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

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

#301

Post by m3kw9 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:57 PM UTC

me551ah wrote: post #232

chpmrc wrote: post #138

It seems pretty obvious to me that this kind of interviews are simply there to assess how much you want to work for a certain company. As in: would you be willing to study for months, go through mock interviews, read books, test your skills etc. to have a shot at working for us? Even though the majority of that stuff will likely have zero impact on your day to day work? That's all there is, really. I've had no proble…

If not algorithms then what would you use to test a generic programmer? You would have to setup a custom panel based on each candidate. A person who has only worked for PHP would need a different panel from someone who has worked on C++ all his life. Algorithms is language and framework agnostic. It doesn't matter if you work in embedded or data science. It doesn't matter if you code in C or Python. The same question…

If I was interviewing a python programmer, I would also know python. I would ask them about a project they’ve done in detail, see if they are bsing, gauge their ability and experience from that

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

#302

Post by _curious_ » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:57 PM UTC

solidasparagus wrote: post #227

mathattack wrote: post #213

This is why internships are so important. Sometimes it’s still hard to tell after 10 weeks. It’s very naive to think we will know after a 30 minute interview.

I don't think people are naive, they just don't have a better solution. Most established professionals are not interested in a 10 week trial period after which they might be back on the job market.

"Most established professionals are not interested in a 10 week trial period after which they might be back on the job market."

Why not? If the position isn't a fit for either side after X time on-the-job, that's OK right?

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

#303

Post by Kaze404 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:57 PM UTC

me551ah wrote: post #232

chpmrc wrote: post #138

It seems pretty obvious to me that this kind of interviews are simply there to assess how much you want to work for a certain company. As in: would you be willing to study for months, go through mock interviews, read books, test your skills etc. to have a shot at working for us? Even though the majority of that stuff will likely have zero impact on your day to day work? That's all there is, really. I've had no proble…

If not algorithms then what would you use to test a generic programmer? You would have to setup a custom panel based on each candidate. A person who has only worked for PHP would need a different panel from someone who has worked on C++ all his life. Algorithms is language and framework agnostic. It doesn't matter if you work in embedded or data science. It doesn't matter if you code in C or Python. The same question…

Your argument is flawed in that it assumes knowing algorithms has any correlation to doing well on the job. It doesn't really matter that it's language agnostic if it doesn't test anything useful.

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

#304

Post by peteradio » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:57 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #14

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.

This was true for me, too. My previous startup I worked at had gone under, and I was thinking about starting my own. An old coworker of mine invited me to lunch. We had a couple of margaritas, and he asked if I wanted to see his office. I went to check it out, and suddenly he asks if I can talk to some of his coworkers. So I basically interviewed while drunk and not fully realizing I was being interviewed. They offer…

That sounds incredible.

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

#305

Post by monksy » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

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…

I'm pretty angry with the person that you were. I'm frustrated with the people who look up a question, see the exact solution and walk through and then expect the candidate seeing the problem statement for the first time to walk through it in the same way.

There are questions being asked that full academic papers have been written on. What's even worse is typically I get interviewers that are not experienced+prepared enough to give hints or work with you.

I am happy that you've had an epiphany to see where you were wrong. If you ever are in a situation to build a quality team. Interview people for the skills to work with others+ teach others, look to optimize, experience, and that they're willing to learn. You'll have a fairly good group of candidates to pick from as that don't do well in these coding interrogations.

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

#306

Post by klodolph » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

timmytokyo wrote: post #32

klodolph wrote: post #19

> In short, the findings suggest that companies are missing out on really good programmers because those programmers aren’t good at writing on a whiteboard and explaining their work out loud while coding. In most of my programming jobs, explaining your work was most of the job and writing code was less important. The whiteboard environment is a bit unnatural but I don’t want to hire someone who gets the right answer…

So have them explain it to you after they complete the problem with you out of the room.

If I’m in the room, I will steer them away from dead ends and ask leading questions when they get stuck. The point of the interview is to give the interviewee as much of a chance as possible to demonstrate their skills.

I’ll say for sure, not everyone interviews this way. A lot of devs running interviews think of it as a “test” with pass/fail. I’d say the better interviewers see it as an opportunity to dig around and figure out how to get evidence of the candidate’s skills. That means being creative, that means responding to what the candidate says and finding opportunities to focus on their strengths.

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

#307

Post by akhilcacharya » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

helen___keller wrote: post #9

The methodology: > For this study, researchers conducted technical interviews of 48 computer science undergraduates and graduate students. Half of the study participants were given a conventional technical interview, with an interviewer looking on. The other half of the participants were asked to solve their problem on a whiteboard in a private room. The private interviews did not require study participants to explai…

I was an undergraduate at NC State. I wonder how the study could be replicated at UNC and Duke. I'd wager they'd have a significantly higher success rate.

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

#308

Post by klodolph » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:59 PM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #27

klodolph wrote: post #19

> In short, the findings suggest that companies are missing out on really good programmers because those programmers aren’t good at writing on a whiteboard and explaining their work out loud while coding. In most of my programming jobs, explaining your work was most of the job and writing code was less important. The whiteboard environment is a bit unnatural but I don’t want to hire someone who gets the right answer…

Most of the job: was that explaining while you write the code, under time pressure, or explaining your debugged code after you've tested it a bit and have confidence in it?

> The whiteboard environment is a bit unnatural…

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

#309

Post by javert » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:59 PM UTC

jjav wrote: post #170

javert wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want a job and good career progression the best advice has to be prioritize making friends with lots of people Getting good at interviewing should also be a priority, and is doable. Getting good at interviewing is largely about developing (a) genuine programming skill; and b) at least some people/communication skill. When you have those skills, you have less anxiety about the interview, and can perform well.

Genuine programming skill has no correlation to the skill of regurgitating algorithms in a reality-show type setting. Actual development, of real products, isn't done like that. This is the reason why it's so perpetually controversial to put developers through this type of interviews which measure nothing relevant to the job.

> regurgitating algorithms in a reality-show type setting

You're not wrong, but this falls under the genus of "companies that suck at interviewing," and thereby hurt themselves (i.e. the company). In other words, it's not an inherent fault of the programming interview.

But there is more to it than meets the eye.

Some companies actually just are that incompetent.

But, to take a particularly successful and egregious offender: is Google actually just that incompetent? So that they systematically do hiring in a poor way?

No, of course not.

They actually don't want the best people.

They want the mediocre people who are also obedient. The kind of people who can be told to study an algorithms book, and will do it, and will regurgitate it, as a show of obedience, mostly, but also mediocre (but not great) intelligence---not great, because if they had great intelligence, they wouldn't waste their time on that kind of activity.

Such people can be treated as interchangeable cogs, which is why BigCo wants to filter for them.

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

#310

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:59 PM UTC

solinent wrote: post #294

The only good way to assess a candidate is to hire them. It's sad, but true. Some of the brightest and best will not even be able to code with someone else even paying the remotest attention to them. Interviews used to take account of this 15 years ago. Google came along and destroyed this. I remember talking to a Google interviewer and I came up with a better solution than they expected. Since my solution was non-st…

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