The software industry's greatest sin: hiring • Hacker News Board

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#21

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:18 AM UTC

tictoc wrote: post #14

Is 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.

It's not that difficult for people smart enough to get a FAANG job. Personally, I've heard anecdotes from people who can't understand leetcode problems even when given the solution. Professionally, I've seen multiple people who were clearly trying to recite a memorized solution for an interview problem, but just weren't clever enough to do it properly or talk about how it works.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#22

Post by jackcosgrove » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:19 AM UTC

Technical interviews were once seen as a breath of fresh air.

You can be a nobody without connections or degrees and if you can prove you have skills during an interview process you may be hired.

Contrast this with other hiring processes which are more irrational, like med residency match, investment banks favoring "target school graduates", law firms favoring "top 14 graduates", etc.

I think whiteboarding is dumb and I'm increasingly unwilling to go through with it. That's a hurdle.

But in many careers the hiring processes are walls, as in there is 0% chance you'll get hired. Because you don't know someone, because you didn't go to the right school. The barriers have little correlation with ability to do the job, and more importantly after some milestone has been crossed it's impossible for you to improve your chances.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#23

Post by asveikau » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:19 AM UTC

jorblumesea wrote: post #13

The 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 think this is actually getting at why people ignore work history and what projects a candidate was involved in.

When you get into these places you realize how little that name brand means. There are a lot of not particularly bright people at those places. Or more charitably, maybe bright people but not particularly skilled at software engineering, for some definition thereof. Sometimes those people can attach themselves to a well known project name. But what did they do for that project? Were they constructive or not? You can't really tell based on their word alone. Maybe they can charm their way out of that discussion. It's also not unheard of that they could be taking some credit from peers.

So people come up with the quizzes and IQ tests, however flawed, as a way to "verify".

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#24

Post by the_arun » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:19 AM UTC

ausjke wrote: post #18

The 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.

+1, agreed. The industry needs to have a better process for it. Say first month is evaluation or something and if you have two job offers, you schedule it on your calendar sequentially.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#25

Post by jakear » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:22 AM UTC

the_arun wrote: post #20

mattbillenstein wrote: post #7

You 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.

Coding on a whiteboard is the worst. I’ve been in google interviews where I mention that the whiteboard format makes the process very difficult because of how much work it is to rework existing code.

The interview replied “well wouldn’t you have to do the same on a computer?” chuckles to himself at how clever he is that he realized that

No numb-nuts, on a computer I can move lines around by pressing Alt+Down. Here I need to erase the entire thing and re-write it, which wastes precious time, so instead I spend way more time pre-planning the exact layout of the code, which wastes more precious time.

And in the end you take a picture of it to transcribe into the computer to send to the hiring overlords. Just let us use our tooling to begin with.

Ugh.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#26

Post by mattbillenstein » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:23 AM UTC

sumanthvepa wrote: post #6

This 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.

You should absolutely see how they code - I've interviewed so many people on the phone who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag, but they could speak to it enough to fool you.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#27

Post by mattbillenstein » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:23 AM UTC

the_arun wrote: post #20

mattbillenstein wrote: post #7

You 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.

Agreed - architectures are perfect for whiteboards - code is not.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#28

Post by johnmarcus » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:25 AM UTC

As someone currently interviewing, with 10ys exp scaling multiple successful companies, I couldn't agree more. Some of the tech questions I've been asked are so useless in practice it's unnerving.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#29

Post by ahmedalsudani » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:25 AM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #16

To 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…

Out of curiosity, where in the Midwest?

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#30

Post by magicalhippo » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 2:25 AM UTC

quezzle wrote: post #19

I 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.

I'm assuming it was for other reasons, but it is possible they did see you put all that extra effort into it and figured that's not the sort of person they want. At least at my job, balancing the time spent on various issues is very important.