Tech Interview Torture Chamber • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#171

Post by eikenberry » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 4:15 AM UTC

bsvalley wrote: post #110

bit_logic wrote: post #44

As a senior engineer who already has a good job, here's how I've adapted to the stupid tech interview and plan on doing for future jobs: - Stay at my job longer and push for more raises/promotions. So far this has worked well. I may not get more in raw $ amount vs job hopping, but when risk adjusted (the risks of any new job such as bad manager, etc.) it's worked out ok so far. I think some job hopping is still good…

I like your first point, though your 2nd and 3rd points tell me you haven't applied for a while :) They've all adopted the google model, small or big companies it doesn't matter. You start with a 45 minute technical phone screen (algorithm/data structures), sometimes a second tech phone screen, an onsite of at least 5 hours with at least 3 to 4 45-minute technical screens (algo/data structures) as if it wasn't enough…

Where do you live? I started a new job a year ago and took my time looking. I spent a good 6 months interviewing at probably 20+ places and none of those places had a lame tech interview... None of them. They were small to mid-sized companies all over the country (I was considering remote work as well). So I think you are overstating it a bit.

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#172

Post by hackinthebochs » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 4:17 AM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #49

d--b wrote: post #36

This is starting to be a bit annoying... I think we read enough about painful interviews. If anyone has a better way, please share... But it'd be nice to skip the ranting... I personally have been the evil interviewer for some time. I'm giving paper coding tests that make sense to me, and I'm generally very happy with my recruiting. I have never met anyone who slammed the door screaming "I'm too good to take your stu…

I'm giving paper coding tests that make sense to me, and I'm generally very happy with my recruiting. [...] I've passed people who completely screwed the test. I've failed people who nailed it in 5 minutes. When I read someone saying "I've taken countless interviews, and I don't get a job", I'm thinking: well, either he's been very unlucky (which happens), or there is something wrong with the guy's attitude. Yeah, mu…

> or that they're selecting for qualities they personally think are important

But that explains one or a few failed interviews. Once it becomes a consistent trend you have to start looking at the common denominator.

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#173

Post by awinter-py » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 4:19 AM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #163

awinter-py wrote: post #125

always carry a sharpie

You write on my whiteboard with a sharpie, we're going to have you escorted from the building.

I don't make mistakes though

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#174

Post by hackinthebochs » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 4:24 AM UTC

anjc wrote: post #136

endymi0n wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having gone through about a hundred interviews on the employer side and a dozen on the employee side myself, I think I can drill down the essence of the problem to: "Everything that can be standardized is a bad predictor of hiring success." In the end, I now have a continuously A/B-tested scheme that I'm pretty happy with, but still most of it is intuition. Which is very applicable to the job itself: Intuition is not…

> We got rid of the "Why are manholes round?" questions, now we have live coding tests. > In the end, I can read much more real-world success from a quick coding challenge The only determinant of on-the-job performance is an on-the-job trial. Quick coding tests can be gamed also.

>Quick coding tests can be gamed also.

How (assuming its in person)?

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#175

Post by hackinthebochs » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 4:25 AM UTC

jakebasile wrote: post #47

watwut wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That favours people with high charizma and pleasant personality (not same as pleasant to work with) regardless of skills or work ethics. Compared to those, whiteboard or live coding is improvement.

Why have only one option that caters to those that can memorize algorithms? Have multiple types of interviews instead of forcing everyone to take the same type.

Always this "memorizing algorithms" strawman. If you can't code basic list/tree/graph algorithms on the fly then there are serious holes in your programming ability. This has nothing to do with memorization.

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#176

Post by jdhopeunique » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 4:27 AM UTC

Do major tech companies ever consider randomly pulling an employee from another department not well known and subjecting them to the interview process as a QA sanity check?

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#177

Post by hackinthebochs » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 4:42 AM UTC

danyim wrote: post #111

This is so painful to read after having recently gone through the gauntlet of Bay Area tech interviews myself. It seems like all the companies follow this exact same pattern of how interviews are conducted and few stray from the standard, not realizing how intimidating the entire process can be for the uninitiated. It's easy to say "the interview process is broken", but how do we fix it?

>but how do we fix it?

Certifications. Companies are duplicating effort to find the same algorithm masters when we can just have a cert that demonstrates your mastery of algorithms. Have different certs for different specialties. Then actual job interviews can just be a culture check.

And the great thing about certs is that they're relatively low pressure. You can always take it again if you fail or score lower than you feel youre capable.

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#178

Post by cyphar » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 4:59 AM UTC

paulannesley wrote: post #113

ar15saveslives wrote: post #59

I would say that the alternative to that crappy process is something like "gradual hiring" (sorry, I'm the guy whose accent can be spread on bread) - you just start working with a guy, giving him basic isolated tasks, and as he successfully progresses with his work, task are getting more and more complicated (salary, permissions as well). After few months of such freelance-ish work you can know for sure that this dud…

> you just start working with a guy, giving him basic isolated tasks, and as he successfully progresses with his work, task are getting more and more complicated (salary, permissions as well). After few months of such freelance-ish work you can know for sure that this dude is compatible with the team, able to solve problems, able to learn. And only then he becomes an employee with offer, benefits and SO. Careful not…

Would you have made the same comment if GP had qualified everything with "she"?

Also, many European languages have gendered grammar, which means that it is hard for English second-speakers to speak about someone in a gender-neutral way (for example, it would not be syntactically possible to create such sentences in Slavic languages).

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#179

Post by flukus » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 5:12 AM UTC

eshvk wrote: post #162

CriticalSection wrote: post #11

Surprised I don't see my main pet peeve - early reference check. Before I even talk to anyone I'm asked to provide three phone numbers of three former managers. So I have to call them up, make sure the number is still working, and ask for the favor that they can give me a reference in case anyone reads my application. All of these other things are on me. References I have to call two or three (or at one company, six)…

> go after normal business hours Think about it from the other perspective, you want to do an interview after normal business hours. This means that a recruiter, several engineers and a culture interviewer have to also be present after work hours. Now scale this up to a few dozen candidates; I wouldn't want to work in a place that does this on the regular.

> This means that a recruiter, several engineers and a culture interviewer have to also be present after work hours

Well no, there doesn't have to be that many people in the interview, especially the first one. I've never heard of recruiters being there for the interview at all.

> I wouldn't want to work in a place that does this on the regular.

Depends, some might allow the interviewers to start late or to take an time in lieu after several interviews.

I'd prefer more interviews to be after hours, otherwise it's too hard to look for jobs when you already have one.

Re: Tech Interview Torture Chamber

#180

Post by flukus » Wed, Mar 08, 2017, 5:26 AM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #149

ar15saveslives wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you triggered?

It's an interesting thought experiment, if the original poster had qualified every statement in a different way... "you just start working with a white person , giving the white person basic isolated tasks, and as the white person successfully progresses with their work, task are getting more and more complicated (salary, permissions as well). After few months of such freelance-ish work you can know for sure that thi…

> people should think more when they write, and make sure they think about what they're saying

Maybe you should just stop overthinking what they wrote.