this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025

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Should I ask applicants about what scifi books they've read? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) by shortrounddev to c/asklemmy

71 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm a software engineer who sometimes interviews other software engineers. I'm not given a script to go off of, I get to ask them whatever I want. Usually we just talk about technology and coding from a high level. I'm not a big fan of whiteboard tests.

I've noticed, however, that a lot of people applying to software engineering jobs feel very alien to me. I started coding when I was 12 and spent most of my teenage years on technology forums. A lot of people applying to these positions are very much ladder-climbing type people who got into the career for the money. Working with these people is an absolute drag.

We also interview for "culture fit". I would like to add in a single question to my interviews to assess that: what is your favorite science fiction book. You don't even have to have read it recently, you just have to have read one and formed an opinion on it. My thoughts

Pros:

Weeds out a lot of people since half of Americans don't read books at all.
Theoretically filters out people who love this kind of tech subculture from people who are just in it for the money

Cons:

It's unfair to people who enjoy fantasy novels, or any other form of fiction
Being motivated by money probably shouldn't be a disqualifying factor (I certainly wouldn't do this job for free), I'm just tired of working with yuppies and lashing out at poor unsuspecting Jr Devs

I'm half-hearted on this. I see why it could be considered unfair but I'm really tired of the kinds of people I work with.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

If you have the authority to try to make a good company culture; hell yes you should. Even if they don't often read novels, or they read something other than sci-fi, it'll help you understand their personality and weed out people who suck. If someone says they prefer reading sci-fi manga or playing fantasy ttrpgs or any other possible nerdy thing they are probably leagues better than a ladder climbing type.There are plenty of places for a soulless corpo to go work for, if you can keep them away from you and yours you'll have a much better and healthier company and (more importantly) life in the long run.

[–] shortrounddev 5 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah but at the same time I feel like it's kind of privileged to be able to work in tech because you love coding. I mean everybody should work in jobs they love but I've met a huge number of people who were making slave wages in other fields and moved to coding to make more money. Why should I punish that? Because I find their water cooler conversations to be boring? What if they're the first person in their family to graduate college and they're just trying to feed their family and are actually really good at coding, but their real passion in life is Football? I want to work in a workplace with people I would want to actually hang out with, but it seems petty to penalize people for not liking the same things as me and not having the advantage of a great salary to be able to turn their real passion into a career

[–] [email protected] 5 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

So you can ask them what they are passionate about outside of work. Something like:

I'm really into reading sci-fi books. Is there anything you are passionate about outside your work?

[–] shortrounddev 4 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

~~That's not exactly what I want to select for though.~~ I guess leaving it open ended lets them convince me of the culture fit rather than just trying to check a box. Maybe they don't give a shit about science fiction, but they're really into science or art. That's cool, too