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People suck at technical interviews (2014)

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Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#161

Post by llamataboot »

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…

Look, I think most companies put too many skills on their wishlist. And if, in fact, you weren't actually going to be using SQL too much, but using ActiveRecord all the time, maybe it is acceptable to say "Well, I actually don't know how to do that in SQL, but here's how I'd do it in ActiveRecord (do it correctly) and here's how you examine the SQL that ActiveRecord is generating, and I'm happy to study SQL and the guts of ActiveRecord if we need to do a lot of complex queries..." and okay, you made your case. But if the job requires SQL experience and you don't know how to do a basic join? Sorry, not gonna be a good fit. I mean, employers need to ask for some specific skills!

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#162

Post by marcosdumay »

saiya-jin wrote: post #140
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…

> Everyone lies, sorry. I have an issue with this - i don't lie. Not in CV, not in interviews. We're not managers, we cannot talk our way out of tasks given to us, and most of us who are worth at least a pinch of salt are not desperate to get job X. But I understand that if your experience is as it is, this is probably correct approach.

> I have an issue with this - i don't lie.

Well, I don't either. That makes it much better for me that people use a test that separates liars from honest people.

Yes, the phrasing is bad, but it is a very understandable hyperbole.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#163

Post by Clubber »

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 think what he is pointing out is that if you don't know the modulus operator, you will fail FizzBuzz. The modulus operator is rarely used and somewhat obscure.

The only time I use the modulus operator is when I'm writing something to track what record / rule I'm processing and I only want to show every 10,000th record or so. I can't think of a time I've used it otherwise.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#164

Post by rtpg »

arethuza wrote: post #113
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…

5 years of SQL experience and no idea of what a join is? Isn't that like saying 5 years of C/Java/C#/... experience and not knowing what assignment is?

Maybe 5 years of Java without using inheritance?

It's possible but feels like you haven't gone the distance.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#165

Post by sotojuan »

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.

Sadly true. What sucks is having to choose between working on a fun side project or practicing algorithm or coding interviews (LeetCode, Hacker Rank). I honestly really dislike doing the latter, but I know I have to.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#166

Post by overcast »

marvin wrote: post #92
gavanwoolery wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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://has…

That was a very fascinating read, and completely illusion-shattering regarding the skill tech companies have in giving offers to good candidates. Social proof provided 90% of his increase in market value. I am not doubting that he is a very skilled developer, but this was certainly not the key reason why he got such a good offer :)

It's ALWAYS about who you know. Always.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#167

Post by tayo42 »

mattzito wrote: post #103
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…

At a previous startup, we gave potential developers a very simple test: we had a file with a comma separated list of movie titles, release dates, etc. The candidate was expected to: - read that file in - store it in some sort of data structure - allow users to run commands to retrieve movie titles based on name, release year, etc. Command-line was totally fine, you had access to the Internet, and as much time as you…

How would you do this without basically writing your own database from scratch?

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#168

Post by cloakandswagger »

tayo42 wrote: post #167
mattzito wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a previous startup, we gave potential developers a very simple test: we had a file with a comma separated list of movie titles, release dates, etc. The candidate was expected to: - read that file in - store it in some sort of data structure - allow users to run commands to retrieve movie titles based on name, release year, etc. Command-line was totally fine, you had access to the Internet, and as much time as you…

How would you do this without basically writing your own database from scratch?

Store it in memory? I doubt the amount of data they provided for a test problem was so tremendous that it required a database.

In itself this is a good (dis)qualifier; if I give someone a problem and tell them the data will never exceed 10k rows, I expect them to be practical and not waste time setting up a database.

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#169

Post by meggar »

tayo42 wrote: post #167
mattzito wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a previous startup, we gave potential developers a very simple test: we had a file with a comma separated list of movie titles, release dates, etc. The candidate was expected to: - read that file in - store it in some sort of data structure - allow users to run commands to retrieve movie titles based on name, release year, etc. Command-line was totally fine, you had access to the Internet, and as much time as you…

How would you do this without basically writing your own database from scratch?

create a Movie class, for each line read in from the CSV file create a new Movie object and add it to a list. queries would search the list of Movies?

Re: People suck at technical interviews (2014)

#170

Post by seldo »

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…

Doing what you're doing will probably work, in that you'll get decent candidates. But this approach only works for one kind of good developer -- the kind who can survive this kind of interview. Silicon Valley's diversity problem is made worse by interview styles that give false negatives for excellent candidates who lack confidence or just don't think the same way. My thesis is that this test, by giving frequent false negatives, is resulting in a worse pool of final hires than a broader process.
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