Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do they?
They’re the worst form of interview, except for all the other ones.
Why not just give an actual IQ test?
Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
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Re: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
#12In the end, it's a crap shoot... Even their highest marker of validity is only about 50%. In the end, if you make it too hard in an employee market, you will have good to great candidates drop off... if you make it too easy, you will wind up at the bottom of the barrel. Market pay will also vary wildly and dramatically, and perception is equally varied. Where I work now, we have a small pre-interview code challenge..…
> if you make it too hard in an employee market, you will have good to great candidates drop off... if you make it too easy, you will wind up at the bottom of the barrel
And where you set the bar will depend on, roughly speaking, your prestige. Google can afford to be extremely selective when hiring technologists. Similar thing goes for Harvard and the Air Force.
> what a person works on (developers) outside of educational or work settings gives a ton of information on how they work as well as what they know
The usual counterpoint: nuclear engineers and surgeons tend to have hobbies with no bearing on nuclear engineering or surgery. Nothing wrong with a competent technology professional keeping it to work hours.
Re: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
#13Re: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
They’re the worst form of interview, except for all the other ones.
Why not just give an actual IQ test?
That opens you up to liability for race-based discrimination. The accepted wisdom is that IQ tests are inherently racist and favor white evaluees over black and brown ones.
Re: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
#15In the end, it's a crap shoot... Even their highest marker of validity is only about 50%. In the end, if you make it too hard in an employee market, you will have good to great candidates drop off... if you make it too easy, you will wind up at the bottom of the barrel. Market pay will also vary wildly and dramatically, and perception is equally varied. Where I work now, we have a small pre-interview code challenge..…
Great points - there are things we're trying to address over at Interview GPS. We're building a Wikipedia/Stack Overflow-style knowledge base of the best interviewer guides/rubrics: come join the cause at https://www.interviewgps.com/community/
We tag questions in 3 areas:
Personal Values: instead of "culture" we help you assess shared values. For example: do you value fun vs. achievement?
Competencies: does your software developer need attention to detail and critical thinking? Or creativity and collaboration?
Skills: what skills are necessary vs. what can be learned on the job? E.g., should you assess for React skills? Or assess for programming/debugging skills in general?
Also, P.S. you have to be careful/thoughtful when asking about what developers work on outside of work. Worst case, you end up breaking the law by discriminating against protected groups. I'd suggest only looking to that if their work history is relatively lacking and you're trying to develop a positive case for the candidate
Re: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not just give an actual IQ test?
That opens you up to liability for race-based discrimination. The accepted wisdom is that IQ tests are inherently racist and favor white evaluees over black and brown ones.
Wouldn't coding interviews show the same bias?
Re: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
#17“General Mental Ability (GMA) tests (like the IQ test) are very predictive of future job performance, largely because people with high intelligence can learn the skills needed to be successful on the job more rapidly. However, due to legal concerns they’re not recommended for companies hiring in the US.” This is what a classic FAANG interview is: an IQ test which is disguised as a relevant skills test for legal reaso…
My first job out of university was answering tech support calls and the interview process was primarily based on the Wonderlic test[0] (famously given to NFL players).
Re: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
#18“In economic terms, the gains from increasing the validity of hiring methods can amount over time to literally millions of dollars,” writes Schmidt regarding the importance of valid assessment methods. “However, this can be viewed from the opposite point of view: By using selection methods with low validity, an organization can lose millions of dollars in reduced production. In a competitive world, these organizations are unnecessarily creating a competitive disadvantage for themselves. By adopting more valid hiring procedures, they could turn this competitive disadvantage into a competitive advantage.”
The problem is that this misunderstands the purpose of the hiring process. The purpose of the hiring process is to get people who are qualified, while signalling that your company hires good people, and staying out of legal trouble along the way.
I'm not sure I agree that an organization can gain "millions of dollars" by fine-tuning its hiring processes to the nth degree. While I absolutely agree that there are skill differences between programmers, I contend that the economic differences attributable to skill between programmers are dwarfed by the economic differences between any automation and no automation. Simply put, having a terrible programmer automate your business processes today is far better than sifting candidates to find the perfect programmer to automate your business process two years from now. Hiring is about satisficing, not optimizing.
Re: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
#19The best interview process is not going to account for bad corporate policy, terrible bosses, or other confounding factors.
Re: Making software engineering interviews predictive of job performance
#20To boil this interview thing, you are trying to make a very far prediction of someone based on very little data. The industry standard way to gather that data will probably get you to see if that person has done it before but not how well. Unless that person is sorta famous and even then he could be an asshol to the team and a disease
Furthermore, the unstated unknown that many interviewers have on their mind is whether the candidate will be successful in this specific company.