Earlier quoted context omitted.
^^ this. Aline learner runs a solid content strategy over there focusing on data journalism.
Lerner
^
Where do you report bugs around here?
That reply button's in italics?!
Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?
61–70 of 129 posts
Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Also known as reading Arthur Whitney's code.[0] [0] http://kparc.com/b/
I hope hell is as engaging and rewarding as that.
Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
I don't follow. Are you suggesting random = whiteboard?
Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?
#64I doubt there’s been too much on software interviewing specifically but interviewing/candidate selection for jobs is a large part of personnel psychology. A recent meta-analysis of what they know is below. Basically general mental ability (g, IQ) is the single best predictor, work sample tests work well, structured interviews can increase the performance of IQ tests or work samples and unstructured interviews are a t…
Can't agree with this enough. The most consistent finding in industrial psychology is that general cognitive ability is by far the best predictor of job performance in virtually every role ever tested. Even jobs that don't seem cognitively demanding, like janitors or infantry. Higher IQ candidates almost universally do better, even if they start with much less experience. The takeaway as it applies to modern software…
The research says structured interviews and work-sample tests have similar predictive power and all together they have yet more. The takeaway shouldn’t be IQ über alles.
Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't agree with this enough. The most consistent finding in industrial psychology is that general cognitive ability is by far the best predictor of job performance in virtually every role ever tested. Even jobs that don't seem cognitively demanding, like janitors or infantry. Higher IQ candidates almost universally do better, even if they start with much less experience. The takeaway as it applies to modern software…
I can't agree with this. High IQ can't be everything. Wouldn't this value experience and knowledge (like everything you learned in university) at zero? Imo there are a lot of great/amazing and productive Software Engineers that wouldn't do well in a whiteboard algorithm interview. The people that tend to do well, are the ones that have a lot of practice with the kind of problems.
> Wouldn't this value experience and knowledge (like everything you learned in university) at zero?
Having switched professions twice, I now use practically nothing of what I learned in university from about second year forward. Math and to some extent physics are still relevant, but that's pretty much it.
It might be painful to admit, but the practical value of that rather specialized knowledge that took me several years of hard work to obtain is pretty much zero now.
Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?
#66Earlier 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.
1. no one will be allowed to do that if you work in a team environment.
2. No one has been able to come up with a better alternative.
I wasn't implying its a prefect metric or even a reasonable one. If you really need a quantifiable metric then thats all we got.
Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't follow. Are you suggesting random = whiteboard?
Some people are suggesting that nothing really works. I suggest that our imperfect processes are still probably a lot better than randomness.
Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?
#68Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't agree with this enough. The most consistent finding in industrial psychology is that general cognitive ability is by far the best predictor of job performance in virtually every role ever tested. Even jobs that don't seem cognitively demanding, like janitors or infantry. Higher IQ candidates almost universally do better, even if they start with much less experience. The takeaway as it applies to modern software…
The research says structured interviews and work-sample tests have similar predictive power and all together they have yet more. The takeaway shouldn’t be IQ über alles.
The research shows that structured interviews do have better predictive performance than unstructured interviews. But that effect is entirely mediated by their higher correlation with IQ.
In other words, structured interviews are better because they're less noisy measures of intelligence. The takeaway very much is IQ uber alles.
[1] https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?refer...
Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?
#70Made an account just for this:
A professor I know from undergrad did research which could essentially evaluate, with some adaptation, whether or not people would work well in software engineering situations. More centered around whether team members would work well together, but relevant nonetheless: Malte Jung