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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

#251

Post by ipnon »

sjburt wrote: post #208

I think this is obvious, but look at the alternatives. * Resumes can be exaggerated, falsified, or perhaps more often often leave out important details or relevant experience. Reviewers often also put unconscious emphasis on formatting or style (I had one colleague that I swear would accept anything in Computer Modern). * Take-home projects (if not carefully designed) can be a considerable time sink and reviewers may…

So the study seeks to investigate the role of an in person judge on the whiteboard interview. The study found that a private whiteboard interview, where the candidate gets the same problem but solves it without a judge in the room, was better at evaluating software engineering skill than the same question with a judge in the room. To your point, we can keep all the benefits of algorithm questions with less of the disadvantages by modifying the typical whiteboard interview to just remove the judge in the room.

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

#252

Post by jcadam »

ngngngng wrote: post #216
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…

This is an accurate view of take home assignments. Most of the take home assignments I've done were "supposed" to take 5 hours. Most of them too around 20. The worst take home assignment I ever had was an extremely tricky brain teaser, the answer to which could not be found on google, and had to be done in the not very popular language this company used. So I not only had to write useless brain teaser code, but I cou…

Yea, I had one take home problem where the instructions stated "Please don't take more than 1 hour to solve." So, just once, I decided to hold myself to one hour, and barely managed to get to a solution that worked.

During the code review in the follow-up interview, I was raked over the coals for not writing tests, failing to cover edge cases, etc. ,etc. Basically, they expected production-ready code. Didn't get the job.

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

#253

Post by mnm1 »

For me, it's almost impossible to think in any kind of group situation. I do ok sometimes on interviews. It really depends. If given time alone, even during an interview, with my own tools and without distractions or having to tell the idiot interviewer what I'm thinking (as if anyone can think and talk about two different things, the problem and what the interviewer wants to hear at the same time), I do amazingly well. With another person watching, in-person or remote, I can't even think of how to start. I get caught in loops of anxiety and I can't relax enough to think things through. I also am afraid of trying wrong things so sometimes get paralyzed a bit. Mainly, I try to avoid such interviews and go for ones that will let me solve the problems on my own, with my own tools, without some idiot watching over me.

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

#254

Post by d23 »

rmellow wrote: post #215

The best technical interview I've had: - Take home: 2 days to read a newly released Deep Learning paper. - On site: explain the paper to the hiring manager. - Evaluation: (1) Did the candidate understand it? (2) Did the candidate go farther, and look into the cited papers and understand that? (3) Can they explain Deep Learning concepts and talk their way through related problems? In 5 months of searching for a job, t…

> Isn't the main point that they can think critically?

Sadly, I'm coming to the conclusion that this is at best completely orthogonal to anything most people care about, and at worst, it's a liability.

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

#255

Post by drewmate »

acomjean wrote: post #241
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.."

This is an interesting anecdote. All too often, interviewers seem to be looking for any reason they can not to hire someone rather than looking for evidence that the person would be a good co-worker. I am guilty of this to some extent, but a lot of it comes down to the interview culture/framework of the company in question.

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

#256

Post by decafninja »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #244
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.

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

My understanding and experience is that one of the A's and the N stand apart from the other letters in having a less of a "one size fits all" approach.

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

#257

Post by throwawayiionqz »

There is a lot of anecdotes in the comments about these interview processes.

The ones with the best data are the company themselves, especially those who interview thousands of candidates a year. These companies (e.g., all FANG) have enough data to assess which interviewer, which interview questions and which interview process have positive correlation (and even causation) with future employee performance. And they can optimize the pipeline to interview most candidates with the interviewers that can actually assess future employee performance for instance.

Either these companies have already done these optimizations and analyze the trove of data they have, and the process is what it is for a reason. Or they haven't yet and there is still much room to optimize the process, and applicants have a chance to see those processes updated for the better (although here better means better for the company, not necessarily better for the applicant).

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

#258

Post by roldie »

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…

The same is true for design/ux jobs interviews. Well, at least for me. I got laid off a couple of months ago, and have been interviewing pretty steadily since then. I have yet to receive an offer.

I already know where my strengths and weaknesses are. I'm fine with 1 on 1s and all that, but when it comes to the technical part of the interview process like a take-home design project or a live design challenge, I usually fail.

I know I have the skills. My work has always been well-received, and I've always received good marks on reviews and feedback, but I haven't been able to translate it to the interview process.

I've tried to assess where I go wrong, and I think I panic and put too much effort into trying to figure out what they want to see or come up with something innovative rather than just doing the work and following my normal approach.

The stress of the time crunch (and sometimes not knowing anything about the product or problem) only add to my inability to improve in this space.

--

When I've sat on the other side of the table, I know that most interview processes aren't that well-structured or set up to actually evaluate the candidate. Even when there's a good process, it's often too easy for one person to influence the results.

So sometimes I tell myself that it was a crappy interview process and it just wasn't set up for someone like me to succeed. But I still end up stewing over it and feeling depressed for a few days.

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

#260

Post by talmr »

I think for senior level positions especially it is more important to see how a candidate approaches a problem beyond just memorizing algorithms or LC solutions. I wish there was way more emphasis on "case study" style approach where you could discuss at high level how to build X. Even pulling the candidate into a real technical discussion where you're trying to optimize something and see if the candidate has any input. Building up on experience is what we should be after.

To me, asking LC or the same algo and data structures questions (implement DFS .. wow genius) is just gatekeeping via a measure that most people can pass by just memorizing stuff for a month.

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