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Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

blog.interviewing.io

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Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#11

Post by TallGuyShort »

staunch wrote: post #6

Most interviewers don't ask enough technical questions to have any idea what a candidate knows or doesn't know. If their one or two questions happen to be something the candidate knows well, they'll call them a genius. If they happen to not know, they'll label them an idiot. You can learn a lot more from 20+ rapid fire questions than forcing a candidate to eek out an answer to something they're not familiar with. And…

Along these lines, I start out with very broad questions. Something like, "tell me how you'd troubleshoot a web service that's suddenly not accepting connections / suddenly performing badly." Different candidates will focus on different aspects of that problem depending on their background: low-level networking, cloud environments, application-level problems, databases etc. Based on their resume, I like to see if their expertise matches up with their experience. I like to see that they don't consider ONLY things within their expertise. I like to see if they can make reasonable guesses outside of their expertise without BS'ing me. I like to see if they have a good approach to exploring areas they're unfamiliar with and general problem-solving. I like to see if they recognize how valuable it is to have diagnostic / monitoring / change control tools in place and to have done pro-active testing. This can be tough to do with coding problems, but I still try give problems that should be familiar to experienced low-level C developers as well as high-level Python web devs and tailor my expectations to their experience. I'm more concerned with how well they've learned based on what they've done than if they've already learned what I'd like them to do.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#12

Post by dudul »

In the HN echo chamber, there isn't a day without some blog post/article describing how our interview process is BS, interview is broken, etc.

I don't necessarily dispute this state of affaire, but does anyone know how it compares to other fiels/professions? How about interviewing a lawyer? Or a doctor? Or an account manager? Or a product marketer? Are developers the only one with a "broken" interview process?

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#13

Post by rewqfdsa »

minimaxir wrote: post #2

The headline is "interview performance is kind of arbitrary," but the data solution proposed in the article is "interviewers rate interviewees in a few different dimensions," which is not any less arbitrary. I appreciate there is an appendix addressing this issue, but it does not absolve the issues the analysis, especially since the appendix uses a "Versus Rating" to justify the statistical accuracy of the system, wh…

> the data solution proposed in the article is "interviewers rate interviewees in a few different dimensions," which is not any less arbitrary.

This article's headline reveals the spin the HN community is trying to put on it. Many people in SF like to attack the very idea of meritocracy, because if you admit that meritocracy is a good idea, you're implicitly endorsing the idea that people have different levels of merit, and thus that between-group differences in representation might be due to something other than discrimination.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#14

Post by Someone1234 »

colmvp wrote: post #10
senekerim wrote: post #5

I have been to lots of interviews, on both sides of the table. I find most interviewers unprepared to evaluate the person for the role, and instead exercise their own biases, stroke their egos, etc. It's largely a voodoo practice that we'll look back and laugh at as a civilization at some point..

I wonder how many employ Kahneman's recommendation based on his book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow": > Suppose that you need to hire a sales representative for your firm. If you are serious about hiring the best possible person for the job, this is what you should do. First, select a few traits that are prerequisites for success in this position (technical proficiency, engaging personality, reliability, and so on. Don't…

I like that.

But just to be a little bit contrarian for the sake of conversation: Has it been shown that ignoring your gut instinct or even who you like most if inherently wrong? That kind of testing definitely removes a lot of bias, but it just assumes that biases are inherently bad.

There certainly ARE bad biases (sexism, racism, etc). But you may also need to work with the individual you're recruiting, so how well you think you can get along with them or work with them is likely important too.

Plus if this method was common, do you think candidates would prep specifically for those scores? Seems like something very easily gamed. Not to mention that scoring itself can be biased.

As I said at the start, I actually like that, and think they're on the right track. But I'd likely want to combine it with something LESS subjective to get a fuller picture of a candidate.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#15

Post by lazyant »

senekerim wrote: post #5

I have been to lots of interviews, on both sides of the table. I find most interviewers unprepared to evaluate the person for the role, and instead exercise their own biases, stroke their egos, etc. It's largely a voodoo practice that we'll look back and laugh at as a civilization at some point..

Same here, the problem is that it takes a lot of time and effort to set up and run a meaningful standardized hiring process (and is very hard to outsource) and also people don't even consider planning for it, thinking they can just ask some questions in a couple interviews.

For more junior candidates I'd go the "take home test" route, for senior candidates I don't see any other solution than sitting down and design the process properly.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#16

Post by grillvogel »

technical interviews are a joke. the majority of the time they exist so the interviewer can try to feel smart and subject the interviewee to whatever whimsical problem they found on the internet. how often do you do group coding in a whiteboard in your actual job? at one interview I was criticized for sitting and thinking about a problem for a minute without just blindly jumping into attempting to solve it. also tons of people are great at solving toy interview problems but can't debug their way out of a paper bag.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#17

Post by grillvogel »

dudul wrote: post #12

In the HN echo chamber, there isn't a day without some blog post/article describing how our interview process is BS, interview is broken, etc. I don't necessarily dispute this state of affaire, but does anyone know how it compares to other fiels/professions? How about interviewing a lawyer? Or a doctor? Or an account manager? Or a product marketer? Are developers the only one with a "broken" interview process?

most other job interview processes don't involve solving a series of riddles

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#18

Post by dms105 »

The real weaknesses of technical interviews are:

1) They usually just measure the amount of effort a person has put into studying interview questions. Whether or not the ability to do this translates to being a better engineer is debatable.

2) An interviewer almost always exercise some form of personal bias, whether it be educational, personal, etc. This doesn't always show up in written feedback, but the interviewers with stronger personalities usually dominate interview debriefs, and often influence others into hire/no-hire decisions. This is especially prevalent in smaller startups where the process is more informal, things move quickly, and decisions are based more on gut feelings.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#19

Post by minimaxir »

rewqfdsa wrote: post #13
minimaxir wrote: post #2

The headline is "interview performance is kind of arbitrary," but the data solution proposed in the article is "interviewers rate interviewees in a few different dimensions," which is not any less arbitrary. I appreciate there is an appendix addressing this issue, but it does not absolve the issues the analysis, especially since the appendix uses a "Versus Rating" to justify the statistical accuracy of the system, wh…

> the data solution proposed in the article is "interviewers rate interviewees in a few different dimensions," which is not any less arbitrary. This article's headline reveals the spin the HN community is trying to put on it. Many people in SF like to attack the very idea of meritocracy, because if you admit that meritocracy is a good idea, you're implicitly endorsing the idea that people have different levels of mer…

The real issue I have is that only a few of the other comments in this HN thread are looking at the data analysis presented in the article and are just taking the headline as gospel.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#20

Post by rewqfdsa »

grillvogel wrote: post #17
dudul wrote: post #12

In the HN echo chamber, there isn't a day without some blog post/article describing how our interview process is BS, interview is broken, etc. I don't necessarily dispute this state of affaire, but does anyone know how it compares to other fiels/professions? How about interviewing a lawyer? Or a doctor? Or an account manager? Or a product marketer? Are developers the only one with a "broken" interview process?

most other job interview processes don't involve solving a series of riddles

In most other jobs, candidates don't vary in skill by a factor of 10x or more
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