How to Interview Engineers
blog.triplebyte.com
How to Interview Engineers
1–10 of 489 posts
Re: How to Interview Engineers
#2An interesting point my co-worker made is that, almost by definition, if an interviewee does not know how to answer a question, they don't know why that question is important or where that type of problem is applied. So from the point of view of an interviewee who's can't do well on all the questions (that's most of us in most interviews) some of the question will always seem like minutiae / lacking application. (Of course, there's also plenty of just bad interview questions)
Re: How to Interview Engineers
#3An interesting point my co-worker made is that, almost by definition, if an interviewee does not know how to answer a question, they don't know why that question is important or where that type of problem is applied. So from the point of view of an interviewee who's can't do well on all the questions (that's most of us in most interviews) some of the question will always seem like minutiae / lacking application. (Of…
It's entirely possible to not be able to answer a question because the question is objectively not meaningful, and therefore the candidate has correctly never considered it important enough to learn about.
Re: How to Interview Engineers
#4An interesting point my co-worker made is that, almost by definition, if an interviewee does not know how to answer a question, they don't know why that question is important or where that type of problem is applied. So from the point of view of an interviewee who's can't do well on all the questions (that's most of us in most interviews) some of the question will always seem like minutiae / lacking application. (Of…
It's entirely possible to not be able to answer a question because the question is objectively not meaningful, and therefore the candidate has correctly never considered it important enough to learn about.
Totally. Both things happen.
Re: How to Interview Engineers
#5"15% dislike academic CS (and think that talking about CS is a sign that a candidate will not be productive)"
That seems really weird. Academic CS isn't really necessary for most programming jobs, but I can't see how it would ever be a detriment.
Re: How to Interview Engineers
#6"15% dislike academic CS (and think that talking about CS is a sign that a candidate will not be productive)" That seems really weird. Academic CS isn't really necessary for most programming jobs, but I can't see how it would ever be a detriment.
I had a guy work for me that was very academic minded regarding programming. He had a hard time letting go of the "pure" way of doing things and taking a good/practical approach to just getting stuff done. It can definitely be, but won't always be, a detriment in my experience.
Re: How to Interview Engineers
#7"15% dislike academic CS (and think that talking about CS is a sign that a candidate will not be productive)" That seems really weird. Academic CS isn't really necessary for most programming jobs, but I can't see how it would ever be a detriment.
I had a guy work for me that was very academic minded regarding programming. He had a hard time letting go of the "pure" way of doing things and taking a good/practical approach to just getting stuff done. It can definitely be, but won't always be, a detriment in my experience.
That's a mindset flaw, not one that can be attributed to having CS knowledge, or enjoying talking about academic CS.
Re: How to Interview Engineers
#8An interesting point my co-worker made is that, almost by definition, if an interviewee does not know how to answer a question, they don't know why that question is important or where that type of problem is applied. So from the point of view of an interviewee who's can't do well on all the questions (that's most of us in most interviews) some of the question will always seem like minutiae / lacking application. (Of…
(Of course, there's also plenty of just bad interview questions)
Well yeah, there's that unfortunate fact. The problem is, a lot of interviewers can't tell the good from the bad -- and it can only take one bad question to effectively sink the interview.
Re: How to Interview Engineers
#9Spending a week working beside an engineer (or seeing how they complete a substantial project) almost certainly provides a better measure of their abilities than watching them solve interview problems for 1 hour
Trial employment is expensive for the company.
[...]
Trial employment (and large take-home projects) are expensive for the candidate.
I can't help but think there's way to mitigate that expense among several (dozen) companies.
Triplebyte is already interviewing for other companies, why not set a low bar and hire everyone who passes it for a week? Charge your clients accordingly. If you have 25 clients hiring for overlapping skills, have them all pay to hire a person for a week.
40 hours of of labor / 25 clients = 1.6 hrs of labor per client, or about what it costs to do a single technical interview.
Meanwhile, the interviewee gets to do a single, focused project for a week, but effectively interviews with 25 companies!
I can get on Dice right now and find over 100 openings for python/java/golang/javascript/c++ engineers, certainly all of those companies would benefit from something like this.
More power to Triplebyte if they can figure out how to take those projects and turn it into a client deliverable on top of defraying interview costs.
Re: How to Interview Engineers
#10An interesting point my co-worker made is that, almost by definition, if an interviewee does not know how to answer a question, they don't know why that question is important or where that type of problem is applied. So from the point of view of an interviewee who's can't do well on all the questions (that's most of us in most interviews) some of the question will always seem like minutiae / lacking application. (Of…
(Of course, there's also plenty of just bad interview questions) Well yeah, there's that unfortunate fact. The problem is, a lot of interviewers can't tell the good from the bad -- and it can only take one bad question to effectively sink the interview.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Every time I hear that question, I die a little inside. I'm not sure it's possible to answer it honestly without taking yourself out of contention.