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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

#711

Post by learc83 »

cwkoss wrote: post #660

I'm pretty proud of the interview loop we use at DefenseStorm: - First section is "pair programming". We try to replicate what coding on the job is actually like: you can whatever IDE/REPL/language you want and can use google to look up docs. Our problem is specifically designed to be a fiddly problem which leads to edge-case handling with no possible 'beautiful algorithm' answer. Once they get the first solution, th…

That is very close to how I interview people. The worst thing about white board coding is the adversarial relationship between you and the interviewer. It’s so much less stressful when you can team up with the interviewer to work on a problem together, and it’s much closer to being a real work sample test.

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

#712

Post by heavyset_go »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #494
dcow wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe we should interview with small take-home tasks to be submitted with some write-ups to test how people research, reason, and write-up problems, rather than writing code on the spot on a whiteboard. ...but maybe that's just me. I'm a huge fan of giving people tasks that somewhat resemble a real world problem they'd likely encounter or at least aligns categorically with their proclaimed resume feats and more impo…

> However, I'm usually instantly met with the "oh well we don't want to expect too much of our interview candidates" mentality as if asking them to do a "take home" (rather than telling them to figure out how to take a day off of work for an onsite panel) is somehow grotesquely disrespecting their time and would make the company look bad if the broader community even got a whiff that it had been considered. I'm so co…

> Honestly, as a candidate, I would be 100% satisfied with a bitesize fix to an open source library that your company maintains, or even a bitesize fix to a closed source library under contract. Or pair the candidate with an employee who is working on a real, minor task at your company, and let the candidate "drive". Give me something real to do, not some contrived situation about an ordering system or building the next Twitter.

It can take relative ages to become familiar with a code base, especially a large one, such that you can easily hop in and commit fixes that actually work. I'm not going to spend hours trying to gain context for the code, or deploying and testing it.

The employer is going to ghost 80% of their candidates anyway, and if your fix does work, you just did free work that benefits the company for little to no gain for yourself.

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

#713

Post by [deleted] »

tomlagier wrote: post #274

This is likely a source of gender disparity in technology. Men tend to be more confident in math and engineering situations, even when they know as much or less than their female peers (the much-reported "gender confidence gap")[1][2][3]. We are disadvantaging equally capable women by using an interview format they are less likely to do well on. [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1949-8594... [2]…

[deleted]

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

#715

Post by voltagex_ »

Sivart13 wrote: post #521
dcow wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe we should interview with small take-home tasks to be submitted with some write-ups to test how people research, reason, and write-up problems, rather than writing code on the spot on a whiteboard. ...but maybe that's just me. I'm a huge fan of giving people tasks that somewhat resemble a real world problem they'd likely encounter or at least aligns categorically with their proclaimed resume feats and more impo…

"Take home" questions are heavily biased in favor of the employer because they're not required to put anything on the line. An asynchronous test is definitely more flexible for all parties, but it also means the employer can more forward with far more interviews than they would be able to do in person. Leading to more candidates wasting their time doing nonsense work when they have proportionally less of a chance of…

The "easy" fix for this is to pay the candidate for the time spent on the take-home.

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

#716

Post by hinkley »

nend wrote: post #607
dcow wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe we should interview with small take-home tasks to be submitted with some write-ups to test how people research, reason, and write-up problems, rather than writing code on the spot on a whiteboard. ...but maybe that's just me. I'm a huge fan of giving people tasks that somewhat resemble a real world problem they'd likely encounter or at least aligns categorically with their proclaimed resume feats and more impo…

I don't like take homes for two reasons: 1) It's less time spent talking with potential coworkers. Which for me, coworkers (and how we work together/get along) determine about 90% of how satisfied I am with my job (assuming pay/benefits are standard). 2) You're still going to require me to take a day off and stand up in front of a whiteboard anyway eventually. Every take home I've done is an early stage filter. The f…

There comes a point in an interview where you're not sure you want the job given what you've seen, and any judgement of the candidate's ability once they've checked out is useless.

You can learn a lot about a person by what questions they chose to ask you, but only if it's not a thing tacked onto the end of a long interview. If they haven't gotten much time to ask you questions, they only have your interview questions to go on. Which you know are not representative of the kind of work you do (but then, why are you asking them?)

So because you only ever talked to them about things that could readily be had off the shelf, and this is the only information they have, they can't know if you're bad at interviewing or some psycho who spends all their time reinventing wheels and then demanding that other people be impressed by your insanity.

The chances of the latter are bigger than you think. So if it's down to you or another opening, they'll take the other opening, and then you've wasted everyone's time.

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

#717

Post by tqi »

schreiaj wrote: post #339
harryh wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

If you explain extenuating circumstances to your recruiting contact, you probably can get a chance to reinterview sooner than the usual cool off period (especially if you did well in the earlier rounds).

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

#718

Post by tazedsoul »

The tech industry, if it can manage to do it, would benefit immensely from enacting interviewing methodologies that aren’t ultimately rooted in an underlying need to haze others. It’s as if the CS nerds forgot that when the frats hazed others we were disgusted by it.

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

#719

Post by maxwindiff »

MattGaiser wrote: post #132
Judgmentality wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That and debate gave me the ability to just start a sentence without knowing where it will end and then talk my way to a conclusion that sounds like it makes sense You're effectively advocating for more bullshit. The problem is that this works in the first place - we shouldn't be rewarding it.

He isn’t advocating it. He is just saying that you must play the system as it is.

I don't know if he is really advocating it, but I absolutely support the notion that programmers should learn to bullshit better.

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

#720

Post by IggleSniggle »

drdrey wrote: post #631
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just you :) A much more realistic way to test people is to tell them to bring their laptop, point to a problem on the whiteboard and say "here, solve it, and use whatever resources you need." I'm somewhat like you; I do a wide variety of tasks every day and simply can't keep all the different rules and syntaxes in my head. I'm terrible at tests anyway and would probably bomb a FAANG interview badly because o…

I don't even have a personal laptop, seems like bringing the employer provided laptop to interviews is not the most sensible.

I have a personal laptop but I haven't used it in a few years. I spend every productive moment deep in the weeds on my employers laptop!

I'm not sure I would even look like a proficient computer users on my personal laptop. It runs Windows, and at this point my macos work environment is so heavily customized that I'd be bound to get tripped up just by the sudden unexpected need to use a mouse.

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