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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

#331

Post by Philip-J-Fry »

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…

Programming in general is language and framework agnostic. Someone who can write an extensible and maintainable C++ application can most likely do the same in C#, Java, Rust etc. There's decades of best practices and knowledge around what makes good software and almost none of it is specific to a language.

Most devs use a handful of algorithms in their entire career. And any algorithm they do use was probably adapted from pseudocode on Wikipedia.

It really comes down to what do you want the developer to do? Are the things you're testing them on even relevant to the job?

I'd argue what most companies are testing through their interview process is largely irrelevant.

If it's a generic programmer, then it's perhaps a position where's there's a range of technologies, maybe a range of languages to pick up and a range of existing software to support. Well in that case you want someone who's quick to learn and eager to train themselves, not afraid to ask questions, not afraid to admit they don't understand something, etc. Whether they can write quicksort on a whiteboard is probably the stupidest thing you could interview them on.

I think the best kind of interview isn't overly technical, but rather one that prods the interviewee to think about problems. Describe a fictional system, what would they suggest to make it scaleable? What would they suggest to improve performance? What would they suggest to reduce the time between writing the code and shipping it. Do they understand what a CI/CD system is? Are their first thoughts "rewrite everything!"? Do they think about iterating software development or are they the kind to dump 200 files on someone for code review?

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

#332

Post by harryh »

schreiaj wrote: post #297
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 was on the other side - I flew out to FB during a vacation earlier this year. I got there, could explain the solution but something was off and I kept losing the thread when I went to convert it to actual code. The interviewers didn’t know I’d gotten a call from my cat sitter that morning and one of my cats had to go in for an emergency check up. (He ended up being fine but didn’t know that at the time). Later that…

A pro tip for anyone reading this who ever ends up in a similar situation: just postpone the interview. I promise you that everyone will understand. Everyone gets that these things are a little goofy[1] and wants to set people up for success and not doom them to failure.

1. Yes, there is a larger and more complicated discussion to be had about making the whole system better. But that isn't gonna happen in the short term. This is advice for dealing with the situation as it exists today.

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

#333

Post by vmception »

scott_paul wrote: post #328
vmception wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not commenting on how anyone else does it, or saying that there aren't bad patterns out there. I'm telling the room about a strategy I found that lets me twist the bad into good.

I understood that, I want to highlight to others how there needs to be standardization or a completely different approach, as this is all a crapshoot and wasting countless work hours.

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

#334

Post by UncleOxidant »

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…

I'd like to see this two margarita interview technique catch on.

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

#335

Post by bluedino »

room500 wrote: post #183
aswanson wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech seems to be the only field that does these dumb types of interviews. Accounting, law, medicine etc seems to work well without these filters. Why are tech interviews so stupid?

The other fields have various ways to filter out people. * Accounting has CPA exams/certifications * Law has the bar exams/law school * Medicine has the USMLE/medical school Tech prides itself on the fact that "anyone" can be a great tech worker regardless of how you get there - read some books, attend a bootcamp, go to college, or even just start banging out code on the keyboard until you gain experience Unfortunate…

"Complete a university computer science degree"

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

#336

Post by Apocryphon »

thebean11 wrote: post #276
Frost1x wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 of them being great engineers. Im fairly confident that's at least part of the dominance of this approach in big tech. If the tech companies can't collude with no-hire agreements (as they have in the past) to prevent developers fr…

Interesting theory, but does the game theory hold up? If high interviewing standards are only good for scaring employees into staying put, couldn't one of the FAANGs "defect" and lower the bar, gaining a hiring advantage over the others?

Do they care to have a hiring advantage, though?

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

#337

Post by harryh »

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…

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

The vast majority of people who work at FAANG type companies do not do any of this.

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

#338

Post by StavrosK »

monksy wrote: post #305
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…

I bomb on technical interviews the same way because my mind just freezes and can't get through even simple problems.

I had the same question you mention. "This is a problem a paper was written on, are you expecting me to derive a whole paper from first principles in half an hour, or are you expecting me to have seen it before? If it's the latter, why not let me Google, as I normally would?"

I feel that saying "I would solve this problem with " should be good enough, and if I'm asked to implement it, I should be able to copy paste the Wikipedia pseudocode and start converting.

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

#339

Post by schreiaj »

harryh wrote: post #332
schreiaj wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on the other side - I flew out to FB during a vacation earlier this year. I got there, could explain the solution but something was off and I kept losing the thread when I went to convert it to actual code. The interviewers didn’t know I’d gotten a call from my cat sitter that morning and one of my cats had to go in for an emergency check up. (He ended up being fine but didn’t know that at the time). Later that…

A pro tip for anyone reading this who ever ends up in a similar situation: just postpone the interview. I promise you that everyone will understand. Everyone gets that these things are a little goofy[1] and wants to set people up for success and not doom them to failure. 1. Yes, there is a larger and more complicated discussion to be had about making the whole system better. But that isn't gonna happen in the short t…

Yeah I didn’t realize how distracted I was until I was there and just blanked.

I also have real problems with traveling to interviews since my other half has issues being alone at home hence doing the interview while we were visiting her family. Even then me being gone was highly stressful for her.

Google was willing to let me interview with folks local to us which really helped. I’m curious if more companies will conduct remote interviews in a post Covid world too.

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

#340

Post by decafninja »

monadic2 wrote: post #119
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…

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.

Not sure I quite understand.

I did use "FAANG and other top tech companies" as an example, but I'm seeing this practice expand out towards many other companies both in and outside the tech industry.

I myself work at a non-tech company (bank) and even with my team/department, all a referral will do is just get you to the leetcode interview and maybe a slight advantage if the final decision is between the referred candidate vs. another non-referred candidate with all other factors being equal.

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