I think a lot of the confusion about how hiring is done or should be done stems from not clearly identifying a goal. For a company on the sale of Google a generalized process makes sense and they have, implicitly, data to back this up. But for everyone else there's just too much subjectivity to have in place a canonical job process. Not to mention the impracticality of using, say, the secretary problem. Having said that, using CTCI or some other book for example to source questions from can be the proxy for problem solving if an interviewer can frame the problem in the form of steps that one needs to flesh out a solution. In that context not having someone google for information makes complete sense and its really easy to use as a filter.
Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process
151–160 of 238 posts
Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process
#152> 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 occasion…
Except that my experience is interviewers (in general) prefer to discuss abstract math puzzles they clearly looked up in a book themselves to exploring a relevant question I propose from their actual business domain.
I don't mind "how would you implement this basic server idea" or even "talk me through how you'd explore this algorithm puzzle", but I've definitely been docked for not having $OBSCURE_INSIGHT to $RANDOM_PUZZLE in 15 minutes, nevermind that I can usually get them sometime that evening when not standing at a whiteboard being interrupted when I pause narrating for 15 seconds to think, which is an appropriate timeline for any actual algorithms work. (I mean, I can count how many times in my career solving a math puzzle couldn't wait a single day: 0.)
Of course, I suspect some of those interviews are designed to fail you as part of H1B scams.
Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process
#153> 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, and another candidate who has been busy raising kids and has never seen this stuff before, who do you want to hire, all else being equal? The one who's raised kids† obviously. As that's approximately 3-4 orders of magnitude more difficult -- and indicative of not only of general character (by itself hugely important),…
Whiteboard programming isn't very relevant to day-to-day programming.
Raising kids is doubtlessly even less relevant.
Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process
#154[deleted]
Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process
#155What I don't get is why interviews arent 4x 30 minute sessions, an hour of research time, lunch, an hour with a manager, another hour of research time, and then 4x 30 minute sessions answering questions and presenting solutions?
It still fits in an 8 hour day, but it has a lot more in common with how Id actually interact with the team and do the work than the contrived 1 hour sessions.
Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process
#156If only interviewers could ask questions that they didn't already know the answer to, they might be surprised to find out that some candidates actually know more than they do.
Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process
#157I actively interviewed job candidates while my wife went through her licensing process to be a doctor. A doctor's job interview spends no time making sure that a doctor is competent. Why? Because the licensing process does that. The most frustrating part of interviewing a software engineer job candidate is that a degree doesn't show that the candidate is competent. Thus, we need to waste our time on imperfect ways to…
Great description of the problem. Licensing is going to be difficult in quickly changing fields.
Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
For 99% of situations in normal software dev, just being able to find X in collection is enough.
I interact with slow and/or battery draining software every day that annoys me.
1% might be about the share of developers who work on battery drivers, video codecs or similar stuff which would be perfomance or battery draining relevant.
Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process
#159While I don't think whiteboard interviews are the best can we at least suggest other metrics? This is a problem I see with the argument. It says something sucks, and it does, but doesn't suggest an alternative. Experience correlates with quality but doesn't necessitate it. GitHubs aren't always available and a person's best work might not be there. You could give someone a coding challenge and an alloted time with co…
Honestly I'd suggest that the company in question takes a little bit of time to construct a toy project of medium size that's relevant to their application domain and asks the candidate how they would solve it.
This gets the candidate to talk about their problem-solving process in broad strokes, like, for example, they could ask a few questions of the interviewer, say things like "I'd break X feature into these 5 pieces, each of which are discrete functions, and I'd have to look up an algorithm to do Y for piece 3, etc."
As many people here have pointed out, what you're looking for isn't knowledge of any particular algorithm, but an idea that they know how to take a problem and get it from a business objective to an operational definition of a software product. If they can do that, the implementation part can be (and often is) literally all copy-pasting stack overflow posts, and that's fine for the intents and purposes for the business.
Furthermore, a process like that should, if the company already has competent engineers (And if they don't, how do they think they're going to successfully assess further additions to their team with any certainty?), allow said engineers to assess the new candidate's ability to get up to speed on their problem domain and meaningfully contribute, without relying on indirect proxies of knowledge.
Re: Programmers are confessing their sins to protest a broken job interview process
#160Earlier 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…
You sound like someone who doesn't realize this isn't 2006 anymore and people stopped pretending to change the world with every new job.