Genre and Sub Genre — Customary Folklore: Behavior, Tradition, Practice

Language: English

Country where Item is from: United States

 

Informant Data: Deven Orie ’19 hails from Queens, NY. He is currently a Junior studying economics and computer science. His parents work as radiologic technicians at NYU. He has always been passionate about technology, especially programming, and he had hopes of becoming a software engineer at one of the big tech companies in this kind of position; at Dartmouth, he created the social media app called Kipper, which shows how many people are in every building on campus and has an anonymous chat. However, this year has been one of discovery for him: he realized that his preference is not to become a software engineer, but a project manager within the technology sector. Deven is member of Chi Gamma Epsilon.

Social Context: Given the stakes involved in Tech interviews, aspiring Tech professionals are often antsy about how it is they ought to behave in an interview. And so much like the case in the other folklore collected here, more junior undergraduates will reach out to those who have done Tech interviews in order to get a better sense of how they ought to behave. And so the customary folklore in question here is shared among males and females, those generally pursuing more quantitative related degrees, and between those who are more junior and those more senior in their academic careers.

Cultural Context: Given that people who work in Technology share a set of common beliefs and practices, they themselves constitute a folk group, a folk group to which one is seeking entry when one recruits for a job in Technology. In light of this fact, one has to exhibit certain behaviors and characteristics that someone already in the sought-after capacity might display. In order to explore what exactly constitutes the “right behavior”, one of our collectors, Trent Shillingford, interviewed Deven Orie one-on-one in a study room in the library in order to get a better sense for the right behaviors.

 

Item: Deven Orie noted a host of behaviors one should exhibit during a tech interview in order to be successful. He noted that one must exhibit one’s technical competency while simultaneously illustrating that one has a wholesome grasp of all the different aspects related to designing and ultimately building a product. He also noted that one should exhibit their knowledge of business more generally, particularly if one is interested in securing a managerial role in tech. He also noted that one must exhibit extensive knowledge about the company one is interviewing with. Deven also noted one’s ability to communicates one’s technical as well as soft skills as being largely determinative of one’s success in securing a job offer. Finally, he noted that one should remain professional and exhibit the level of decorum and comportment that is expected of an interviewee.

 

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Relevant Portion:  7:30 — 8:57

Transcript of Associated File:

• Trent Shillingford: What are some of the things that happened in your interview? What are some of the things you picked up on? ….

 

• Deven Orie: You know… ah I think during the interview… they wanted to see if you were technically skilled while at the same time … you were able to think… you were able to have a wholesome overview of the design thinking aspect…. Its seems that a lot of the PM’s that work for microsoft are very technically skilled and they like technically skilled PM’s who can code reasonably well and who can also think in the minds of consumers .. .so the interviews were also based around design thinking and how you would think about building a product for a user or how you code something out on a whiteboard

 

Collector’s Comments:

• Deven’s extensive experience in the tech space has made him a particularly interesting person to speak with and someone who in particular has illuminating thoughts on the customary folklore associated with tech recruiting

General Comments:

• Virtually universal and uniform findings here. No meaningful variances noted in what was relayed.

Collector’s Name:

• Trent Shillingford

Tags/Keywords:

• Customary Folklore, Tech Interview Behavior, Practice, Interview Tradition