People suck at technical interviews (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#21

Post by dfabulich » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 9:01 AM UTC

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…

>> 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 are notorious cases where senior engineers with years of actual honest coding experience "fail" fizzbuzz. IMO, That happens in two ways:

1) Not knowing (forgotten?) what a modulus operator is, and trying to code one up from scratch with a for loop. This can totally happen when you spend a few years working on line-of-business CRUD apps that never turn out to need modulus arithmetic.

Coding modulus from scratch with just + - / * is a fun little challenge in its own right, but it'll probably take you longer than 10 minutes to write it correctly and solve fizzbuzz with it.

That means you just took more than 10 minutes on fizzbuzz, which means you failed.

2) Trying to "clean up" the solution. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FizzBuzzTest has a good discussion on 'Why Fizz-Buzz is "hard:"', which points out that many of the most obvious solutions have code duplication, which some people then try to eliminate, tying themselves in knots trying to make it perfect.

The third possibility, that a candidate with years of experience shipping code nonetheless struggles to write a for loop, is IMO just not as common as the above two failure cases. (Much more likely is that the candidate has lied/exaggerated on their resume.)

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#22

Post by LionessLover » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 9:09 AM UTC

Maakuth wrote: post #17

ktRolster wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* 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.

That is a useless statement unless they followed the rejected candidates for a few more years at least. Otherwise it's just a tautology: They suck because my favorite test says so (i.e. because I say so).

Sure it weeds out "non-programmers" - any programming task (more than "Hello World") does. But how many people who are good programmers and just suck a) under pressure, b) especially when surprised are falsely out-selected?

I once failed to answer what a right join is. I got the (freelancer) job anyway - and of course I knew all along what that is, but when I got that question I had not used any joins in years (doing infrastructure work instead), and under interview pressure I can't think except along narrow lines. I ended up doing most of the complicated SQL queries in the department, with people coming to me because to me that was easy. After failing a very simple interview question on joins.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#23

Post by Scarblac » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 9:11 AM UTC

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…

I disagree. You need to be able to find existing working solutions and use them, sure.

But you also need to be able to do this kind of thing yourself if you can't find an existing solution, because that also happens all the time. It's that ability that they were testing. That's perfectly valid.

They should however have told you that before the test.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#24

Post by k__ » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 9:12 AM UTC

gavanwoolery wrote: post #11

smnscu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It speaks for broken hiring when even skillers like you can't get a job.

I always thought I just wasn't as good as I think when I didn't get a job, but I know your work and it is amazing, so hiring companies just don't know what they doing anymore

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#25

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 9:12 AM UTC

gavanwoolery wrote: post #11

smnscu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#26

Post by PuffinBlue » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 9:14 AM UTC

There needs to be a bit of a shift in understanding what 'category' of worker a programmer 'is', both by companies and more importantly by (some) individuals themselves.

Programming is both technical and artistic. It's a creative endeavour that relies on technical skill to complete.

The best analogy to another profession would be to those in the 'technical arts', those like photography, joinery, painting, sculpture, drafting, perhaps writing too.

It seems at the moment that companies are approaching programmers as if they are purely technical like an actuary or bookkeeper and are seeking to quantify artistic skill through interview tests. This is rubbing off on some programmers who begin to think of themselves in these terms.

I don't recall a single instance as a photographer where I had to quantify my technical skill, but there were hundreds of times I had to based on my artistic skill, proving I had already made a vast range of photographs with sufficient quality to 'prove' my ability and by extension proving my technical ability.

Crucially, it was the fact I had a portfolio that allowed me to prove my ability, both artistically and technically.

I see a similar need in programming. I think programmers should create their portfolios of personal or paid for projects that showcase their technical and artistic skill and companies should take those seriously.

At the moment it seems that far to many programmers are attempting to get jobs without a 'portfolio' which is why, in an creative endeavour like programming, companies that hire are trying to quantify and determine a new hires ability with these seemingly bullshit tests.

There's room for improvement in this argument and there are outliers, but I think the basic premise is sound.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#27

Post by MrLeftHand » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 9:16 AM UTC

dijit wrote: post #19

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.

Yes, that is a problem as well. They don't want to use libraries from the outside, so they develop a lot of stuff in-house. Which will have specific requirements and getting someone up to speed takes longer then using an existing API, which is well known and used by millions of other companies and developers.

Also most of the times these in-house APIs are developed by if not one, but a handful of people. So if they leave, you are stuck with code which nobody understands and you keep on adding on top of it and breaking it in many ways.

Not to mention your developers will be stuck and get experience with code not used anywhere else. If you want to cripple their prospect to get better jobs and experience, this is the way to go.

It is a vicious cycle and it seems nobody is willing to break it.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#28

Post by gavanwoolery » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 9:20 AM UTC

PuffinBlue wrote: post #26

There needs to be a bit of a shift in understanding what 'category' of worker a programmer 'is', both by companies and more importantly by (some) individuals themselves. Programming is both technical and artistic. It's a creative endeavour that relies on technical skill to complete. The best analogy to another profession would be to those in the 'technical arts', those like photography, joinery, painting, sculpture,…

That is actually a really great point.

Its like hiring a writer based on their grammar. A writer could have perfect grammar but their books are boring as hell.

Or even hiring a writer for adhering to the techniques of connoisseurs. The book "Ready Player One" was heavily criticized as amateur work (it was, after all, the author's very first book), but it nonetheless was hugely successful (and even has a movie in the making).

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#29

Post by gavanwoolery » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 9:23 AM UTC

k__ wrote: post #24

gavanwoolery wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It speaks for broken hiring when even skillers like you can't get a job. I always thought I just wasn't as good as I think when I didn't get a job, but I know your work and it is amazing, so hiring companies just don't know what they doing anymore

Thanks! It honestly does help, because in my current state I find myself heavily second-guessing my own value. That said, I have found the humility to be enlightening :)

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#30

Post by mruniverse » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 9:27 AM UTC

gavanwoolery wrote: post #28

PuffinBlue wrote: post #26

There needs to be a bit of a shift in understanding what 'category' of worker a programmer 'is', both by companies and more importantly by (some) individuals themselves. Programming is both technical and artistic. It's a creative endeavour that relies on technical skill to complete. The best analogy to another profession would be to those in the 'technical arts', those like photography, joinery, painting, sculpture,…

That is actually a really great point. Its like hiring a writer based on their grammar. A writer could have perfect grammar but their books are boring as hell. Or even hiring a writer for adhering to the techniques of connoisseurs. The book "Ready Player One" was heavily criticized as amateur work (it was, after all, the author's very first book), but it nonetheless was hugely successful (and even has a movie in the…

Would you hire a writer with bad grammar?