I did love the way eBay did hiring with 360 interviews. I interviewed my future boss and recommended that she should be hired.
The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
241–250 of 590 posts
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. I think it stops being seen as a breath of fresh air when e.g. Google's explicit expectation is that you will spend multiple months studying for the privilege before interviewing with them.
That's how long people study for the bar and board exams. And that's after investing years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra schooling. You also don't get to retake those every couple years.
Perhaps, but it won’t be one or two binary pass/fail questions at random. Because that would be… ridiculous.
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#243Technical 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 an…
While I'm pro meritocracy(and think that, contrary to an increasingly popular opinion, anyone of any background is capable of showing merit in this field), technical interviews can be done very poorly and swing so far the other way that they dehumanize the candidate. Years ago, I had an interview for Yellow Pages. I know, who the hell still uses Yellow Pages? Well, this was back in 2014, though I'm still wondering th…
Yelp actually ripped off the Yellow Pages. The name comes from YEL-low-P-ages. The Yellow Pages was a paper-based business telephone directory that started decades earlier.
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#244My 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…
One bad technical interview does not mean technical interviews are bad. This has happened to me as well -- and it's a little bit satisfying when those companies fail, because often what happened in that interview is a symptom of them not having their eye on the ball.
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#245You 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 interview people in non-coding disciplines and this is what I try to do. Ask them technical questions from a soft-skills perspective. I like to ask questions where they criticize their own work, or get an idea of how they approach and tackle a problem. I look to see how they react to being corrected or taught in a similar way to how you would with a coworker.
We have a question on a quiz that we give to every potential employee that very reliably tells me early on whether someone is going to be a potential hire. It looks super technical, but in reality anyone should be able to work out a reasonable solution logically. I always ask the same question in the interview: "Walk me through how you solved the problem." Good candidates think past the problem to things like maintainability, really good candidates tend to ask for feedback on what the answer is.
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I'm pro meritocracy(and think that, contrary to an increasingly popular opinion, anyone of any background is capable of showing merit in this field), technical interviews can be done very poorly and swing so far the other way that they dehumanize the candidate. Years ago, I had an interview for Yellow Pages. I know, who the hell still uses Yellow Pages? Well, this was back in 2014, though I'm still wondering th…
Yelp actually ripped off the Yellow Pages. The name comes from YEL-low-P-ages. The Yellow Pages was a paper-based business telephone directory that started decades earlier.
Oh, for sure, but comparing the state of Yellowpages.com now to its state in 2014, it's clear that someone decided to make the design and UX uncannily similar to that of Yelp. Of course Yellow Pages the concept was around before Yelp.
However, YellowPages.com ripped off the concept of yellow pages just as much as Yelp.
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't it the companies' role to turn those junior developers into senior developers? Where else are they going to come from?
I don't know! Is it their job? The attention of senior engineers is the single most valuable, expensive and scarce commodity of a modern software company. The incentives are absolutely not aligned for most companies to make it worth their time to hire junior engineers. But obviously thats a problem - because as you say, where else will senior engineers come from? And I don't think we have a good answer here. The old…
But most companies are loathe to do that because you're likely to quit and go somewhere else for a pay bump as soon as you have enough skills and experience that you're worth hiring.
This is only true in bad companies. Good companies understand that people move on, and don't assume that someone is hired in to a role forever. Once you realise that hiring is an expensive process that you will always be doing you then you can optimize it appropriately.
Some really good companies even use it as a point in job adverts. There are plenty of senior developers who actively want to teach and mentor juniors, and will be happier working in companies that encourage that process. It's a good way of retaining those staff.
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#248> 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 think we all like to complain when we don't get the job we want. It doesn't matter what the process is, some form of song and dance is needed.
I think the thing people are "on about" is that we have become so cynical about the current status quo, that there's no oxygen left to have a real conversation about what constitutes a true "false negative".
It would require some sort of longer-term data gathering around the rejection / ghosting process.
For example, Google claims to be very objective and data-driven about their hiring process, but once a candidate is rejected there is no further data.
How would one solve such a problem?
If we agree that it's just window dressing around a "song and dance" (I prefer to call it "the rituals of gate keeping"), there is no problem to be solved.
But I still feel like giving in to cynicism is the wrong answer.
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Half the leetcode becomes obvious when you actually solve engineering problems as a part of the job.
What do you consider engineering problems? Many engineering problems aren't about algorithms but rather solving a real world problem.
You usually don't need to re-implement an algorithm.
But very often you have to understand which algorithm to choose. Then you can pick an existing implementation.
In interviews I conduct I gladly allow to read the wikipedia page with a reference implementation (say, for the mentioned Dijkstra algorithm), or pick an implementation from a standard library of a language (say, for a priority queue). What I'm looking for is a conscious and reasonable choice of an approach, and understanding its trade-offs.
Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't it the companies' role to turn those junior developers into senior developers? Where else are they going to come from?
I don't know! Is it their job? The attention of senior engineers is the single most valuable, expensive and scarce commodity of a modern software company. The incentives are absolutely not aligned for most companies to make it worth their time to hire junior engineers. But obviously thats a problem - because as you say, where else will senior engineers come from? And I don't think we have a good answer here. The old…
There is the part where you give junior pay raise after he or she learns enough to get raise elsewhere.