Ask HN: Interview feedback biased?

2 points by employee123 8 years ago | 2 comments

I recently interviewed at a well-known silicon valley company that is public for a front-end role. I have been doing front-end for more than 3years now and I don't mean to brag but I can say with confidence that I am an advanced Javascript developer because for the past two years I have put in so much effort into understanding the deeper workings of the language from ES5 - ES6. At my current employer, I'm well known as a Javascript expert. So I was shocked when the feedback from the interview was that I was not well versed in Javascript, this surprised me. Note that I'm of African descent & I think this may/may not have influenced the interview. I'm not sure what to make of this.

The interview went fairly well & I demonstrated my knowledge of es6 which they even acknowledged.

twobyfour 8 years ago |

Unfortunately, there's no way to know, and we're going on even less information than you are. If you feel comfortable doing so, you might consider writing back and politely asking why the feedback contrasts with the informal feedback you received during the interview itself.

That said, I'm always skeptical of claims of more than mid-level skills with less than 7 years of experience. Before JavaScript, were you doing other kinds of software development for 5 years?

I don't doubt you now know JavaScript and are capable of contributing with minimal supervision as a member of a team. I wouldn't be surprised to learn you're the best JS dev on your own team. And this year I'm less and less surprised (though no less saddened) to hear about racial discrimination and prejudice - whether the bias is conscious or not.

But do consider the possibility that you're not quite as much of an expert as you thought. In my experience, the best way to find that out, and to become even better, is to deliberately seek out a position where you're clearly NOT the best on the team, and to learn from people with even more experience and expertise.

The unfortunate truth is that women and non-Asian minorities in this industry often have to be significantly better developers than white and Asian dudes to get a similar level of expertise acknowledged. (Not everywhere, not with every interviewer or every company, but in enough - or should I say, too many - contexts.) So keep learning, be better, and don't give up.

byoung2 8 years ago |

It could be possible that you are not as good at JavaScript as you think you are (even if you are the best at your company). Even if you are a top 10% JavaScript expert in the applicant pool, if they interview 100 people they saw 9 people better than you.