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What is the engineering hiring bar?

blog.interviewing.io

181–190 of 298 posts

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#181
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exactly. pretending to have not seen the question before is one of the "skills" that ppl practise on leetcode forums. https://www.teamblind.com/post/Should-you-tell-your-intervie... only ppl GP is catching is ppl who havent' practiced that skill. Leetcode junkies are simply outsmarting him.

Our questions aren't on leetcode and we aggressively monitor for leaks (including on Blind). You're also missing the point: we're intentionally avoiding the questions which boil down to a binary question of "do you know this algorithm or not?". Most of our questions are open-form, asking the candidate to implement a widget or interface with an API. They usually don't involve big-O or any data structure tricks. Unless…

[deleted]

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#182
post #162
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standards (e.g. algorithmic questions) are bad because A) they're only tangentially related to the work, meaning they include bad hires and exclude good hires B) they put a huge workload on employees who must practice tens or hundreds of hours of underwater basket weaving, time which would be better spent doing almost anything else C) they systemically exclude anyone who can't play the dumb game due to a lack of…

I think of "the bar" as being basically our industry's equivalent to a law degree: it's just a way to show that you have some foundational knowledge in the subject, even if it bears little resemblance to day-to-day work. All of the flaws you enumerated could also apply to law school, but at least "the bar" is reasonably accessible and doesn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The annoying thing is that with the bar exam, there is a clearly defined test with criteria. Whereas what you have in the software industry is a vaguely-defined set of expectations that vary widely. There's no standard.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dur…

> 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.

Right, they are different. The latter makes people uncomfortable or alienated at their job. The former keeps people from getting jobs in the first place on the basis of race and gender.

Which one is more serious? Someone who gets bullied for their race at their workplace probably has a very different opinion on this than someone who can't get an interview because they aren't diverse. The proverbial grass is usually greener on the other side. Someone who's non-diverse and can't get a job in tech might look at a diverse worker talking about bullying at their job and think to them selves, "well, at least that have a job.". That doesn't mean they are racist. That means they have a perspective different than your own.

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

This reads like a total non-sequitur. Interviewing.io compared non-anonymous interview performance of women to anonymous interview performance, and found that there was little discrepancy (in fact it found a slight positive bias in favor of women). Why are you referring to sociology and psychology in a study focused on anonymous vs. non-anonymous interview performance? Also, why would African American Studies relate to studying potential gender bias in hiring? It seems like you just assumed that this study was focused on black candidates, when in reality it was studying potential bias with respect to gender.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#184
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not how software engineering works.... I am glad we don’t have to have “certifications” by some bureaucratic local agency to work.

You do realize you make a disservice to those who studied and worked hard to obtain a proper engineering degree, right?

The "Fundamentals of Engineering - Electrical and Computer" exam requires topics from differential equations to impedance in AC circuits to op-amps to frequency modulation. I would never gong a candidate for not knowing any of those things, because we write computer software; we don't make our own servers out of magnetite and sand.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#185
I feel like giving people a decent coding project is, at the moment anyway, the best approach. If I'm interviewing someone I really just want to see these things: what their code is like, what their final result looks like (if there's room for creativity -and there should be), how they got there (revision history). And then in the interview portion I just want to get a sense of their personality and their decision making process on the project. It's not perfect but it gives a sense of if they can finish a likely task, and if they would be easy or hard to work with.

Btw, none of that involves puzzles or trying to guess their IQ. If your company is like google in 1998 maybe you care about that, but chances are you need someone to build something relatively straightforward, not invent PageRank. Honestly having a super genius on board might be bad if you're not solving a truly hard problem - they might get bored and check out.

It's a valid complaint that these projects can take time, but job searching is pretty time consuming anyway, and joining the wrong company or hiring the wrong person is way more so.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dur…

> 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. Right, they are different. The latter makes people uncomfortable or alienated at their job. The former keeps people from getting jobs in the first place on the basis of race and gender. Which one is more serious? Someone who gets bullied for th…

> Right, they are different. [Racial slurs] make people uncomfortable or alienated at their job. [Diverse hiring] keeps people from getting jobs in the first place on the basis of race and gender. Which one is more serious?

So, you're saying racial slurs are preferable to diverse hiring? Thanks for definitively putting the "Are you a racist?" question to rest. I think we're about done here.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

>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.

If you do a great job in a FAANG internship then you will get a full time offer at the end. Does the probationary period you propose have a lower performance bar than is applied post-internship? If so then it seems it wouldn’t achieve FAANG’s standards.

> 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.

FAANG doesn’t need to attract more weaker candidates who can’t pass the interview, they are more concerned about getting strong candidates who have multiple offers to pick them. For less competitive candidates there are contract positions.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if that candidate cannot even answer Easy/Medium Leetcode questions but got offer, then yes. Is that not clear enough?

You just said that a diversity hire is anyone who is female or an under-represented minority. I think this comment is what you meant to say. Explicitly, if a candidate is a female or an under-represented minority, AND they do not stack up to standards.

Ah I see, so that's where the misinterpretation come from. Sorry, that's not what I meant.

I meant to say that if a minority gets offer without being able to pass even Easy/Medium questions, then yes it is a diversity hire.

Thanks for the clarification.

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#189
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I've seen it myself" - So you've sat on FAANG hiring panels that made decisions specifically based on candidates' underrepresented demographics? Or you're just inferring based on people you met while employed at a FAANG? Or...?

I've sat at company hiring panels, and have taken part in discriminatory policies first hand. At career fairs, Dropbox recruiters had us mark candidate resumes with a star for diverse candidates, two starts for "double diverse" candidates (female + URM), and "ND" for Asian male candidates. It turns out "ND" stands for "negative diversity". Literally the first thing we did was bucket candidates by the desirability of…

Were you required to remove stars already on the resume? If not, then I know just what to do.

Where on my resume should I put the two stars? Are those the traditional hand-written style, with the lines crossing to make a pentagon in the middle? What sort of pen or pencil should I use?

Re: What is the engineering hiring bar?

#190
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hel…

I suppose they could have assumed I lied about the assistance, but surely they could have reasoned that would be less disqualifying than delivering nothing.
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