What is the engineering hiring bar? • Hacker News Board

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#171

Post by christiansakai » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 9:23 PM UTC

charlesu wrote: post #144

christiansakai wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your experience matches my anecdote. Hence you can imagine my total confusion once I got the interview myself (Google, 2 times, phone to onsite, Amazon one time to onsite, Facebook, one phone). In my latest FB phone for example. I was asked a Medium question that I've never seen before, and nevertheless I solved it. How do I know? Because apparently that was taken straight from Leetcode, and the interviewer didn't ev…

Keep trying. I hate to say it, but luck is a factor. The process is by no means objective. Sometimes it's just a matter of getting the right interviewer.

Thank you. I am currently pivoting to learning other things that are more practical in the job. I did enough Leetcode that I started to like it (Stockholm's syndrome).

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#172

Post by omar_a1 » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 9:25 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #168

omar_a1 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many times do I have to re-quote your own words to yourself? Did you not say the following? > Many see getting called slurs as a small price to pay to get a chance to break into tech. Because that's a breath-takingly racist assertion. And I did not say that. I suggest re-reading your post so that you understand that you wrote those words. > First of all, it is a common practice at least as far as what I've experi…

> Because that's a breath-takingly racist assertion. And I did not say that. I suggest re-reading your post so that you understand that you wrote those words. Let's reread the sentence in context: > But is the perspective of a white or asian man pursuing a coding boot-camp to try and break into tech going to have the same opinion on policies that greatly reduce or eliminate his chances of getting an interview as comp…

And I've heard hiring managers say racist and sexist comments on prospective employees all throughout my career. And neglect to mentor or promote them. And freeze them out of the team. I suppose the strawman you've set up outweighs the actual racist and sexist discrimination in hiring, which only seems to exist to you as some abstraction, rather than real people losing their livelihoods because of sexual harassment and racist bullying.

> Good thing I cited a source studying hiring the private sector as well.

Ah yes, the highly regarded International Journal of blog.interview.io. How did I miss this groundbreaking research?

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#173

Post by myalphabet » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

faanginginthere wrote: post #117

After 9 years at the same company, I left my job at the beginning of January 2020 to dedicate myself to leetcoding and interview practicing in the hope of getting hired at a FAANG, more specifically Google. I really started dedicating all my time to interviewing January 1st. It is now March 31st and I am now abandoning the idea of getting hired at a FAANG, or any larger-sized startup and will target early startups wi…

I can't really comment on your interview experiences except to say: that sucks. I know firsthand (unemployed for a long time and had a really long personal struggle similar to yours) how shitty it can be. The unfortunate reality is that, no matter how much these companies say otherwise, a huge part of hiring comes down to luck. Luck of who you interview with, luck of what mood they are in before beginning the interview, luck of having technical problems, luck of a lot of things. To a certain point, you are in control of how you respond to unlucky, non-ideal situations, but you may still not come out ahead versus someone who didn't get so unlucky. Luck sucks. But one day, you might get lucky too, so keep your head up.

The main thing I want to say to you as this: I work for a FAANG, I know many people that work for FAANGs, and I know many people that have left FAANGs. It is not all it is cracked up to be. I would even venture to say that, in most cases, it isn't worth the hassle. You should not in any way feel like you are setting your sights "lower" by targeting non-FAANG companies, because you absolutely are not.

The FAANG hiring process measures whether or not you pass the FAANG hiring process. That sounds tautological, I know, but it's a not-very-well-kept-secret within my FAANG that the hiring process does not at all measure proficiency for the job, but it's something we keep doing because at this point the process itself is ingrained in the culture. It is not a measurement of how smart you are, how good at programming you are, or even how likable you are. The "hiring bar" is entirely built around whether or not you will be a good worker for that specific team's needs, which are not necessarily the characteristics of "smart, good at programming, likable". Sometimes it could be a specific niche skillset, or how well you will adapt to a weird or chaotic internal culture, or how well you will kiss ass. Sometimes people dumber than you will be hired because it just so happens that they applied at the right time when the company was in dire need of bodies.

I too know how much it sucks when your personal confidence starts to take a hit. It makes it so hard to apply to jobs when you already feel like you will fail before you even hit submit on the applications. But keep in mind all of the things that make you smart and all of the things that got you those FAANG interviews in the first place. If you failed out of FAANG hiring, it just means you aren't good at FAANG hiring. That's it. Period. It does not mean you are not good at your job, or that you are not smart, or that you can't pass hiring at another company. It doesn't even mean that you wouldn't succeed working at FAANG! It only means you didn't succeed at FAANG hiring.

If you really want a FAANG job, then keep at it. You are smart enough to get it, you just have to use those smarts to mold yourself to the very specific way that the FAANG hiring process looks for. If molding yourself in that way isn't something you want to do, that isn't a bad thing, and there are definitely other, just-as-good-if-not-better, companies that will value you.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#174

Post by monksy » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 9:30 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #79

twomoretime wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And that helps us understand why Recursive Cactus spends so much time practicing. He’s training himself partially because his current company isn’t developing his skills. I develop software full time and have some 10 years of experience depending on how you count it, and I'm absolutely terrible at leetcode style problems and find whiteboard questions difficult for non programming reasons. I know it wasn't the point…

I remember one time I was hiring for a JavaScript developer. The most important technical competency was a brief working knowledge of the DOM. The actual position required modifications to pages for A/B tests and jQuery was either too slow or broke in production when other developers used it for their test code. Of everybody that passed through HR to me I sent out a notice that there would be a minor code assessment…

> No matter how much of a lifeline I threw out almost nobody would bite. They would sit there silent on the call or they would attempt to stall like that would somehow make code magically appear. Sometimes I would remind candidates they could ask me questions because I cannot evaluate a blank answer. Other times I would try nudge them to get started or guide them into progress, which only seemed to hurt more than help.

Because they felt that it was a false help. If they take it they're disqualifying themselves because they didn't know something.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#175

Post by twomoretime » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 9:38 PM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #159

twomoretime wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make it as far as internship to hire, the company is signaling more of a commitment than just temp work. It's basically like a probationary period. Also this would be especially good for graduates with little work experience.

This only works for new grads. Why would I ever want to quit my job to get hired as an intern? In our industry, quality people overwhelmingly already have jobs, so this way you’re restricting yourself to pool of lower quality candidates on average.

The last time I was applying, I was finally at a place in my career where I felt I could choose an interesting company to work for. I applied for places like Tesla and SpaceX and Boston Dynamics and such. I ended up in a fantastic role through the typical process, but if someone had offered me internship to hire at a desirable company I gladly would have taken it and used it as an opportunity to demonstrate my value.

Maybe this is something only companies with reputations can do.

Hiring a candidate based on a 1 hour interview and a minimal coding exercise is a pretty substantial risk. I'm surprised more companies don't do this as a sort of hedge. I doubt it'd be that discouraging - do you know how many candidates apply for the average role right now? And if they're willing to jump through all the ridiculous leetcode hoops now, I imagine they'd be willing to take the internship too. Especially if that means we can return to saner interviews.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#176

Post by manfredo » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

omar_a1 wrote: post #172

manfredo wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because that's a breath-takingly racist assertion. And I did not say that. I suggest re-reading your post so that you understand that you wrote those words. Let's reread the sentence in context: > But is the perspective of a white or asian man pursuing a coding boot-camp to try and break into tech going to have the same opinion on policies that greatly reduce or eliminate his chances of getting an interview as comp…

And I've heard hiring managers say racist and sexist comments on prospective employees all throughout my career. And neglect to mentor or promote them. And freeze them out of the team. I suppose the strawman you've set up outweighs the actual racist and sexist discrimination in hiring, which only seems to exist to you as some abstraction, rather than real people losing their livelihoods because of sexual harassment a…

What you call a strawman is exactly the kind of discrimination that exists at my current employer and at my previous employer. This is reality. And the discrimination isn't small or subtle. We're talking about aggregate 2-3x times less likely to get a phone interview as a diverse candidate. Is harassment or bullying equal to or greater than the impact of this preference in hiring? There's no right answer to this question, this is a subjective question for which people can and do give different answers. Someone whose diverse in tech might feel like a reduction in harassment or bullying would be worth a significant reduction in career opportunities. Someone who is struggling to get into tech, and doesn't have diversity status to stand out from the rest of the pack could also arrive at the answer that they'd be better off as diverse even if it did mean that they might be subject to additional harassment or bullying.

Calling the latter "frothing", "breath-takingly racist" is an incredibly hostile thing to say, and it makes me question whether people actually want to discuss the impact of discrimination in hiring or want to shut down discussion by making it taboo.

Also interviewing.io actually conducts interviews on a large scale, and is probably one of the best positioned organization to conduct this sort of experiment. Can you elaborate on why their study should not be accepted?

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#177

Post by omar_a1 » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #176

omar_a1 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I've heard hiring managers say racist and sexist comments on prospective employees all throughout my career. And neglect to mentor or promote them. And freeze them out of the team. I suppose the strawman you've set up outweighs the actual racist and sexist discrimination in hiring, which only seems to exist to you as some abstraction, rather than real people losing their livelihoods because of sexual harassment a…

What you call a strawman is exactly the kind of discrimination that exists at my current employer and at my previous employer. This is reality. And the discrimination isn't small or subtle. We're talking about aggregate 2-3x times less likely to get a phone interview as a diverse candidate. Is harassment or bullying equal to or greater than the impact of this preference in hiring? There's no right answer to this ques…

And you do realize that you're equating diverse hiring efforts with getting called racial slurs on the job, yes? Those are two very different definitions of "actual" racism. And rather supports the breathtakingly racist claim above.

> Can you elaborate on why their study should not be accepted?

Forgive me, I didn't realize they were the leading authority on the nuanced sociological facets of unconscious prejudice during hiring. And here I thought a publication by psychology researchers or African American Studies professors would be the subject matter experts to seek out, not a blog post.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#178

Post by cousin_it » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

runawaybottle wrote: post #65

commandlinefan wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a lot of these discussions end up being something along the lines of "the standards are bad because they exclude me, therefore there shouldn't be any standards at all" (just with a lot more words).

Most of the criticism probably should be articulated again to probe whether these standards are realistically something one can work towards. If we’re out of the running no matter how much you practice, no matter how much job experience, and if there really is this mysterious value G, with the right combination of Ivy League CS program, then I can see how these discussions mirror the notion of ‘the bar’ - that is, a…

You could start a company and hire people on other standards, and I suspect it would work, as long as the "other standards" are painful in the same way as the current ones. For example, you could require candidates to learn ten pages of Chinese poetry by heart, or anything else that tests their ability to keep their mind on-task for long stretches of time. In my experience, people with that ability can become good programmers if they're inclined to.

What won't work though is hiring based on only past experience. The bullshitters will eat you alive. You really do need some kind of "underwater basket weaving" as a test.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#179

Post by twomoretime » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 9:48 PM UTC

djannzjkzxn wrote: post #158

twomoretime wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make it as far as internship to hire, the company is signaling more of a commitment than just temp work. It's basically like a probationary period. Also this would be especially good for graduates with little work experience.

Sure, that’s exactly what an internship is and it’s why these companies offer it. If you gave a similar opportunity to people who are already in the industry, you would have a major adverse selection problem where the better candidates would never pick a “probationary” job with second-class status over a normal job.

>Sure, that’s exactly what an internship is and it’s why these companies

I don't think so, to me an internship is temporary by nature and does not have a "guaranteed" job at the end based on good performance.

>you would have a major adverse selection problem where the better candidates would never pick a “probationary” job with second-class status over a normal job

The selection process is so competitive right now that I think plenty of people would be happy for such a change if it meant a more reasonable interview process. Plenty of strong candidates are being thrown away over arbitrary metrics right now anyway.

Personally I'd take a non-leetcode non-white board interview with a probationary period over the typical grueling 2-5 round FAANG process, and I'm sure I'm not the only competent developer who expects to have trouble with the typical FAANG process.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#180

Post by twomoretime » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 9:52 PM UTC

mav3rick wrote: post #22

twomoretime wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And that helps us understand why Recursive Cactus spends so much time practicing. He’s training himself partially because his current company isn’t developing his skills. I develop software full time and have some 10 years of experience depending on how you count it, and I'm absolutely terrible at leetcode style problems and find whiteboard questions difficult for non programming reasons. I know it wasn't the point…

How is your test proven to be better than the others ? Can't the FAANGs be more selective ?

We can't reasonably priced which is superior for selection, but in our opinion the process is much saner and less resource intensive on our part.

I wonder if the modern interview process at large orgs is built on a false sense of security. They are possibly overly selecting and perhaps successfully choosing above average candidates but missing exceptional cases who fail to conform to their rigid criteria.