Anklam
Back and they didn't give you any feedback. They didn't give you a yes or no, I emailed him four or five times saying just you know, give some feedback. I would love to learn from this. I would love to grow from this very poorly of that company. You know, I would never recommend anyone interview with them. I would never recommend anyone go work for them. It's

Derrick Showers
I think part of it unfortunately, I think part of is our culture like is the same reason you can't go to TGI Fridays and order a burger medium rare, literally can't Yeah. Because I'm sure they had were hit with some sort of some point. And you know, and I think if I

Ryan Anklam
didn't get a yes or no, I got nothing. That

Ryan Burgess
I think especially if it's a technical thing, is it really that? I mean, as a company, it's not that hard to say is like hey, well, even right scalable code, or it wasn't very performant and we were looking for that for for the job that we're hiring for. And you can always give somebody technical feedback. Yeah, whether that's a reason or not they've gotten it they didn't get the job. Yeah, is another story but you could also have the like really like genius who's an asshole and you're like,

Derrick Showers
you could find something exactly that to give them feedback on to at least satisfy that emotion. So I want to I want to pose the question then, is kind of the pocket says, what can you do to give better interviews? Like from the interviewers perspective? I'll answer my own question that I want to give a bit of a depends on the heart interview, that I see a lot on Twitter people saying like this quote, this company asked me this question, it's bullshit, because this is not my day to day job. Well, yeah, to be totally honest, a junior to mid level developer can do my day to day job most days. Like, I'm just writing UI code that read, you know, renders a bit of HTML doesn't CSS, that's a terrible do totally doable job for most junior developers. But unlike those hard days, I ran into a super hard problem. And I have to, you know, dig deep into the internals of node to figure out what's going on, that's when it really pays to be a senior developer, and I need, I'm interviewing you to show me those kinds of skills so that when you run into those kind of problems, those kinds of skills come out, and that it's not gonna pass off to some other developer, but we're not gonna we normally don't hire senior developers. I mean, sometimes. That's all we say, I'm like, well, it's like a senior, but you don't I mean, you have all senior level, like, as far as like, most companies you have, you have somebody that's coming in, and maybe wouldn't be expected to solve the senior level. And I don't work at Netflix. But it just seems like there's still a level of like, I've, you know, been here for a little bit of time. And like I can, I can help to solve some of these things, maybe just proprietary stuff that you just don't know, as somebody coming in. So one thing I think that we could do better to answer Brian's question is, is maybe like, spend some more time in actually collaborating in pair programming with candidates. So a friend of mine, interviewed a gentleman, he was a four hour interview with one developer, but it was together they built like a credit card processing and validation. But it was, I'm sure more to it in four hours, but you know, on a laptop pair programming, trying to figure something out and building something. And I think that's a really good way to evaluate how somebody is thinking and get away from the just real, trying to ask trivia or trying to get this like, very rough valuation.

Ryan Burgess
I think that's also good for the person interviewing as well, is that they're able to say like, Hey, would I work with this guy? Derek, he's interviewing me, would I enter? Or would I, like, want to work with him? And like, Could I see us collaborating? I think that's a cool way to do it. And it's, it's kind of fun, you know, it's like,

Derrick Showers
I think a lot of us, I, myself included, like four hours, I'll have four hours to spend every week or every other week, even, you know, I get about 45 minutes sometimes just because taken out of what I'm trying to get accomplished for that, I think is valuable. And I think it actually helps you.

Ryan Burgess
As a front end engineer, how do you feel about getting an algorithm based question, which is something we don't necessarily deal with on a day to day basis? Is it a good question,

Ryan Anklam
or? No, it's It's not a bad question. Because if you think the DOM is a big tree, right, is you got to know the decisions you're making when you're changing CSS are adding and removing DOM nodes or searching demos, how that's affecting the algorithm behind that. It's a really deep tree,

Sarah Federman
its first junior engineer doesn't even

Ryan Anklam
remind me. I don't think they didn't know that. I mean, definitely.

Sarah Federman
Like,

Derrick Showers
no, I think so. I'm still a junior engineer. There is no introduction.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, you did say that. But you also also said we don't hire junior engineers. Well, you know, you shouldn't somehow through that,

Ryan Anklam
pretty sure I recommended Brian as a senior Junior.

Ryan Burgess
I think it's something like you definitely should know, the concepts. And I agree with actually what Ryan said there is that there is like the DOM is basically a tree and you should understand how to traverse the DOM. I think sometimes though, I've even personally been in interviews where the interview gets a little carried away with what the algorithm is, and it's not so much focused on DOM and it can be a little off putting to have that as something that you're like, oh, I don't deal with sun in normal day to day basis. And even if they don't know how to solve a pickle algorithm, like traversing a binary search tree, whatever, as long as they can think about it intelligently and talk about what they're trying to do. That's more than enough for me. I would

Sarah Federman
much rather interview somebody who like went through and like checked their stack trace on like, the Chrome Developer Tools and hold me like the big was like, oh, to the second or something.

Derrick Showers
Well, also, it's interesting because like, I'm I feel like I'm a junior. Well, it's interesting because I, I'm like a junior Dev. And I also used to hate like these programming questions, but I've kind of noticed that a lot of them get recycled. So eventually start catching on, and like, but I kind of agree with what you were saying like it, as long as you're focusing on like, what they're thinking, and you're not holding them to like, hey, you need to solve this, like bullet proof point like that. I don't think I don't think it's like a big deal. You hit an excellent point that I always make people like, you can you can spend time learning algorithms, eventually the same stuff. Right. Right, exactly. But But what you should be investing your time on is learning the actual practical integration that you're in. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, cuz I know, like, some people will just sit and read, like, the famous coding interview book. And they'll just memorize it, and they'll do well in it. Right, right. Yeah. And that, and that is like, totally like one way of going about it. But I don't recommend it. Like, really, if you just understand it, express your understanding of the problem. You don't have to get it fully right. Don't get it that you figured out that you know, so I think this has been an extremely good point that, like I wanted to make this podcast, which is like, right now, right now, Jesus. interview processes are just throwing off positive signal, like that's the big secret that as an interviewer, you're looking for negative and positive signal, it's almost impossible to discern negative signal. So that basically all we're looking for as positives. There, they can do this thing, they can do this thing where we're trying to check boxes somewhere so that when the the, you know, head of talent comes back and asks, like what happens, here's all checkboxes.

Ryan Burgess
You have to be able to demonstrate your knowledge of whatever you're doing. It's like her front end engineering, it's like you have to demonstrate that knowledge. And if you can't, well, that's what we're evaluating.

Derrick Showers
So as much as you can do, like, if you don't know how to answer the algorithm question, just start going through as much as you can throw off as much positive signal as you possibly can. And like, that's your best shot, that's your best chance. And you can still get hired based on even if you've never even get the answer. Actually, like building on that, like, this was like something that like really changed my perspective, when I started interviewing, rather than being just an interviewee like, the interviewer wants you to succeed, right? I don't think I've ever met someone like, Oh, I hope this guy fails, right? In general, they want you to succeed.

Ryan Burgess
Well, now that we've kind of discussed some of the interview process for someone, you know, being on the side of being interviewed, what about when we interview another person? What is some of the things that are that you're actually looking for?

Ryan Anklam
So first, for me, first and foremost, is I'm looking for someone that I'd want to work with, I want to sit next to I want to pair program with, you know, want to find someone that's confident, but not arrogant. And that could just talk to and have a good conversation with and knowledgeable, but

Derrick Showers
you have to be besties you just have to go

Ryan Burgess
through? Yeah,

Derrick Showers
I mean, if it's a small start up, and yet you're gonna go, basically, yeah.

Jem Young
I mean, so ultimately, what's, what's the point of an interview? We're trying to gauge how intelligent they are and how they think. And I think you hit that point, Brian, and I guess it's too, like, we missed that. As interviewers, we say, Oh, you need to get this algorithm Exactly. Right. Oh, you need to like fill this component. Exactly. Right. And that's wrong. We need to say, even if they don't know it, could they figure it out? If I gave them the problem, because like, 90% of any job is stuff you've seen before. So I don't care about what you know, right? I care about like, how quickly even so as an interviewer, that's what I look for, like,

Ryan Burgess
your process is basically how can you solve this problem or think through it?

Jem Young
I actually prefer when they get stumped. And they actually have to stop and think rather than like, oh, they cut it all out in five minutes, they're done. I'm really then get stumped and say like, okay, what can I do here? So like, what do they do? They asked me, Do they think out loud, they like, write some pseudocode. And try to figure that out. Like, that tells me so much more than how they just got the problem out just right. And would you would you fail

Ryan Burgess
someone who's interviewing? Because it didn't answer the question. If they were able to explain it or explain their process? No, I I'm the same way as I asked the question is, yeah, would be not hire someone because he can't answer the question perfect. Or is it just thinking through the process,

Sarah Federman
there's something to be said, like, you have to communicate with them. Like, when Derek actually asked me my question, my interview, like, I just kind of was like, Oh, I know this, and I started. And then he was like, Well, can you talk me through this? And so I had to stop and I had to go back through it. And it was, it was more helpful to me and to him than just like me coding it all out. answer right. So it wasn't perfect, but it was good enough

Derrick Showers
experience more than the Ryan Brian's. One thing that I would add to this, too, is the ability to accept feedback. And you know, both ways, I'm sure but like, you know, it's, I've interviewed some people, and just, you know, clearly just not Right, and that's fine. But when when we tried to like talk through it, it's kind of like and you know, I'm not saying that I have all the answers as an interviewer, but I do think that there's a level of like, as the interviewee like, I think what happens a lot is some interviewees get very defensive, and they don't want you to think that you're a candidate. But, you know, I think I think it's some natural for some people to to gravitate towards being defensive in a way of like, oh, you know, if I admit that I'm wrong, then I'm failing at this interview. Because you know, they're on your first PR. PR to say, No, this is yes. It's just like you this is the way it's supposed to be I did

Ryan Anklam
wrong, because I asked them a question. And they're doing a great job. And I say, well, why'd you make that decision? They get defensive. And just the way I'm doing it. Exactly.

Ryan Burgess
Right, because I think in our day to day, we ask each other questions and challenge it. And even if we're wrong for challenging, walking through the explanation is more valuable than just saying, oh, yeah, that's perfect. And that's okay. And like, ship it. It's like asking those questions. Super Sure. And all goes back to what Ryan said about,

Derrick Showers
would you work on this person? Yeah. Would I want to work with somebody who I could never give feedback to? Absolutely. What kind of

Ryan Burgess
questions should an interviewer he asked he interviewer? What are some things that you look for in like, value as a question?

Jem Young
My my go to is, how long have you been here? And why are you still here? That tells me so much. You've been here for years. Why? Because the company's great, like, has your so this. This reminds me of a bad interview, I asked the guy. I said, Oh, why have you been here for years? He's like, Well, you know, interviewing is hard. And you know, this is a good company. Like, I know, the code base. And I was like, this is I'm not gonna work here. I turned on the offer that question, because why do they want to work with something's not passionate? Like they're there? Because interviewing is hard, and they don't want to like try something new. That's terrible. So

Ryan Anklam
they miss that when we're talking about passion. That's another thing that's, you

Jem Young
know, yeah. Oh, yeah, I

Sarah Federman
guess we all kind of assume because you know, we're here afterwards. Yeah.

Derrick Showers
Brian's here for we're actually off of what Jem said, I have to go to which are extremely similar. My coaches are, how did you get here? Like, how did you get to this position, whether it be like from another position or something? And then also, like, what is one thing you hate about this company? And I always, it's always awkward, because I have to clarify, like, I'm not trying to get you to bash on them or something. Just just want to know what you what you don't like about the company. And you get kind of a sense of like, what the culture is like, because a lot things do come out when they say that they're like, Well, yeah, depending on depending on what day they are, like, I've had some inner viewers who had like rough days, like, wow, yeah, there's just a lot. Like it's super stressful here and stuff. It's like, oh, geez, I don't know if I want to work.

Sarah Federman
So like, one of the questions that I try to ask whenever I'm talking to like, a higher up is, what are the challenges you see in the next five years, versus the next 10 years versus now? Like, it really gives you perspective on like, what they have in stock, the next like, going forward? They're looking to the future,

Derrick Showers
sometimes I think it's good to ask us an interview as a candidate. is kind of how did I do I know that kind of puts the interviewer on the spot interviewer in a spot, but I also think it gives you the ability to, you know, maybe gain perspective on what they thought, maybe you don't say like that, how did I do? But yeah, you know, how do I how do I fit into, like, what you're looking for as an ideal candidate is a politically correct way of saying it. So then you can kind of see what, maybe they got a wrong idea, you know, and it's your chance as a candidate to change that.

Jem Young
So speaking of like, good feedback, that's a good segue to my shower. I was thinking not enough people think about interviews in terms of, sometimes it's just luck. Sometimes interview, you could be the smartest person in the world and fail an interview because this person is looking for a specific answer to this specific question. And you just don't know it. And exactly, and not enough people think about that. And they get rejected. They're like, Oh, I'm not smart enough to work at Netflix or LinkedIn or wherever. And it's not true. Maybe it is true. I don't know. No offense to people out there but sometimes just luck you get the wrong person on the wrong day get the right person the right day. And not to say like make excuses for not getting through interviews, but sometimes that fact that his feel like you know what, I know I'm smart. I know I answer the question. I still don't get it just because some arbitrary, raise your

Ryan Anklam
hand if it feels lucky. Never felt lucky.

Jem Young
Everybody, everybody. Absolutely.

Sarah Federman
I mean, a company's absolutely love success stories that come in, like, they failed the first time they come in and they've improved the second time and they're like, Wow, we need to hire this person because they made progress.

Ryan Burgess
We've actually, at Netflix have given feedback on things that we'd like to see for like, we're like, hey, it's not a no, or it's a no for now. But it's a no, like, not forever. It's like, we want to see these things that we want to improve on. And this is what we're looking for. We've definitely had candidates come in for the second time that please

Derrick Showers
reapply. And yeah, we did. Yeah, we didn't exactly.

Sarah Federman
Know forever. Especially.

Derrick Showers
Yeah, if you have a candidate that wants to come back in six months. That's true passion.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, definitely. And, and the ability and the ability to take feedback. I think that's super important. That says a lot to me is like, yeah, you weren't the right fit right now. But to take my feedback, and be like, Hey, I'm gonna act on this, and then come back and interview again. That's amazing.

Ryan Anklam
Hold and get the job and just start losing.

Derrick Showers
Yeah, you know, one, feedback is, have you ever do you guys talk after like, our, I don't know how your interview processes and employees, but at LinkedIn, kinda like, especially we're on the same team, kind of like talk to each other supposed to put into the system. But um, one of the things that I think is really impressive is when you when you talk to somebody and you're like, oh, yeah, like, they got this wrong. And I told them this, and they were like, okay, and then and then they specifically answer a different way, like that same problem, or that same thing. And I think that's,

Ryan Burgess
like, right, like they've grasped it throughout the interviews, and they've changed

Derrick Showers
the way that they like, Yeah, that's awesome. Or that's actually something I really liked, actually, at Evernote to like, when we do those kind of discussions, we will like talk about a candidate and we don't have we felt like they were really smart. He just didn't like, get the right things like we actually will fight to see if they will fit in another position at the company or, or the recruiting campaign was a small, that's really cool. Mike rent, interviews, and then we're done with the episodes. You have. Now you have like six picks, and only you're

Ryan Anklam
gonna be religious podcast.

Derrick Showers
We all suck at interviewing, like, we suck, giving interviews and we suck at like, interview, right? Like, no one's figured it out yet. As far as I know. If you have a no, because obviously, I don't know what's going on. But we're all looking for particular things. We're all looking to get particular answers and get out yet. Just like Jem said, like, It's just luck on a given day that someone answers the question, looking. And so my advice to people interviewing is, like cast a wide net aim as much opportunity to give you as much positive signal as possible, and again, to interviewees or candidates.

Ryan Burgess
And it was one good.

Derrick Showers
Like, be totally honest, because you don't want to get a job of false pretenses, right? You want to give them as much honest, positive signal as you possibly can. Hopefully, that on that day,

Jem Young
says the man who is coding.

Ryan Burgess
Well, yeah, but also that is his friends who got the job. It's,

Derrick Showers
you can ask? Yeah, I mean, like it was their fault having a shitty interview. Yeah.

Ryan Burgess
Alright, it's about time to wrap up today's episode. Let's go through our picks Augustus. What are your picks for this episode? Yeah,

Derrick Showers
sure. So I chose Massdrop. For those of you who don't know what that is, a bunch of people vote on something that they want. And then the company like, sends it to a warehouse. And it's like mass ordering. Like it's like, maybe like, and you get it for like a really good deal because so many people ordered item. So it's really good for like mechanical keyboards or like tech stuff. Also, this other one is elevator saga. It's this thing I found on GitHub, where basically, they have like the simple elevator API and all these like little levels. And you like just use their API to make the most optimized elevator. Thought, I think it's like a really good way to like, kind of get into the mindset of using an API for interviews. For my music of the day. Here. This one today. It's called pretty thoughts. Paolina bras and go fill them something like that. It's awesome. Really chill.

Ryan Burgess
Derek, what do you have for us this episode?

Derrick Showers
So first one is something I was playing around working with a couple of personal projects. It's called climate. Any of your you heard of it, but it's pretty cool. You can you hook it up. If you if you're doing something open source, it's free. And it actually will check your code. So it's kind of like it does ies land it does all kinds do other stuff to check for code duplication, you can actually set that on like a Yamo file. But yeah, it's pretty cool. And I found that Ember actually is a good way to kind of get some feedback, trying to kind of see your code quality. And then the second one is Slack team. So Ryan Burgess and I were talking about this theme, the front end, Happy Hour Slack channel that we have. And basically, it's just six different hex colors. And there's this website like, I think it's dot org. Net. Oh, but they basically have a, you can just send them a pull request, and then they have, they want their Netflix, they want more slack stuff. So because I'm too lazy to go in and try to I did it for free

Ryan Burgess
and happy. I was gonna say, Derek, did you submit a pull request for the front end? Half an hour? Yes. So that's, that's pending right now.

Derrick Showers
But if you're too lazy to go in and pick a theme, here's

Ryan Burgess
what I just learned about that. When you told me about that yesterday. It's awesome. And what's also cool

Derrick Showers
is if you do it on desktop, it'll automatically go over to your phone.

Ryan Burgess
Cool. That is really cool. Sarah, what are your picks for this episode? So my

Sarah Federman
music pack for this episode is Lindsey Stirling, who you may not have heard of you may have heard of her. She's kind of she does electronic violin hit up. So that's great to cook too. Yeah, she's pretty chill. And Brian went to college with her apparently. That's pretty cool. And my other pick is a little program that I actually paid money for. It's called size up. It's a window management solution for OSX. And, like, I just provides keyboard shortcuts for like sending windows to one side, like half your screen a quarter of your screen and, like keeps track of all the time you save. So like apparently I've saved over 40 minutes just started at LinkedIn moving windows around. I like

Ryan Burgess
that's really cool. That's cool. All right, Jem, what do you have for us for this episode?

Jem Young
See music pick. My music pick is Apex Swift is a mash up of a FX twin or my favorite artists and Taylor Swift. And I'd actually never heard before this. Yeah. And I heard the songs. I was like, wow, this is really good. She's talented artists. And if you did where I right

Ryan Burgess
Ryan England has a I love Taylor Swift

Ryan Anklam
saw that. I do not wear ironically, I'm probably

Sarah Federman
based off of a song

Ryan Burgess
called Brian's is because he loves to, like playing. Yeah.

Jem Young
It's great. For you guys. Check it out. It's really, really good. Second pick is empire. Jess, I'll be speaking there in May. And it's in New York and I will be speaking on hands. I was

Ryan Burgess
nice. I'll be good talk. I will be there I guess.

Jem Young
Right. You can meet the famous Ryan Burgess river to see right. I

Ryan Burgess
think I'm famous, but

Jem Young
he will be. And my last pick is Netflix menus. I have no idea why our menu is open to the public. But hey, you can see what we have for lunch every day. I don't know why you would.

Ryan Anklam
contest if you accurately pick what any of us are going to eat in a specific day. We'll give you something with engine stickers or something a t shirt. Yeah, so if you can go to netflix menues.com and either tweet at Jem Young or Brian halls or negotiate Ryan or Ryan Burgess. If you can pick previously Burgess e Ryan to really pick what we're gonna eat. We'll send you something. I don't know what but

Derrick Showers
something good. Even my personal. I would want to say that you could do that on the LinkedIn menus. But there's so much more options. Oh,

Ryan Burgess
LinkedIn does eat better. That's all right. You see bigger, bigger,

Derrick Showers
the feed that we feed all of our non Senior Web devs.

Jem Young
Yeah, man. All right, let's

Ryan Burgess
move past. Brian, what do you have for us this

Derrick Showers
episode? So my first two pics are pretty related. One of them's at Hack, which is a hackathon and human trafficking, which I think is pretty amazing. Really cool. And then the second one is Annie cannons, which is a developer school that they it's a charity on top of that Bible and see. That does it for survivors of human trafficking. So just super, super incredible, impressive people on the CTF Esha Galiana, was just on my personal heroes. So definitely go and support both of those. You should attend the hackathon. And you should donate any cannons to hold the cool things. I will be personally there at the hack. If you want to come hang out with me. I'll be very cool. Um, and then I'm just Yeah, I mean, three, they just released a new album this week. It's pretty awesome. I would definitely suggest you go and listen to it. And then what hit huge on Reddit this week was scroobius Pip. Which is one an amazing name for a rapper. And two super awesome who released a song on YouTube called known in this she raps over grinds is another one of my favorite artists.

Ryan Burgess
I'm actually really excited to like, listen to that. It's so good. It's so good. Ryan, what do you have for us this episode? The first one I have is the escape app for iOS 10.

Ryan Anklam
It tracks your interruptions throughout the day. So if you go to Slack or email, it'll kind of track that and see how many times have been interrupted by the specific application will actually tell you how long or how many, how long your interval is that you're able to say focus before you got in on these applications. And it's pretty eye opening will give you a daily report at the end of the day. And it's amazing how many this tiny little interruptions you get through your day just based on Slack or email. Did you get one for your manager? No, I don't have a specific filter. The second one is the the best of old time radio. It's a podcast. They just replay old podcasts and it's their old radio shows from the 50s 60s it's just really entertaining just to see the live stories they would tell them radio and things like that. Oh, it's like an old story like war, the world rebroadcast. That is really cool. They'll give you the original recording. You can hear all the commercials and how much has changed. It's really interesting,

Jem Young
stupid random facts. I didn't won worlds when it was broadcast. Originally, people didn't understand it was their telling story. They thought as a news brief. So there's actually like mass panic and riots because people actually thought alien aliens like pestle.

Ryan Anklam
And wow, if you listen to the old time radio pass, I think it's on there. And it's, you could see why people would think that if they weren't privy to that I was actually sorry. The second one of my musical pick is actually dusty hid behind the Aeon that hill. It's an album. It's not the EDM. It's kind of chill, but it's a really good, quote unquote, shoe. There's a lot of lyrics a lot of really good beats.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah. Awesome. So I guess to wrap up everything for my picks this week, I've chosen the aerial screensaver, which is actually someone had ripped out of the, if anyone has a new Apple TV. There's this really nice aerial screensaver that shows like San Francisco, London, New York, quite a few cities around the world and have this beautiful aerial scene that's moving. It's really great. Jem was at my desk the other day, he's the hell is this? This is super cool. And I was like, hey, yeah, it's the Apple TV. screensaver. But someone ripped it out and is actually made it for your laptop, desktop, whatever you want. And so definitely check that out. It's an aerial screensaver for your laptop.

Derrick Showers
So if you have two monitors, is it actually you could set it the same, but it'll do multi multiple

Ryan Burgess
ones. So there's, there's people at Netflix that I'll walk by, and they have like three or four monitors. Whoa, they've got like all the different ones going super cool to see such a beautiful screensaver. Then my second pick is the Amazon Dash button. I think it's amazing. These like little buttons will just order whatever you like, whatever you've set it to order. And the kind of cool thing about it is they don't really cost any money is their their $5. And you actually get $5 off your next purchase. So they're really cool. And I've also seen some people have some really cool things out of it as well. Third and final pick is since everyone's talking about music, we've shared a lot of great music pics. We've actually put together a front end Happy Hour playlist on Spotify. So check that out. I listened to was it good? Yeah. Awesome. And we'll add all these new pics to it as well. That's it for today's episode. Make sure to follow us on Twitter at @frontendhh. Tweet at us with some of your interview experiences good or bad. We'd love to hear about them.

Sarah Federman
Mostly that