Tech sector job interviews assess anxiety, not software skills: study • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by acomjean » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:27 PM UTC

mywacaday wrote: post #195

It's ironic that people who want the job will be nervous and might interview poorly but people that are only interviewing for experience or just don't care will do better.

My Mom makes this point about nerves. In the last century when she was interviewing she got lost and showed up 45 minutes late to the interview. Thinking she had no shot, she was relaxed and interviewed well and was hired.

When she left that job 10 years later, her boss noted, that "one of the things she learned from her was that it was ok to hire someone who shows up 45 minutes late to their interview.."

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

#242

Post by marcinzm » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:27 PM UTC

scrozier wrote: post #224

marcinzm wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the quality they're actually testing for: ability to study and dedicate yourself to a task. Or in other words work ethic. The algorithms don't matter but the fact that you can spend months learning them is an important skill. Intelligence is less important for success than work ethic which is why work ethic is tested for so much. Specifically, work ethic and ability to learn in a related domain as, for…

In my experience, certainly no interviewers think that they're screening for "ability to study and dedicate yourself to a task." In being on both sides of the table for more than thirty years, I have never heard an interviewer mention that.

Companies encourage you to study for the interview, providing you with links to books, guides and preparation material. They'll delay the interview to give you time to study more. So it seems pretty clear to me that corporate management sees it as a test of study skills even if interviewers don't.

edit: I'm talking about large tech companies, not the startups blindly copying their policies with little thought or consideration.

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

#243

Post by Apocryphon » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:27 PM UTC

mpalczewski wrote: post #223

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #115

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…

My experience has been quite opposite. I worked for a FANG and conducted over 100 interviews. Most of that time I thought I was asking really hard questions and wasn't sure I would have been able to answer them if I hadn't seen the question before. I later interviewed at a different FANG, surprised myself and answered harder questions than I typically gave and answered them better than most of the people we hired. No…

Looks like being an interviewer taught you a thing or two about the test content.

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

#244

Post by akhilcacharya » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:27 PM UTC

ironman1478 wrote: post #98

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 don't understand this obsession with leetcode style questions specifically. I just got a job at a FAANG on an algorithm heavy team and all they asked me was linked lists, some basic graph questions, and some basic (and I mean really basic, high school non-calc level) vector math. I think just having a rock solid understanding of the basics will help much more than trying to grind questions and memorize patterns.

It fundamentally depends on the FAANG. Which FAANG was this, or are you just minimizing the difficulty of the problems?

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

#245

Post by proverbialbunny » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

gregkerzhner wrote: post #111

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 ra…

I like the data science interview process a lot more, though I'm biased enjoying the kind of work I do.

It's somewhat common during a data science interview to be given the actual problem you would be working on if you took the job. Often times you're given multiple days as a take home or multiple interviews to go through it, because the problem is difficult enough it does take research to begin to hypothesize a possible solution.

Most software engineers would cry murder if you gave them a 3 to 5 day take home interview that is an actual problem the company is trying to solve. "It's free labor. They're taking advantage of you." but in the data science world solving a problem can take 3 to 12 months, not 3 to 5 days, so you can't solve it in that time frame, just come up with ideas that lead to paths forward. The company can't take advantage of you this way.

On the SWE side, a near equivalent would be pairing with someone on the actual code base with an actual jira issue for a day, learning the code base, seeing the problems in the bug tracker, and then deciding from there if those are the kinds of problems you want to spend the next handful of years of your life on.

I like this kind of problem because I know what my 9 to 5 will be for the next year to years and if it is what I want to be doing with my life.

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

#246

Post by mgkimsal » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #161

ironman1478 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this obsession with leetcode style questions specifically. I just got a job at a FAANG on an algorithm heavy team and all they asked me was linked lists, some basic graph questions, and some basic (and I mean really basic, high school non-calc level) vector math. I think just having a rock solid understanding of the basics will help much more than trying to grind questions and memorize patterns.

> I think just having a rock solid understanding of the basics will help much more than trying to grind questions and memorize patterns. It isn’t about memorizing patterns, but about hopefully spotting the exact question. A friend is currently interviewing for a FAANG and the recruiter flat out told him that his best chance of passing was to do a pile of previously seen questions for that FAANG and hopefully he gets…

In 5th grade, I was in a poor school district. My parents had been pushing (with other parents) for a 'gifted program' for years. Finally, in November, a program was being introduced. I was given a test - IQ test perhaps, but an entrance test of some sort. I went home, dejected at the stuff I didn't know - was asking parents what the questions were - "what is an octave?" was one I remember not knowing at the time. I'd "got in" to the program, but... we suddenly moved over Christmas to a newer school district. It was richer by comparison, although still in the same county.

First week at the new school, I was taken aside and given a test for their gifted program. Exact same test, which ... I completely aced, because I'd figured out all the questions I hadn't known in November (from parents). It felt like cheating, and I told the teacher about it later. I don't know why they couldn't have just taken the test results from the previous school - same county, shouldn't have been an issue.

Anyway, if you keep studying known questions, it will increase your chances of passing in the future ;)

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

#247

Post by vmception » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

scott_paul wrote: post #122

When I interview a candidate, I'm explicitly and intentionally looking at how they respond to stress, how (if) they're able to say "I don't know", and how they communicate complicated ideas. I open with soft-balls to put them at ease and get them opened up and talking. Then dive deeper into technical things. All the questions are technical, but the main answer I get is how they communicate, how they relate to people,…

yeah, but these anti-patterns are completely different everywhere. your insight isn't a signal at all, when the next interviewer isn't saying what they mean and evaluating only correct answers.

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

#248

Post by nemonemo » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

There's one genetic factor known for the performance variance against the stress, which is also called "warrior vs worrier": https://www.huffpost.com/entry/stress-management_b_2671591

IMO, there's Moneyball-like opportunity for companies who can utilize (or, in another word, exploit) this aspect. A tech company may conduct tech interviews with a private environment & a traditional environment, and if one's performance is much better in the private setting, they might be able to offer a job with a reduce salary than the candidate's capacity shown in the private setting.

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

#249

Post by sosilkj » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

annoyingnoob wrote: post #225

This is why I stopped writing code. After I bombed a bunch of interviews I threw up my hands in disgust, it wasn't me it was the process. One thing that stands out to me about the process is that everyone gets the same interview, doesn't matter if you are fresh out of school or have a lifetime of experience. Experience counts for nothing in these interviews. Can you design twitter in 40 minutes, thinking through ever…

"This is why I stopped writing code."

would be interesting to hear about what career you transitioned to, if you're willing to share.

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

#250

Post by aliante » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

leafboi wrote: post #194

MattGaiser wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I have read from Gayle Laakmaan, they know this throws away many good engineers, but it is acceptable to them because it doesn’t let bad ones through.

But they're not aware that the filter is just anxiety. Google is basically using anxiety to filter good candidates and eliminate false positives which works in a sense but is still highly illogical. Why not use a technical filter to filter for technical candidates? Anxiety seems like a pointless filter.... how does that even eliminate false positives?

> But they're not aware that the filter is just anxiety.

Could this be deliberate? As working with people with anxiety problems is often a pain in the ass as they won't report problems for fear of seeming stupid or ask for help.

Confident people are far easier to work on a team with.