Follow-up to “The dystopian world of software engineering interviews” • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by raverbashing » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 10:00 AM UTC

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…

> Last week, the person interviewing our latest candidate told me that despite the candidate doing perfectly fine, he couldn't come up with something that he felt excited about doing in his current job, which was a red flag for him.

> I tried explaining that perhaps that's something you shouldn't expect from someone who's at that point switching jobs.

Ugh. You are, of course, correct.

They want "the best candidates" but when they get one that's evaluating new positions they go on about "why do you want to move", "candidates don't seem to enthusiastic about our company" well maybe because you're not enticing then to move, quite the contrary.

Good candidates get hired (from an unemployment/"underployment" pool), excellent candidates get poached. Sports teams gets that but apparently if it was a software company they would ask Michael Jordan if he would be able to hit a 3 pointer

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

#392

Post by choppaface » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 10:07 AM UTC

biztos wrote: post #194

rekabis wrote: post #23

The “hopeless list”, no. 3: “If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.” This pretty much sums up my impression of these hiring managers that crank the bar sky-high: they are assholes through-and-through, and are full of shit to boot. If you crank the bar sky-high, all you will get are two kinds of people: those that interview/test well, b…

Many years ago I interviewed at a FAANG and the VP who interviewed me over a (fairly crappy, 30-minute) lunch was really a pain, enough so I didn't want to work for him. The feeling was mutual. Turned out he did 500 interviews a year. Five hundred. Unless that's your entire job, I don't see how you could come out of that without becoming an asshole.

At a previous employer, managers were expected to do 200 per quarter (typically for 2-2.5 of the most active quarters). We were told it's better than Twitter where engineers did a minimum of 8 per week (and, allegedly, managers did even more).

From my own experience, that sort of load undeniably turns evaluators into assholes. I think the main problem is that to see any return on investment (i.e. a 'successful' interview) it takes about a 6-12 months assuming the person is hired. Having to do such a repetitive task with such a dearth of feedback I think will make anybody go crazy. That's not even considering any imbalance between time spent on recruiting versus time spent on strategy or other management tasks.

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

#393

Post by choppaface » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 10:10 AM UTC

deanCommie wrote: post #159

itronitron wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sincerely hope the codebase of your employers is littered with 30-minute solutions to puzzles such as the one you describe.

see my edit for why it doesn't matter that these 30 minute algorithmic questions do not need to be directly applicable to day-to-day job tasks

Perhaps you might consider putting that sort of effort into CSE outreach or preparing interview prep materials that are free to the public.

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

#394

Post by missosoup » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 10:11 AM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #382

tomp wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can result in hiring of person B instead of more capable person A, just because person B satisfies some arbitrary immutable characteristics (skin color, sex, etc.) and person A does not. Texbook discrimination.

GP has since edited their post, it originally used the word "bigotry" where it now says "discrimination". Edit: This leads to a much more interesting line of discussion that can be summed up as "discrimination (and similarly bias) isn't always bad". They're useful tools and we should be careful about practicing them, but the idea that because discrimination is sometimes bad it is always bad doesn't follow. (or an alt…

Discrimination is discrimination. Whether it's 'good' or 'bad' depends entirely on who you ask.

I think most people making a case for 'good' discrimination don't realize that the existing 'bad' discrimination originated exactly the same way.

We need to strive to eliminate discrimination, not perpetuate the swing of the pendulum that's been going back and forth for hundreds of years. Pushing down on some demographics to uplift others is not going to solve anything, it's just a no-op perpetuation of what's already going on.

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

#395

Post by tonyedgecombe » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 10:13 AM UTC

e40 wrote: post #271

achievingApathy wrote: post #238

I will never forget the time I was given a coding "challenge" and sent home with the instruction to send it back whenever I felt it was complete. This sent my OCD into overdrive, of course. For the better part of two days straight I coded my heart out and came up with this (what I thought perfect) robust system with all the bells and whistles. Heard nothing back. At all. My calls into the recruiter went unreturned an…

One has to wonder, then, why they didn't hire you. I have a theory. It's quite cynical, but it's taken me about 5 decades to arrive at it: life is a beauty pageant. I don't say this lightly. It was a very slow process to get to this point. A friend, colleague recently interviewed at a very popular, pre-IPO company that is often discussed (positively) here. He doesn't look like your typical engineer, but he's literall…

I often think it would be better to introduce a random element into the process. Set some minimum criteria then just roll a dice.

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

#396

Post by rustybolt » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 10:16 AM UTC

In my experience, once you have a very basic sense of 'how to program', your programming skills don't matter a lot anymore. If you work in a team that underdocuments and underspecifies their project (which is practically every team ever), communication and motivation are much more important than knowing how to reverse a linked list in-place.

I have masters in two STEM degrees, which most employers seem to value at exactly nothing. They are very enthusiastic about hiring me. At the same rate they would hire someone without a degree, that is.

The thing they want, is multiple years of professional experience with a very specific set of 4-8 technologies. These are 'must-haves', and then there are probably 4-8 'nice-to-haves', which are even more exotic demands. And then companies complain 'that there are sooo little people skilled people in IT' and 'the IT people have such ridiculous demands!'. In my environment, I see people with a lot less experience make a lot more in other fields.

(This is how it goes in the Netherlands, at least.)

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

#397

Post by rustybolt » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 10:18 AM UTC

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…

The thing I hate more than getting rejected is getting a very enthusiastic response accompanied by an offer that is slightly above minimum wage, when you have a year of work experience and masters in mathematics and computer science.

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

#398

Post by tonyedgecombe » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 10:18 AM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #106

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.

If you build a culture where you expect no loyalty, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sadly this culture now no longer applies to specific companies, but the industry- and perhaps the economy- as a whole.

Definitely the economy as a whole, it started in the Thatcher/Reagan era when corporates starting shedding people. It's no surprise employees show no loyalty when their employers do exactly the same.

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

#399

Post by joshuamorton » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 10:29 AM UTC

missosoup wrote: post #394

joshuamorton wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP has since edited their post, it originally used the word "bigotry" where it now says "discrimination". Edit: This leads to a much more interesting line of discussion that can be summed up as "discrimination (and similarly bias) isn't always bad". They're useful tools and we should be careful about practicing them, but the idea that because discrimination is sometimes bad it is always bad doesn't follow. (or an alt…

Discrimination is discrimination. Whether it's 'good' or 'bad' depends entirely on who you ask. I think most people making a case for 'good' discrimination don't realize that the existing 'bad' discrimination originated exactly the same way. We need to strive to eliminate discrimination, not perpetuate the swing of the pendulum that's been going back and forth for hundreds of years. Pushing down on some demographics…

That's not at all true.

The historical discrimination did not originate from people saying "yes discriminate against me in the interests of general equality". In fact, to return to the start of this thread: historically much discrimination was the result of bigotry. It's very unlikely that hiring quotas (or similar) are the result of bigotry.

Your conclusion also doesn't follow at all, at least not without some argumentative work that you haven't presented. Suffice to say that I believe that the best way to, in the long term, eliminate discrimination is to allow some specific forms now, with the intent of undoing past discrimination.

You haven't presented even a shadow of an argument as to why that isn't reasonable.

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

#400

Post by tonyedgecombe » Sun, Feb 23, 2020, 10:31 AM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #338

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 hate to break it to you, but I think you've just worked at shitty companies? If you think that other fields don't have the same or worse issues, you're dreaming.

Or you've been very lucky. When I was consulting I visited a lot of companies. There were only a couple that didn't suffer from at least half of those problems.