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Hired – Technical Interview Score

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Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#11

Post by rafiki6 »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #3

I don't know what to make of this. Looks like a potential headache. As an engineer in an interview, we never get told what we're being scored on in advance (naming, speed, coming up with wonky edge-cases, scalability to 1million times workload, versatility, mentioning a bunch of relevant buzzwords (bloom filters!), confidence?). This is one reason why most interviewing is a subjective clusterfuck (not just software,…

Totally agree. Classic fallacy of test confidence. The question is, why are we confident in the test to begin with...

Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#12

Post by rafiki6 »

kyberias wrote: post #9
notmuchtotell wrote: post #4

Clearly the person didn't run the code. The factorial function returns an int. The factorial of 13 is already too big for a 32-bit int. The factorial of 21 is bigger than a 64-bit int.

I think the code people have to write in interviews is not supposed to work/scale in the real world. The purpose usually is to test whether the candidate can implement a correct algorithm. Even though this is Java (?), it's used more like pseudo code. A follow up question could be: "Do you see some problems with running this with big numbers? How would you scale it?"

So why ask people to write "code". What are you testing?

Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#13

Post by pvelagal »

I am really curious to know why there are businesses such as hired.com build around "interview" tools that rate software engineers only ? What tools are available to evaluate other professions : 1) Doctors ? 2) Engineers from other disciplines such as Chemical engineers, mechanical, civil , electrical engineers ? 3) Lawyers ? 4) VPs / CEOs 5) Financial analysts ?

Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#14

Post by rafiki6 »

What has this proven exactly? Has an study been done to show a strong correlation between these test scores and ACTUAL programmer productivity? What two metrics are you correlating here? All I see is a score. Is this score valuable? I see nothing outside of pure speculation or opinion to suggest that's the case in the link. And anyone who wants to rebut and say, "that's an impossible task" or "but we know what it takes to be a good programmer" is full of it. We don't. We actually have no real, documented objective way of determining what a good programmer is. My definition is creates a program, to spec that is acceptably performant. Even that has tons of subjectivity and bias to it. Guess what, everyone has a different definition or bar. And frankly they are all full of our inherent biases.

Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#15

Post by Swizec »

pvelagal wrote: post #13

I am really curious to know why there are businesses such as hired.com build around "interview" tools that rate software engineers only ? What tools are available to evaluate other professions : 1) Doctors ? 2) Engineers from other disciplines such as Chemical engineers, mechanical, civil , electrical engineers ? 3) Lawyers ? 4) VPs / CEOs 5) Financial analysts ?

Wild guess but maybe it’s easier to sell quantitative tools to industries that are already used to making decisions based on quantitative measurements in other parts of the business?

Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#16

Post by ng12 »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #3

I don't know what to make of this. Looks like a potential headache. As an engineer in an interview, we never get told what we're being scored on in advance (naming, speed, coming up with wonky edge-cases, scalability to 1million times workload, versatility, mentioning a bunch of relevant buzzwords (bloom filters!), confidence?). This is one reason why most interviewing is a subjective clusterfuck (not just software,…

> This is one reason why most interviewing is a subjective clusterfuck (not just software, I suspect).

This is why I get a laugh out of people complaining about whiteboard-style interviews. Far and away tech still has one of the most intensely meritocratic hiring processes. Not perfect, sure, but better than almost every other industry. The majority of high-skilled jobs rely heavily on pedigree, education, social standing, references, sociability, etc. I'd much rather reject Linus for flubbing a BFS traversal than hire him for attending my Alma Matter and knowing a lot about golf.

Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#17

Post by dragonwriter »

ng12 wrote: post #16
alexandercrohde wrote: post #3

I don't know what to make of this. Looks like a potential headache. As an engineer in an interview, we never get told what we're being scored on in advance (naming, speed, coming up with wonky edge-cases, scalability to 1million times workload, versatility, mentioning a bunch of relevant buzzwords (bloom filters!), confidence?). This is one reason why most interviewing is a subjective clusterfuck (not just software,…

> This is one reason why most interviewing is a subjective clusterfuck (not just software, I suspect). This is why I get a laugh out of people complaining about whiteboard-style interviews. Far and away tech still has one of the most intensely meritocratic hiring processes. Not perfect, sure, but better than almost every other industry. The majority of high-skilled jobs rely heavily on pedigree, education, social sta…

> Almost every other industry relies heavily on pedigree, education, social standing, references, sociability, etc.

Almost every industry, including tech, relies heavily on those things as pre-interview filters. Tech is not a meritocratic exception here.

Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#18

Post by pfarnsworth »

I have never seen a correlation between passing standard coding interviews (whiteboarding, algorithms, etc) and how they perform as a candidate 1 year after hiring.

Does anyone have any data that surfaces this information? All these companies like Triplebyte do is standardize incoming interviews, but what's the point if it has no bearing on whether or not the candidate is actually successful.

Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#19

Post by blktiger »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #3

I don't know what to make of this. Looks like a potential headache. As an engineer in an interview, we never get told what we're being scored on in advance (naming, speed, coming up with wonky edge-cases, scalability to 1million times workload, versatility, mentioning a bunch of relevant buzzwords (bloom filters!), confidence?). This is one reason why most interviewing is a subjective clusterfuck (not just software,…

To be fair, I'd reject Linus. I wouldn't want to work with someone like him even if he is a well known programmer with leading a well known open source project very successfully. I don't think he'd make a good cultural fit at most of the places I've worked.

Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#20

Post by kyberias »

rafiki6 wrote: post #12
kyberias wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the code people have to write in interviews is not supposed to work/scale in the real world. The purpose usually is to test whether the candidate can implement a correct algorithm. Even though this is Java (?), it's used more like pseudo code. A follow up question could be: "Do you see some problems with running this with big numbers? How would you scale it?"

So why ask people to write "code". What are you testing?

Personally, I think that asking people to write code in interviews brings very _limited_ data. However, from my experience, it usually is also a very _strong_ signal. Narrow but strong.

For example, if a candidate cannot implement a simple algorithm (like the factorial here), he very likely has poor skills.

If he can implement it without too much trouble, that's a good sign, but he only proved that he probably has some good skills.

Again, the signal is narrow but strong.

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