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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”

#341

Post by SPascareli13 »

giovannibonetti wrote: post #297
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally find some of the current (if I can call them) standards of tech hiring to be very narrow in which skills and capabilities they test. What would you propose as an alternative? I’ve been involved in training new engineering managers how to hire and interview. Everyone starts with the best intentions, but reality quickly forces some compromises. The bottom line is that you only have a number of hours in w…

> What would you propose as an alternative? In my company (totally remote) we decided to automate hiring (also remote) as most as possible and we are happy with the results. We also value the candidate's time very much so we made the hiring process very straightforward. It works like this: - First the candidates must do some online tests, which are mostly multiple choice questions. The subjects are logic, english and…

Usually I like to take things in a practical way, if you are happy with the people you're hiring, than it's fine, and there is not much point thinking about "what if these are not the best possible people we could hire?", you just never know.

But probably a lot of people that don't make it into your company just can't be bothered to do 2 sets of technical tests with zero human contact. I can tell you that my most "successful" interview processes (there is, the ones with offers/acceptances or just the ones I can even remember the name of the company) were the ones that focus on me as a human and as a professional, the ones that looked less automated and that seemed to have taken more time trying to know ME rather than just my skills.

Not that there was no tests, there were and some went kind of overboard with the complexity, but in the end what I remmember about these companies was the conversations we had and how they were interested and knowing me.

So, like I said, if it's working for you than great, but I probably would forget your test in my inbox to be honest.

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

#342

Post by perl4ever »

pmiller2 wrote: post #306
perl4ever wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Most companies are hiring "software engineers."" What's your reason for thinking there are more "software engineers" than "programmers"?

Where did I say that?

I'm asking what the basis for your quoted statement is. If it needs to be clarified what it meant, please do.

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

#343

Post by perl4ever »

apta wrote: post #237
klipklop wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "standardized" interview at companies like Google has lead to them hiring mostly White/Asian males though... I have had plenty of people tell me that interviewing at Google is essentially a roll of the dice these days. You can answer all the 5x interviews in a satisfactory manner and still get rejected. I feel "just wing it" can lead to somebody talented from a non-traditional background getting a chance at a gre…

> hiring mostly White/Asian males though Which seems reflective of the underlying pool of applicants.

It works in the opposite direction too, though. If you live in a place where a given sort of people is scarce, it doesn't matter how hard you try to be unbiased, you internalize prejudices based on your lack of (or minimal) experience with them. Then someone does come along and they don't fit in, and they are set up for failure, and try as you might, you (subconsciously) associate whatever group they belong to.

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

#344

Post by perl4ever »

Skunkleton wrote: post #318
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I worked at a company where the interview process was basically "ask them about their experience, successes, and failures, and do whatever technical screen you feel works." I'm part of another online community that has a strong emphasize on social justice issues. These "just wing it" hiring practices are one of their biggest complaints about tech companies. There's a perception that the less well-defined and struct…

> There is a strong push for standardized and repeatable interviewing processes, complete with sufficient documentation to support hiring decisions. Standardized processes don't mean unbiased processes. The SAT for example is pretty racist.

"The SAT is..." seems like a questionable statement even before you complete the sentence, given that it has changed over time.

Is it equally racist now versus in the 90s?

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

#345

Post by claudeomusic »

A word of advice. You spent the time writing this post knowing full well it would get a lot of hits but it appears you haven't yet updated your resume. Little details like that go a long way towards winning over a lot of hiring managers.Good luck!

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

#347

Post by 1MachineElf »

shapiro92 wrote: post #346

Why the freakishly long post.. Is there any job that doesn't have interview procedures that fail? Isn't half of the system if not more broken? Taxes, education, housing.. Why we engineers whine so much about it?

Probably because engineering partly about obsessively getting things right, and so that's the kind of personalities you have opining on this topic in these spheres.

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

#348

Post by deanCommie »

andrewflnr wrote: post #126
philjohn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but it's often not about seeing you get a perfect solution straight away, they're judging your problem solving skills - how do you approach something you've probably never seen before. Do you choke? Do you break the problem up into smaller sub-problems?

People who say "oh, I just want to see how you approach the super-hard problem" are often the first to comment on threads like this, but the experiences of OP and others seem to indicate that most interviewers expect you to actually finish or GTFO.

It's a bit of both

1) The companies that do this interview a TON, so there are bound to be bad experiences, and those are the ones that people blog about

2) The questions are supposed to be hard, but achievable. So you get two scenarios:

A/ candidates who are not good enough and are not aware of it. "How am I supposed to know if the hashmap/dicationary data structure in the language I say I'm best at maintains insertion order? I just google that every time - everyone does!". Sorry, bucko. That's the kind of in-depth understanding of your tools that we DO expect you to give a shit about

B/ Immature interviewers with a bar that's too high that are using overly complex questions and don't get noticed right away by the more experienced interviewers.

So ultimately, YEAH, the questions I ask, for me to want to move forward with a candidate, I expect you to solve the problem. But I'm not expecting you to solve it in the most efficient way or GTFO

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

#349

Post by omar_a1 »

giovannibonetti wrote: post #297
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally find some of the current (if I can call them) standards of tech hiring to be very narrow in which skills and capabilities they test. What would you propose as an alternative? I’ve been involved in training new engineering managers how to hire and interview. Everyone starts with the best intentions, but reality quickly forces some compromises. The bottom line is that you only have a number of hours in w…

> What would you propose as an alternative? In my company (totally remote) we decided to automate hiring (also remote) as most as possible and we are happy with the results. We also value the candidate's time very much so we made the hiring process very straightforward. It works like this: - First the candidates must do some online tests, which are mostly multiple choice questions. The subjects are logic, english and…

Sorry, but what you've outlined above doesn't show that you value the candidates' time. You require two rounds of technical interviews before any human contact. It's asymmetrical. By automating the first two steps, you've made it so that you can waste as much of the applicants' time as you want without expending any further time or resources on your part.

Also, from experience, I've never come across a two hour takehome that actually takes two hours. Everyone always says not to spend more than two hours on it, but I can't exactly turn in an incomplete assignment.

I'm glad it is working for you, but it's not something to be proud of. Essentially what you've done is replace the standard 30 minute intro phone interview with a 2 hour SAT.

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

#350

Post by dasil003 »

trashface wrote: post #295

Hiring is broken, but so is all of software as a profession: 1) Terrible Algorithmic interviews, AI-based evaluations, whiteboard coding. 2) Hey you are hired! Now move to $BigCity, with expensive real estate, schools, transit and everything else. 3) So, welcome to the job. You'll be maintaining this shitty old python 2.4 CRUD app that multiple people have tried and failed to upgrade. And one of the web guys wrote hi…

I feel you, but who has it any better in late stage capitalism?
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