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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

#141

Post by gaylemcd »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #58
dnackoul wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1. No, you don't need to know everything... It takes maybe a week for a smart developer without a CS degree to learn what they need to know for interviews. I just went through a job search and I didn't find this true. I think the bar on algorithms has raised significantly with all of the prep material (your book included) out there. I also found a few companies sent over "things to study" lists that were quite compr…

I would estimate a reasonable amount of prep time prior to interviewing is around 100 hours. This is about how long it will take to brush up on and practice data structures, algorithms, DP, design questions, etc. This is about 2 months of practicing an average of 2 hours a day, meaning you're still working a day job. I figure this could be reduced to 1 month of prep if you quit your job and have all day to yourself.

Lots of people get offers with little to no prep.

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

#142

Post by gaylemcd »

geebee wrote: post #44

For starters, thank you for hanging out on this thread and answering questions. Where it comes to taking a realistic look at what it takes to be hired at google and other top tech companies, I think you give great practical advice. I've recommended your book and blog to a lot of people. Here's a summary of something I've posted elsewhere on HN, and I'd be interested in your angle. It goes, essentially, like this. Tec…

Happy to give you my thoughts, but I'm not sure what you're suggesting.

I do agree that lots of companies create bad interview processes -- for coding interviews and other interviews. Those issues should be addressed.

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

#143

Post by gaylemcd »

metaphorm wrote: post #137
rajathagasthya wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think asking someone who you just met about their wife and if they plan to have kids is a "get to know you" question.

it might not be, and it's an inappropriate question for a job interview, but it's not that weird to ask about in casual circumstances. have you spent time around any new parents, recently? they're basically mono-maniacally focused on kids and it's nearly the only thing they ever talk about. I can easily imagine that the guy asking the question might be a new parent himself and it was just where his mind went to autom…

I actually agree. This is probably all it was.

But the other interviewer still handled it appropriately.

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

#144

Post by kafkaesq »

gaylemcd wrote: post #135
kafkaesq wrote: post #130

A mixture of some good observations... with some regretabble bits of fanboy-ism thrown in. For example: Don’t. Give. Up. Ever. What they’re testing is your ability—and your willingness—to tackle problems that seem completely baffling. They are looking for you to keep working toward a better and better answer. If you’re ever about to give up remember this: The interview process is designed to challenge you, and even t…

Do you truly believe that all those top tech companies have decided on this process to boost the egos of the interviewers? Are you saying this because you have actual evidence? Have you talked to interviewers who admitted this was their personal motivation? I assure you that the purpose of these questions is to identify good engineers. You might think it fails to do so, but that is the purpose.

Are you saying this because you have actual evidence?

The place where evidence is needed is in support of the hypothesis that these questions actually work (in favor of achieving their stated ends). That is, the question to ask should be:

"Do any of these companies asking these questions have actual evidence that they actually work?"

I grant that many people who ask (overdrawn, larger-than-life) questions like these probably believe that they help identify good engineers. Whether these questions actually achieve that goal is an entirely different matter.

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

#145

Post by gaylemcd »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #94
ldite wrote: post #87

Build something on your own. Nine-to-5 isn’t enough. Practice, Practice, Practice. Single parents or carers need not apply, eh? Diversity?

This is not related to diversity. Some companies want to attract people who spend 40 hours a week on their job and nothing more and that's OK. Other might be out of reach unless you spend many more hours learning every week and that's OK too. Whereas people are spending their free time with their kids or learning or watching television it's up to them.

No, it is related to diversity. I agree that it's unfair to expect all candidates to work on a side project. Some companies expect this out of all candidates (which is bad). Others see it as a plus (probably okay).

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

#146

Post by gaylemcd »

jerrylives wrote: post #104
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 tide is definitely turning. The last two interviews I've been to were nice casual affairs where me and another engineer had a technical discussion on how I'd approach various problems they were having (such as deployment woes, wonky network topology etc). The best part is that I feel like I learned something as well, rather than just being shown my failure because I didn't get the interviewer's "trick" to how to…

> If you just recite problems from Cracking the Coding Interview, you have pretty limited insight into the candidate's abilities.

I agree with this. I tell companies to not ask questions from Cracking the Coding Interview. But that doesn't mean those style of interviews are fundamentally broken. It's just stupid to ask questions that candidates are likely to know.

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

#147

Post by kafkaesq »

gaylemcd wrote: post #133
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…

So if whiteboard interviews are stupid and ineffective, what process do you think is better? I assure that the big tech companies absolutely do care, but they struggle to find something better.

Whiteboard interviews don't have to be ineffective. But empirical evidence suggests that companies greatly overestimate their ability to conduct them properly.

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

#148

Post by codesnik »

gaylemcd wrote: post #22
siliconc0w wrote: post #16

Sure- you don't need a CS degree but you need to know everything taught in a CS degree regardless of it's applicability to real life software engineering. You should also buy a bunch of books and section off at least a month to study. Especially if you don't have that CS degree. Hope you don't have other obligations like a family or a demanding job. You should also spend a lot of time doing coding competitions even i…

1. No, you don't need to know everything. You should know what a binary search tree. You probably don't need to know the specifics of how to balance one. (If a company is requiring this knowledge, then they're doing whiteboard interviews poorly [or they have a very specific skillset needed]. That's not a problem with whiteboard interviews. That's a problem with that company or interviewer. It takes maybe a week for a…

bad handwriting is not an issue for interviewer, but it could seriously ruin thought process for interviewee. It ruins it for me, for sure. You know, good code "looks" good, and that feeling is a major part of programmer intuition for me.

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

#149

Post by kafkaesq »

meggar wrote: post #19
gaylemcd wrote: post #2

I'll try to stay active on this thread if anyone has any more specific questions. (Context: I'm the author of Cracking the Coding Interview)

CTCI is a great book. Is it acceptable to ask an interviewer for a different question? For example, if you're really bad at chess algorithms and you get the N-Queens question?

Is it acceptable to ask an interviewer for a different question?

Generally, no. Not unless you want to look like a whiny stick-in-the-mud.

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

#150

Post by cr0sh »

famil wrote: post #68

What do you think about take home projects/homework interviews? I've noticed that they have become much more prevalent among smaller companies as a replacement for phone screens. As a candidate, interviewing is already a time consuming hoop jumping process, so if the project will take more than 3-4 hours, I probably won't be interested but most companies I have applied to are keeping these projects short enough.

When I've had them, I liked doing them. Of course, I was usually in-between employers, so I had plenty of time on my hands and no reason to not give it a shot. I could see where it would be a problem if you aren't in that situation, and just looking for a new employer (and depending on your family/home life responsibilities as well). I like such projects (or on-site development tasks) over a whiteboard interview any day.
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