I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today • Hacker News Board

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#311

Post by siscia » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:24 PM UTC

pault wrote: post #205

caymanjim wrote: post #85

Interviewing people is hard. Most people suck at it. I've interviewed over 100 people in my life, and I've been interviewed about ten times. I know I still suck at it. The code test is one of the more annoying facets of interviews. On the hiring side, it's an efficient way to screen and vet candidates for basic skills. It's relatively low cost to the employer to have a recruiter issue the test. If you come up with yo…

> My resume speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, I am working with someone who has 10+ years of experience, including former positions as a lead developer. I was involved in the interview process and made the recommendation to hire, as they were able to answer a lot of domain-specific questions very well and had a good knowledge of the ecosystem. Fast-forward three months, and I am spending hours per day s…

But code like that pass your unit tests, integration test, CI, and LINT?

If it does, you may consider to improve the quality of your tests.

If you don't have all of those it is your fault since you are cowboy coding instead of doing engineering and at this point he is playing along.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#312

Post by mixmastamyk » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:25 PM UTC

It's a cargo-cult disease, now spreading to other realms.

I don't write code with a gun to my head, clock ticking next to $100k in a suitcase, swordfish style, and not about to start now. ;-)

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#313

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:29 PM UTC

caymanjim wrote: post #85

Interviewing people is hard. Most people suck at it. I've interviewed over 100 people in my life, and I've been interviewed about ten times. I know I still suck at it. The code test is one of the more annoying facets of interviews. On the hiring side, it's an efficient way to screen and vet candidates for basic skills. It's relatively low cost to the employer to have a recruiter issue the test. If you come up with yo…

[deleted]

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#314

Post by mikeash » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:29 PM UTC

siscia wrote: post #311

pault wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My resume speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, I am working with someone who has 10+ years of experience, including former positions as a lead developer. I was involved in the interview process and made the recommendation to hire, as they were able to answer a lot of domain-specific questions very well and had a good knowledge of the ecosystem. Fast-forward three months, and I am spending hours per day s…

But code like that pass your unit tests, integration test, CI, and LINT? If it does, you may consider to improve the quality of your tests. If you don't have all of those it is your fault since you are cowboy coding instead of doing engineering and at this point he is playing along.

How are tests supposed to help when someone writes atrocious code that works? The posted pseudocode probably gets the job done.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#315

Post by pault » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

siscia wrote: post #311

pault wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My resume speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, I am working with someone who has 10+ years of experience, including former positions as a lead developer. I was involved in the interview process and made the recommendation to hire, as they were able to answer a lot of domain-specific questions very well and had a good knowledge of the ecosystem. Fast-forward three months, and I am spending hours per day s…

But code like that pass your unit tests, integration test, CI, and LINT? If it does, you may consider to improve the quality of your tests. If you don't have all of those it is your fault since you are cowboy coding instead of doing engineering and at this point he is playing along.

Can you show me a linter or a unit test that would reject that code?

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#316

Post by gowld » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

pault wrote: post #233

sokoloff wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this person doing (valuable) work that would even require hiring a replacement? If not, fire them. If so, lobby to secure a backfill and then fire them.

The crux of the problem is that we've interviewed dozens of applicants and none of them have been able to pass the sniff test. We are setting the bar pretty low, but the average skill level of the people we've had access to is shocking. There just isn't a supply of good developers for companies that aren't FAANGs or unicorns. And before anyone says we aren't paying enough, or we are being unfair, the reason these int…

> There just isn't a supply of good developers for companies that aren't FAANGs or unicorns.

> interviewing for a react/redux position one of the first questions I ask is [very vendor-specific technology question]

FAANGs don't hire people for "react/redux positions", they trust smart, conscientious people to learn it when needed. Maybe that's your problem.

Maybe the good people aren't already "react/redux programmers".

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#317

Post by mixmastamyk » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

pault wrote: post #205

caymanjim wrote: post #85

Interviewing people is hard. Most people suck at it. I've interviewed over 100 people in my life, and I've been interviewed about ten times. I know I still suck at it. The code test is one of the more annoying facets of interviews. On the hiring side, it's an efficient way to screen and vet candidates for basic skills. It's relatively low cost to the employer to have a recruiter issue the test. If you come up with yo…

> My resume speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, I am working with someone who has 10+ years of experience, including former positions as a lead developer. I was involved in the interview process and made the recommendation to hire, as they were able to answer a lot of domain-specific questions very well and had a good knowledge of the ecosystem. Fast-forward three months, and I am spending hours per day s…

> political reasons and difficulty hiring a replacement, we can't fire this person

Believe that's the root problem, right there. Gun-to-head coding problems aren't the solution.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#318

Post by gowld » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:35 PM UTC

pault wrote: post #302

aianus wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you not hire someone smart who doesn't already know react/redux and teach it to them? Or give them a couple of weeks to do some tutorials? I knew almost zero about web dev (I had been a decent C++/Java/Scala backend programmer) when I was hired to work in a web dev role -- I spent the first two weeks doing RoR tutorials on the internet and was just as productive as anyone else a couple of months after that.

This is what we've resigned ourselves to, but it's very expensive. We're building crud apps, not doing cutting edge research, so I assumed we would be able to find someone that is already up to speed on the language and frameworks. You also have to factor in the cost of senior developer time spent coaching, the lost productivity, and the code quality suffering in the meantime.

> We're building crud apps

Perhaps you shouldn't be using complicated faddish framework then?

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#319

Post by gowld » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:35 PM UTC

ConcernedCoder wrote: post #123

jasonpeacock wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had interviews start very positively with such an approach of questions, but then "just to be thorough" I have them code something simple on the whiteboard and they completely fail. Some of them couldn't even get nested for loops to work correctly. If you're hiring someone to write code for you, you need to have them write code in the interview. There's no substitute for it. Obviously, you can improve the experi…

This disproportionally filters for those who can think/code and perfom while under pressure/observation... i.e. the "porn stars" of software development, if you will. Similar to how not everyone is able to perform well while having sex-on-demand in front of a camera -- these same people are more than likely able to have sex when not under pressure and observation, and probably are quite adequate while doing it. My pe…

> "porn stars"

That's.... a much more accurate term than the "rock star" that gets tossed around.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#320

Post by mixmastamyk » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

zerr wrote: post #293

pault wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My resume speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, I am working with someone who has 10+ years of experience, including former positions as a lead developer. I was involved in the interview process and made the recommendation to hire, as they were able to answer a lot of domain-specific questions very well and had a good knowledge of the ecosystem. Fast-forward three months, and I am spending hours per day s…

> I typically focus on reviewing code with bugs and refactoring bad code instead of forcing them to whiteboard This is a completely different (and actually relevant) thing compared to leetcode/hackerrank riddles.

Indeed, came to say that is a much better alternative.