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The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

nytimes.com

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Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#321

Post by nojvek »

thecardcheat wrote: post #201
mooreds wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, put another way, they choose to accept a high rate of false negatives to avoid false positives.

> Or, put another way, they choose to accept a high rate of false negatives to avoid false positives. Which is how it is typically presented because it sounds much better than "reject a lot of candidates who would probably have worked out just fine". It is useful to perceive both the potential value in an approach like this and the shortcomings. Google can absorb the massive expense in man hours, lost opportunity, et…

Interviewing is hard. I wonder if a number of great candidates just refuse to interview with Google because it's too cumbersome? I know a couple of great folks who just dropped half way because they couldn't be bothered with Google's lack of organization and their lengthy process.

Its not like Google pays the best or still has the best workplace. It's a large company with large company politics and red tape.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#322

Post by Clubber »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #49
dikdik wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of the companies paid the best/has the best benefits? If it's the tech giant, it's very possible they attract better candidates because they offer more.

In my experience, the big Corps don't tend to offer anywhere near as much compensation but better days off etc etc. The best sofware guys I've ever seen work at those big corps. The big corps are the ones that have the resources to work on the REALLY hard problems and not writing the same CRUD app over and over again. Those same companies also provide tons of educational benefits so that you become an expert in your…

>I have no idea why there is such a backlash against interviews. What's so hard about studying for a job you want?

That's a really good question and I had to think about why I don't like interviews.

1. It's an interrogation and the stakes are extremely high. There are so many aspects of it you don't control. Some guy had a shitty morning, or just doesn't like you, dropped your resume on the way back to his office, etc.

2. It's completely phony and it starts with the first question, "So why do you want to work at generic company X?" "I need money," is not an acceptable answer. Now I have to be phony and tell them why their company is awesome (it's not) which makes be feel like a kiss ass. I have to pretend to be excited about working at a boring ass company. Just shoot me.

3. We have to do it, unless we have rich parents that died young like Batman.

4. The person or people that are interviewing you have no notion of what you've accomplished aside from skimming your resume. All the hard work I've done to produce miracles in the last 20 or so years means, really nothing.

5. Companies only reward tenure at that company. It signals the start of something new but that's typically a bad thing when it comes to work. Less vacation, less credibility, less influence, etc.

6. You really don't know if the person or people you are interviewing are bozos or not. It doesn't matter, they cut the checks, they have the power.

7. As the article insinuates, they're fairly pointless.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#323

Post by demallien »

Jach wrote: post #291
flukus wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any evidence to say that algorithm questions are a better indicator of job performance? Most development work isn't algorithm heavy at all.

I doubt there's that much, in general, since a lot of jobs just need a floor. But when it's used as a proxy for IQ test, the better you do at algorithms the higher IQ you probably have, and that typically correlates with better job performance, or being able to transform one's job into one with higher impact. (Even more if they have high Conscientiousness too but I don't think algorithms would correlate much with tha…

The problem with testing algorithms is that it in no way tests intelligence. I would think that 9 out of 10 programmers that know an algorithm would not be able to derive the algorithm from first principles. So you are just testing esoteric knowledge - it's qualitatively no different that asking someone questions about a specific framework / API.

You could make the argument that algorithms tend to be studied more by smarter people, but if that's what you're going for you may as well ask them about their hobbies, and hire the person that is into playing chess, or doing astronomy (or whatever intellectual pursuit you care to name).

If on the other hand you are interested in a person's ability to code, ask them to do so. The last time I had to hire someone, I wrote a small application with one module that was deliberately written in an obfuscated style. I asked candidates to bring that module under control - rewrite it in a readable code style. To do this, successful candidates needed to identify what the current code was doing by examining the public interfaces in a debugger, documenting what the calls seemed to do, prepare unit tests, and then rewrite the module in a readable style. It took about a day for most candidates to do.

At the end of that, you get to see a candidate's ability to read code, use a debugger, write unit tests, write documentation, and write well structured code, which is a pretty good coverage of the typical tasks in a developer's day. I feel this gives a much more realistic assessment of a candidate's capabilities that asking questions about a more or less randomly chosen algorithm.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#324

Post by Spooky23 »

draw_down wrote: post #316
Top19 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This I think is a very a good point. The scariest point about Lazlo Block's book is that he is very against the idea that people can improve or be trained better. To him there is this idea of predestination. You're either always good and always have been, or you're not good and won't get better and there is nothing Google can do. I feel like as a company you could exploit a lot of value by just hiring people and trai…

Wow, that's really terrible to hear. And of course, conveniently, it lets the employer off the hook for any notion of team or project fit with the employee. If they weren't performing well, then obviously they never will in any capacity in any context. Awesome.

A lot of the pure evil HR bullshit is the dance around discrimination suits and to maintain the use of alma mater as a discriminator. It's literally in their interest to assume that you're a widget fit for a specific purpose.

If you provide meaningful training, you need to be fair in the application of said training. If you admit that you can train people with common existing skills to do most technology jobs, it's going to hard to justify your cozy recruiting funnel with a small number of universities, picked in the basis of where a few bigshots in the company went to school.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#325

Post by Spooky23 »

jernfrost wrote: post #237
andrewmutz wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to present data that shows flaws with today's interviewing. It's a lot harder to present a better way of predicting candidate performance in the workplace, along with substantial data that indicates it's better than today's methods. Corporations would love more effective ways to determine effectiveness/performance before hiring. Interviewing is terrible, but that doesn't mean there is a better option.

Nonsense. First step is to acknowledge that interviewing doesn't work very well. You can't keep deluding yourself because you haven't found a better way. Accept reality. This is one of the biggest problems I see with business guys today. They want absolute certainty in a world which can't offer it. Start accepting that there is a lot of stuff we don't know and can't know at the moment and we simply have to work towar…

Yet, literally every professionally employed person is in their current gig via that process.

It works good enough.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#326

Post by hobls »

pdimitar wrote: post #318
hobls wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what am I to do when I have to share that I maintained a Rails 4.0.x app for 16 months and was unable to upgrade it even it to 4.1.x because the previous team did a horrific job? The reason I personally care about the skill of talking about bad coworkers tactfully is that I think it correlates with being able to navigate tricky workplace fuckups without making a big political mess that I have to clean up. The way I…

> The way I would phrase the above situation is: You're a better diplomat than me. I could've phrased it almost the same, but with me the tone and the wording depends a LOT on my current mood -- I have to work on this, that's for damn sure. It does however still leave the question "but whose fault that legacy code is?" open, don't you think? With my wording in the above comment I would've aimed at being crystal clear…

> It does however still leave the question "but whose fault that legacy code is?"

Heh, I can do this all day. "We accumulated a lot of tech debt on a previous project because of very short deadlines." Or, "the previous owner learned the technology while building the system -- I'm sure he would have done it differently today." What I'm looking for is that you understand what leads to this sort of situation, and it isn't usually, "the last guy was an idiot." I mean sometimes, sure, but even then it's usually closer to, "the last guy was hired into a role he wasn't ready for and needed a better mentor, or better training."

> Could you please clarify on that point? I am curious.

It's really helpful to be able to send an engineer to collaborate with another team without having to worry about whether they'll end up butting heads with someone and making a mess. Tact is important. Sometimes other people are under constraints that you're not aware of, and it's useful to have empathy. Maybe they have super tight deadlines, or maybe they're having to use a technology they've never used before. It's easy to say, "this person is a moron and their code is bad," but if they get the impression that you think that it can really harm working relationships. At that point, I end up having to step in and smooth relationship over, and it's not a great use of time.

Talking about how bad ex-coworkers with tact shows me that you 1) have empathy and 2) will understand how to navigate similar situations if hired.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#327

Post by flukus »

demallien wrote: post #323
Jach wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt there's that much, in general, since a lot of jobs just need a floor. But when it's used as a proxy for IQ test, the better you do at algorithms the higher IQ you probably have, and that typically correlates with better job performance, or being able to transform one's job into one with higher impact. (Even more if they have high Conscientiousness too but I don't think algorithms would correlate much with tha…

The problem with testing algorithms is that it in no way tests intelligence. I would think that 9 out of 10 programmers that know an algorithm would not be able to derive the algorithm from first principles. So you are just testing esoteric knowledge - it's qualitatively no different that asking someone questions about a specific framework / API. You could make the argument that algorithms tend to be studied more by…

> It took about a day for most candidates to do.

This is an issue as well. If you aren't google then a day is too much investment for a single job opportunity, especially if you're already employed.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#328

Post by Spooky23 »

yorwba wrote: post #284
frankc wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect he is referring to iq tests. They have a pretty high correlation to success and are banned.

I wonder how much correlation with IQ is allowed before custom algorithms questions qualify as an illegal IQ test.

Employees will test the limits with lawsuits. I know at least one large state lost a class action lawsuit due to racial bias on civil service exams.

The problem with comparing IQ results at hire to employment success is that employment outcome is difficult to define over time. You're also unlikely to get statistically relevant data without focusing on large organizations with standardized HR processes. Most of the research is based on supervisory evaluations, which are not the most reliable indicators of anything for a variety of reasons.

The other thing I find amusing is that business folk who talk about this miss the fact that there are large workforces in the US that either have or do use standardized testing like this to hire and promote. Those are government bureaucracies, which function relatively well, but are hardly a model that most folks advocating this would aspire towards.

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#329

Post by _m8fo »

hota_mazi wrote: post #312
throwaway71958 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't take his word as a word of god from heaven. Google's interview process is just as shitty as anyone else's, and shittier than some I've been through. It selects for people who do well on the whiteboard under pressure, which are very often not the best workers overall. It also wastes a ton of time both on the employer and on the candidate side. Source: interviewed ~100 people in my 6+ years at Google.

> It selects for people who do well on the whiteboard under pressure If this were true, Google would have crashed and burned a long time ago. Obviously, their interview process selects for much more versatile engineers than that. Engineers who not only produce reliable and maintainable code, but who can actually come up with products that generate billions of dollars over the years.

A simpler explanation is that they pay well and are prestigious and so get a lot more good candidates. The proof is pretty obvious: what companies pay as much as Google and are as prestigious as Google and have bad engineers?

Re: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews

#330

Post by throwaway71958 »

solipsism wrote: post #306
throwaway71958 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To quote Abraham Lincoln: "Do not trust anything you read on the internet". I know it from my own experience and that of many others who have been through the gauntlet. Take it for what it's worth, I'm not selling you anything. I don't look impressive on the whiteboard, but I do have a rather impressive track record. Something doesn't line up. :-) FWIW, as far as I recall there was another experiment at Google where…

Don't take this the wrong way, but the anecdotes of people who didn't make it through "the gauntlet" are quite likely to be biased. Those of people who did make it are as well. This is not data.

Did I say it was "data"? The closest anyone has come to "data" on this (that I know of) is Google, in that experiment where they just hired people at random. But they decided to ignore the results and stick to the soul crushing 5 hour interviews anyway, so data did not change the relevant people's minds.
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