We use them to try to “get to know” people. It doesn’t work.
Establishing a weekly user interview routine - Jonnie Hallman (@destroytoday)
For the first time in years, I start performing user interviews again, and remember how valuable they can be.
The One Method I've Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires - Mattermark
Let’s be real. Interviews are a terrible way to hire tech candidates. Here’s why paying candidates to solve problems works.
Reversing the technical interview
If you want to get a job as a software witch, you’re going to have to pass a whiteboard interview. We all do them, as engineers–often as a part of our morning ritual, along with arranging a beautiful grid of xterms across the astral plane, and compulsively running ls in every nearby directory–just in case things have shifted during the night–the incorporeal equivalent of rummaging through that drawer in the back of the kitchen where we stash odd flanges, screwdrivers, and the strangely specific plastic bits: the accessories, those long-estranged black sheep of the families of our household appliances, their original purpose now forgotten, perhaps never known, but which we are bound to care for nonetheless. I’d like to walk you through a common interview question: reversing a linked list.
Palantir Employees Are Starting to Wonder if They’re the Bad Guys
Interviews with current and former Palantir employees, along with internal Slack messages obtained by WIRED, suggest a workforce in turmoil.
Interviewing Users (2nd Edition) | Free EBook with Purchase | Steve Portigal
Expert researcher Steve Portigal updates his classic Interviewing Users to provide fresh guidance on interviewing techniques.
Turkopticon: interrupting worker invisibility in amazon mechanical turk
As part of the Digital Library's transition to Open Access, new features for researchers are available in the Premium Edition. Click here to learn more.
Howtown
David Graeber interview: ‘So many people spend their working lives doing jobs they think are unnecessary’
The books interview: The anarchist author, coiner of the phrase ‘We are the 99%’, talks to Stuart Jeffries about ‘bullshit jobs’, our rule-bound lives and the importance of play
Things You Thought You Didn’t Need To Care About That Have a Big Impact On Your Job
Conference talk with Holly Cummins at GOTO Copenhagen 2025
Questionable Advice: “How can I sniff out bad managers while interviewing for a job?”
A few weeks ago I got a question from Stephane Bjorne on twitter, about how to screen for bad managers and/or management culture. This is a great question. I’ve talked a lot about my philosop…
The Last Technical Interview
Today we will pour one out for the vaunted technical interview process, which is on its last leg. And we’ll talk a little about what’s…
The Last Technical Interview
Today we will pour one out for the vaunted technical interview process, which is on its last leg. And we’ll talk a little about what’s…
Why Is Everyone In Tech So Sad?
A lot of people seem to be realizing that knowledge work is mostly pointless. AI might give us the pleasure of finding out what happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers.
Talking with strangers is surprisingly informative
A meaningful amount of people’s knowledge comes from their conversations with others. The amount people expect to learn predicts their interest in having a conversation (pretests 1 and 2), suggesting that the presumed information value of conversations guides decisions of whom to talk with. The results of seven experiments, however, suggest that people may systematically underestimate the informational benefit of conversation, creating a barrier to talking with—and hence learning from—others in daily life. Participants who were asked to talk with another person expected to learn significantly less from the conversation than they actually reported learning afterward, regardless of whether they had conversation prompts and whether they had the goal to learn (experiments 1 and 2). Undervaluing conversation does not stem from having systematically poor opinions of how much others know (experiment 3) but is instead related to the inherent uncertainty involved in conversation itself. Consequently, people underestimate learning to a lesser extent when uncertainty is reduced, as in a nonsocial context (surfing the web, experiment 4); when talking to an acquainted conversation partner (experiment 5); and after knowing the content of the conversation (experiment 6). Underestimating learning in conversation is distinct from underestimating other positive qualities in conversation, such as enjoyment (experiment 7). Misunderstanding how much can be learned in conversation could keep people from learning from others in daily life.
“CEO said a thing!”
A blistering guide to what lazy journalism too often looks like
