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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”

#451

Post by edanm »

jjav wrote: post #371
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? Easy. Just talk to people as would-be peers. They want to find a role they can succeed in. You want to find someone who can succeed in the role. I interview by just talking about their past projects (based on resume). You can't fake your way through a friendly technical dialogue if you haven't done it. (Pre-requisite: the interviewer must be technically competent. This is w…

> I interview by just talking about their past projects (based on resume). You can't fake your way through a friendly technical dialogue if you haven't done it. (Pre-requisite: the interviewer must be technically competent. This is where many companies miss. Algorithm puzzles won't make up for it.)

I absolutely disagree with this.

I've interviewed people who seemed incredibly impressive, both in terms of showing me actual past projects, and in their explanations of them. I've then gone on to give them simple programming exercies, the kind that people with far less experience take, and they've gotten nowhere on them.

I'm talking a two hour, "here's a computer, here's internet access, here's a setup environment, code this simple thing, which you could probably copy-paste from Stack Overflow / documentation". And they couldn't do it.

And what's worse - I'm pretty sure I could fake my way through most technical dialogues. I mean, not literally everything, but I could probably fake my way through interviews about most technical topics, and given a bit of preparation time, fake my way through most things. I mean, I could probably get caught out if someone was seriously trying to do it - but to the depth that most interviewers get, I can pass as experienced on most things.

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

#452

Post by VRay »

bambataa wrote: post #316
z3t4 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some companies also use the interview as free consulting. Remember that you are a professional. Don't work for free.

How do you detect when they are trying this?

Honestly I'd love it if someone did this

I'd just download the next version of their app off the store and save a copy of it, then decompile it to prove my code is there and sue the living shit out of them

I guess that's not an option if you write server code for them though.. I'd probably negotiate to be paid for the work in that case

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

#453

Post by scarface74 »

no_wizard wrote: post #449
scarface74 wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the point. Once you have “molded” the junior developer for a year a two, they can easily jump ship for greener pastures. I’ve seen the argument about paying them market rates. But honestly, if they are young and unencumbered, their “market” is the entire US. Meaning you may not have been in the position to pay them what they could make if they were willing to move across the country. To go into more anecdotal…

I still think it’s an incorrect assumption that you’ll just lose engineers you train, full stop. There are a lot of reasons being willfully ignored and a lot of assumptions being made that I have not seen nor seen data to the effect of happening en made. We train developers in popular languages (particularly our stack leverages Vue and C# and a good deal of custom SCSS) we are only ~3 hrs from the valley yet we aren’…

There is plenty of data. The average tenure of a software Engineer is between 2.5 and 3.5 years.

https://www.businessinsider.com/average-employee-tenure-rete...

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

#454

Post by jlokier »

jimthrow wrote: post #243
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #240

I've mentioned this before. I have a portfolio that consists of six figures LoC of code, across dozens of open-source repos; most of which I am the 100% sole author. I've written a fairly large open-source system that is rapidly becoming the world standard for a specific (rather small) demographic. It deliberately uses old and rather primitive technology (which is a big reason for it becoming a standard). I've writte…

When you get rejected, it’s not about you. There’s just too many high quality candidates and too few positions. It’s just the inevitable outcome of a vast oversupply of talent

> There’s just too many high quality candidates and too few positions.

That can't be true simultaneously with "companies are having trouble finding good enough candidates", which is often said these days.

What can be true: There are many high quality candidates, and many positions looking for high quality candidates, but they cannot find each other and overcome matching hurdles.

So you have candidates applying to a large number of positions, and positions seeing applications from a large number of candidates, just because the matching process is so inefficient. Then both sides can legitimately complain about the large amount of work and time it takes.

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

#455

Post by neonate »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #240

I've mentioned this before. I have a portfolio that consists of six figures LoC of code, across dozens of open-source repos; most of which I am the 100% sole author. I've written a fairly large open-source system that is rapidly becoming the world standard for a specific (rather small) demographic. It deliberately uses old and rather primitive technology (which is a big reason for it becoming a standard). I've writte…

You mentioned that you've been writing shipping software for over thirty years. To what extent do you think ageism is the issue here?

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

#456

Post by joshuamorton »

belorn wrote: post #421
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…

Carl Sagan described it best in his book The Demon-Haunted World. Reducing people down to a few single bits of information is lazy thinking. It shields the stereotyper from contact with the enourmos variety of individuals, the multiplicity of ways of being human. Even if it discrimination were valid on the average, it is bound to fail in many individual cases. Profound injustice in favor of averages is not an accepta…

Relatively few countries ban discrimination in general, they ban discrimination based on certain characteristics.

For example, in most places in the US it's okay to discriminate based on political party, and I don't know of any jurisdiction where you aren't allowed to discriminate based on someone identifying as a racist.

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

#457

Post by tomnj »

skizm wrote: post #7

Honestly, I think until FAANG start doing something else, the vast majority of tech/semi-tech companies will just copy them. A few smaller companies might branch out and try some other stuff, but most people hiring at mid and large size companies are just trying to minimize risk more than go grab that great diamond in the rough. If the big guys are doing X, the medium guys are gonna keep doing X also.

Maybe FAANG should institute random DS&A tests for all employees and fire underperformers as potential false positives. /s

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

#458

Post by perl4ever »

p_l wrote: post #430
perl4ever wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about logic problems or Fermi estimation? They are different things, but I'm not sure the people who complain about either distinguish.

The problem is that they are composed as riddles, with the whole thing made so that unless you trained yourself on solving riddles, you might not figure out that it's a fermi problem. Meanwhile asking questions that are grounded in the actual work you're going to have the candidate do, often gets you people making the estimation even if they haven't heard of Fermi Estimation, ever. That's what makes them riddles, to…

People often confuse knowing things with being smart. It seems useful to me to ask questions that sound on the face of it like things nobody knows, but can actually be figured out based on knowledge everyone has, because it reduces the elements of chance and bias from testing arbitrary knowledge.

When someone says they hate "logic problems", it sounds as though they're talking about this: https://www.pennydellpuzzles.com/products/logic-math/origina...

I don't like those either, but I doubt they are used in interviews.

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

#459

Post by banner2018 »

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…

The effort is very considerate in terms of legality that you are not favoring anyone.

Programming or the fancy name of Software Development has sort of become the new blue collar job.

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

#460

Post by banner2018 »

omar_a1 wrote: post #387
TeMPOraL wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unfair. A typical, half-competent candidate in tech sends much fewer applications before they find a job than a typical company has to process in the same time span. So there's indeed an asymmetry here, but in the other direction - few companies could even afford to fully process every single application that comes in (not even counting the human toil on the interviewers from dealing with spam). 4 hours over…

It doesn't have to be equivalent, but it can't be entirely one-sided either. Two technicals are a major commitment. Even if we assume the nominal 4 hours, there's still lots of preparation that goes into taking those tests. And that's 4+ hours to get to speak to a human being assuming you pass . Otherwise, it's the "We appreciate your time," autoreply. That's asking for too much upfront before the candidate can even…

If a candidate is preparing for an interview, they will not perform well at work for no test replicates actual work unless the test can recognize the general skills that a person would rely on day to day basis
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