Why we don’t have technical interviews for technical roles at Buffer (opens in new tab)

Two key points from this article:

- "We hire everyone who we believe is a fit after interviews for a 45 day full-time contract period" (which is obviously more informative than a 1 day technical interview)

- "We hire remotely" (which likely opens up the recruiting pipeline to people who would be willing to do a 45 contract instead of FT work)

I think its important to match interview style with the company. If you're a very theoretical data-oriented / machine learning company then knowing algorithms and computer science is very important so traditional coding tests are probably pretty important. On the other hand, there are times when all you need is a capable Software Engineer with experience and knowledge of a particular tech stack. In that case, whether or not he paid attention in algorithms is not going to give you a great indication of whether he can work full stack.

I'm a big fan of this approach, especially the code show-n-tell. Kudos for recognizing which attributes are important and designing a process to try and uncover them. Technical "gotcha" questions rarely reveal anything useful.

Why should someone quit a full-time job to go work for you if there's a 30% chance of being unemployed 2 months later?

Even if it's a 30% raise, it isn't worth it if there's also a 30% chance of being stuck.