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Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

blog.interviewing.io

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Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#171

Post by graffic »

existencebox wrote: post #43
vdnkh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the majority of actual tasks are often googled and stack-overflowed The more I've grown as a developer the less I've had to do this.

Ah damn; and I had been doing so well mushing down my imposter complex :P I've found the exact opposite, the longer I dev the more I look for things. I've found it entirely impractical to keep the esoterica of dozens of different languages, frameworks and tools in my head at once. What little memory I have is typically reserved for thinking about abstractions, arch/features, and core concepts, and I let myself lean h…

You're not alone. The more experience I get, the more I feel that specifics in a language are a commodity, but what you do with that language is what matters.

Those abstractions, identifying problems, talking with peers, deciding the next step, etc. The language is not the problem, you will learn it.

With time I got to know more core concepts but I don't know the syntax of whatever language the interviewer's company is using. It is nice to find people interviewing you who care more about what you're trying to say than the syntax.

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#172

Post by popcorncolonel »

ordinaryperson wrote: post #166

The master's in CS can be useful if: 1. You have an undergrad degree in liberal arts 2. You pay as little tuition as possible 3. You take no time off and continue to work FT These apply to me -- my undergrad was in English, I paid 6k total (27% of the 21k total cost) and went to school at night over 4 years while my career continued to progress. Most of the people in my program couldn't write a FOR loop if their life…

> The measure of successful programmers is how efficient and professional they are in problem solving

They are not asking you to split a linked list given a pivot value or reverse a string without using a builtin function because that's what you going to be doing on your job. They're doing that so they can see how efficient you can be given a new problem. That's why companies have interviewers sign NDA's - so their interview questions escape as little as possible, so it's not just problem memorization.

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#173

Post by greenhatman »

ooqr wrote: post #150
forrestbrazeal wrote: post #71

The author draws a hard distinction between Udacity/Coursera MOOCs (good) and traditional master's degrees (bad). I'll interject that with Georgia Tech's Online Master's in Computer Science program [0], which is delivered via Udacity and insanely cheap [1], you can get the best of both! (Their "Computability, Complexity and Algorithms" class is one of the top Udacity courses cited in the article.) Keep in mind that a…

While I agree that MOOCs lack face time, I was a terrible traditional student and excel when given the opportunity to structure my time as I see fit. Accountability is overrated.

I'm im the same camp. I've start studying at a university a few times now, and I keep failing because other oportunities come up that are more important than passing the course.

I need to be able to self study at my own pace according to how my free time allowes. I'm also not that interested in formal tests and exams. And even course projects.

I want to learn what I need for whatever project I'm currenty working on or going to work on next.

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#174

Post by nkozyra »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #90
forrestbrazeal wrote: post #71

The author draws a hard distinction between Udacity/Coursera MOOCs (good) and traditional master's degrees (bad). I'll interject that with Georgia Tech's Online Master's in Computer Science program [0], which is delivered via Udacity and insanely cheap [1], you can get the best of both! (Their "Computability, Complexity and Algorithms" class is one of the top Udacity courses cited in the article.) Keep in mind that a…

Jumping in as another OMSCS student to second your post. The accountability really makes a difference finding the balance between work/life and the schooling (which can be nontrivial considering the courses are certainly rigorous).

Same here. There's much more at stake and it helps push you. Grades and money are extrinsic motivators, but they get you from point a to b.

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#175

Post by hliyan »

enjo wrote: post #157
fecak wrote: post #56

Thanks for writing this Aline. As a recruiter for almost 20 years, I wish I had access to all my data and then the time to compile it, and anecdotally I'd expect the finding about MOOCs would be similar. The most selective of my hiring clients over the years tended to stress intellectual curiosity as a leading criterion and factor in their hiring decisions, as they felt that trait had led to better outcomes (good hir…

"Intellectual curiosity" was my primary attribute for many years. Particularly when I was young and didn't really know any better. It makes sense doesn't it? Someone who is interested in learning for learning's sake will be a better developer! Except I'm convinced it's not really true. It's something that is horribly subjective and really self-selective. It's funny, intellectually curious people often have exactly th…

> It's about attention to detail. In the world of scatter brained developers who never seem to really follow through on anything, it's those guys that are the real unicorns.

I've done a few hundred technical interviews over the years and this is absolutely true. It's these guys who make production ready systems possible more than anybody else.

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#176

Post by zump »

ma2rten wrote: post #92

Until recently I worked at a startup as Machine Learning Engineer/Data Scientist. There I got some experience interviewing people and looking at their resumes. In my experience, which is very limited compared to this post, people who put an MOOC on their resume are usually less qualified compared to people who don't. There is nothing wrong with MOOCs, but they are almost always beginner-level. If you put them on your…

Elitism.

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#177

Post by geebee »

eanzenberg wrote: post #125
geebee wrote: post #14

Interesting bit on the MS degree. I followed the link, and I'm not quite as surprised that the correlation is poor, or even negative, given the way the data was collected and analyzed. Absolutely agree that some MS degrees are pretty much less rigorous cash cows by now, that allow students to skip the fundamentals such as data structures, operating systems, and compilers. However, many CS MS degrees actually do requi…

Um, did you actually look at the article? There was no data shown between interview performance and MS degree status. The graph you saw was interview performance vs. years of experience. This isn't surprising since a person with 20 years experience will generally interview for a much more challenging job than someone with 0 years.

Yes, I read the article. Under the section "Master’s degree & years of experience", the author writes:

"No surprises here. I’ve ranted quite a bit about the disutility of master’s degrees, so I won’t belabor the point."

And provides a link to another post the author has written. Look for ("disutility of masters degrees"). That page will contain more of the content we are discussing.

This is what I was referring to when I wrote:

"This is fully acknowledged in the text of the article referenced in a link, but unless people follow it, I do think the message may be a bit misleading."

I would agree that no data is provided here, the author simply states MS degrees are an indicator of poor technical performance "in my experience" and goes on to list reasons why this might be the case.

I'm sure there's a reasonable case to be made that an MS in CS isn't worth the time, effort, and money, even from a top school. But I don't think that grouping these degrees with MS degrees in Info Sys (among others) and then reporting experiences without that distinction provides much useful insight into the topic.

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#178

Post by ordinaryperson »

popcorncolonel wrote: post #172
ordinaryperson wrote: post #166

The master's in CS can be useful if: 1. You have an undergrad degree in liberal arts 2. You pay as little tuition as possible 3. You take no time off and continue to work FT These apply to me -- my undergrad was in English, I paid 6k total (27% of the 21k total cost) and went to school at night over 4 years while my career continued to progress. Most of the people in my program couldn't write a FOR loop if their life…

> The measure of successful programmers is how efficient and professional they are in problem solving They are not asking you to split a linked list given a pivot value or reverse a string without using a builtin function because that's what you going to be doing on your job. They're doing that so they can see how efficient you can be given a new problem. That's why companies have interviewers sign NDA's - so their i…

> so it's not just problem memorization.

How is it not?

Grasping the fundamentals of algorithms and data structures: important.

Memorizing the best greedy algorithm for traversing a linked list: not important.

Any super specific answer to a problem is likely not worth committing to memory because 1) it'll probably change as platforms evolve 2) Googling specifics lets you save space in your brain for things that actually matter.

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#179

Post by Apocryphon »

jorblumesea wrote: post #161
Apocryphon wrote: post #98

Not to harp on the "technical interviews are disconnected from actual work!" angle too much, but I'm reminded of a comment from a thread about the creator of Homebrew failing a Google interview. Someone pointed out that it goes to show that it's possible to create widely-used software without an intimate knowledge of CS. I wonder if that's a disconcerting fact for some employers to grapple with.

Google's specific interview standards only select for academic rigor, not just successful software skills. Look at how many failed or poorly designed products and libs Google has released.

I've always said there seems to be a weird relationship in tech between "the industry" and academia. On one hand, there's a growing disconnect between the everyday API gluing-frameworks galore-trudging through someone's code instead of rolling your own nature of day to day work vs. the clean algorithms of school. On the other, there's a youthful, even immature, vibe of all-nighters and casualness for the sake of casualness and Silicon Valley perks.

Maybe this is what happens when an industry is built around worshipping whiz kids. If CS in SV was about venerating NASA/aerospace code, less flashy but very very stable, well-engineered stuff that lives are dependent upon, it'd look a lot more like EE and other more traditional engineering fields.

Re: Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews

#180

Post by sytelus »

yes, this is absolutely startling:

For people who attended top schools, completing Udacity or Coursera courses didn’t appear to matter. (...) Moreover, interviewees who attended top schools performed significantly worse than interviewees who had not attended top schools but HAD taken a Udacity or Coursera course.

Possible explanation might be that people going through regular degree typically spread themselves thin over many subjects (digital electronics, compiler design, OS theory, networking etc) while MOOC folks sharply focuses on exactly the things for interviews (i.e. popular algorithms). Its like interval training for one specific purpose vs long regime for fully rounded health. The problem here is not academic system but how we measure performance in interviews. I highly doubt if results would be same if interviewers started asking questions from all these different subjects instead of just cute algorithm puzzles.

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