I feel like this explains the needless product abandonment and reinventing at Google.
The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
11–20 of 590 posts
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#12This makes so much sense. I've stopped doing in-depth technical interviews for precisely this reason. Instead, I take the developer out for lunch and spend an afternoon discussing our software stack and business with them. It always gives be better results. There is no stress. I don't want to see their code, but I do want to understand how they think and work.
Love this idea, going to steal it for the next time I'm hiring someone.
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#13The worst part about hiring is once you're into the "elite circles" it becomes less work. Work for a FAANG? Getting a much becomes far easier and sometimes with less difficult questions.
Whether you agree with the IQ test or not, it's not even a level playing field or merit based. It's about an elite club keeping things elite.
Half the engineers working for FB, Google etc would not get hired today. Yet they still ask questions that they would not be able to answer as a form of gate keeping.
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#14Is it actually an IQ test? Can you practice for an iq test like you can for an interview? I don't see it being that difficult to just grind on leetcode enough to snag a FAANG job.
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#15The worst part about hiring is once you're into the "elite circles" it becomes less work. Work for a FAANG? Getting a much becomes far easier and sometimes with less difficult questions. Whether you agree with the IQ test or not, it's not even a level playing field or merit based. It's about an elite club keeping things elite. Half the engineers working for FB, Google etc would not get hired today. Yet they still ask…
If they prepared, why wouldn't they be hired? Unless there is rampant ageism.
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#16To the best of my knowledge, my workplace uses a fairly traditional hiring process that's the same for hiring a programmer or a machinist: Resume screen, phone screen, on-site, offer.
I have to say we do really darn well, especially given we're located in the Midwest and supposedly the brightest programmers have fled to the hot markets. One thing I like is that we get a range of ages, which is heartwarming given that I'm over 50 myself.
The thing to do is look around at your colleagues and ask if the hiring process is really broken. It may be that we've all been driven into a panic about hiring, by the hiring industry.
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#17The worst part about hiring is once you're into the "elite circles" it becomes less work. Work for a FAANG? Getting a much becomes far easier and sometimes with less difficult questions. Whether you agree with the IQ test or not, it's not even a level playing field or merit based. It's about an elite club keeping things elite. Half the engineers working for FB, Google etc would not get hired today. Yet they still ask…
>Half the engineers working for FB, Google etc would not get hired today.
I thought people jump around a lot these days.
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#18The best way I see it, is to have this guy to work for a while, say a few weeks or a few months as a contractor, then either ends it or converts to a permanent job. This is the best interview approach.
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#19I did a coding test the other day.
To be fair they said don’t put more than 2 to 4 hours in. However I’m not someone who can fail to meet the requirements so I spent 8 hours building it to meet the requirements exactly.
Heard nothing at all back.
Silence.
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#20You sorta evaluate the soft skills while evaluating the hard skills - how they approach a question, how they solve the problem, etc. Our general rule hiring was hire sharp people, but no assholes - at least nobody more of an asshole than I am ;) I think the biggest problem is actually whiteboard coding problems - nobody does that in real life.
I think designing on whiteboard helps if not coding. Designing shows the big picture they have in mind for solving the problem.