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

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

#511

Post by munk-a » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 8:33 PM UTC

rc-1140 wrote: post #482

rsweeney21 wrote: post #448

I'm a ex-FANG dev that started a recruiting company, so I am VERY familiar with the arbitrary tech interview process. I'm a huge proponent of contract-to-hire. Even started a company* to make it easier for companies to offer contract-to-hire. Now before you dismiss the idea because you are "too good" to do C2H hear me out. Everyone knows that actually working with someone on the job is the only way to get an accurate…

Sorry, but C2H sounds like a great idea to you because you have the luxury of having already earned FAANG money on your side. You'd have to pay me considerable money for me to consider taking a C2H role so I could cover health insurance across the usual suspects (general health, dental, vision, specialists just in case). Like many people outside of this website (and enough here), I don't have the luxury of FAANG mone…

This is one of the reasons I've always found it paradoxical that people in the US seem to think that universal healthcare would depress the labour market.

Up here in Canada not all procedures are insured, Pharma, Vision & Dental are the big three that most either pay out of pocket or purchase extended insurance for - though there are generally pretty good provincial programs to help with the costs of those. However, nobody is walking around in Canada concerned that they may get fired and then be bankrupted by a heart attack.

Companies absolutely do still bear a significant per-employee cost to support provincial healthcare and residents do need to pay a pretty light fee into a pool (with options available for financial assistance).

The end result is that companies do end up bearing pretty heavy burdens on a per-employee basis - but employees don't end up with as much of a burden forcing them to remain in undesireable employment positions, though some guaranteed income would really free up employees to have a more equal amount of power in the job market.

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

#512

Post by taurath » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 8:34 PM UTC

rc-1140 wrote: post #482

rsweeney21 wrote: post #448

I'm a ex-FANG dev that started a recruiting company, so I am VERY familiar with the arbitrary tech interview process. I'm a huge proponent of contract-to-hire. Even started a company* to make it easier for companies to offer contract-to-hire. Now before you dismiss the idea because you are "too good" to do C2H hear me out. Everyone knows that actually working with someone on the job is the only way to get an accurate…

Sorry, but C2H sounds like a great idea to you because you have the luxury of having already earned FAANG money on your side. You'd have to pay me considerable money for me to consider taking a C2H role so I could cover health insurance across the usual suspects (general health, dental, vision, specialists just in case). Like many people outside of this website (and enough here), I don't have the luxury of FAANG mone…

Many consultant/contractor firms esp for programmers provider insurance. Its usually not as good as a top tier company benefit package of course. The biggest issue for me is you're unlikely to get a 401k or tax-benefited investment vehicle, which means if you're making programmer money you can't even do a ROTH or a traditional IRA due to income restrictions. So make sure its a really good jump in pay due to that at minimum.

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

#513

Post by marcinzm » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 8:35 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #452

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…

> 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 TIL I've been "hacking" all their "tests" :D acing them just by curiosity & interest in computers in general, a bit of intelligence and a lot of laziness!

FAANG or other companies? FAANG interviews tend to be timed enough that even if you're intelligent enough to come up with a solution you won't have enough time if you haven't studied. On average you'll get roughly 17 minutes to solve, explain and code a leetcode medium with optimal efficiency and no bugs. Either that or 35 minutes to do a leetcode easy followed by a hard. Again with optimal efficiency and no bugs.

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

#514

Post by google234123 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 8:35 PM UTC

jconley wrote: post #493

This largely applies to people that have already produced working software in the real world, but... Companies should trust the people applying based on their resume and ability to talk about what they have done in the past or how they would approach real world problems (organizational, interpersonal, technical). Maybe have them write some small bit of real world code using libraries and frameworks they are familiar…

Could you imagine working with a senior software engineer that couldn't write FizzBuzz? Anyway, I feel your approach may end up selecting for prestige and be more venerable to implicit bias. A recent engineering graduate from Cornell will probably have a much nicer looking resume than someone from some random state university even if they both have strong technical skills.

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

#515

Post by foolfoolz » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

lrem wrote: post #377

People bomb, including good people. That is sadly part of the system. Once I had this candidate. Damn, I know my questions are deceptively simple on purpose, but he literally couldn't do anything. Not even a trivial brute force. Not even any related simple knowledge questions. Couldn't tell an average from a median. The only good thing I could write in the feedback was "seems to know some basic syntax". It was quite…

i worked at a company where i had done over 150 interviews and the company did at least 10 interviews a day at the office i was at. we did metrics on what times of day or days of the week or rooms.

before lunch or 4pm or later interviews we’re worse across all candidates

certain rooms we knew were smelly, loud, or poorly converted from like a storage closet scored worse across all candidates

we took some rooms out of the rotation and made sure everyone was well fed/had drinks. the effect is real

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

#516

Post by taurath » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

BlahGod420 wrote: post #488

lallysingh wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interviewed a lot of people while I was at Google, and sometimes the people were clearly, clearly too anxious to interview. Like one fresh-grad who's hands were shaking. I thought about how much pressure the kid must have been under. You try to help them relax, but you don't have much time, and the whole thing is just so unnatural. Other places I've since been at, and interviewed with, give you a laptop, a problem…

Microsoft interview. I was just graduating college, and was super anxious walking in to my first interview. The interviewer realized that writing on the whiteboard was going to be awkward for the problem he was asking me to solve so he let me just sit down at his computer while he hung out to to the side and watched me work in notepad. I think that was the best way to do that interview, because the second I started w…

Nowadays that's "favoritism" in an interview and it wouldn't fly. Everyone must pass through the same meatgrinder (that, surprise, fails people other than white men more often).

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

#517

Post by lbrito » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

soared wrote: post #463

lbrito wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this one interview some time ago where instead of having the HR person talk about what the company does and prod me to see if I was curious/interested in what it is they do, the opposite was expected to happen. That obviously didn't go well. After the usual "tell me about yourself" stuff, the HR rep asked me what I knew about the company and was noticeably disappointed when I said I had only accessed the homepa…

From your perspective why wouldn’t you spent 15 minutes learning about the companies and it’s products?

I did, they wanted more.

15 minutes gets you a general outline of what they do, a superficial notion of culture etc. I had that, but they wanted more in-depth knowledge of their products and culture.

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

#518

Post by colinmorelli » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #406

hawk_ wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why does it have to happen in a high pressure situation with only 45 minutes though? there's no analog to that in professional coding.

HBO's Silicon Valley is dramatized, but I can't be the only one who's coded from the the convention hall floor/hotel, or had to setup servers "live". Every time a site gets unexpectedly popular (/. effect; HN hug of death) and dies, and comes back, there's someone at the other end who's probably close to tears trying to get their site back up ASAP. That doesn't indict the fact that's the exception and that software p…

Have you ever actually tried a take home exercise? Or is this just based on your perceived concerns?

In the years I have been doing take-home exercises for candidates, I have yet to see a single instance of a great take home leading to a terrible on-site or hire in terms of technical skill. There have definitely been great take-homes for candidates that we later chose not to hire, but usually due to challenges interacting with the product team, or in some cases too much fixation on technical perfection with no focus on business realities, etc. If there are a large number of candidates paying others to do their take homes for them, they should be asking for refunds.

Second, even if this is a problem, there's a very simple solution. For candidates that do well on the take home, either on a call or on the on-site, do a live code review with the candidate and ask them to explain a bit more about why they wrote the code the way that they did. Ask them questions about other approaches, or what they'd do if they have more time. Candidates will be significantly more comfortable talking about their own code they wrote. It'll be quite clear if the candidate didn't write it themselves.

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

#519

Post by reverite » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 8:37 PM UTC

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #499

rsweeney21 wrote: post #448

I'm a ex-FANG dev that started a recruiting company, so I am VERY familiar with the arbitrary tech interview process. I'm a huge proponent of contract-to-hire. Even started a company* to make it easier for companies to offer contract-to-hire. Now before you dismiss the idea because you are "too good" to do C2H hear me out. Everyone knows that actually working with someone on the job is the only way to get an accurate…

As a candidate, I'd rather get a non-insignificant RSU grant up front, with a vesting schedule that begins day 1, than play the will-I-actually-be-brought-on-full-time game.

Companies have no incentive to bring you on full time, either. They can lie and tell you that you will at the end of the term, but it'll either be met with "we do not need this position anymore" or continual contract extensions because the market is suddenly unfavorable, there's no headcount, or some other excuse.

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

#520

Post by willcipriano » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 8:38 PM UTC

roldie wrote: post #258

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 usuall…

>I panic and put too much effort into trying to figure out what they want to see

My approach for take home challenges is this. Often I complete them and never even get any feedback from the firm beyond a form rejection letter. If that is going to be the case anyway I might as well make something I'm proud to have in my portfolio, even if it doesn't line up with exactly what they are asking for. That transforms the work from something that I'm doing for them to something I'm doing for me. I know that's hard when you are unemployed and have bills to pay, but if at the end of the day you have some work that at least meets with your expectations you can retain that bit of your pride.