Jon writes: “They needed someone to write interfaces for their scientific software. The interview was with two postdocs that spent the entire interview making fun of me, beginning with questions about Dunning-Kruger. After an hour, I got off the call and spent the weekend working through depression.”
I think it is unavoidable for hiring teams to come in with some initial judgement about candidates. The way I try to deal with that is to do the same: I come in with technical questions about their field (after doing some research) and get them to start educating me. If I can’t keep up or improvise new questions then I know I am a bad candidate. If they start to stumble or have apparent limits to their knowledge, then the question is whether they are humble about those limits. If they aren’t, then it would be a terrible place to work. If they are collaborative and see a way for me to contribute, then I am energized. Rather than posturing about Dunning-Krueger, they could simply let the candidate apply their own metaknowledge after a brief conversation and come to matter-of-fact consensus about their needs and “fit”. The thing about postdocs is that most of them probably haven’t had professional experience. They may be using fragile models about what is valuable out in the jungle, especially with regard to commercial relevance. If they are really scientists, one can expect them to want the candidate to leave with the feeling The Work is important and exciting, even if the candidate isn’t appropriate. To make it about anything other than relevant skill (e.g. can the interfaces we want be built by this person?) and curiosity (e.g. would this person be engaged?) is an indicator they were not first-rate scientists, and perhaps that they may even have some `issues’. Also I have found that first-rate technical people have an intuitive sense of what is trainable on the horizon they need and what is not, and they don’t get hung up on hair-splitting. Marcus
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