Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hired – Technical Interview Score

refdash.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 123 posts

Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#31

Post by tankenmate »

bit_logic wrote: post #24

Have we reached the tipping point yet? How much worse does the technical interview process need to get before the industry finally decides enough is enough? When this all began, it was with the justification that it's not about getting the right answer, it's about seeing how you think and approach a problem. Companies don't even pretend this is the case anymore. It's now just expected rote memorization of algorithm p…

Coupled with the fact that most recent grads don't have much wisdom or common sense, relatively less so in the coding sense, and much more so in the everyday business environment sense. As a friend of mine used to have in his email sig; "You have a Ph.D.. Good, don't touch anything."

Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#33

Post by vonmoltke »

ng12 wrote: post #21
dragonwriter wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How many traders at Goldman Sachs don't have degrees from Penn/Harvard/Yale/etc? I bet not very many. Yet some of the best developers I know are self-taught or went to no-name schools. My SO works in media and I can assure you the hiring process there is completely, thoroughly, perniciously subjective. Experiencing her job search really gave me appreciation for the fact that taking a test is 80% of my interview proce…

> How many traders at Goldman Sachs don't have degrees from Penn/Harvard/Yale/etc?

I just did a quick check in LinkedIn, choosing four people at GS with "Trader" in their title. The four schools I got: UNC Chapel Hill; Duke; Williams College; Amherst College. I find that distribution hard to correlate with your statement.

Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#34

Post by alexandercrohde »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #18

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.

Well the other half of the problem is that I think most companies are so disorganized that even if an engineer does great work the company might not know within a year.

They may look at tickets completed, "buzz" around the individual, being assigned to a project that was highly profitable, staying late a lot, or any arbitrary thing they want to.

Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#35

Post by lolc »

rafiki6 wrote: post #14

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 tak…

While I don't know whether this has been studied, I would expect the interview results to correlate well with years of experience for example.

I think what these interviews test best is your ability to interact with your peers. Candidates who interface badly with other people would have trouble getting a good score. So yes some brilliant people will bomb those interviews. And some talkers will manage to pass one interviewer.

In total I would expect those interviews to indicate a minimum of professional knowledge in combination with good communication skills. That is valuable data without it being objective in an absolute sense.

Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#36

Post by southphillyman »

vonmoltke wrote: post #33
ng12 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many traders at Goldman Sachs don't have degrees from Penn/Harvard/Yale/etc? I bet not very many. Yet some of the best developers I know are self-taught or went to no-name schools. My SO works in media and I can assure you the hiring process there is completely, thoroughly, perniciously subjective. Experiencing her job search really gave me appreciation for the fact that taking a test is 80% of my interview proce…

> How many traders at Goldman Sachs don't have degrees from Penn/Harvard/Yale/etc? I just did a quick check in LinkedIn, choosing four people at GS with "Trader" in their title. The four schools I got: UNC Chapel Hill; Duke; Williams College; Amherst College. I find that distribution hard to correlate with your statement.

Aren't these all expensive private "elite non Ivy" schools? Maybe OP was being too restrictive with the 3 listed schools but I think the general point being implied is correct.

Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#37

Post by sidlls »

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…

This is why I get a laugh out of developers who think tech has a meritocratic hiring process. The majority of real engineering (I've come to the conclusion that most of software development in the context you would identify with isn't engineering except inasmuch as the Orks in Warhammer are engaged in the practice) doesn't grill candidates to solve math or engineering trivia on a white board in 45 minutes or less.

Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#38

Post by bastijn »

ng12 wrote: post #28
prisionif wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you have a job for a Kernel hacker. You have John, who has zillions of non-trivial patches applied upstream available, but "flubbed a BFS traversal". And you have Joe, who you haven't heard before but took a whole year doing nothing but traversing graphs and trees to pass your interview. Who would you reject?

Whiteboard interviews are not for hyper specialized roles. They're for companies who get hundreds of applicants every week. Right tool for the job. In this instance if I were John I probably wouldn't want to work for the company anyways because they clearly have no idea how to hire.

Problem is that most companies copy “the right tool” for all the jobs just because the famous big brother(s) do(es) it.

Re: Hired – Technical Interview Score

#39

Post by hyperpape »

southphillyman wrote: post #36
vonmoltke wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many traders at Goldman Sachs don't have degrees from Penn/Harvard/Yale/etc? I just did a quick check in LinkedIn, choosing four people at GS with "Trader" in their title. The four schools I got: UNC Chapel Hill; Duke; Williams College; Amherst College. I find that distribution hard to correlate with your statement.

Aren't these all expensive private "elite non Ivy" schools? Maybe OP was being too restrictive with the 3 listed schools but I think the general point being implied is correct.

Chapel Hill is a relatively prestigious public school. The other three are prestigious private schools.
Post reply on HN