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How to Interview Engineers

blog.triplebyte.com

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Re: How to Interview Engineers

#21

Post by padobson »

ammon wrote: post #15
padobson wrote: post #9

Spending 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…

That's an interesting idea! The hard part would be convincing companies to trust an external trial week fully (part of what's great about a trial week is the chance to actually see how an engineer will interact with your team / your problems). But I like the idea!

It's true that a company would not be able to gain a "feel" for working with a candidate, but those feelings probably help contribute to noise as much allowing interviewers to ask their pet questions.

Surely a company could objectively learn a great deal about a candidate by looking at a week's worth of git commits and evaluating the final product for correctness/maintainability/optimization.

But still, taking TOO much of the humanity out of hiring ignores the fact that ultimately, a person has to work with other people, so you're right that it's not perfect.

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#22

Post by fwefwwfe »

padobson wrote: post #9

Spending 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…

A trial week seems like it would only work for more desperate candidates, ones who are currently unemployed.

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#23

Post by angryasian »

padobson wrote: post #9

Spending 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…

If I'm already employed, it be weird to take a week off just to work for another company. Also ramp up time takes at least a day or two. This whole process seems troublesome for both the employee and employer

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#24

Post by fwefwwfe »

rsyring wrote: post #6
jobu wrote: post #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.

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.

I like how you discriminate against CS knowledge in general because a single person couldn't get stuff done.

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#25

Post by kafkaesq »

fwefwwfe wrote: post #22
padobson wrote: post #9

Spending 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…

A trial week seems like it would only work for more desperate candidates, ones who are currently unemployed.

"unemployed" != "desperate"

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#26

Post by fwefwwfe »

scottLobster wrote: post #19
logfromblammo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suppose it depends on your 5-year goals and the position, but as an entry-level developer my first thought would be: "Well as I'm interviewing here I would obviously see taking this position as a step foreword for all the reasons we've discussed. Naturally I don't see this position as the job I'll work until I retire, and obviously I'll be looking for at least some mild expansion of responsibilities in the future.…

Ok, now do it for someone with 5 and 10 years of experience.

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#27

Post by [deleted] »

jdp23 wrote: post #12

Looking at Triplebyte's "about us" page, it appears that their engineering team is 100% male. This should be a big red flag for any company trying to get diverse engineering team - why work with a company that doesn't hire women engineers?

[deleted]

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#28

Post by Dzugaru »

altharaz wrote: post #17

At my company our engineers defined the following process. First, we defined the skills we're looking for i.e. Programming / SysAdmin / Cybersecurity. Our process goes as follows: 1. We ask candidates to answer a quizz by phone, with questions in the 3 chosen fields. Duration = 1h. 2. We ask candidates to solve remotely with Google Docs 5 real-world problems asking for skills in Algorithmics, Data Modeling, Object-Or…

> how many people can get into a train

Can't speak for everyone, but I'd turn away and walked out the instant I hear this or similar BS (which is totally unrelated to "approaching new problems" or "stress management" in programming at least)

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#29

Post by fwefwwfe »

jdp23 wrote: post #12

Looking at Triplebyte's "about us" page, it appears that their engineering team is 100% male. This should be a big red flag for any company trying to get diverse engineering team - why work with a company that doesn't hire women engineers?

Clearly they must be racist, too.

Re: How to Interview Engineers

#30

Post by vaishaksuresh »

ammon wrote: post #2

An 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…

>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

I would argue that not knowing answer and not knowing question are two different things. I may not know answer to a questions, but know that the question exists. I personally am comfortable not remembering things that I can easily look up.

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