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

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

#681

Post by VRay » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:05 PM UTC

u67583 wrote: post #401

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…

It's not just nerves either. All interviews, but especially FAANG ones, are random. The interview might be racist, sexist, etc. They might have gotten divorced that day. The question they ask you is something you haven't heard of but they spent their PhD on. You can even do everything correctly, but the interviewer doesn't like the way you did it. The leetcode stuff is just masochism. You will spend X months beating…

I agree with you for the most part, but Google goes out of its way to force the interviewer to just hand in an emotionless, gender-neutral description of the candidate's code and coding performance to a hiring committee that makes the decision

This kinda bit me in the rear when I applied to Google a couple of times. As a nerdy American male, aged 22 to 40, with above-average people skills (for nerds) I got along great with everyone I talked to. But the hiring committee would get a sloppy page of half-functional garbage code, along with a note like "Seems like a great candidate". I found another FAANG company I fit into a lot better anyway, so it all worked out great

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

#682

Post by bumby » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:07 PM UTC

itronitron wrote: post #630

timClicks wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this. Hiring the wrong person can be ridiculously expensive, especially if they linger on in a role for years corroding the culture.

obligatory request for citation

Not trying to be snarky but isn’t it intuitively more expensive assuming you’ll try to fire and then rehire correctly? It’s like asking “why does it cost more to go through a process twice rather than once?”

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

#683

Post by VRay » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:08 PM UTC

speeder wrote: post #422

benburleson wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is the king of assessing how much you want to work for the company. The recruiter will place a huge emphasis on nailing their Leadership Principles, and coming up with stories from your work to demonstrate you embody the Principles. They will even tell you that specific interviewers have specific LPs they will probe on, but in the actual interview they ask very veiled questions and you're supposed to know that…

When I interviewed at Amazon last time, I paused all my other work, even my full time job, to focus on it. Wasn't well treated at interview day (people forgot me in a room for several hours for example, also had interviewers arrive late, among other issues), and probably didn't pass because there was some questions about LP that I couldn't answer, basically all interviewers without exception asked the same question o…

Amazon's a fucking pit of vipers anyway, dude, you're better off. If your potential future teammates were so busy putting out fires that they couldn't meet up with you on time, that team was probably in bad shape too

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

#684

Post by bumby » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:10 PM UTC

mattkrause wrote: post #605

bumby wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, there's a famous study showing those doing the judging "can't think when hungry" either. (Or, at least can't think unbiasedly).[1] [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889

That study turned out to be quite flawed, because the cases were ordered [1]. In particular, cases were grouped by prison and within each prison, prisoners without an attorney went last. As the well-known saying goes, "the man who represents himself has a fool for a client": the pro se prisoners fare far worse than those with a lawyer. Judges tried to complete an entire prison before taking a meal break, and therefor…

Ah, thank you! The more I look into a lot of these (in)famous behavioral psychology studies, many don’t hold up or aren’t replicable. As a layman who is simply interested in the topic, I appreciate the correction and insight!

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

#685

Post by coffeefirst » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:11 PM UTC

speeder wrote: post #422

benburleson wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is the king of assessing how much you want to work for the company. The recruiter will place a huge emphasis on nailing their Leadership Principles, and coming up with stories from your work to demonstrate you embody the Principles. They will even tell you that specific interviewers have specific LPs they will probe on, but in the actual interview they ask very veiled questions and you're supposed to know that…

When I interviewed at Amazon last time, I paused all my other work, even my full time job, to focus on it. Wasn't well treated at interview day (people forgot me in a room for several hours for example, also had interviewers arrive late, among other issues), and probably didn't pass because there was some questions about LP that I couldn't answer, basically all interviewers without exception asked the same question o…

Weird but fascinating. That question suggests:

1. They have a lot of problems with people who come and can't get stuff done in a giant organization

2. They don't try to teach newcomers how to get stuff done in a giant organization. Which would be the obvious answer to those problems.

I'm admittedly stretching a little, but I find more often than not the kinds of questions people ask tell you a lot about what they're trying to select for. (Or, for a lot of orgs, that they have no idea what they're trying to select for.)

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

#686

Post by decafninja » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:12 PM UTC

tluyben2 wrote: post #583

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…

Not sure if that is FAANG or US but nah; I recommend people and people recommend me to large corps and the interview is pleasant banter and nothing else. If I see a whiteboard I would walk out anyway; what is this, grade school? If my resume and references do not help then I have no interest working for you.

I'm sure there are still companies like that out there, but getting fewer and fewer. My current company (bank, non-tech) hired like that when I joined 5+ years ago. At most you would have gotten some language or framework trivia questions. Fast forward to today, and interviews are now all leetcode on whiteboard - just like a FAANG, albeit easier with lower standards. My direct manager and half my team is in London, so I know any UK candidates also get leetcoded the same way US candidates are.

Same thing with other banks and hedge funds - 5 years ago I think the only major bank that leetcoded me was Goldman, and even that was leetcode easy level. Today, every bank leetcodes candidates AFAIK.

Pretty much every company, both tech and non-tech, I've interviewed with the past 3 years has done leetcode interviews at various levels of difficulty and rigor. Interestingly enough, recently FAANG and a few other top tech companies seem be creating frontend specific interview tracks that are arguably more practical tests of JavaScript knowledge rather than pure leetcode problems.

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

#687

Post by CobrastanJorji » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:19 PM UTC

markandrewj wrote: post #619

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…

It's also sort of ironic how studies repeatedly show high preforming teams, are cognitively diverse teams. Even though research shows this, the hiring strategy of most technology companies, is hiring new employees with the same skills, and traits, as current employees. https://hbr.org/2017/03/teams-solve-problems-faster-when-the...

This is a critical point that a lot of hiring misses. We talk about building great teams, but the hiring requirements are static and never seem to consider who's currently on the team and what mindsets or backgrounds are missing.

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

#688

Post by txcwpalpha » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:22 PM UTC

benburleson wrote: post #280

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…

Amazon is the king of assessing how much you want to work for the company. The recruiter will place a huge emphasis on nailing their Leadership Principles, and coming up with stories from your work to demonstrate you embody the Principles. They will even tell you that specific interviewers have specific LPs they will probe on, but in the actual interview they ask very veiled questions and you're supposed to know that…

I interviewed with Amazon and I hated the LP bullshit. I hated it so much I gave a ton of feedback and had a very lengthy and illuminating conversation about the process with a friend of mine who works there.

Amazon knows full well what the LP interview experience is like, and it's by design. It's not about "how much you want to work at Amazon", but it's also explicitly, intentionally not about "actually getting to know you".

My friend told me that every Amazon employee has to go through an interviewing training course where they are explicitly told they are not allowed to ask any questions that are not directly related to an LP. In most cases, they don't even get to choose the LP that they are asking about. They are given a specific list of 2-3 LPs, and told that when they come out of the interview room, they must have asked questions about those 3 LPs, taken the answers down as notes, and are explicitly told that they must not ask any other questions or take any other notes.

The explanation I was given is that this is all an intentional attempt to make the interview process as impersonal and consistent across candidates as possible. They intentionally do not want to ask any questions that would lead you to talk about your education or hobbies outside of work, and they intentionally do not want the interviewer coming up with their own, not-pre-approved questions. Apparently they think that this makes it less prone to bias, which I suppose is a good thing in theory, but in my opinion, the execution resulted in a piss-poor experience as a candidate.

Apparently it isn't fun for the interviewers, either. My recruiter warned me that my interviewers would likely be rushed, impersonal, and focused entirely on recording notes about our conversation, because apparently if you are designated as an interviewer you have very strict quotas on the amounts of notes you have to take, and then as soon as the interview is over you have to rush immediately to another interview where you again have to take a certain amount of notes. The entire process sounds awful for everyone involved.

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

#689

Post by lumost » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:24 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…

Senior/Principal Engineers at FAANGs may not even code all that much in their day to day. The difficult decision that gets faced when interviewing those folks is whether they could walk into a fresh environment, and stack, and immediately earn the trust of their team.

In practice whiteboard interviews assess this pretty well. A new senior engineer must immediately be shipping optimal, tested, and well designed code. Otherwise you'll have Junior Engineers coaching Senior Engineers and the Junior Engineers will just get frustrated and leave. Worst case, you'll have an "architect" who never learns how to actually deliver independently in the environment.

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

#690

Post by VRay » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:24 PM UTC

proverbialbunny wrote: post #198

daenz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can smell desperation, and rightly or wrongly, it pushes them away.

This is one of the things I look for when I'm being interviewed. Does the company want me to be desperate? Some companies will only hire those who are desperate and will do anything. I assume, hopefully correctly, that those are the companies not worth working for, so instead I use the interview opportunity to get better at interviewing. Because these companies want to take advantage of their employees, I do not feel…

Careful, lads, it's possible to be TOO confident.

I interviewed at a few places for some really easy, fun-looking jobs while I was doing freelancing. I didn't care if I got the jobs, but they did look trivially easy compared to what I'd been doing earlier in my career. Surprisingly though, after making it through all the technical people and talking to the CEO in every case, I never got the job.

Later on I applied to a really awesome job at a FAANG-class megacorp, and the hiring manager's manager called me. He said "Look, you've gotten the highest marks I've ever seen for a candidate. Everyone loved you. But I have a hunch that you aren't going to be dedicated to this job. So before we move forward, I want your personal promise that you aren't planning to just hop ship in 6 months to start a company or something"

I was JUST starting to get nervous about finding a new job at this point. My consulting work had dried up, I was down to about 3 months' worth of cash, and I was thinking about selling my car to get a few more months' runway while I grind Leetcode in order to be able to pass the bar at Google.

So you can imagine how shocked I was to hear that this guy thought his awesome senior engineer FAANG job wasn't good enough for me. I promised to stick it out, got the job, and so far it's been my favorite job of all time (other than the glorious week where my crypto trading bot was working well and just printing free money..)