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Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

jarednelsen.dev

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Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#141

Post by karatestomp »

wutbrodo wrote: post #97
rm445 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem to be all fakers. The situation as described by advocates of FizzBuzz and the like, is that large minority proportions of people who have already held down jobs in the software development field, actually can barely do things that we think of as basic programming, like implement a very straightforward function. The implication seems to be that there's just too many to all be actual liars; that they're…

> It seems implausible. It's counter-intuitive. But the idea seems pretty persistent. Some of us have direct experience with exactly this situation (see my previous comment). Hell, Jeff Atwood wrote a whole piece on it a long time ago.

As a programmer who is for-sure well past "fizzbuzz" quality and has been for a while now, I can just about guarantee I've left interviewers with the impression they dodged a can't-actually-program bullet when they rejected me, a couple times.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#142

Post by no_wizard »

LordFast wrote: post #75
scarface74 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But while they are getting guidance and mentorship, they are not being a productive member of the team, taking time away from experienced developers and as soon as they level up they will change companies and the next company didn’t have to invest training time. I know everyone has to start somewhere but from the company’s perspective, hiring a junior developer doesn’t make sense.

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…

Or is it? I think this ignores the human psychology factors. Like actually following through with being loyal to employees, training as a benefit etc.

Also if you are going to lose employees because you can’t match competitive salaries than i would say you are losing them if all other things are equal.

In another words this greatly oversimplified version of events here only allows for you to come to that conclusion and dismisses how an organization could adopt different practices, values and foster organizational culture that combats these issues differently which I think training is an essential component.

I actually think this is a good argument for licensure like civil engineers etc have to have, because one thing it mandates is required training hours (among other reasons I won’t diverge into here for the sake of staying on topic)

You can debate what that should look like and I encourage that but I see little downside to forcing employers to acknowledge that all employees may need some time just to train on new things and different concepts away from the day to day work. I know this is a little bit of a tangent here but it’s something I see so often at every level of an engineers career path yet organizations so rarely set aside adequate time for it.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#143

Post by Apocryphon »

wutbrodo wrote: post #97
rm445 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem to be all fakers. The situation as described by advocates of FizzBuzz and the like, is that large minority proportions of people who have already held down jobs in the software development field, actually can barely do things that we think of as basic programming, like implement a very straightforward function. The implication seems to be that there's just too many to all be actual liars; that they're…

> It seems implausible. It's counter-intuitive. But the idea seems pretty persistent. Some of us have direct experience with exactly this situation (see my previous comment). Hell, Jeff Atwood wrote a whole piece on it a long time ago.

Then perhaps it's not just interviewing that's broken, but the industry as a whole. At least, software engineering education and training.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#144

Post by lainga »

inertiatic wrote: post #128

I don't know, hiring seems inherently broken. Not just the algorithmic part, even the part leading up to it. You have to impress a recruiter or an HR drone by listing all the buzzwords that are currently trendy. Then, even after the algorithmic questions and interviews where you prove you can DO the job, you get rejected. Every company I've worked for had trouble hiring. I'm working for a company that also has troubl…

Sounds like the problem is low trust. It's a marketplace (for labour) where no transactions are taking place, because the buyers and sellers are afraid to come out to the town square.

What do your counterparts at the company think the source of their hiring difficulties is? If not flawed process?

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#145

Post by castratikron »

inertiatic wrote: post #128

I don't know, hiring seems inherently broken. Not just the algorithmic part, even the part leading up to it. You have to impress a recruiter or an HR drone by listing all the buzzwords that are currently trendy. Then, even after the algorithmic questions and interviews where you prove you can DO the job, you get rejected. Every company I've worked for had trouble hiring. I'm working for a company that also has troubl…

I once worked for a company that build industrial machinery. Because we were an "engineering" company, the director of our department would only hire software engineers if they had an "engineering" degree. Literally. Many dozens of applications thrown out that only had "computer science" degrees and not electrical engineering, computer engineering, etc.

Needless to say that company had a lot of problems with technology. But they seemed to be good at making money strangely enough.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#146

Post by matz1 »

andrewflnr wrote: post #115
sjc33 wrote: post #17

Honestly 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.

Doesn't leetcode pretty much cover most of the question?

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#147

Post by deanCommie »

tastroder wrote: post #101
deanCommie wrote: post #35

I got to the last thread too late for a comment to make a difference, but I'm exactly the person most of you want to talk to or hate. I'm an interviewer at a FAANG company with >500 interviews in the last 5 years, I teach multiple internal courses on interviewing, and I think the system makes a lot of sense for companies at our scale. Ask Me Anything :) I currently have a toddler on my lap, but I'll edit this post la…

> Ask Me Anything :) Appreciate it. For some background it would be nice if you clarify the perspective of your role as one of HR/coordination or a more technical view on participants of these interviews. Do you feel like current FAANG hiring practices for lower level roles incubate a generation of programmers that trains specifically for the interview process moreso than they do for the actual role you want to fill…

I'm an SDE, i conduct technical interviews.

No, I don't think so. We would not hire a person who clearly only memorized a bunch of algorithms and data structures to solve toy problems, but cannot describe their thought process coherently, does not show a fluent ability to translate their ideas into code, or can't refactor the code or adapt their process when introduced with new requirements, scaling bottlenecks, or system failure scenarios.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#148

Post by deanCommie »

pyb wrote: post #122
deanCommie wrote: post #35

I got to the last thread too late for a comment to make a difference, but I'm exactly the person most of you want to talk to or hate. I'm an interviewer at a FAANG company with >500 interviews in the last 5 years, I teach multiple internal courses on interviewing, and I think the system makes a lot of sense for companies at our scale. Ask Me Anything :) I currently have a toddler on my lap, but I'll edit this post la…

Do you have a shortage of good candidates or not, wrt your company's staffing requirements ?

Yes. Without a doubt.

See my edit, but most interview candidates I see onsite (that's after resume/phone screens) are not good enough to join the company.

Our onsite pass rate is between 15-25%

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#149

Post by bitcoinmoney »

chad_strategic wrote: post #76

I have always hated software engineering interviews. This is a popular topic on this site, but nothing ever changes. Not sure as I would call them dystopian, I generally thought they were a chance for a senior dev to parade his ego. I could tell stories... (As I'm sure everybody else...) I used to take interviews and I always knew the outcome. "Sorry you are self taught, we only want people with CS degrees." "Or you…

Can you explain more? How did you find a trading company that hires non formally trained devs? They seem to be the type to only look at Harvard grads etc.

Re: Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews”

#150

Post by deanCommie »

aerovistae wrote: post #50
deanCommie wrote: post #35

I got to the last thread too late for a comment to make a difference, but I'm exactly the person most of you want to talk to or hate. I'm an interviewer at a FAANG company with >500 interviews in the last 5 years, I teach multiple internal courses on interviewing, and I think the system makes a lot of sense for companies at our scale. Ask Me Anything :) I currently have a toddler on my lap, but I'll edit this post la…

Okay, let's start with the obvious one-- why do you believe focusing on excruciatingly difficult algorithmic problems totally unrelated to the work you do is a good way of finding people?

Because we want to find the best people at solving difficult problems with limited time, and maximum ambiguity.

At a high level that reflects the work that we do. The project scale may be 20 weeks instead of 20 minutes, but the level of complexity is scaled accordingly.

Of course, we miss out on some candidates that could be great at executing on a large timeline but can't demonstrate it in a short in person interview.

But, (see my edit), this is all we can do to scale our interview process, and we don't want to take risks.

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