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Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

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Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#111

Post by gregkerzhner »

The interesting thing is that Leetcode style problems encourage your code to go into the opposite direction that most production code should go. The game of Leetcode is to write the most consise, clever function that solves the problem in a tricky way. Thats exactly the kind of code I would flag in a review - sure it might be super efficient and elegant, but good luck maintaining it a few months later. I would way rather go for a solution thats less efficient but easy to maintain - I can always improve it later if it becomes a bottleneck (it usually doesn't).

I know the take home assignment is a divisive subject, but I think it's the perfect way to evaluate a person's coding ability. Did they use dependency injection or did they reference globals straight in the code? Did they break down the code into small testable chunks or write one giant file? Would their code pass code review? These things are way more important for most codebases than shaving an order of magnitude of big 0 complexity.

The only issue with the take homes is that they take a ton of time. Most companies say that it should only take a few hours but also ask for production grade code. Thats impossible - clean code takes time. Companies should at least start compensating for the time taken to do the assignment.

My favorite interview process involved a take home assignment which if you pass takes you directly to the final onsite interview. There the live coding sessions involved building more features onto the take home. As an experienced programmer who sucks at Leetcode I really hope the industry moves in this direction.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#112

Post by OnionBlender »

x87678r wrote: post #48

Interviewing is a skill. I once had a good job where I was happy and didn't move for 10 years. Big mistake - after that I bombed at interviews. After doing 10 interviews I'm now up to speed. I kinda feel like I need to do some interviews every year just to remind me how to behave and how to keep market ready.

I was in the same boat. Nearly 10 years experience at the same company that hired me after university. My first phone interview had me write a linked list and I froze. I had even practiced writing linked lists that week. The interviewer probably thought I lied about my resume.

I spent 4 months doing leetcode problems and reading books before I started doing interviews again. I would interview at places like Facebook that I had no interest in working at but I needed the experience. 7 months after I started I finally got an offer.

I don't want to go through that again but I agree that you probably need to do interviews every year inorder to not completely lose that skill.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#113

Post by klipklop »

decafninja wrote: post #41
erentz wrote: post #11

It was made the clearest to me when I interviewed a colleague who had left to another company and two years later was interviewing to return. I knew he knew everything and had the skills for the job because, well, I know him, I’d worked with him before. He’d done this very job previously. Yet he still performed terribly in the interview and (rightly or wrongly) I had to base my evaluation on my knowledge of him rathe…

I feel in the tech industry, networking and knowing people only gets you so far - typically just to the whiteboard interview. Then you have to solve the leetcode problems just like everyone else. Especially so in larger companies. FWIW, all of my friends who somehow managed to get into FAANG or other top tech companies swear that were they to go through the interview again, odds are they would fail. This despite all…

Agreed. Connections at best let me skip the phone screen and do the onsite leetcode at FAANG.

Maybe I just don't have friends at the >= VP level?

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#114

Post by btgeekboy »

jsinai wrote: post #97
goostavos wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually a little scared to leave my current FAANG gig for that exact reason tbh. I'm fairly certain I wouldn't make it back in the door without more leetcode grinding + repeated loops than I'm willing to do at this point in my career. Plus, stack on top of that, I've seen how the sausage is made. I've done 90+ interviews on the other side. At the end of the day, it comes down to how lucky you got in the loop. I'…

What is the lowers/raises approach? Google isn’t up to the job (pun was not initially intended, but here we are).

I think it’s the candidate vs team. Is the candidate better or worse than half of the team?

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#115

Post by CobrastanJorji »

I conducted a couple hundred interviews for my first FAANG employer, and I was constantly amazed at the percentage of candidates with years of Microsoft or Facebook experience on the resumes who apparently did not know how to program. I always thought, 'huh, guess I know why they quit after 3 years, amazing that they all lasted this long."

Then I interviewed for another company and utterly bombed. It became suddenly clear to me that I had been an idiot. Of course nearly all of those candidates were perfectly good programmers. They had had shit interviewing days, probably mostly due to nerves, but they probably would have mostly been perfectly good employees. How frickin' arrogant I had been for concluding that people who couldn't solve incredibly high stakes algorithm riddles on a whiteboard in 45 minutes with enough speed and flair were somehow not qualified to be my coworkers.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#116

Post by non-entity »

I wish I had an agreeable way out of this field. I'm not going to critize the current interview process, it has its advantages and disadvantages and theres a reason it's used, but if its shown me anything it's that I chose the wrong career.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#117

Post by [deleted] »

goostavos wrote: post #74
decafninja wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel in the tech industry, networking and knowing people only gets you so far - typically just to the whiteboard interview. Then you have to solve the leetcode problems just like everyone else. Especially so in larger companies. FWIW, all of my friends who somehow managed to get into FAANG or other top tech companies swear that were they to go through the interview again, odds are they would fail. This despite all…

I'm actually a little scared to leave my current FAANG gig for that exact reason tbh. I'm fairly certain I wouldn't make it back in the door without more leetcode grinding + repeated loops than I'm willing to do at this point in my career. Plus, stack on top of that, I've seen how the sausage is made. I've done 90+ interviews on the other side. At the end of the day, it comes down to how lucky you got in the loop. I'…

[deleted]

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#118

Post by Nav_Panel »

decafninja wrote: post #41
erentz wrote: post #11

It was made the clearest to me when I interviewed a colleague who had left to another company and two years later was interviewing to return. I knew he knew everything and had the skills for the job because, well, I know him, I’d worked with him before. He’d done this very job previously. Yet he still performed terribly in the interview and (rightly or wrongly) I had to base my evaluation on my knowledge of him rathe…

I feel in the tech industry, networking and knowing people only gets you so far - typically just to the whiteboard interview. Then you have to solve the leetcode problems just like everyone else. Especially so in larger companies. FWIW, all of my friends who somehow managed to get into FAANG or other top tech companies swear that were they to go through the interview again, odds are they would fail. This despite all…

Eh, I got my job at a very early stage startup through a friend I met on Twitter. The "interview" was a chat with the (reasonably technical) CEO, where we talked about political philosophy for 45 minutes, then I said something about "oh, I should probably tell you about my experience and resume," so we went over that briefly. No coding challenge or anything. I assume my case is an extreme outlier, though.

But yeah. "Networking" by meeting groups of strangers for drinks probably wont get you a job. But making friends who happen to work in (entrepreneurial) tech might.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#119

Post by monadic2 »

decafninja wrote: post #41
erentz wrote: post #11

It was made the clearest to me when I interviewed a colleague who had left to another company and two years later was interviewing to return. I knew he knew everything and had the skills for the job because, well, I know him, I’d worked with him before. He’d done this very job previously. Yet he still performed terribly in the interview and (rightly or wrongly) I had to base my evaluation on my knowledge of him rathe…

I feel in the tech industry, networking and knowing people only gets you so far - typically just to the whiteboard interview. Then you have to solve the leetcode problems just like everyone else. Especially so in larger companies. FWIW, all of my friends who somehow managed to get into FAANG or other top tech companies swear that were they to go through the interview again, odds are they would fail. This despite all…

Am I crazy or are you replying to a comment that is a clear example of how knowing someone can lead getting jobs in spite of whiteboard interviews?

EDIT: Ahh, didn't see the FAANG qualifier.

Re: Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study

#120

Post by ipnon »

jcadam wrote: post #6

Huh, the only successful interviews I have are the ones where I'm burned out after a long, fruitless, frustrating job search. And so I walk in assuming the interview will be a waste of time and just not caring anymore. That's when I get an offer.

I solved this horrible problem with legal anxiolytics. I crashed and burned every interview I had until I decided to drink kava[0] beforehand until I couldn't care less about whether I got the job. I've been working there for years now.

Like it or not, interviews are a game. Smart people will figure out how to play them after losing enough, though maybe some of us take a bit longer ...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kava

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