Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 10:30 PM UTC

mdturnerphys wrote: post #76

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…

I get your point, but I'll also point out that costs a lot more than $35 to lock yourself in a room for 3 months. Many people don't have guaranteed room and board for that long.

>Many people don't have guaranteed room and board for that long.

If a person has been in the industry for more than than three years and doesn't have 3 months cash reserve saved up[1], they are severely mismanaging their finances. _Particularly_ since we're seeing increasing warnings from the financial sector that we're in a bubble already.

[1] barring some unexpected catastrophic expense

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

#132

Post by rodgerd » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 10:30 PM UTC

forinti wrote: post #86

It's a clever intervew if you expect the answer to be "I would find an appropriate module on cpan". People shouldn't be rewriting these algorithms.

This. The last thing I want to work with is the guy who re-implements well-understood problems with well-implemented solutions.

So many security and performance problems I've run into boil down to people not bothering to use a good standard library or framework for solving a problem.

Or, at a more fundamental level, people who can't be fucked learning SQL properly so haul heaps of data into the application and try to beat Oracle at implementing joins and GROUP BY[1].

[1] If you can beat Oracle at that, you are wasting your time working with me. Larry, IBM, or Microsoft will give you swimming pools of money to come make their databases better.

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

#133

Post by weixiyen » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 10:30 PM UTC

paxcoder wrote: post #129

weixiyen wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>build me X Pay me

nobody has asked me that because this normally happens within the typical 3-hour interview scope, but honestly that's fine too

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

#134

Post by bravo3 » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 10:31 PM UTC

I think we should differentiate between the interview process of Google and such, and (for lack of a better word) average companies. Average companies almost never need sophisticated algorithms and perhaps, even if someone put such sophistication in, the return would be marginal ("sub-linear"). However, this does not seem true for Google and such - the return on investment of a sophisticated algorithm looks to be super-linear. So it makes sense for Google to filter candidates by knowledge of algorithms (among other sophistications) and for most other companies to not copy Google's interview process.

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

#135

Post by kafkaesq » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 10:31 PM UTC

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…

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.

If anything, this just tells us what a low bar to entry the CTCI drill is.

Say you had a pool of candidates of roughly comparable intelligence, educational background, and work experience. And then you gave them 3 months of all living expenses paid† to go an "improve themselves as software development professionals."

One of them comes back and says "I cranked out an MVP (relying in part on a language I only barely knew to that point) that's actually being used by people, and getting good reviews. Here, check out he repo."

Another says, "I thought it was about time I got a handle on this machine learning stuff. Here's a project I did, based on a generalization of some ideas in such-and-such paper. Wish I had more time to spend on it, but looks like my error rate's not too bad."

And another says "It took literally 6-8 hours of devoted practice, every day. But I finally got some serious traction on Japanese. I honestly thought I'd never be able to do that."

And then there's the guy who says "Oh, I looked myself in my apartment and did every exercise in CTCI. Because, you know, I heard that's what you're supposed to do. Damn, my back is sore. I think I need a better chair or something."

Who would you rather talk to first?

† Which costs a lot more than 35 bucks, BTW.

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

#136

Post by arximboldi » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 10:31 PM UTC

payne92 wrote: post #19

I've been coding for almost 40 years. Without an Internet connection, my productivity drops by at least 60%. "Cut and paste fragments from {SO,Github,Gist,.etc} and edit to taste"

Admittedly, I was without internet working from home for a few days, and I found it a very nice experience. Not being able to go to Hacker News while compiling managed to keep me focused and on the flow. When I had to look up stuff I found myself digging in /usr/share/doc to find the reference manuals... in a way it took longer than looking up the answer in Google, but it forced you to better understand the system you are using and build your solution from that understanding, sometimes considering third options that one would have missed when stack overflow already contains a bunch of snippets to copy paste.

Of course, I am idealizing the experience (eventually I really needed internet and ended up going to public libraries to use it)... but like everything, maybe we are getting too used to the instantaneous and forgetting that the alternatives are actually not so bad and sometimes empowering.

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

#137

Post by Izmaki » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 10:32 PM UTC

canadian_voter wrote: post #34

Hello, my name is Tim. I'm a lead at Google with over 30 years coding experience and I need to look up how to get length of a python string. The problem with Python is the arcane, arbitrary and nonsensical syntax. It sure as hell isn't anything as obvious as length(str) or string.length like any reasonable language. And god help you if you want to do something complicated like define a function. But seriously: I have…

Just as many things I love about python, I hate about python.

Each time I get to the part where I need to modify the path which the import mechanism uses to look for modules, clean up the loaded modules to make sure I'm not reimporting an already loaded module by the same name, in order to import a module which is in the SAME DIRECTORY as - get this -__file__, I need another coffee.

Also "len(...)" is not obvious.

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

#138

Post by hxta98596 » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 10:32 PM UTC

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…

I'm not defending whiteboard interviews, but I don't think it's a secret very very few candidates answer the questions from real experience. Rather, it's obvious the main approach to dealing with whiteboard questions is to read up and memorize the stuff before an interview.

To what extent are companies using whiteboards to test who is serious about getting the job? And who is willing to put in extra time and occasionally do unpleasant extra work?

Again not defending whiteboards, and I can think of ways to improve it especially for the more experienced engineers. But all else being equal in terms of two candidates experience and skills and fit; the candidate who was able to memorize things just for the sake of the job, who did research and who came prepared etc. Well that candidate might have the upper hand when making the hiring decision.

Right or wrong, companies do want to test for things besides current programming skills, like being a team player and do things that aren't easy or enjoyable. 80/20 rule maybe applies. How else to test this stuff if companies decide it's important?

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

#139

Post by digler999 » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 10:32 PM UTC

Izmaki wrote: post #109

digler999 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's asymmetrical though. A reviewer can yea-or-nay my 1-hour assignment in a minute or two. If I'm desperate for work, sure I'll do it. But my position is in high enough demand that I can choose another position that doesn't require me to do homework. If they made some attempt to get to know me, talk to me, and then give me homework, I might bite. But I'm not going to do hours worth of work just for the chance to ge…

Why would you apply for a job that you don't want? And if you want it, why wouldn't you put at least some effort into getting it? Effort does not only include writing a cover letter that will be appealing for the company you apply to instead of just forwarding HR your resume. It also includes small activities like these. You sound more like a spoiled brat, pardon my French, than an artist looking for new opportunitie…

> an artist looking for new opportunities to make a difference.

The only "difference" I want to make is in my checking account. I want the deposits from my employer to "differ" by greater margins as time advances.

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

#140

Post by eikenberry » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 10:33 PM UTC

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…

One problem with that argument is that the person who's been doing it for years and has seen it all will not be able to do it directly from memory, because those problems almost never come up in practice.

It's like interviewing a doctor by giving them the symptoms of some rare 3rd world disease, that they maybe studied back in school, and judging their ability based on how well they diagnose it.