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

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#471

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #98

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience as a hiring manager disagrees with yours. Large system design interviews are par for the course - everyone knows how to do them and everyone has lots of experience. They don’t tell you really anything about a candidate, to the point that we should stop using them.

In my experience, this has been rather selective. Some people have very little idea about load-balancing, DNS, database scaling (replication, sharding, etc), fault tolerance, graceful degradation, queues, throttling, caching, you name it.

These topics are covered extensively in cookie-cutter interview prep materials like Hacking the Coding Interview. Every candidate is treating these things the same as leetcode trivia. There are whole YouTube channels devoted to how to rote memorize the path to answer open-ended system design questions like designing a fault tolerant Twitter feed, asynchronous video streaming, etc. The rote memorization even extends many layers deep into “nuanced” follow up questions that are supposed to distinguish mere rote memorization from real experience.

This is just every candidate, certainly at the senior level. It’s impossible to use these questions to discern anything. Even asking them to give these details about past real systems they designed you’re just getting the same 5-layer-deep inception rote memorization of everything they could be asked and every follow up contingency.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#472

Post by tristor » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

josephg wrote: post #362

pdimitar wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I extract from your reply is what I am actively trying to teach myself: DON'T. TAKE. ANYTHING. PERSONALLY. Yeah? BTW I am not exactly young -- 40 y/o with 18 years of professional experience (not claiming anything about quality). I was just objecting to your general premise that if somebody isn't snatched immediately then they must be mediocre because I've witnessed programmers times better than me (whose sole e…

Imagine a scale from 1 to 10. A 10 means "The interview process is fine. It judges people fairly and objectively, and works well for both candidates and companies". A 1 on the scale means "The whole interview process does a disservice to almost everyone it touches, and reflects badly on our industry as a whole" Where do you think we are? Personally I think we're at about a 7. Which is to say, I agree with you. I've i…

FWIW, I appreciate you sharing this perspective. I concur, more or less, with your position here after having interviewed many hundreds of people over my career. I've found internships were the best way to identify who was quality out of a class. It seemed of every 100 new grads I interacted with maybe 3 or 4 were skilled and engaged in learning more. But there are also some standouts and I really wish more companies did internships with larger cohorts and allowed their senior folks time to mentor. Some of my best experiences in my career were mentoring interns and I made some solid life-long relationships that way as well.

I've often posited among friends in the industry that it's partly due to apathy and mismatched expectations. College students go into CS because they expect a good paying job, not because of any specific aptitude or interest. CS isn't the study of software engineering, nor of the act of programming. They graduate, with no appreciable skill, and no real desire to learn, and can't find work. We can argue about fairness until we're blue in the face, but the reality of the situation is that motivated students who are actually interested in learning have vast free resources available to them to learn and free resources available to them to demonstrate their competence. Anyone not taking advantage of these resources is going to be subpar compared to others in the labor market.

Pretty much anyone who went to college in the last 20 years should have been able to anecdotally identify the stand-outs in their classes, and in general on the other side of the pipeline those are the only folks having an easy time getting hired. I dropped out of college, even though I was one of the stand-outs, because I wasn't learning anything I hadn't already taught myself. I've had less difficulty in my career than some of my former classmates I keep up with and my salary is multiples of theirs when they are employed, we're all the same age and they're technically more credentialed. It comes down to the fact that most people are just not very good at programming or at systems design. In fact, I'm not a good programmer, my skill-set is very much in the arena of systems design.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#473

Post by ativzzz » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

Drecula wrote: post #439

Given HN's demographics, I'm probably older than most here. I've worked with and personally invented quite a few great products, usually spanning Product, UX, and Engineering work. It's a joke to pretend ageism isn't a thing, and asking questions that only a recent CS grad is going to remember is not a tacit form of filtering for age. There's not many technical questions a fairly smart, non-lazy person with some expe…

Ok cool, so how do companies adjust their hiring processes and be able to objectively measure what makes you a qualified candidate?

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#474

Post by ativzzz » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #247

josephg wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

> 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.

Yes, they understand this, so they simply do not hire people who need to be trained for a year or two to be effective hires.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#475

Post by ggggtez » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

> neil with data .com

> no data in the article to back up claims

Yet another person who claims that hiring is broken. If this is the case, then show me the company that is not using technical interviews, and demonstrate to me that all these other companies are failing to hiring the best people for the job.

The closest they get to evidence of their claim is that Google didn't hire 1 random guy 4 years ago. Oh, and that Google built Stadia (??? huh ???).

Did I just read an anti-Google blogpost disguised as an anti-interview blogpost? What does Stadia have to do with interviews?

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#476

Post by downerending » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #291

thaumasiotes wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, ianeure is a rather unfortunate username. Why?

Sounds a bit like manure, maybe?

Brings to mind enuresis.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#477

Post by jiveturkey » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

Drecula wrote: post #439

Given HN's demographics, I'm probably older than most here. I've worked with and personally invented quite a few great products, usually spanning Product, UX, and Engineering work. It's a joke to pretend ageism isn't a thing, and asking questions that only a recent CS grad is going to remember is not a tacit form of filtering for age. There's not many technical questions a fairly smart, non-lazy person with some expe…

You say that as if you were born perfect. As someone of elder years myself (and not just by SV standards), what you are saying is quite obvious to anyone with experience. But when you're young and know everything, it's not so obvious. We too, were brave believers of complex == good in our youth. Well, I sure was.

It's also important to learn by failing (aka learn by doing). Like parenting, there are many things in organizational behavior that can't be learned until you experience it for yourself. Few of us can be told "don't do that" and will internalize it to the degree necessary, without experiencing personally what happens when you do "do that". These people graduating from top schools and going straight into FAANG are doing themselves a disservice of the worst kind, by missing out on important organizational learning experiences.

On that note, I recommend everyone either get fired from a job, or work for a company so bad you quit, at least once. I also recommend it at most once. :)

As for inverting a binary tree, with your experience you must realize that the very large majority of applicants are poseurs. You need to filter them with easy things like inverting a binary tree. Most companies need "doers" not "thinkers". Even at the highest levels of pseudo-management (staff and above IC), you really better be able to do this kind of easy stuff.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#478

Post by downerending » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

downerending wrote: post #132

dontreact wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say Google discriminates on the basis of race? I used to work there and was involved in the hiring processes and never saw evidence for this

Take a close look at the diversity report they publish each year.

Not sure why this got downvoted. Google publishes some pretty detailed stats (which I applaud), and the "thumb on the scale" could not be more obvious.

Whether or not you feel this is a problem, it's worth reviewing the data.

[And for the record, I've enjoyed every female or minority colleague I've ever worked with, and made efforts to ensure their success, whatever their ability. I don't particularly object to AA hiring, but I don't like wasting my time on "fake" interviews, so I think publication of stats like this should be required.]

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#479

Post by lordCarbonFiber » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

lucaspm98 wrote: post #446

Drew_ wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing you're referring to has anything to do with the actual hiring process. None of the issues you listed makes anyone more or less likely to pass the hiring committee. Offers are based on merit as much as they can be. You just have a problem with efforts to reach out to people who normally have a hard time making it into the industry.

Every one of those 6 points made have to do directly with the hiring process. Supporting education and outreach for underrepresented groups is a noble cause, but when it gets to the point of giving a group an easier interview path the hiring is by nature not merit based. In the long run, this will only undermine the efforts to get these groups involved by forcing experience to be viewed with the asterisk that they ma…

This line of reasoning doesn't hold up. It's just as easy to flip your conclusion on it's head currently; any given member of a majority group could be viewed as only being hired because of internal biases, not merit.

To contribute my own, relatively unique, anecdote, Ive interviewed both as a man and as a woman and the process is considerably easier when you just get to coast through on the "white nerdy guy, must know tech" stereotype.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#480

Post by ativzzz » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 5:02 PM UTC

tristor wrote: post #472

josephg wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a scale from 1 to 10. A 10 means "The interview process is fine. It judges people fairly and objectively, and works well for both candidates and companies". A 1 on the scale means "The whole interview process does a disservice to almost everyone it touches, and reflects badly on our industry as a whole" Where do you think we are? Personally I think we're at about a 7. Which is to say, I agree with you. I've i…

FWIW, I appreciate you sharing this perspective. I concur, more or less, with your position here after having interviewed many hundreds of people over my career. I've found internships were the best way to identify who was quality out of a class. It seemed of every 100 new grads I interacted with maybe 3 or 4 were skilled and engaged in learning more. But there are also some standouts and I really wish more companies…

> I've often posited among friends in the industry that it's partly due to apathy and mismatched expectations. College students go into CS because they expect a good paying job, not because of any specific aptitude or interest.

This is not unique to CS. I feel this is the general mindset among most people who go to college: "I get a degree and get a job" and is the reason for so many young people coming out of college with a 4 year degree and no job.

Just getting a degree doesn't mean you are smart, curious, or driven. I have friends who got liberal arts degrees who are smart, curious, and driven and went on to have great careers and friends with business degrees who don't care and are unsurprisingly "underemployed" by their degree, but not by their personality and the way they live their life.