Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#341

Post by thewhitetulip » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 3:56 AM UTC

bshacklett wrote: post #293

thewhitetulip wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a different experience. They gave me a lot of time but either I don't know python at all, or they didn't. they asked me to build something. I used dictionaries and wrote the code in ten minutes. Both interviewers wouldn't believe that the code could solve the problem. They later told me that dictionaries are not used in practical applications. Never understood why. Are dicts not used in "real life"?

I'm not the best with Python, but if someone gave me that answer I'd feel like I avoided a land mine. Dicts, and analogous data types, are incredibly useful.

Yes! I avoided the landmine. I can't imagine how I'd have felt working with a woman who interviews for Python role and doesn't know or understamd dictionaries!!

Plus they were giving me (x%) a raise, and I got (x-5)% in my current company. So thank God I didn't join there. Contacts are more important than salary.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#342

Post by smsm42 » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 7:54 AM UTC

watwut wrote: post #261

smsm42 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct question, obviously, would be "why in some places they make manhole covers round and which advantages and disadvantages over square ones they have?" Which, as any good question does, already contains part of the answer.

It could be coupled with following question: "why in some places they make manhole covers square and which advantages and disadvantages over round ones they have?"

That is, essentially, the same question :) Except, of course, for triangular ones, which also exist.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#343

Post by ptd » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 8:09 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #337

ptd wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally agree except for the last sentence. What if the false negative is Elon Musk? Netscape could have hired him, but they passed. You can always fire a bad hire. You can’t reinterview Musk when you realize your mistake.

Even though most people work “at will”, firing someone always has consequences. - There are usually HR policies around firing people that takes awhile and a lot of paperwork. - You open yourself up to lawsuits whether they are successful or not, it still a hassle and has costs. - you increase the amount you have to pay to your states unemployment insurance fund. - It puts a chilling effect on other employees. They th…

Thanks again for sharing. Great insight. If you had a blog/newsletter, I would be a reader.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#344

Post by c1sc0 » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 10:39 AM UTC

solatic wrote: post #243

Dogfooding their process is going to give them adverse results here: Microsoft is paying them to take all the time they want, but good candidates won't be so willing to spend so much time. Already, they're up to a full day of interviews, which is ridiculous. One of the worst parts of current FAANG interviewing is how long it takes to get to the day of interviews, needing to take off from work to attend the interview…

I sometimes wonder if a shortcut would be to hire & Fire quickly but only for short-term contract work. After X time as a contractor devs can upgrade to a full position.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#345

Post by scarface74 » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 1:08 PM UTC

ptd wrote: post #343

scarface74 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though most people work “at will”, firing someone always has consequences. - There are usually HR policies around firing people that takes awhile and a lot of paperwork. - You open yourself up to lawsuits whether they are successful or not, it still a hassle and has costs. - you increase the amount you have to pay to your states unemployment insurance fund. - It puts a chilling effect on other employees. They th…

Thanks again for sharing. Great insight. If you had a blog/newsletter, I would be a reader.

No blog. I would rather keep my opinions on corporate America and my real life separate.

Everything I know about management, hiring, firing and organizational theory comes from the Manager Tools/Career Tools Podcasts.

As far as hiring, this is my go to guidance.

https://www.manager-tools.com/2007/04/effective-hiring-set-t...

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#346

Post by recursive » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 9:16 PM UTC

pytester wrote: post #332

recursive wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really actionable. Even if my skills aren't up to pytester's standards, we still need to recruit developers now. And for what it's worth I doubt I'll ever be able to explain most of the tasks our business is doing what you refer to as "properly".

I joined a team two weeks ago that built a fairly complex machine learning pipeline. One week in I was told I needed to help interview a candidate. I lopped off a block of the code, made it run without the rest of the code base and explained what it was supposed to do. This wasn't that simple, but could still be explained in about a minute to somebody with familiarity in ML (assumed; that's what we're hiring for). I…

Perhaps I just don't understand what you're proposing. If it's general enough to be presentable without any domain specifics, then it seems indistinguishable from a general algorithm like reversing a string. I don't use tasks quite as simple as string reversal but not far from it.

As I read it the main observable difference between your exercise and the kind of exercise you're arguing against is that you are starting with some baseline code that the candidate is supposed to modify. That seems like a pretty good idea, but I haven't used it yet.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#347

Post by chrisweekly » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 1:34 AM UTC

wheaties wrote: post #45

Swizec wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like you're having the wrong conversations. With all your experience, why are you still going into companies through the front door? Where's your network? Fundamentally: Why are you having the "Can you code your way out of a wet paper bag" conversation instead of the "How much value can you add to this company" conversation? Perhaps my experience as a consultant/freelancer is breaking my perspective. It's…

You shouldn't have to only be able to go through your network to get a job. We should judge based upon the same criteria every other damned job judges ...how well they did their last job.

> "how well they did their last job"

Right.... so if you have a mismatched role, that's it, you're done for, huh? Please.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#348

Post by mancerayder » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

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.…

By "fizzbuzz" I wasn't referring to the "divide by 3 and 5" one that seems common, but something much worse. I once interviewed at a place where they presented a jumble of characters, and about 8 rules, and I was on the phone being watched (after an hour of successfully troubleshooting a broken AWS instance with a bunch of quirky Linux issues). The 8 or so rules involved something like, "You must print each line with one character longer than the last / c must never come right before vowel / x's must be on alternate rows / f's and z's ... " while parsing all of this stuff, I had 10 minutes total since we were almost out of time when we started the questioning. The interviewer said, "Don't worry, just do it in pseudocode."

That's bad interviewing.

I can do the problem easily without someone looking over my shoulder, and I need more than 10 minutes just to think about the 8 or whatever rules he gave me.

He failed me, and I ended up working there anyway a year later after the guy quit (true story).