Rock climbing is dangerous

My partner and I have been climbing since 2018; for me it’s been one of the best ways to keep up the muscle mass in my hands and arms to compensate for my particular brand of repetitive strain injuries: without exercise, my hand muscles disappear, and I begin to feel pain from relying on tendons to do basic, day-to-day activities, like typing.

I was not good at rock climbing when we started. Despite doing yoga quite regularly at the time, and being in the best running shape of my life; I really struggled with building the muscles in my hands – still do – I actually own a hand dynamometer, something that I was introduced to by my hand therapist; and after years of climbing, I can proudly say that after years of climbing my grip strength has basically approached normal human grip strength for my age. My rock climbing friends can output almost double-that level of pressure; and with more endurance.

But I loved yoga, and climbing pretty quickly. So I watched the masterclass (youtube). I learned a lot of technique to get the weight off my hands and into my feet. I got a pulley injury, climbing a V1 while tired. I’m generally too afraid to boulder really hard; the first time I went to the top of a V3, I flashed it; I don’t like climbing up things I don’t think I can down-climb.

So we finally, after many years – and the COVID-hiatus almost everyone took – signed up for the lead class.

Lead climbing is the form of climbing most common outdoors; you tie into rope, and bring it up with you, clipping into safety points as you go. If you slip and fall before you have enough safety points; you can get seriously hurt. If you clip in wrong, the rope can pop out as you fall. If you step wrong, you can get tangled in the rope as you fall. If you weigh more than your belayer; they’ll go flying into the air if you fall.

It’s dangerous.

At the end of the lead class, our instructor sat down the group to tell them that taking the class was no guarantee we would pass the test. Four hours of training did not make us experts. Lead climbing is still incredibly dangerous, and treating it lightly can literally cost you your life.

We listened carefully to our instructor’s stories. He warned us that most people do not pass the test on their first try. If they do well enough, they may be granted conditional approval to lead climb in the gym for a day, where they can focus on what they are not doing safely.

The next day, I walked in the gym and told our instructor that we were ready to fail the test for the first time.

We passed.

We’re not perfect climbers. I almost skipped a clip on my climb (the first two are very close together) but I caught myself, and so I can still be considered to hvae passed. My belaying motion is still robotic, still not smooth enough for the climber. I don’t enjoy falling.

SWE Interviews and Maturity

Climbing aside, the thing that stood out in my mind was that the lead instructor was attempting to test for the same things I think we should interview for in tech.

We have convoluted coding, system design, and behavioral expectations of candidates, in a make-believe environment that doesn’t feel like reality. The stress of having someone watch you does not make most people better coders, or better engineers. Worse still, the average interviewer is evaluating you on some arbitrary problem they always give, or they suffered through in an interview once.

Maturity.

The thing we want to test for is maturity. My gym wants to pass people who don’t think they’re great lead climbers after four hours. They want to pass people who take the danger seriously and try to improve. Our gym staff knows we will climb the same easy climb over and over until clipping becomes second nature and missing a clip is no longer a concern.

Maturity is what I look for in senior software engineers. I told a number of my teammates what I’m looking for in leading or owning an initiative: you don’t have to know all the answers, or solve it by yourself, or even solve it without asking for help.

You need to know what you know. You need to know when you need help. And you need to ask good questions. When the ticket is vague; you should take steps to update the description yourself; to identify experts who can help you narrow down the problem.

As an engineering lead who was interviewing for senior candidates, I want to work with mature engineers who can own things without solving everything – I can’t solve everything either!

Lead climbing will literally cause you bodily injury if you’re overconfident, and yet you can’t be so nervous you’ll get overtired and make stress mistakes.

Software engineering can have very real consequences for people in the world; usually those we do not know.

They are not the same. But the similarities really resonated for me when listening to the instructor try to explain what they’re trying to accomplish with the lead test.

There’s no quick test for maturity. We rely on our flawed impressions of people, and bias and confusion and the test itself creeps in; making this determination really difficult.

If you find yourself giving an interview, and all you do is pull the “appropriate-level” leetcode question, or give the same question you always give… maybe ask yourself what you’re testing for. Why is that a measure of worth to you? Is it even a measure of worth? What are you looking for in candidates?

Maybe there’s a better way to use that time.