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The company doesn't like all-day interviews any more than you do. Multiple highly-paid people get distracted from their normal duties to interview you. With both you and the employer having a cost to bear, the interview should mean that both you and the employer are pretty serious about you being hired.
That's a really interesting point. I think you may have just nailed why the software developer hiring process is so broken right now.
Our industry is about at the stage of maturity where civil engineering or medicine were circa the turn of the 20th century when state accreditation boards began licensing in those industries.
I actually don't have a CS degree at all and admittedly poor understanding of algorithms and data structures as I originally was educated in code at an art school. But after 16 years writing code, due to the increasing amount of gatekeeping being put up around CS fundamentals I'm actually going "back to school" right now, taking online courseware to gain at least some rudimentary online certificates in those CS areas just to demonstrate that I'm qualified to continue working in the industry.
It would actually be quite nice to have a real board certification in this stuff to study towards, rather than some BS online course certificate, or worse, having to re-do my entire undergrad 16 years into my career...
I am supposedly a senior developer, but I was asked:
To whiteboard a system that I designed and asked me how I designed it for high availability, scalability, etc.
How would I improve the current process to bring in CI/CD.
My theory on automation testing.
My previous job interview was similar, I was interviewing for a lead dev position without knowing it. He asked me 30/60/90 day plan to create a software development department to ship some green field projects and to rescue a project that had gone off the rails.
Any company that is more concerned with whether their senior developers can write algorithms than whether they can ship features and architect systems is not a company I am going to work for. It’s probably a company full of architect astronaughts who couldn’t ship if their life depended on it.
Then again, I don’t live in SV but so do live in a major metropolitan area.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is whiteboard interviews a sv thing? Because they seem to be rare in the Midwest? Maybe I've just been lucky. But they seem like an incredibly poor way to interview someone.
I’m curious to know what you think a better way would be?
I have a simplified skeleton of class that is similar to the problems we solve every day and failing unit tests.
They have to make the unit tests pass.
Then I give them a second set of requirements and they have to make the second set of tests pass without breaking the first set.
It's almost like we need a piece of paper from something like an accredited institution of some sort. ----- I'm just kidding but it is really expensive to hire and fire a poor performer. These are high paying jobs where bugs can mean loss of revenue so it makes sense that they want the best. Honestly, you should be reviewing algorithms every few years so you never fully lose it... not just when you need a new job. Up…
Using the simple Joel Spolsky criteria for hiring, “smart and gets things done”, the only thing that testing whether someone can do algorithms is testing is whether they are smart.
There are plenty of people who are smart but don’t have the follow through to get things done and are always distracted by the “ooh shiny”.
It's almost like we need a piece of paper from something like an accredited institution of some sort. ----- I'm just kidding but it is really expensive to hire and fire a poor performer. These are high paying jobs where bugs can mean loss of revenue so it makes sense that they want the best. Honestly, you should be reviewing algorithms every few years so you never fully lose it... not just when you need a new job. Up…
I'm just kidding but it is really expensive to hire and fire a poor performer. Using the simple Joel Spolsky criteria for hiring, “smart and gets things done”, the only thing that testing whether someone can do algorithms is testing is whether they are smart. There are plenty of people who are smart but don’t have the follow through to get things done and are always distracted by the “ooh shiny”.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is whiteboard interviews a sv thing? Because they seem to be rare in the Midwest? Maybe I've just been lucky. But they seem like an incredibly poor way to interview someone.
I’m curious to know what you think a better way would be?
This is a topic that has been discussed to death for years and there are ample resources on the Internet for anyone who is genuinely interested in alternative approaches to whiteboard interviewing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem isn't a high barrier to entry, what's tested is a separate skill set. It's like testing a carpenter's skill by looking at how good he hits with the hammer.
I would like to think we have a problem if a carpenter is unable to wield his hammer properly.
There shouldn't be many all-day interviews. If you are honest on your resume and there is a phone screen, your chances with the interview should be pretty decent. The company doesn't like all-day interviews any more than you do. Multiple highly-paid people get distracted from their normal duties to interview you. With both you and the employer having a cost to bear, the interview should mean that both you and the emp…
While it's nice to think this is true in an ideal world, having been on both sides of the interview in numerous companies in Silicon Valley (even having done hundreds of interviews in a big company I had worked in), this is remarkably false. (Sorry, didn't intend to be mean, just stating how it is.)
Both in terms of candidates that I've interviewed, as well as when I'm a candidate myself, pass rates for on-site interviews are quite low. I'm not selective as an interviewer, but when everyone else is unreasonably selective, there's not much I can do as a lone interviewer who gives a "Hire" to candidates I thought were fine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is whiteboard interviews a sv thing? Because they seem to be rare in the Midwest? Maybe I've just been lucky. But they seem like an incredibly poor way to interview someone.
I’m curious to know what you think a better way would be?
I'll be crude but whiteboard interviews are fucking stupid, obnoxious and wastes time, you will definitely miss out on quality candidates. You might as throw a personality test in for the ultimate combo of "how to fail at hiring"