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

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

#951

Post by soamv » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 3:29 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 so glad this realization is the top comment on HN.

I think Fizzbuzz can be actually a reverse test: if an experienced programmer can fail fizzbuzz in an interview, then maybe it's the interviewer who screwed up.

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

#952

Post by andrewflnr » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 3:29 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #729

andrewflnr wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think that the people giving the questions and interacting with the applicant should be different from the ones judging their results. This also gives you the opportunity to blind the judging for race, gender, etc. The proctor should be explicitly on the applicant's "side" IMO.

I used to 'sit in' on interviews, and basically say very little except to answer questions about working here or to serve as the 'linter' to get them unstuck. You hear something very different than the person who asked the question. And in one case I discovered that my coworker had been asking a question that he thought he knew the answer to and did not; a deep clone implementation (where he never asked about cyclic…

I assumed it rather than say it out loud, but my idea is to have standard, vetted questions, to reduce the risk of a question being mal-formed like that (unless you want to see how they make tradeoffs in response to an overambitious spec). Your situation sounds rather different. Do you think my scenario would work better?

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

#953

Post by davedx » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 3:32 PM UTC

bananaface wrote: post #880

StavrosK wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 woul…

You're misunderstanding what they're trying to test. They're testing your raw ability to manipulate algorithmic structure in your head. It's important that you have to visualise the data structures and manipulate them without being able to look it up. It's an brainpower test, not a workflow test.

Which is fine if your job is really going to be centred around developing algorithmic software in a unique or high pressure way. The problem is most software engineering day jobs are nothing like this, so the test is not a good filter.

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

#954

Post by vonmoltke » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 3:34 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #697

ccajas wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People easily identify that white-boarding interviews suck for more than just the interviewee. And yet any time a solution is proposed that involves doing something other than putting the candidate in a room in front of a whiteboard for an hour, it's shot down. Most people take issue with the repetition of similar tests and evaluations for multiple companies. If A, B, and C were considered different stages of a tec…

> Programmers largely oppose industry-wide regulation ... of programming (because the regulation would never be able to catch up to the state of the art), sure. Of HR practices? I don't think I've ever heard an engineering lead lament that their company's restrictive HR practices prevent them from testing candidates the way they want. > and it's not something that a single company alone can fix Sure they can: micro-c…

> Someone needs to be the CompTIA of tiny programming challenges, where you prove once-and-for-all (in a proctored situation) that you can solve FizzBuzz or whatever, and get that fact recorded in some database.

I don't think any of the major companies would accept such a solution. I mean, they make people who already passed their own interviews once re-interview if they leave and come back or apply again too long after they pass and decline. If a company isn't willing to trust its own interview process as a once-and-for-all test, why would they even consider doing so for a third party test?

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

#955

Post by d3ntb3ev1l » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 3:41 PM UTC

Our industry has created this mess thanks to that stupid crackin “book” and process designed by someone who never actually worked as a software engineer or released and maintained an actual product.

When I “cracked” my Google interview and got the job, I joined a team I never met. Of course we all could code , since we “cracked it”, but did I enjoy the team dynamics or team culture? Nice people but if they were a 10 person startup I wouldn’t choose them or would they have been successful.

None of the social dynamics which are important to teams was there or even fostered, acknowledged.

You just did a transfer and kept fishing.

Why, b/c Google just believe coding skills are all that mattered.

Yet they matter, but so do other things.

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

#956

Post by bananaface » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

davedx wrote: post #953

bananaface wrote: post #880

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're misunderstanding what they're trying to test. They're testing your raw ability to manipulate algorithmic structure in your head. It's important that you have to visualise the data structures and manipulate them without being able to look it up. It's an brainpower test, not a workflow test.

Which is fine if your job is really going to be centred around developing algorithmic software in a unique or high pressure way. The problem is most software engineering day jobs are nothing like this, so the test is not a good filter.

I mean, I can see why they would want to test both. Horsepower is a good indicator.

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

#957

Post by DabbyDabberson » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 3:49 PM UTC

Anxiety management is absolutely foremost in these interviews. I did not successfully get through one of these interviews until I started experimenting with taking anxiolytics beforehand.

I eventually found that a moderate does of phenibut 5 hours prior was an ideal balance of social inhibition vs the types of impairments that come with these drugs.

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

#958

Post by cutemonster » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 3:58 PM UTC

rikroots wrote: post #925

mark-r wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once brought a laptop to an interview. Completely bombed it, because when asked to connect it to a projector I couldn't do it - I'd never used the video output on that laptop before and it was hidden behind a flip-down door that I didn't know about.

I completely bombed an interview because they gave me a laptop but refused to supply a mouse. Plus the laptop touchpad scrolled in the opposite direction to what I was used to. I felt quite sorry for the interviewers who had to sit silent for ten minutes watching me try to copy a function from one file to another.

Mark and rikroots, I'm curious about how long it took for you to travel to the interview and back

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

#959

Post by cutemonster » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 4:01 PM UTC

ccajas wrote: post #692

Sivart13 wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

>"Take home" questions are heavily biased in favor of the employer because they're not required to put anything on the line. Not to mention it doesn't test the collaboration aspects of real work. Imagine doing your job but you're not allowed to talk to your teammates in case of a blocker. How are we doing our jobs here? But when it comes down to actually starting them, I will always pass if they come before any inter…

And maybe excludes short of time people taking care of kids? Maybe more often women

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

#960

Post by altoidaltoid » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 4:40 PM UTC

woeirua wrote: post #287

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is essentially the point of a lot of hiring and performance evaluation theory. E.g. it's acceptable (but not ideal) not to promote talented commanders. It's catastrophic to promote someone to General who isn't ready or is unsuited.

And yet, time and time again we see that Generals promoted during peace-time rarely have the skills necessary to lead men under intense combat conditions. The best generals are identified on the battlefield.

Coming from a military background, I can confidently say that promotions at that level are more the end of a political process than a true assessment of skills...