February 2023

There were 2 posts published in February 2023 (this is page 1 of 1).

is Gen Z changing the interview dynamics ?

Classical Nature of Job interviews

Job interviews were always 2 way street . At least on paper it was always the case . For most of the time as millennial the candidates were more kind and silent in this process towards the other side .The most common diligence my friend circle used to do while appearing for IT jobs was pay scale .However the Gen Z are turning the tables . I have seen them matching the Hiring manager and HR questions with equal scrutiny .

Gen Z has different attitude towards Jobs

A typical “why did you change company so often ” is matched by “what is your turnover rate” . A “Tell me about your skill sets” is matched by “what are my leaning opportunity”. A “The salary you are asking is high” is cleverly countered by “what is your growth rate/hike rate etc” .A probe on hard work , flexibility , learnability is match by “what is support system/work arrangement ” . Ofcource these are my wording and slice of my socio-work sphere .

In many cases where start up and stock options were applicable these generation shows equal grasp of these dynamics .In many case my senior friends form these circle told me that “inspiration” ,”growth”,” making dent in universe ” are not having the impact it used to be during there conversation .This attitude is seen candidates from not so elite colleges also !.

Gen Z mindset shift

But a good amount of Gen Z have started looking at workplace as lifestyle choice (now/India) as opposed to earning “opportunity” earlier . In 90’s IT pioneers in India used to talk of themselves as offering social upward mobility for first generation Engineers from rural India .That basically summarizes work place as employment opportunity ,trend that previous generation displayed . However when I specifically probed about this strata assuming that folks from this segment might still be seeing world like my generation things did not change .The youngsters with no so privileged background seem to have caught the same attitude (as that of urban/settled section ) towards work and workplace .This is how social scientist define a generation ! The attitude change is generational and here to stay .

Changes the hiring side needs to do

What this now means is that people on the other side of “conference call” have to now shift the mindset from “hiring”-“recruiting” to “teaming up”-“tribe formation” .We are no longer giving them job .Instead they are choosing to spend their life with us . to A big shift for my generation of people .

PS : these are my observations and not a scientific study with large-diverse sample space .My slice of the world in india/IT centric …..But it made sense to plot this point in space for anyone to spot the trend .

calling the BS on system design interviews

diagram
( copyright design gurus/Arsalan Ahmad , included for critique ,which is fair usage )

This great diagram about system design also exposes the hollowness of this system design trend . Apparently system design expects you to know
1. Load Balancing
2.Caching
3. Queues
4. Search
5.Streaming
6.Observability
7.All databases
8. Cloud compute for scaling

What are we interviewing for ?


But what we are basically asking is can a candidate design this fictitious FaanG system using Aws with 5-7 years experience . I am sure a sharp mind can read and answer anything about Graph DB to partitioning to blob storage but it is a fact one needs good number of years of hand on practice to be reliable professional in this area .I will be suspired to see a candidate so lucky that every 6 months he/she worked on a project that exposed him/her to each one of this area .Very unlikely .Have we then started believing that knowing random bits of designs from FaanG companies is somehow a skill akin to knowing distributed computing with guaranties !

What system design interview might mean


What system design interviews then probably means is we are looking for team mates who understand cloud scale vocabulary .What it might also mean is the expectation is restricted to only vocabulary and there is some other Senior fellow or team doing the actual Architecture .It might then just be simpler to ask AWS certifications instead of system design.
Next problem is what frameworks do we expect these candidates to use ? Java/spring in lambda is different ballgame than nodejs in container .REST is a different skill than how you package your services as micros while keeping functional sanity and quality of services. So is UI or big data. Very few system design talk of this complete stack (cloud to framework to code).I am sure lot of these interviews also cover performance ,security , build and such areas but how is that coherently weaved to the typical system design questions is a question worth pondering !
And i am totally discounting the fact that most great internet companies build their own platforms , a skill that is more challenging than system design in current interview flavor .

The reality check

In all probability system design interviews are outgrowth of the full stack engineer myth we created in industry (my old post on this topic) .Here 2 questions are worth asking :
1. Are we really creating tribe of cloud aware candidates with whom we do mutual fakery that we can design netflix video stream or uber scheduling with no deep experience to back it up ?

2. What is you job designation ? system designer engineer I/II/III ? or system design architect ?

ps :Here is also a detailed skill matrix for you to plan your growth https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lAFfBj7UM3NZrS3ywsHZsK4pnWN5eWZJCeSt-UtQyu0/edit?usp=sharing