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Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

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Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#21

Post by vthallam »

EpicEng wrote: post #14
vthallam wrote: post #4

I don't know of any academic research, but Triplebyte is trying to understand this better. Their interview process involves a little of algo problems and pairing on hangouts. Also, there's no one size fits all theory. There are companies where every ms of time you save by writing a better algorithm makes a big difference and most where it doesn't matter. Take home assignments, pair programming have all been tried and…

>it seems to work fine How do we know that? Interviewing is near a total crapshoot from what I can tell based on my 13 years of experience (~8 of which being actively involved in the process, 3 as a decision maker.) I have yet to find a method that weeds out people who can whiteboard, but can't deliver, or those who seem to have a great personality and work ethic, but stop showing up to work and/or throw tantrums whe…

> How do we know that?

As the sibling comment mentions, companies are able to build large scale systems by engineers who got in through these kind of interviews. I am not saying this is the right way or wrong way, but it definitely works.

Of course when you do this, you miss out on some amazing candidates, but the big companies which started this can afford to do that because of the insane num of applications they get.

Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#22

Post by ghaff »

rpedela wrote: post #18
EpicEng wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it seems to work fine How do we know that? Interviewing is near a total crapshoot from what I can tell based on my 13 years of experience (~8 of which being actively involved in the process, 3 as a decision maker.) I have yet to find a method that weeds out people who can whiteboard, but can't deliver, or those who seem to have a great personality and work ethic, but stop showing up to work and/or throw tantrums whe…

> How do we know that? Because businesses are still able to solve problems, service customers, etc. Of course, there is room for improvement.

Unsatisfactory as the whole hiring process can be, I don't actually believe that throwing a pile of resumes in the air and picking up a handful at random would work as well.

Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#23

Post by Dangeranger »

vthallam wrote: post #21
EpicEng wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it seems to work fine How do we know that? Interviewing is near a total crapshoot from what I can tell based on my 13 years of experience (~8 of which being actively involved in the process, 3 as a decision maker.) I have yet to find a method that weeds out people who can whiteboard, but can't deliver, or those who seem to have a great personality and work ethic, but stop showing up to work and/or throw tantrums whe…

> How do we know that? As the sibling comment mentions, companies are able to build large scale systems by engineers who got in through these kind of interviews. I am not saying this is the right way or wrong way, but it definitely works. Of course when you do this, you miss out on some amazing candidates, but the big companies which started this can afford to do that because of the insane num of applications they ge…

A larger problem is the cargo-culting of whiteboard interview techniques by smaller companies who do not get the volume of applicants that FAANG do, get believe they will succeed anyway.

Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#24

Post by jppope »

neilk wrote: post #5

Interviewing.io is a startup that does some research into candidate evaluation. To their credit, they have even posted research with negative results. http://blog.interviewing.io/posts/

^^ this. Aline learner runs a solid content strategy over there focusing on data journalism.

Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#25

Post by aerovistae »

jppope wrote: post #24
neilk wrote: post #5

Interviewing.io is a startup that does some research into candidate evaluation. To their credit, they have even posted research with negative results. http://blog.interviewing.io/posts/

^^ this. Aline learner runs a solid content strategy over there focusing on data journalism.

Lerner

Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#26

Post by emaginniss »

lemony_fresh wrote: post #9

When I was self-studying social psychology I came across social facilitation theory and found it applicable to understanding interviewing. People have a hard time performing complex tasks while other people are watching because their working memory is monitoring the social situation. This varies for each individual. For tasks that have been rehearsed, like a musical or dance routine, they perform better. Politeness t…

I disagree completely about your theory. I have been on both ends of the whiteboard interview an almost uncountable time during my career. What it has always come down to in my mind is a collaborative process to solve a problem where the one performing the task is trying to solve the problem, while the giver of the task makes suggestions and points out weaknesses before they get out of control. I'm sure there are sadists who just want to watch people squirm while trying to solve an extremely complicated problem, but I don't think I've ever run into that in an interview and it has never been what I've put people through.

Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#28

Post by hyperpape »

sampo wrote: post #2

To correlate with job success, you need to define and measure job success. A sub-question: How's the academic research into measuring programmer job success?

Hillel Wayne has been writing about this a bit on Twitter. Some threads: https://twitter.com/hillelogram/status/1120495752969641986 https://twitter.com/hillelogram/status/1119709859979714560

In general, there's a lot of research, though with some weird gaps, and a lot of results (though not all) are inconclusive.

Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#29

Post by RugnirViking »

onion2k wrote: post #12
dominotw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think this is best we got so far.

So the secret to being a 10X programmer is ":set tw=8" making your maximum line length 8 characters, forcing you be 10 times more productive than rival devs who're stuck at the old 80 character standard. Got it.

I think reading code deliniated into lines 8 characters code, written by somebody else, with no whitespace and single letter variable names is the punishment reserved in hell for the very worst of developers.

Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#30

Post by organsnyder »

srfilipek wrote: post #3
sampo wrote: post #2

To correlate with job success, you need to define and measure job success. A sub-question: How's the academic research into measuring programmer job success?

Easy: LOC / hour.

On an inverse scale, sure. Only the best coders have net-negative LOC/hour metrics.
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