---
title: "Simeon says I don't listen to what my interviewee has to say. Is he right?"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/2/5/simeon-says-i-dont-listen-to-what-my-interviewee-has-to-say.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/2/5/simeon-says-i-dont-listen-to-what-my-interviewee-has-to-say.html"
published: "2006-02-05T08:34:00"
updated: "2006-02-05T08:34:00"
tags: ["Interview"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Simeon has some harsh bits to say about my interview style with Kent Beck . \"...The best example is when Kent had to answer \"Moo\" due to the question been overly complex and not making sense. Another example was when…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Simeon says I don't listen to what my interviewee has to say. Is he right?

By Roy Osherove February 5, 2006 In [Interview](https://osherove.com/blog/category/interview)

**Historical article** · Originally published February 5, 2006; technical details may be outdated.

[Simeon has some harsh bits](http://spaces.msn.com/simeonpilgrim/Blog/cns!21C001D6D9CA7CEA!291.entry) to say about my interview style [with Kent Beck](http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/archive/2006/02/01/437077.aspx).

_"...The best example is when Kent had to answer "Moo" due to the question been overly complex and not making sense._

_Another example was when Roy was asking Kent about how to deal with people not following the XP rules, and Kent reply that people follow the rules due to belief in the system not been told to do it. Roy just didn’t seam to comprehend what Kent was saying, and kept asking the same concept in different forms. I felt frustrated on Kent’s behalf...."_

At least he's honest :)

I'll definitely take that into account in the next interviews, and see if I can locate the place where my listening stops. The purpose of the interview was specifically to conduct it as a conversation rather than an interview, but I'm not sure it turned out that way.

Feel free to post your own comments on the that interview, or my interview style in particular. I hope to learn more as I go on doing these things!

## More in Interview

[All posts in Interview](https://osherove.com/blog/category/interview)

- Jun 13, 2008

    ### [Unit Testing Interview at TechEd](https://osherove.com/blog/2008/6/13/unit-testing-interview-at-teched.html)

- Feb 16, 2006

    ### [I've been DNR'ed](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/2/16/ive-been-dnred.html)

- Feb 1, 2006

    ### [\[Audio Interview\] Johanna Rothman - Secrets of great management](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/2/1/audio-interview-johanna-rothman-secrets-of-great-management.html)

- Feb 1, 2006

    ### [\[Audio Interview\] Kent Beck - An Agile conversation (First Iteration)](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/2/1/audio-interview-kent-beck-an-agile-conversation-first-iterat.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

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- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/