# Using shared tmux to interview candidates (2024-02-29)

**URL:** <https://pluralist.net/t/using-shared-tmux-to-interview-candidates-2024-02-29/93>\
**Category:** breadcrumbs\
**Created:** [February 29, 2024, 8:00am UTC](https://pluralist.net/t/using-shared-tmux-to-interview-candidates-2024-02-29/93 "2024-02-29T08:00:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![delyan](https://pluralist.net/user_avatar/pluralist.net/delyan/32/245_2.png) [@delyan](https://pluralist.net/u/delyan)\
**Post date:** [February 29, 2024, 8:00am UTC](https://pluralist.net/t/using-shared-tmux-to-interview-candidates-2024-02-29/93/1 "2024-02-29T08:00:00Z")

</div>

For a long time I have been using services such as [CoderPad](https://coderpad.io) to interview Software Engineers.

Long time ago I was interviewed by Carey Nachenberg (Symantec, Google, UCLA prof) and the IDE was… a Google Doc. It was a torture, but in retrospect - I love the method. It aligns with my philosophy on [competitive programming on paper](https://pluralist.net/t/on-writing-by-hand-vs-typing-thinking-through-edsger-dijkstras-denken-als-discipline-interview-2024-01-29/60) first.

But today I am going to use something different. I am going to leverage a shared tmux session. Inspiration for this are [Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship-that-made-google-huge):

> TL;DR: Jeff and Sanjay used `xterm` with `shared tmux` and then of course `Emacs`. This in parallel with a Google Meet.

 ![image](https://pluralist.net/uploads/default/original/1X/414d76a3e9f03019a60febb9fa32bf147635356b.jpeg)  
([source](https://twitter.com/JeffDean/status/1309358537034792961))

So my plan today is to:

- create an Azure VM with a public IP
  - maybe: Standard D4s v3 (4 vcpus, 16 GiB memory) with Ubuntu 22.04

- prep: `sudo apt-get install gcc python emacs-nox vim`
- start shared tmux: `tmux -S /tmp/interview`
- for interviewer - ask interviewee for their public SSH key `cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub` and put on new Ubuntu machine in `/home/u/.ssh/authorized_keys`
- then interviewee will `ssh u@interview.pluralist.net` and then attach to shared tmux with `tmux -S /tmp/interivew a` - and if they are running iTerm - `tmux -CC -S /tmp/interview a`
- before the interviewee begins coding - get permission and run [asciinema](https://docs.asciinema.org/getting-started/)
  - `sudo apt-get install asciinema` (available on Ubuntu 22.04)
  - start with `asciinema rec ~/.ascii/interview.cast`
  - `exit` to stop recordirg
  - scp to local host
  - play with `asciinema play interview.cast`

This solution may not be as pretty as CoderPad and needs a few extra chords or key strokes to compile and run, but it is in the hacker spirit and drastically cheaper ($0.20/hr). Arguably this tests interviewees’ ability and comfort level in the UNIX shell.