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Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process

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Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process

#111

Post by memracom »

joshka wrote: post #89

I'm conflicted about this. On one hand I agree with the idea that the best way to test whether someone can do something is to look at evidence that that can do that actual thing (i.e. write real code using best of breed tooling). On the other, a whiteboard provides a very real constraint and tests something a little less tangible than can someone copy/paste. A whiteboard test is not just a test of 'can you solve this…

I wrote a bubble sort in Grade 12 but I can't remember the details well enough to write BUG-FREE code to do it on a whiteboard. Nowadays if I want to sort, I use quicksort() or I use the accepted language way of sorting list.sorted() in Python for instance, or I write an ORDER BY clause at the end of my SQL statement.

And so should you. Writing sort algorithm code is a dumb thing for a software engineer to do and I don't care if you have never heard of bubble sort because it is useless historical knowledge for everyone except historians.

But you definitely should be able to make some wise suggestions about how to handle sorting of some set of data in a certain specific context.

I know there is a fad for reinventing the wheel in regard to databases these days but so few engineers will actually have to do this and so few employers will get any real value from this, that I think it is best ignored. Just consider these whiteboard interviews as a way of warning you that the potential employer probably is not such a great place to work after all.

Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process

#112

Post by OJFord »

memracom wrote: post #90
brianpgordon wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're equally competent except that they can't design an algorithm on demand based on remembered strategies for solving problems, or talk intelligently about the trivia of the field that can come up in a technical interview, or tell you the asymptotic running time of a given algorithm, or comfortably rattle off a bunch of code from experience without needing to look things up online, etc. That's not the same as bei…

Rushing into coding something using abstract mathematical computer science techniques is a poor way to solve real world business problems. The person who has spent time in the real world raising kids realizes that you do not build business value by being a smartass know-it-all and that when time and money are of the essence, something quick and dirty, maybe even brute force, will save the business, please the custome…

> Rushing into coding something using abstract mathematical computer science techniques is a poor way to solve real world business problems.

(If you want a disclaimer, I'm not really sure which side I come down on with this, but:)

Knowing how to model something abstractly, and what known good algorithms might be applicable, is exactly not 'rushing into coding'.

Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process

#113

Post by ceronman »

memracom wrote: post #90
brianpgordon wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're equally competent except that they can't design an algorithm on demand based on remembered strategies for solving problems, or talk intelligently about the trivia of the field that can come up in a technical interview, or tell you the asymptotic running time of a given algorithm, or comfortably rattle off a bunch of code from experience without needing to look things up online, etc. That's not the same as bei…

Rushing into coding something using abstract mathematical computer science techniques is a poor way to solve real world business problems. The person who has spent time in the real world raising kids realizes that you do not build business value by being a smartass know-it-all and that when time and money are of the essence, something quick and dirty, maybe even brute force, will save the business, please the custome…

This is a strawman argument. Nobody is saying that algorithm and data structures knowledge is preferred over pragmatism, commercial awareness and real world problem solving.

What brianpgordo is saying is that algorithms and data structures are an important quality in addition to those.

Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process

#114

Post by pavlov »

riskable wrote: post #106
pavlov wrote: post #83

Whiteboards are useful for conversations about software architecture, but that seems to be the less common application in interviews. Writing pseudocode you've memorized from a book is fundamentally meaningless. You have to realize it isn't really a programming test: it's a filter for whether you're willing to do what's required to fit in. The principle is the same as in classic British private schools where boys wer…

What an apt comparison! It appears that you have completely failed to realize that your example from British private schools regarding memorization is used to weed out the "riff raff" as it were. Don't want to hire "brown people", women, or other non-white privately-educated individuals? Institute a British-styled rote memorization test and make claims that it is fair because, "anyone can learn the requisite knowledg…

I assure you, I realize the intent of mock-meritocratic memorization tests that happen to ensure a "cultural fit".

Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process

#115

Post by luis_espinoza »

pavlov wrote: post #83

Whiteboards are useful for conversations about software architecture, but that seems to be the less common application in interviews. Writing pseudocode you've memorized from a book is fundamentally meaningless. You have to realize it isn't really a programming test: it's a filter for whether you're willing to do what's required to fit in. The principle is the same as in classic British private schools where boys wer…

hahaha this is hilarious. BTW I think you are right.

Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process

#116

Post by drewrv »

vp89 wrote: post #48

Its counter intuitive but whiteboarding is actually more inclusive IMO. Anyone who has 35 bucks can lock themselves in a room for 3 months with a copy of CTCI and a pad of paper and come out with an 80+k salary. You cant do that in any other industry. If we judge candidates purely on work experience that just favors the incumbents who have already broken into the industry and presumably already quite comfortable in l…

Having the ability to lock yourself in a room and study for three months is an enormous privilege, particularly if the thing you're studying is only marginally useful.

Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process

#117

Post by ebola1717 »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #92
brianpgordon wrote: post #60

> The process “freezes out many of the people who are underrepresented in the software development field,” Larson wrote. “If you’re busy working and raising kids, you want to spend as much of your scarce time as possible learning to code — not performing rote memorization that won’t matter once you start your job.” I'm not sure I buy this argument. If you have one candidate who has seen all of this stuff before and c…

> If you have one candidate who has seen all of this stuff before and can use it directly from memory Except that the continued success and popularity of books like Cracking the Coding Interview suggest that this really isn't the case. The candidate who has spent the last month cramming on the best way to reverse a string in place, or the difference between the plethora of types of trees isn't guaranteed to be the be…

Worth underscoring that point - these processes lead you to hire worse candidates.

Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process

#118

Post by quantum_state »

Very interesting topic ... IMHO .. white boarding would be a useful process if it is used to poke into the thought process of the interviewee, independent of the answer being right or wrong ... think most important is to hire guys with good personality .. then motivation .. then ability to reason n learn ... the technical specifics would not be n should not be a major factor if one is hiring for the long term ...

Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process

#119

Post by weixiyen »

brianpgordon wrote: post #60

> The process “freezes out many of the people who are underrepresented in the software development field,” Larson wrote. “If you’re busy working and raising kids, you want to spend as much of your scarce time as possible learning to code — not performing rote memorization that won’t matter once you start your job.” I'm not sure I buy this argument. If you have one candidate who has seen all of this stuff before and c…

> Do you want to see someone who did an EMT course at a local community college and hit the basic highlights of how to treat different symptoms

I'd ask the 2 doctors to perform the exact treatment on their own kids, look at the outcome, and then decide.

Basically, "build me X" instead of "show me your algorithm skills on whiteboard" is a far better proxy.

Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process

#120

Post by memracom »

riskable wrote: post #106
pavlov wrote: post #83

Whiteboards are useful for conversations about software architecture, but that seems to be the less common application in interviews. Writing pseudocode you've memorized from a book is fundamentally meaningless. You have to realize it isn't really a programming test: it's a filter for whether you're willing to do what's required to fit in. The principle is the same as in classic British private schools where boys wer…

What an apt comparison! It appears that you have completely failed to realize that your example from British private schools regarding memorization is used to weed out the "riff raff" as it were. Don't want to hire "brown people", women, or other non-white privately-educated individuals? Institute a British-styled rote memorization test and make claims that it is fair because, "anyone can learn the requisite knowledg…

actually, I think the Greek and Latin text memorization WAS there to weed out the riff raff. If you are going to hire someone young and energetic to do a job that is not exactly taught in school, would you rather have someone who can work hard, even struggle to learn, but ultimately succeed? Or someone whose character is unknown even if they can say all the right things in an interview?

And since this is about historical reality, we know that the British public school system of rote memorization of Greek and Latin texts, along with translation into and out of Greek, did produce capable people who built up an empire and maintained it for many generations.

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