Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

People suck at technical interviews (2014)

seldo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 315 posts

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#11

Post by gavanwoolery »

smnscu wrote: post #9
gavanwoolery wrote: post #4

As someone who is going through many technical interviews right now, and failing all of them, I love this article. (It was actually brought to my attention last week.) My technical ability is readily apparent to those who have viewed my work, and by virtue of those who have praised it. I don't claim to be the best programmer in the world, just a competent one. I've also been programming for over 20 years, that might…

Did Voxel Quest ( http://www.voxelquest.com/ ) not work out financially? :( If I had my company I'd hire you in a heartbeat. Might be stupidly obvious, but pinging your network might help – I can't be the only one who would want such a talented programmer on their team. Good luck in your search!

Please read my most recent two blog entries on http://www.voxelquest.com where I talk about the current state of things. :)

I have pinged my network, and am very grateful for all the job offers that have come of it. However, at least half those offers have come with technical interviews that basically ignore my work experience, or in one case the recruiter could not even determine why my experience was relevant (even though it was). Some offers involved getting paid to continue working on Voxel Quest. However, one such offer was in a remote country where the US dollar is much stronger, and I could not have operated under the salary they were offering (at least, not without moving to their country, which is very far away).

At this point I am trying to figure out the "best" path, and that involves many factors, one of which is trying to ease up on the stress I have put my family through. By insistence I have put up Patreon although I am not yet touching the money until I know what my future job is and what that means for VQ (and as mentioned I'm also refunding all the money put into VQ).

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#12

Post by gavanwoolery »

ktRolster wrote: post #7
gavanwoolery wrote: post #4

As someone who is going through many technical interviews right now, and failing all of them, I love this article. (It was actually brought to my attention last week.) My technical ability is readily apparent to those who have viewed my work, and by virtue of those who have praised it. I don't claim to be the best programmer in the world, just a competent one. I've also been programming for over 20 years, that might…

But it is not my life goal to be good at interviews. It is my goal to work in areas I am interested, and continue learning things that are directly relevant to my real-world tasks You have to look at the programming career as requiring two skills: the first is programming, and the second is finding a job. That might suck, but it's the nature of a career where you change jobs every three years or so.

Oh, I agree with you, you are totally right. I am mostly speaking from a hypothetical "I wish the world did not operate this way" type of tone. :)

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#13

Post by gavanwoolery »

collyw wrote: post #10
gavanwoolery wrote: post #4

As someone who is going through many technical interviews right now, and failing all of them, I love this article. (It was actually brought to my attention last week.) My technical ability is readily apparent to those who have viewed my work, and by virtue of those who have praised it. I don't claim to be the best programmer in the world, just a competent one. I've also been programming for over 20 years, that might…

Yes, I find it ironical that I was way better at coding tests 15 years ago straight out of University. Nowadays I think longer and write less code. It works better.

One great example is Haseeb, who spent two years of all his life programming. He now commands a $250k salary (which, I say more power to him for exploiting our current interview system).

I don't doubt that Haseeb is an excellent programmer. But not everyone has two years to devote to mastering the interview system like him, and there are plenty of skills you won't get just by doing competitive programming.

http://haseebq.com/farewell-app-academy-hello-airbnb-part-i/

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#15

Post by MrLeftHand »

With one of many job applications I did, I received a small coding exercise before getting to the actual interview.

It was about writing a small application in perl (one of my favorite scripting languages) to solve a problem. It was a number converter from arabic to roman and vice versa.

Anyway I started by looking up a perl module that solved the whole thing in 3-4 lines of code.

What was the answer? Sorry that's not we wanted. We would like to see, how you would solve it with general code.

So you're saying that doing investigation work, finding an existing working solution and applying that solution is not a good answer for you?

Sorry but that's how I work. I find a problem; I investigate for a solution; if there is one I use it and implement it; if not then I will write one.

The moral of the story is: interviewing is fundamentally wrong and doesn't help you find a good candidate. There are millions of good solutions to one problem in programming. Asking for a solution you want to see and not a solution that solves the problem will never help. Then why don't you clone yourself and have an army of developers which work the same way and produce the same code with the same flaws over and over and over.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#16

Post by drinchev »

skrebbel wrote: post #2

In all honesty, I'm not sure the author did a lot of interviewing. For example, > The famous fizzbuzz test simply asks "are you aware of the modulo operator?" Wait, what? No, it asks "can you write a for loop without breaking a sweat?". There's a rightfully vivid debate going on about the virtue of asking algorithmic questions in interviews, but fizzbuzz is hardly algorithmic. I'd wager that virtually all programmers…

I agree with the author that Fizzbuzz is about the modulo operator if you present it to the candidate like that.

What I would simply do is :

"Write fizzbuzz test for language ... use the modulo operator, which is ... for that language"

By doing this it's all about the loop.

On top of that I think the author is right, because the pressure of the candidate is sometimes huge.

I prefer giving a task that they can do at home. For example if it's a front-end position, it would be a small landing page. When I interview I usually tell the candidate :

"I really enjoyed the conversation so far. Just to let you know, the management wants from us to get from every candidate a code sample, so I will have to give you a small task that you can do at home. I'm really sorry about that, but I think it will be also helpful for you to check out what exactly you will be doing here. Do it whenever you want, just make sure you have something by the end of the week. You can also ask me anything at ..."

This sentence makes miracles. The candidate is motivated. The code is cleaner and though-trough. Then you can actually see if the person will be able to do the job.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#17

Post by Maakuth »

ktRolster wrote: post #8
skrebbel wrote: post #2

In all honesty, I'm not sure the author did a lot of interviewing. For example, > The famous fizzbuzz test simply asks "are you aware of the modulo operator?" Wait, what? No, it asks "can you write a for loop without breaking a sweat?". There's a rightfully vivid debate going on about the virtue of asking algorithmic questions in interviews, but fizzbuzz is hardly algorithmic. I'd wager that virtually all programmers…

* It's a great predictor for "can this person actually program, well, at all?".* How do you know, have you hired many who had trouble with the Fizzbuzz? Or are you just guessing? (I don't know either; there's a lot of missing data in interviews)

Everyone I know doing recruiting says that FizzBuzz reliably disqualifies surprisingly large fraction of candidates. Even half of them, even after prefiltering by education or relevant experience.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#18

Post by itaysk »

Interviewing is hard.. I always hated the idea of judging someone based on a 1 hour chat (I was always the tech interviewer or first screen). I also hate that interviewers aim to challenge the candidate with hard technical questions that they might have or might have not had experience with.

So what I do is ask the candidate to tell me about their experience, past projects, and also frankly ask them "what are you most comfortable talking about" and continue diving from here. When they talk about a topic they claim to be experienced with, you can really see what they worth. When someone can't fluently discuss something his claims to be knowledgeable in (yes that happened), that's a bad sign.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#19

Post by dijit »

MrLeftHand wrote: post #15

With one of many job applications I did, I received a small coding exercise before getting to the actual interview. It was about writing a small application in perl (one of my favorite scripting languages) to solve a problem. It was a number converter from arabic to roman and vice versa. Anyway I started by looking up a perl module that solved the whole thing in 3-4 lines of code. What was the answer? Sorry that's no…

The issue is many companies have NIH syndrome, sometimes for a generally good reason.

in the same circumstances I would have noted my find and copied the relevant code into my project, not because I'd do that in personal projects, but because companies only care about integrating their requirements with as few external dependencies as possible.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#20

Post by gavanwoolery »

drinchev wrote: post #16
skrebbel wrote: post #2

In all honesty, I'm not sure the author did a lot of interviewing. For example, > The famous fizzbuzz test simply asks "are you aware of the modulo operator?" Wait, what? No, it asks "can you write a for loop without breaking a sweat?". There's a rightfully vivid debate going on about the virtue of asking algorithmic questions in interviews, but fizzbuzz is hardly algorithmic. I'd wager that virtually all programmers…

I agree with the author that Fizzbuzz is about the modulo operator if you present it to the candidate like that. What I would simply do is : "Write fizzbuzz test for language ... use the modulo operator, which is ... for that language" By doing this it's all about the loop. On top of that I think the author is right, because the pressure of the candidate is sometimes huge. I prefer giving a task that they can do at h…

I can second the value of the take-home assignment. My last company, Appstem, gave them out, and it never once failed. It additionally succeeded in weeding out people who were not motivated enough to want the job.
Post reply on HN