Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#231

Post by sk5t » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 5:20 AM UTC

burtonator wrote: post #197

mancerayder wrote: post #39

Great, now can Netflix, Google and Facebook do this, too? Not because I want to work in these places, but because they influence everyone else and as a senior engineer in the systems space I feel I shouldn't need to study days or weeks for fizzbuzz sorting algorithms questions that are designed to test comp sci recent grads. I have a proven career, and was never suddenly stumped in a project due to not being able to.…

I had a junior/intermediate level engineer start asking me minutiae about HTTP and HTTPS... After about 5 minutes of this I literally said: "Dude, have you seem my resume? I literally built a petabyte scale full text search engine and wrote 1.5M lines of code to do so and a HTTP framework that parses fetches more than 2PB of HTML per month. If there's some edge case that I might miss I can Google it in 30 seconds". I…

Over what period of time did you write 1.5 _million_ lines of code for this one project?

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#232

Post by kronin » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 5:23 AM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #229

kronin wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the start of the coding interview. It moves on from there. This candidate didn't even ask if he could use Apache commons, and I hadn't yet specified that he couldn't use a 3rd party library. So yes. He failed on many counts. 1) not asking clarifying questions 2) not being familiar with some well-known libraries 3) not being able to implement a basic reverse string 4) not being able to explain whether or not a si…

Just speaking to points 1 and 2: In an interview, there is an unspoken assumption that you won't be using third party libraries to implement algorithms, and certainly not a third party library that implements it in one function call. Using that as a red flag will yield a LOT of false positives. Also, I have over 10 years experience in Java, have used Apache commons extensively, and had no idea that a string reversal…

I agree about your unspoken assumption, but many interviewees ask. And the post I was responding to pointed to the Apache commons library, so I hazard to say it's not universally known.

A fail is not a red flag. A senior candidate not asking clarifying questions does not disqualify them (what I would call a red flag) but it is brought up in the debrief as a potential gap. I don't expect them to state this could be implemented using a single call to Apache commons. I call those candidates out in the debrief as being aware of the library, as a bonus. But not saying it isn't a negative.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#233

Post by BurningFrog » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 5:26 AM UTC

derefr wrote: post #31

BurningFrog wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for explaining why roads are round!

More like, why we got four-way intersections for so long before anyone tried roundabouts. It was intuitive to just drive one road through another, and then we added traffic laws and signalling on top to try to make it work, rather than anyone sitting down at the start to try to work out what intersection shape would optimize for traffic flow and [non-]accident rate.

Ok, that's actually an interesting (schelling) point!

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#234

Post by JaRail » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 5:33 AM UTC

borgfriend wrote: post #156

kronin wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've interviewed and been interviewing for over a decade. I have had the displeasure of interviewing many people who have very impressive resumes yet when asked how they would judge their skillset in an area, and being told from them that they would say "expert", being shown exactly the opposite when it came time to answer some questions in that area. One data point... Senior engineer that founded the local java user…

Why do you assume that the person is lying? Why do you start your relationship with your new co-worker on distrust? There is a way to weed out the liars - you hire them and then when it does not work out you fire them. You would be astonished how little people lie on their CV. They may exaggerate claims - yes, that is why you gave them a call in the first place. But then again you exaggerated your claims in the job p…

I think you're ignoring that hiring someone onto your team takes a long time and significant effort. Say you're allowed to add one person to your team. You interview 50 people and decide on the best candidate. Then you spend the next 6-months waiting on lawyers, processing visas, moving their them and their family to the US, paying for their initial housing, etc. Might not be an issue for a small company in France that hires locals but it sure is for big companies in the US.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#235

Post by danieltillett » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 5:40 AM UTC

Has anyone looked at how g loaded these interview quizzes and brain teasers are?

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#236

Post by nearbuy » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 5:48 AM UTC

pytester wrote: post #212

recursive wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes a few days to explain the business rules. It's probably better to use a well understood general structure.

It isn't that hard to isolate a block of code that addresses a small cross section of your business rules and ask a candidate to do something meaningful with it.

That could be an excellent second, more involved, question. The first, super simple 2-minute sanity check question is to reverse a string. It's literally just a reverse for loop.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#237

Post by JaRail » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 5:51 AM UTC

avisser wrote: post #138

whack wrote: post #65

Here's what they are doing, from the linked blog post: > Our dev teams had taken to working with candidates to solve a bug or feature as part of the interview process. It was a collaborative effort with the candidate and the team working together to solve a real problem. Sounds like a great idea. Except it's so variable. What if you get lucky and you get a easy bug, whereas someone else gets something much harder. Le…

> taken to working with candidates to solve a bug or feature as part of the interview process This is unethical. How is this anything other than unpaid labor?

Fixing a simple bug in your own software is an order of magnitude faster than doing it in someone else's codebase. Make no mistake, it would be cheaper for them to fix it themselves than guide someone else through a paired-programming exercise. This isn't unpaid labor, it's more expensive labor.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#238

Post by vaststag » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 5:58 AM UTC

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #14

> But the aha moment for me was that not everyone does well in those fast-paced brainstorming sessions. A lot of people (including me) prefer to sit with a cup of coffee and some data and try to think things through. This is me. Hard to get that across in an interview, but once people work with me, they're cool with me coming back an hour later in an email with some thoughts on the last meeting topic. They know and r…

i’m like this but admittedly, in some cases, you’re interviewing for roles where it’s critical you identify that candidate can think on their feet (eg devs that might need to serve in 24/7 ops roles), where “let me get back to you” isn’t a feasible option

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#239

Post by nightski » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 6:02 AM UTC

vaststag wrote: post #238

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #14

> But the aha moment for me was that not everyone does well in those fast-paced brainstorming sessions. A lot of people (including me) prefer to sit with a cup of coffee and some data and try to think things through. This is me. Hard to get that across in an interview, but once people work with me, they're cool with me coming back an hour later in an email with some thoughts on the last meeting topic. They know and r…

i’m like this but admittedly, in some cases, you’re interviewing for roles where it’s critical you identify that candidate can think on their feet (eg devs that might need to serve in 24/7 ops roles), where “let me get back to you” isn’t a feasible option

Usually those who optimize for thinking on their feet do so at great compromise in quality. Maybe you can afford that, but it's kind of "shooting from the hip" so to speak.

It's probably not that these candidates can't think on their feet, it's just that they generally aren't willing to compromise so greatly on accuracy and quality of the answer.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#240

Post by vorpalhex » Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 6:18 AM UTC

lilott8 wrote: post #43

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #14

> But the aha moment for me was that not everyone does well in those fast-paced brainstorming sessions. A lot of people (including me) prefer to sit with a cup of coffee and some data and try to think things through. This is me. Hard to get that across in an interview, but once people work with me, they're cool with me coming back an hour later in an email with some thoughts on the last meeting topic. They know and r…

My life's motto is: "Let me think about it, I'll get back to you."

It took me a very long time to realize this is an okay reply. "Let me stew on this."