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

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#231

Post by starpilot » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 5:29 AM UTC

tomnj wrote: post #144

josephg wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a software engineer working at a company in the hiring space. I've done over 400 technical interviews in the last year alone, and ... this is a hot take, and not the view of my employer, but I think developer hiring processes are fine (At least, at most mature companies.) There's a problem at the moment in the market that there's a huge amount of pent up demand for senior developers. The market has responded with…

> huge amount of pent up demand for senior developers But is leetcode really the way to find them?

Isn't Google known for analyzing the hell out of their candidates for predictors of success? They dropped the GPA requirement, college degree requirement, brain teaser questions - but they kept the leetcode questions. It's probably least bad of everything else they've looked at.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#232

Post by novok » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 5:35 AM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #190

ghettoimp wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely right. Unfortunately the broken-ness of the interview process is not limited to the interview itself. I've interviewed around 40-50 folks for $role at $wildly_successful_megacorp. My qualifications: zero training, zero oversight. I'm getting a lot better and more consistent. But I have still left a lot of interviews thinking how poorly I have done, and needing to reflect on how things could have gon…

I think it's because anyone qualified to interview is probably qualified to do valuable work. And so companies turn that around and say "Let's take our best and brightest, and have them interview candidates! Then we'll select the best candidates!" But it's the same research / teaching faculty problem, where one skillset does not imply the other.

Interviewing is a skill, and some of the very productive can be very bad at it.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#233

Post by Infernal » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 5:37 AM UTC

war1025 wrote: post #153

gruez wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He explained you don't need a group by in a having statement and that I needed to go back and study sql. I sat there awkwardly [I have been writing sql since I was 14 - I was 25]. He's technically right though. For instance in postgres, you don't need to have a GROUP BY clause when using HAVING https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-select.html#SQL-...

"Technically correct", the most irritating form of "correct"

Also, technically the only form of correct.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#234

Post by read_if_gay_ » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 5:39 AM UTC

google234123 wrote: post #202

AlwaysBCoding wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ask them what they've built in the past and start digging in from there.

For all you know they might have just followed some online tutorial.

You can figure out whether they actually understand what they’ve done by asking the right questions. E.g. not “how did you do that” but “why did you do it this way and not that way?”

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#235

Post by p0nce » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 5:39 AM UTC

I liked most interviews, but the one that irks me are when the interviewer asks very specific questions that are specific to the particular domain the company is in.

But one of the biggest reason to apply somewhere as a developer is precisely to get to know a problem domain. Money is not the only incentive, by far.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#236

Post by pdimitar » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 5:40 AM UTC

josephg wrote: post #222

sanderjd wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And a few angry senior engineers out there saying "Why do I have to keep writing fizzbuzz? Its like I have to prove over and over again that I can program at all!". You didn't address this part of the problem. This friction is one of the reasons the job market is so distorted.

Oh sorry I wasn't clear. The reason is that successfully completing a simple programming exercise puts you in the top 15% or so of resumes that get sent in for most programming roles. When you apply for a company, they have to assume you aren't very good, because most people who apply aren't very good. (Because people with strong skills get snapped up, and people with weak skills spam their resume everywhere they can…

> (Because people with strong skills get snapped up, and people with weak skills spam their resume everywhere they can.)

It's extremely saddening how prevalent this prejudice is.

But what if I am still looking for work and companies literally don't reply to my applying to them? I might be the next John Carmack but if nobody gives me a chance (for reasons outside of my control and unrelated to my proficiency) then according to you I suck. :(

It's very broken to assume that skilled people get snapped up immediately so whoever is available must be mediocre (or bad).

It is an awfully imprecise assumption!

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#237

Post by JohnJamesRambo » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 5:43 AM UTC

ransom1538 wrote: post #78

My favorite interview was at digg.com. A four hour interview was going great. My dream job. I knew their tech solid. Then the last guy - walked in [ianeure]. He asked: "What is a having statement in sql". I leaped in - rambled on and on how you can filter aggregated sets. His response: "I don't think you know how they work." I sat there confused and concerned. He explained you don't need a group by with a having stat…

As a former digg user, I gotta say you got the last laugh on that one.

Checking his LinkedIn it seems he works for what amounts to a modern payday loan (now the users pay with privacy loss and a monthly subscription instead of high interest) website now.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#238

Post by p0nce » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 5:44 AM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #155

josephg wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a software engineer working at a company in the hiring space. I've done over 400 technical interviews in the last year alone, and ... this is a hot take, and not the view of my employer, but I think developer hiring processes are fine (At least, at most mature companies.) There's a problem at the moment in the market that there's a huge amount of pent up demand for senior developers. The market has responded with…

> I think the real sin is that we're afraid to tell people they aren't very good at programming yet, and we use technical interviews as a scape goat. So does this mean that programming education is broken? That companies should invest more in training? That bootcamps should revamp what they teach? That there should be industry standards for what programmers at different levels should be expected to know? The most mad…

> So does this mean that programming education is broken?

Of course it is broken, it rarely mention naming, debugging, and never emphasize reading code. The real fundamentals are not there and you learn them on the job.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#239

Post by closeparen » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 5:46 AM UTC

josephg wrote: post #134

dahart wrote: post #47

> Developer hiring is broken This seems to be a pretty popular opinion. It totally might be right, but it’s not my own experience, so I have a serious question because maybe I don’t know what’s happening out there with most hiring today - what are the broad-stroke outcomes that demonstrate that hiring isn’t working? Are there statistics that show that hiring has problems? All of the reasons given in the article are c…

I'm a software engineer working at a company in the hiring space. I've done over 400 technical interviews in the last year alone, and ... this is a hot take, and not the view of my employer, but I think developer hiring processes are fine (At least, at most mature companies.) There's a problem at the moment in the market that there's a huge amount of pent up demand for senior developers. The market has responded with…

Two things that have never happened in more than 200 interviews:

1) Anyone with >0 years of experience outperforms a Waterloo internship candidate on the coding or algorithms round.

2) Anyone interviewing for a senior position performs well on the other rounds and fails only system design.

I'm pretty sure it's large companies that can afford to play long-term big-picture strategies with talent, and small ones that have such low-rent concerns as which languages and frameworks you know.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#240

Post by _8j50 » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 5:48 AM UTC

Whiteboarding sucks. I was asked to do this once or twice, I can't think while others watch because I am focusing on what they are seeing, and my penmanship sucks. It's not for anyone that gets nervous easy. I just don't get it, why not put up a text editor on a wall screen and ask people to write the same code there?