There's significant ladder pulling. Tons of engineers work at places with interview processes they could never pass.
Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”
111–120 of 538 posts
Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another perspective to consider as well: while you are spending the time investing into and training people who needs the training and investment, your competitors are throwing money luring away the ones you have already trained, and leaving you in the dust in terms of velocity. Turtles all the way down. Once a game shifts into zero-sum, it's not gonna stop getting played until it collapses. Normally, I would say to…
Not every business needs to be aiming for hyper-growth. Perhaps some tech startups can take a breather and reconsider whether they need to be engaged in the same zero-sum game as everyone else. Because grow at all costs doesn’t just harm untrained juniors- it also leads to corner cutting and short-term thinking that could bite the business in the back later on.
I agree with you, but from what I've seen there's been a steady and increasing stream of pressure from the capital side of things.
Wisdom shall lead again at some point, but I don't clearly see when. Threads like this one though are a promising sign.
Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
But there is a way to filter the amount of FAANG applicants! It is as follows: Offer ridiculously low pay, such that only basic expenses could be paid for, like basic housing... Then, see who shows up. Whoever shows up... really wants a job. You don't hire them yet. You implement your own corporate bootcamp, where you give then coding assignments. These start easy, but progress, over a number of weeks, to those that…
Sorry, this won't work. 1. Too arduous for the FAANG company 2. If the end result is $250k/year salary, then absolutely insane amount of people will stick it until the end. I know I do. Heck, I will live at FAANG office 24/7/365 if I need to, and I know a lot of people will do it. See the current state of Leetcode forum and reddit CS career questions to get the feel of the type A people who flock there. It is go big…
I agree, it probably wouldn't work for the FAANG companies...
I posted what I said as a note to my future self, if/when I run a software engineering company... if/when that happens, then that's how I'm going to handle hiring...
Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”
#114What is tragic here is the amount of effort that is now expended by young computer scientists into the game of algorithms. Whereas a young programmer in the past may have spent their extra days writing games in Basic or static web pages, hackers these days seem to do Leetcode until the wheels come off. We are failing to bring certain softwares into existence by effectively requiring programmers to their effort into t…
Not to mention the huge gap between supply and demand with respect to CS graduates and jobs. It’s really frustrating to hear so many new grads are struggling to get hired despite the gigantic investment in CSE. Articles like these point to the failure of the evaluation process as a bottleneck versus the common understanding that supply is limited.
New graduates don't get hired? That's the first I hear about this (recently) anywhere in the world. What's changed?
Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”
#115Honestly having an interview process that is highly standardized and teachable + learnable is a good thing, so I'm not sure why people complain. You know exactly what sort of questions you will be asked from company to company, and can spend nights and weekends over a couple weeks studying for it. Most jobs are not like that, and then you get extreme variance in expectation with little communication on how to prepare…
The article to which this is a follow-up answered your questions fairly comprehensively. Among other concerns: no, it's actually not that easy to predict what questions you'll get.
Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”
#116What is tragic here is the amount of effort that is now expended by young computer scientists into the game of algorithms. Whereas a young programmer in the past may have spent their extra days writing games in Basic or static web pages, hackers these days seem to do Leetcode until the wheels come off. We are failing to bring certain softwares into existence by effectively requiring programmers to their effort into t…
I notice that you mention "computer scientists," "programmers," and "hackers" in your comment. Those are all different types of people, and generally not the kind companies are looking to hire. Most companies are hiring "software engineers." That is, they want people to build stuff in a team with other software engineers, things that are well designed and stand up to the various forces that software systems are subject to.
Ultimately, though, you're right. The problem is that software engineering interviews aren't actually about software engineering. And, that's what really needs to change.
Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”
#117When I interviewed at Google for a front end position they didn't ask me a single CSS question. It was all algorithms and easy JavaScript questions. It was just really weird, like at least ask me how to center something. They bothered to ask me how I'd deal with diversity issues if I was in HR, though. I probably didn't get the job because of my answers there...
> They bothered to ask me how I'd deal with diversity issues if I was in HR, though. I probably didn't get the job because of my answers there... Strange postscript that suggests you hold some problematic opinions that indicate you can't play nicely with others? Did you fail to get the job because you didn't have the tech chops or is it because you said something wildly inappropriate on the behavioural questions? Wha…
Sour grapes, more like. If simply asking how they'd work with people from diverse backgrounds was triggering enough for this person, the process worked perfectly in rejecting them.
Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to me that it should be straightforward to objectively measure hiring practices by correlating different interview questions and techniques with subsequent job performance (compared to a control.) Has this been done? If so, I'd love to see the studies, if not, then it would be hard to argue that current techniques aren't voodoo.
It has been done, I've seen the numbers and they work. Other companies have probably done the same. Of course this isn't popular, instead people up-vote anecdotes from people who say that they once had an algorithm wiz who performed badly, or how some stellar performers were rejected by this kind of interview.
> Of course this isn't popular, instead people up-vote anecdotes from people who say that they once had an algorithm wiz who performed badly, or how some stellar performers were rejected by this kind of interview.
That's kind of reductionist. I upvote answers that at least attempt to propose alternatives to the current status quo. The employer side isn't the only relevant one, which is likely a stronger reason why a lot of current hiring practices aren't popular. Some only work at FAANG scale with a large enough pool of applicants, some seem optimized to hire people that waste time on code puzzles (that doesn't make them an "algorithm wiz") and others generally put applicants in a position resembling begging for a job, especially for junior roles.
Just because something works well on some quantitative metric does neither imply that it is the only, nor the optimal solution, especially in two player games like hiring.
Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
One reason to complain is that these interview-questions usually bare so little relevance to the actual job.
So what? It's a logic test. And you're still proving that you have enough experience to code well in general language e.g. java, python, javascript, ruby, etc. It would be way more time intensive for the interviewee to be asked to code up some fullstack project for every interview. Having to memorize some basic algorithm questions that are maybe 20 lines of code each is way better.
> It would be way more time intensive for the interviewee to be asked to code up some fullstack project for every interview.
Assuming the role is a fullstack developer, memorizing basic algorithms doesn’t show one is fit for the purpose.
Providing a simple skeleton of a fullstack project—in the chosen tech stack of either the candidate or the company—and then verifying a candidate can add a simple feature, or something similarly fullstack, would accomplish that far faster than algorithm answers.
Edit: I realize this risks sounding like stupid take-home interview homework. I personally oppose that crap. However, I recognize why some companies take that route, as I don’t think I’d feel confident that a candidate could work in my company’s stack by asking silly algorithm questions. I’d probably feel more confident watching the candidate do a remote screen share, git clone a starter app, and do some simple to moderately complex fullstack tasks. Of course, the tasks should fit the role, I think—e.g., I wouldn’t ask a candidate who’s being hired to tune DB queries a bunch of fullstack questions. And if I was hiring a backend dev to build out APIs, I wouldn’t bother with a bunch of frontend tasks and questions. The hiring processes I’ve seen and managed always had better results when more time was invested in prepping specific, job-focused interview processes, rather than offloading that time onto candidates because recruiting teams can’t actually do more than ask shallow questions or follow checklists.
Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”
#120I think that "apparently very few people actually know how to program a computer" part is more about how many people have "fake it till you make it" attitude or how large ego they have. Or how much they dont bother how they look like during interview and keep trying until they get lucky scoring position. And that actually is how many get to start programming. As in, one of common advice is to be self-learner and abse…
I’m self taught, and have kicked ass at every position I’ve ever had, and rise quickly. Alg interviews suck the very life out of me - nothing is ever relevant to to actually building working software in 2020.