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

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#151

Post by blub » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 2:23 PM UTC

mruniverse wrote: post #55

zeemonkee3 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's a developer, not a telepath. In tests like this you make it clear what's allowed - "use the standard library, no external dependencies" etc. Because in a normal working situation, his solution is perfectly valid. If I were interviewing him it certainly wouldn't be a dealbreaker. I'd probably want to discuss more about pros and cons of in-house vs using libraries, because you tend to find out more about the skill…

In an interview you are trying to show that you understand the problem. Not just get the right answer.

Alas, there are interviews where the correct solution is using a library and writing your own is wrong, because it shows a NIH attitude.

One has to ask, but then the mere act of asking might also annoy some interviewers.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#152

Post by skrebbel » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 2:24 PM UTC

chrshawkes wrote: post #149

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?

Actually I usually ask a comparably difficult question for fear that people might have actually remembered the solution to fizzbuzz by heart. But I didn't think it added to the discussion to mention that.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#153

Post by coredog64 » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 2:29 PM UTC

heartsucker wrote: post #125

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've had the same experience. Someone listed 2 years Scala experience on a resume, but couldn't explain Unit, None, null, and Nothing to me. Or the guy this week who had several years of ops experience and when asked "how can you tell what indexes are being used in a SQL query" didn't even know about EXPLAIN. Basic technical interviews are a must, but someone people get hung up on "they couldn't explain a hash map im…

That latter bit in the Amazon interview really pissed me off. They saw my resume, and it didn't include a degree in CS. They had a cheap opportunity to ask me questions about data structures (phone interview). So why the hell do they wait until the "fly me across the country" interview to ask questions about implementations of priority queue?

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#154

Post by mathgeek » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 2:32 PM UTC

PuffinBlue wrote: post #134

oblio wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you have a decent, up to date, programming portfolio without investing tons of time in it? Photography is IMO a flawed comparison since it's much easier and less time consuming to have some nice looking photos than it is to set up an equivalent software project. More than that, the photos you took in 2010 are likely to still be relevant in 2016, for the average user. However, for programming, your PHP4 project fr…

> Can you have a decent, up to date, programming portfolio without investing tons of time in it? Why wouldn't you invest time in it? It's investing in yourself and could get you your next pay rise. It's not wasted time. We're back to the point I made above about putting the effort in. > Photography is IMO a flawed comparison since it's much easier and less time consuming to have some nice looking photos Sure, as I al…

> feel free to grab the last word

I hope you realize you're having a discussion with three different people. It's not up to you whether the community continues this discussion without you.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#155

Post by gregmac » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 2:39 PM UTC

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…

> A lot of times a job spec contains a minimum of 10-15 skill you need to know.

This can also happen if they are just bad at writing job requirements. Remember, it is typically programmers (or their managers) writing these things, and sometimes HR or a recruiter (who doesn't understand any technical details) "cleaning" it up.

They may just mean "Here are the skills we need, we want to hire someone that knows some of these, and is able to learn the rest fairly quickly".

Of course, they could also have someone specific in mind (but are required to post the job anyway), and in some cases may be delusional and really think they can find someone with all those skills.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#156

Post by reitanqild » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 2:43 PM UTC

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…

This has other sides as well:

* Excelling through the test never to hear from the company again.

* Being (as admitted by the manager in the interview) one of two qualified candidates, the other one being from a somewhere a few hours away by plane, and then get a really cheap offer.

* being asked in a disbelieving tone if I can still code after working as a system engineer for a while. (yeah, give me an assignment already.)

I'd love to be in more interviews where I could win just by coding small small samples or discuss code on the whiteboard (that is as long as nobody is nitpicking about things that any decent IDE will catch.)

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#157

Post by freek4iphone » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 2:46 PM UTC

I totally agree with most of the points Laurie made, specially I hate the new trend of asking people for an online coding test before even talking to a person. I have worked on a ton of complex problems in life and in real world you never have to write 4 complex tree traversal algorithms using the best possible approach in under 60 minutes, never!

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#158

Post by rickr » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 2:58 PM UTC

MrLeftHand wrote: post #38

mruniverse wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really didn't know what they wanted? You think they wanted you to find a library that did it?

Yes, call me stupid. I thought showing resilience by searching for an existing solution and implementing it, instead of reinventing the wheel, will give them a good impression. Clearly I was wrong. But, when you come across a problem, what is the first thing you do? Try to find a solution and use that, or start from scratch every time? This costs money, time and manpower. Having someone who can solve a problem the fa…

As long as they didn't state you can't use external libs it IS a good solution.

Their response lets their team dynamic and environment shine through. They came across an unexpected but valid solution and instead of accepting their question was beaten within the rules they rejected it. I'd wager they didn't fix the wording of the question afterwords either.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#159

Post by sotojuan » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 2:59 PM UTC

pjmorris wrote: post #128

MrLeftHand wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't thinks so. You don't have to use join, but you might end up with loads of queries instead of having just one, but the end result will be the same set of data.

Arguably that's one year of SQL experience repeated five times.

Yep. Believe it or not depending on the team/manager/programmer that happens very often.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#160

Post by Clubber » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 3:01 PM UTC

CSMastermind wrote: post #126

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 honestly can't think of a time I lied during a job interview. Am I doing it wrong?

It's usually over-promoting a skill on your resume. It might not be nefarious or intentional, but it's a communications gap. What you mean by "experience in," and what the manager wants you to mean by "experience in," are two totally different things.

Example, if you read a SQL book a couple of years ago, you would say you have experience in SQL. You've forgotten most of it, but you are familiar. If a manager reads that same thing, he or she might think, "Oh, proficient in CRUD queries but not overly complex ones." Manager gives you a quiz on SQL, but since you don't have Google in front of you, you flail because you haven't messed with it in a long time.

It's not really lying, it's just a communications gap. I'm not saying there isn't outright misrepresentation of skills, but most of the time it isn't intentional.