Hiring Engineers: Signals to Evaluate

Generic interview questions can provide limited insight when they are disconnected from the work a candidate would actually do.

Questions such as "What's your greatest weakness?" or isolated whiteboard puzzles may not reveal how someone approaches the role's day-to-day problems.

Signals worth evaluating:

1. **Can they learn your stack fast?** Not: "Do you know React?" (Anyone can learn React) Ask: "What's a recent technology you learned well?" Listen for intellectual curiosity and learning speed.

2. **Do they communicate clearly?** Have them explain a technical concept to you like you're not a programmer. Confused explanations reveal confused thinking.

3. **Have they shipped something?** A side project. An open source contribution. Anything. Shipping teaches lessons that resumes don't capture.

4. **Can they debug?** Give them a broken piece of code and watch them debug it. Not for speed, but for methodology. Do they form hypotheses? Test them systematically? Or do they flail?

5. **Would you want to sit next to them for 8 hours?** People work in teams. Working with someone brilliant but difficult costs more than it's worth.

• **Red flags:**
• Can't explain their previous work clearly
• Defensive about feedback
• Focuses only on technologies, not problems solved
• Can't debug systematically

• **Green flags:**
• Asks thoughtful questions about your product
• Talks about learning from mistakes
• Can explain complex things simply
• Listens more than talks

Interview for learning ability, communication, shipping experience, and fit. Everything else is optimizable.