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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

#221

Post by marknutter »

turkishrevenge wrote: post #205
marknutter wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once was called into an emergency meeting by the CEO of the company I was working for the time. When I entered the room, all of the top brass were seated around the table, some visibly agitated. The CEO proceeded to hand me a single black whiteboard marker as he stated "the fate of the company depends on you". The problem was outlined by a fellow engineer and it was explained that I had 10 minutes to solve it, or w…

I believe you, but this really reads like something on /r/thathappened.

;)

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#222

Post by splintercell »

tarsinge wrote: post #216
splintercell wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I envision "Software Engineering Test" as a 20 questions exercise. The interviewer will give a simple user story to the user. "As a user I want to be able to add two numbers". After the candidate implements that, "As a user I want to be able to subtract two numbers". At this point look how the candidate continues. If he implements a class Calc with two methods as Add and Subtract, then give him 5 points, if h…

It looks like a test for how good you are at over engineering things. Making classes for data processing functions is OOP wrongly done in my opinion. Simple functions or even a lambda seems more appropriate, ability to make it simple is seems less impressive but it takes experience. Plus what if your language is functional and doesn't even have classes?

> It looks like a test for how good you are at over engineering things. Sorry I typed it all on mobile, so laziness got to me. But it seems like that you missed the point of the test by a fair margin. The test allows you to judge overengineering too. The whole idea is, give them scenarios like this, suitable to your values and business needs. Every language has abstractions, and it is the decision to figure out good abstraction vs bad abstraction vs no abstraction.

Making a calculator class is an overkill IMHO, and this is precisely why the next task is to "create an interest rate calculation method which offers different interest rate based on credit rating", the whole idea is, that here any developer worth their salt, will be separated from the chafe. Of course, you will need to help them a bit to steer in the right direction, but the test isn't about knowledge, but of their perspective.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#223

Post by iolothebard »

stale2002 wrote: post #95
iolothebard wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a 800+ page study guide while living in SF for the ridiculous technical interviews they'd put you through. Then you'd see their code base and realize they've never actually done anything that would remotely resemble best practices. The best part though was realizing if you didn't answer that one question exactly how the "brilliant" person interviewing you wanted it answered, you were done. So at that point I'd…

Ever thought about releasing this study guide that you've made? I would love to take a look at it/ send it to some friends!

Lol, no. It's mostly just an amalgamation of all the technologies and stupid fucking interview questions that you get.

I have 10-12 different documents. CS/OO (basics for reminders with some simple algorithms), .Net, SQL (I always forget this shit, it's why I have data layer and use ORMs + LINQ), LINQ, jQuery, Vanilla JS, HTML5+CSS, Architecture/Patterns, ASP.Net vs MVC, Tuning, etc.

Haven't updated them in a few years because I left the bubble. My interviews in the midwest are typically an hour or two at most with very little quizzing. At worst they ask you to make them a small simple app (which I find irritating but better than SF interviews).

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#224

Post by st3v3r »

kasey_junk wrote: post #174
st3v3r wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe those clauses are completely unethical in the first place, so I wouldn't have a problem.

But you sign them and take money from the people offering them?

So? For one, I live in California, where those clauses are not enforceable. If they want to put illegal stuff in their contracts, that's not my fault.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#225

Post by fapjacks »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #132
jessedhillon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interest is not enough, unfortunately. There are plenty of engineers who are attracted to the challenge and excitement of building new things, but have no appreciation for The Right Way to build things. Great engineers think beyond "how" and ask the "should" questions as well. Mediocre engineers glue things together in a haphazard way with little thought about what's the best way to write things. Caring about maintai…

>There are plenty of engineers who are attracted to the challenge and excitement of building new things, but have no appreciation for The Right Way to build things. It still takes a village to get to this point, which means even in the best case, we're all going to contribute some shitty code to the world because that's just the learning curve. You can, of course, go a long time without peer review or having ever bee…

This is a very poignant observation. Interesting.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#226

Post by jkyle »

bsder wrote: post #124
jkyle wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I expect a programmer to be able to pick up a new language or database within a couple of weeks (tops) in most cases. They may be able to hack around, write a for loop, track down a bug....but you're not going to get the same caliber of work from someone who first saw python two weeks ago compared to someone whose been using the language for 5 years on real projects.

> but you're not going to get the same caliber of work from someone who first saw python two weeks ago compared to someone whose been using the language for 5 years on real projects. Careful. You probably need to define your terms more clearly. A CS student who knows Java (4+ years of experience) is going to turn out very different programs from a 20 year veteran of Erlang who is just learning Java. Even with bad Jav…

> A CS student who knows Java (4+ years of experience) is going to turn out very different programs from a 20 year veteran of Erlang who is just learning Java.

Perhaps. But I would take contention with a CS student claiming 4+ years "experience" with Java unless they were referring to something outside of class work.

When filling a position though, you're usually not comparing "was handed my degree yesterday" candidates with 20 year veterans. . . they're demanding much different compensation and degrees of responsibility.

A more apt comparison of my point would be a 20 year veteran of of Erlang who says "oh, yeah, I can pick Java up. Never seen it, but it'll just take me a couple of weeks." is not, in any way, going to produce the same quality code as a 20 year veteran of Java of relatively comparable experience and general skill.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#227

Post by acheron »

dragonwriter wrote: post #220
acheron wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are easily many more programmers who work on potentially life-or-death systems than there are lawyers who litigate death-penalty cases in court.

> There are easily many more programmers who work on potentially life-or-death systems than there are lawyers who litigate death-penalty cases in court. But potentially life-or-death cases are not limited to death penalty cases, they are just the most obvious class of cases that are life-or-death. There are far greater numbers (and proportion) of lawyers who work on potentially life-and-death work -- not limited to d…

Well, the OP said "sentenced to death" specifically, which is why I mentioned the death penalty. But ok. Either way I still don't think I agree, though frankly I'm just going off gut feeling and don't have any numbers. But think about how much medical device software is out there, plus industrial control equipment, airplanes and other vehicles, military stuff, etc. I know on HN the image of "programmer" is "person taking VC money to write a photo sharing app" but there's a lot of other work out there.

Though for what it's worth this is less a "programmers are awesome and important!" argument than it is a "don't get your view of lawyers from television shows" argument -- if the OP had gone with doctors or something I wouldn't have said anything.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#228

Post by sytse »

arjie wrote: post #211
maxaf wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience this hasn't been the case. The closest I've come was an employment contract that required me to notify my employer of any work on the side. This has happened only once over more than a decade of work in this industry.

GitLab has an employment offer example up on their website¹. Here's the part that's relevant to the discussion: > While you render services to the Company, you will not engage in any other gainful employment, business or activity without the written consent of the Company. While you render services to the Company, you also will not assist any person or organization in competing with the Company, in preparing to compe…

I do not think we would make a problem if people did a paid technical interview somewhere else, it doesn't make sense to me. On the other hand it is hard to write an exception for this, but merge requests are welcome.

Are technical interviews work on real world problems, the work is not paid and the code is open source. You can opt for an alternative if you want, see https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#229

Post by kafkaesq »

nvarsj wrote: post #161
brightball wrote: post #22

With programmers, the single easiest way to identify good candidates (in my experience) is sheer interest in what they do / desire to learn. This is a learn everyday field and if you're interested in what you're doing, you're going to do a lot better at it. It's hard to apply yourself mentally to something that you don't have a good level of interest in. Given that it's a learn everyday field, people with that level…

> The single most effective way that I've found to interview for "interest" is to just get them talking about something they've done before and ask them to go deep into the details. You get everything you need from watching somebody talk, with a smile on their face, about how they solved some problem in a creative way that makes them show some pride. Sorry, but you are being scammed. You are selecting for sales skill…

Actually it's pretty easy to sniff out "salesmanship" in the interview process. From either side, whatever the format.

Re: Technical interview performance is kind of arbitrary

#230

Post by h0w412d »

lazyant wrote: post #15
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 t…

I have to say, I hate take home tests. They move all the burden of time commitment onto the candidate. And even if the question says it should take 2-3 hours, there's a game theory situation where you have to assume others are spending more than the recommended time to make their answer more polished, forcing you to spend more than the recommended time.

Finally, companies never pay you back appropriately for your time investment. If you fail the question, they don't give you a detailed report of why you failed. I'll always politely turn down a take home test.

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