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What I've learned from 100s of interviews with candidates at top tech companies

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Re: What I've learned from 100s of interviews with candidates at top tech companies

#81

Post by rocket_woman »

wayn3 wrote: post #51
gaylemcd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a really interesting point. (Context: In chess, a queen can move along a row, column, or diagonal to attack. The N Queens problem is to place N queens on an NxN chessboard such that no two queens can attack each other.) No one does poorly here because they are "bad at chess algorithms." They might do poorly because they think they're bad at chess algorithms. But this is not a "chess algorithm." It's…

Do you think it makes sense to ask interviewees to solve backtracking problems, given the fact that its mostly about already knowing the solution? Someone who's never come in contact with backtracking won't be able to solve n queens "in time", unless they pull a mathematics stunt, but those who do know backtracking won't struggle much. On a higher level - how much of an "already seen the algorithm" crapshot are tech…

> On a higher level - how much of an "already seen the algorithm" crapshot are tech interviews?

I'd say it is mostly that. Just do thirty to fifty leetcode medium problems (some of them on pen and paper), and you're good to go.

Re: What I've learned from 100s of interviews with candidates at top tech companies

#82

Post by DeonPenny »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #72

We've adopted a new process for interviewing software engineers. It has three interview sessions held on subsequent dates: 1. Candidate learns about the company and the tech during a set of 2-4 interviews with our engineers. We don't tell them to learn as much as they can because we want to see how inquisitive they are. Interviewers are coached to be fairly open and talk about our products and tech. If there are no r…

You're going to get a lot of people dropping out of that funnel. If you only get 2 to 3 people who also have offers from 3 to 4 other places this kill your ability to hire. plus thats a huge time investment for the interviewer as well.

Re: What I've learned from 100s of interviews with candidates at top tech companies

#83

Post by myrandomcomment »

sporkenfang wrote: post #73
myrandomcomment wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I was always very upfront. I told the candidate you will not get the answer. This is so I can see how you attack a problem. All the candiates had a background in the subject matter. The question was not on subject matter not tied to the job. Overall we found that the way we did this interview was very successful. At one point we lowered the bar and hired a bunch of people and they were all gone in six months. On t…

> I told the candidate you will not get the answer. I've had an interview like this. I said thanks for your time and walked out of the room. I'm not interested in being told problems are unsolvable, I'd really prefer to work in a culture where there's a growth mindset. Even if a problem is unsolvable for me right this second, would it not be within the realm of possibility that with more experience or with a couple o…

The problem is not unsolvable. I though I said that. Sorry if that was unclear. It is just caused by something that is pretty far down the stack which you would never know unless you have seen the problem. Once again this was to see if the canidate could think and problem solve. How far down could they get? Could the test for the obvious answers? If they got stuck and I gave them a hint could they go further? I would look at the background on the resume and say "so you worked with X before right? So you know how X has this behavior? This is similar."

There was no arrogance here. The job REQUIRED critical thinking and problem solving. Resumes are generally bullshit and unless you have a major public project were this quality is shown how do you test for it?

The first person hired that had to answer this question and go through this was me! I did not get the answer. I got real close. I am really glad I did. That job changed my life. The quality of the people I got to work with was a complete eye opener and made me want to do better and frankly made me a better person.

The company is now worth ~11B or so and everyone made money and was well cared for.

Re: What I've learned from 100s of interviews with candidates at top tech companies

#84

Post by dpark »

sporkenfang wrote: post #73
myrandomcomment wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I was always very upfront. I told the candidate you will not get the answer. This is so I can see how you attack a problem. All the candiates had a background in the subject matter. The question was not on subject matter not tied to the job. Overall we found that the way we did this interview was very successful. At one point we lowered the bar and hired a bunch of people and they were all gone in six months. On t…

> I told the candidate you will not get the answer. I've had an interview like this. I said thanks for your time and walked out of the room. I'm not interested in being told problems are unsolvable, I'd really prefer to work in a culture where there's a growth mindset. Even if a problem is unsolvable for me right this second, would it not be within the realm of possibility that with more experience or with a couple o…

The question isn't posed as unsolvable. It's posed as being unreasonable to solve fully in a short interview setting. If someone gives you a challenge and says "I don't expect you to solve this in an hour" and your reaction is to walk out, then you're unprofessional and likely the interviewer will be happy you left.

Re: What I've learned from 100s of interviews with candidates at top tech companies

#85

Post by NTDF9 »

theoh wrote: post #77
NTDF9 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> >Either way, it’s very common for a candidate to get rejected and then get an offer a year or two later. What OP implies is that the interview process is out of candidate's control and there are many variables in play. What the OP doesn't realize is that this is the definition of a shitty process. What would you call a piece of software that cannot reliably produce the same output most of the time? vs What would y…

I don't know about SV interviews, but there are ways of quantifying this kind of unreliability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-rater_reliability

Quantifying assumes that the "raters" remain the same forever.

That's not true though. Raters change. Counter intuitively, as the rater gets more and more familiar with the problem, the less tolerance they have for mistakes.

Re: What I've learned from 100s of interviews with candidates at top tech companies

#86

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

claudiulodro wrote: post #78
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #72

We've adopted a new process for interviewing software engineers. It has three interview sessions held on subsequent dates: 1. Candidate learns about the company and the tech during a set of 2-4 interviews with our engineers. We don't tell them to learn as much as they can because we want to see how inquisitive they are. Interviewers are coached to be fairly open and talk about our products and tech. If there are no r…

Not to be super harsh, but this sounds awful. - First day is 4 interviews and a take-home project. - Second day is an interview in front of a panel followed by an indeterminate amount of further interviews. - Third day is a "culture fit" interview. 3 separate days of interviews and a take-home assignment? What professional has time for that?! EDIT: I guess it depends on the length of the interviews. Is the total inte…

So far the people who we've called have been ok with this process. I'm pretty flexible because I don't want to impose too much, so we have shortened it to two a couple of times.

On the other hand, we need people who will stick around for a few years. Our tech is very domain specific and there are few candidates that can drop in and get to work. We have to spend a lot of time bringing them up to speed on the code base. So we don't want to pull the trigger too soon. And we definitely don't want to bring people in for subsequent interviews if it's obviously not going to work.

Regarding cultural fit, the question I ask the team is "You're going to see this person every work day for years. Do you think you'd be Ok with that?" I think it's reasonable to assess that as part of the process.

EDIT: Interviews are 2 hours each step. 1-1 interviews typically 1/2 hour. The code review is usually 1/2 - 1 hour, we don't put a time on it.

Re: What I've learned from 100s of interviews with candidates at top tech companies

#88

Post by dv_dt »

bit_logic wrote: post #60

I think the tide is turning against this type of interview. The industry is starting to notice how ineffective and stupid it is. The big tech companies don't care and will continue doing it because success hides all failures. When there's an endless flood of new college graduate applicants and near-monopoly positions bringing in billions of revenue, nobody cares if the hiring process is bad. They will care someday if…

> The big tech companies don't care and will continue doing it because success hides all failures.

Cynically, big companies might be selecting for a modicum of technical expertise along with demonstrating capacity to put up with some amount of abusive processes.

Re: What I've learned from 100s of interviews with candidates at top tech companies

#89

Post by perryh2 »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #72

We've adopted a new process for interviewing software engineers. It has three interview sessions held on subsequent dates: 1. Candidate learns about the company and the tech during a set of 2-4 interviews with our engineers. We don't tell them to learn as much as they can because we want to see how inquisitive they are. Interviewers are coached to be fairly open and talk about our products and tech. If there are no r…

I'd interview at your company if you made your take-home assignment your first step and combined the interviews with engineers and management into a single day.

Re: What I've learned from 100s of interviews with candidates at top tech companies

#90

Post by gniv »

holydude wrote: post #20
ThePawnBreak wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would rather make more money in a stupid corporate job than working on more aggressive ways of making people to click on ads. Could you name a few "stupid corporate jobs" that pay better than Google or Facebook (200k - 300k for a senior engineer) ?

Are you sure the majority of senior engineers earns 200 - 300k ?

See for example: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Senior-Software-Engi...
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