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People suck at technical interviews (2014)

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Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#141

Post by DeBraid »

The whole hiring process is a nightmare for both parties.

Two things I've learned about hiring / interviews: it's both very difficult and imprecise.

Process is more like dating than laboratory science; a race to establish rapport (a combination of comfort and trust). To get hired you must sufficiently possess an arbitrary blend of credentials and testing/interview performance.

Whatever it takes to make the hiring manager comfortable and trusting. Some want 10x-ers only, are soothed by strong technical chops/coding test performance, others select for culture and ability to learn. YMMV as selection criteria based on job description, sector, company stage, weather/etc.

This is why personal referrals are so powerful: trust is established MUCH faster, other flaws will be overlooked.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#142

Post by mbesto »

MrLeftHand wrote: post #88
hanginghyena wrote: post #76

Hiring Manager Perspective: Everyone lies, sorry. As a candidate, I hate technical interviews. For the reasons above. As the poor schmuck asked to make the hiring decision, however, I've learned that I can't live without them. My technical isn't complicated. A very basic SQL assignment (delivered to an audience which claims to know SQL) that is followed by a few broader database design / data process QA questions. En…

Potential Employee Perspective: they can't be serious!!! A lot of times a job spec contains a minimum of 10-15 skill you need to know. And that's just the modest one. Maybe employers should stop trying to find the non-existing 'developer rock-star' and people would stop lying. The funny thing is that even the developers themselves start to behave like that when they are on the other end of the hiring (Been there, don…

Both responses sound oddly like dating.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#143

Post by strickjb9 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #90
hanginghyena wrote: post #76

Hiring Manager Perspective: Everyone lies, sorry. As a candidate, I hate technical interviews. For the reasons above. As the poor schmuck asked to make the hiring decision, however, I've learned that I can't live without them. My technical isn't complicated. A very basic SQL assignment (delivered to an audience which claims to know SQL) that is followed by a few broader database design / data process QA questions. En…

I hear you. I'm terrified by the kinds of interviews that want programming trivia. In the last three years I've never had to code a binary search tree. But I should be able to show you I'm very comfortable with Python.

As an interviewer, I don't ask this question but if I did then you could impress me by asking what a binary search tree is, then I would tell you, then you explain or write how you would do it.

Most of these interview questions aren't designed to be trivia. It's designed because your job IS implementation of technical and business problems.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#144

Post by gregmac »

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,…

Except that the vast majority of programmers essentially say "I'm very good at taking pictures, but I can't actually show you any of them because they're all property of my previous employers, and I never take pictures just for myself".

> 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.

100% agree, and Github in particular is great for this. Sadly, in my experience very, very few candidates have such a thing. Even non-code content such as issues they've filed or stackoverflow questions and answers is a very useful way to judge someone's technical abilities, but many candidates don't provide links and either use separate identities/aliases or don't participate.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#145

Post by Spoom »

Waterluvian wrote: post #90
hanginghyena wrote: post #76

Hiring Manager Perspective: Everyone lies, sorry. As a candidate, I hate technical interviews. For the reasons above. As the poor schmuck asked to make the hiring decision, however, I've learned that I can't live without them. My technical isn't complicated. A very basic SQL assignment (delivered to an audience which claims to know SQL) that is followed by a few broader database design / data process QA questions. En…

I hear you. I'm terrified by the kinds of interviews that want programming trivia. In the last three years I've never had to code a binary search tree. But I should be able to show you I'm very comfortable with Python.

Devil's advocate: Asking highly academic questions allows employers to be ageist without explicitly stating it, since college grads are likely to be the most familiar with them. This lets them select for younger candidates with less experience and thus drive down developer salary.

(Standard disclaimer: Some development positions actually require the academic knowledge mentioned. Most of the time, though, a good developer will use a well-tested library instead of rolling their own.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#146

Post by fweespeech »

hanginghyena wrote: post #76

Hiring Manager Perspective: Everyone lies, sorry. As a candidate, I hate technical interviews. For the reasons above. As the poor schmuck asked to make the hiring decision, however, I've learned that I can't live without them. My technical isn't complicated. A very basic SQL assignment (delivered to an audience which claims to know SQL) that is followed by a few broader database design / data process QA questions. En…

> Hiring Manager Perspective: Everyone lies, sorry.

Yeah, and honestly, that includes hiring managers.

I've rejected offers because the hiring managers level of deception exceeded my tolerance for bullshit.

> About candidates who claim to know a skill but literally cannot write even basic syntax on the whiteboard.

Yes, I don't remember the syntax from 5+ languages well enough to write it in on a whiteboard. Yet somehow, I'm able to use 3-4 on a daily basis to handle millions of dollars in transactions.

So...I really think whiteboards, once again, are really the wrong way to test people. Code samples and discussing them work much, much better for everyone.

I may be biased...whiteboards, I get rejected 50% of the time. I also find, honestly, that if I ask two technical questions of the people giving the whiteboard test of similar difficulty...they rarely can answer more than 1 acceptably so I've found the failure rate to be pretty consistent with the rate they fail me.

Code samples? I get offers 90% of the time.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#147

Post by chrshawkes »

mruniverse wrote: post #47
gavanwoolery wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they had a killer hook, yes. An editor can always review and fix the grammar. :) A coding analogy: A compiler or debugger can catch bugs. If they can't form a competent sentence, they probably would fail to write a convincing hook. But some margin of error is acceptable.

Is the "technical" part really analogous to grammar? I don't think many interviewers care about that. They don't care about missed semi-colons. They want to see that you know how to solve a problem. And a github portfolio is not going to give them that. As an aside, I think debugging is hard even with a debugger.

how would a GitHub portfolio of problem solving projects and contributions not show that? I can't think of any better way.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#148

Post by timford »

Waterluvian wrote: post #90
hanginghyena wrote: post #76

Hiring Manager Perspective: Everyone lies, sorry. As a candidate, I hate technical interviews. For the reasons above. As the poor schmuck asked to make the hiring decision, however, I've learned that I can't live without them. My technical isn't complicated. A very basic SQL assignment (delivered to an audience which claims to know SQL) that is followed by a few broader database design / data process QA questions. En…

I hear you. I'm terrified by the kinds of interviews that want programming trivia. In the last three years I've never had to code a binary search tree. But I should be able to show you I'm very comfortable with Python.

Python isn't the only capability you're typically being evaluated for, though. A binary search tree is a very simple thing. I think it's reasonable to expect a candidate to come up with a basic implementation of a binary search tree, especially if you are giving him/she hints when he/she gets stuck -- an interview should be a two-way conversation. If you can't come up with something approaching a binary search tree in an hour and with my help, how can I expect you to design a reasonably complex system when the business needs it?

Now if you are asked to come up with a red black tree without any help, now that is a different story. A red black tree's implementation details are hard to derive given a set of requirements. A binary search tree, not so much.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#149

Post by chrshawkes »

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…

If you're so crafty at sifting through candidates to resort to FizzBuzz to help you do it, why do you have to copy and paste FizzBuzz, why not come up with something original?

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#150

Post by drdeadringer »

mbesto wrote: post #142
MrLeftHand wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potential Employee Perspective: they can't be serious!!! A lot of times a job spec contains a minimum of 10-15 skill you need to know. And that's just the modest one. Maybe employers should stop trying to find the non-existing 'developer rock-star' and people would stop lying. The funny thing is that even the developers themselves start to behave like that when they are on the other end of the hiring (Been there, don…

Both responses sound oddly like dating.

Because that is what the process of hiring is.

Dating and interviews go both ways. "I don't want to hire you" is a valid as "I don't want to work for you".

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