I won’t be the only one on the call so I can’t just give him an impossible interview. we’re planning the interview together today. how do I make sure we can’t hire him?
luckily his background doesn’t line up with what our team does, at least from his resume – god it’s the worst to read from the formatting alone. so maybe I can just lean into that? my team is part of a software infrastructure group and we’re tasked with making the rest of the org stop sucking ass at software development – secrets don’t go in git repos type of stuff. so people skills and writing little bits of code that ensure the culture changes over time. his background is in operations and maybe a little software dev.
I need suggestions for questions that will make him a no go. I can’t take someone who worked for Palantir, for nearly a decade no less, seriously.
ask him to describe some project. either from a prompt you give “name a difficult project and how you overcame difficulties and conflicts with teammates” or pick one from his resume
then just keep drilling him on the technical details deeper and deeper. e.g. “why did you pick this database schema over this other option?” “why did you decide to index the tables this way?” “why did you pick this db over another one? could you explain all the pros and cons?” “you only considered the amount of features? have you considered i/o speeds at all?”
If your company emphasizes DEI, ask him what he has done at palantir to foster a pro-DEI workplace and how he has helped boost underrepresented minority groups at the company. High chance he hasn’t at all