Hiring Without Whiteboards • Hacker News Board

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#251

Post by asdff » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 9:02 AM UTC

WesternStar wrote: post #90

virtuous_signal wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is statistical data saying the opposite Interesting study and really good discussion on HN at the time, but the opposite of "[Whiteboard interviews] often give a very good and reasonable signal that often has a high corollary to work performance" would be something like "People who do well at whiteboard interviews tend to be worse performers at work." I don't think that's what the study said at all; rather tha…

Also people act as though software is a job without anxiety. There is plenty of anxiety in this job. Sometimes under pressure you really do have to perform or push back and its good to know if people can do it.

It doesn't have to be stressful. Whether or not you have a gun to your head is due to management. Deadlines are an abstract concept created by humans and can always be moved. The best companies keep them very elastic.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#252

Post by usgroup » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 9:02 AM UTC

It’s a funny cultural thing. Here is a caricature:

Hiring managers have a real problem to solve: “how do I hire?”. They don’t have the time to conduct actual experiments and work out what actually relates to better hiring. So they trivialise the solution into some assumption about how the information captured in an interview generalises to overall suitability. They then proceed to defend the process and it’s results as if it was state of the art because bad hiring = bad management in the politics game.

To me it feels obvious that whiteboards, pair programming , take home tasks, panel interviews , etc are all subject to being highly flakey and highly presumptive not least because repeatable processes are just hard to enforce and train people on.

What really works is survival. Practically every company has a probationary period but it’s rare that once you’re in you’ll get bounced out in my experience. IMO bite the bullet, over hire and then collect the cream based on evaluation of the total output and the teams impressions in the probationary period ...

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#253

Post by asdff » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 9:09 AM UTC

judofyr wrote: post #238

collyw wrote: post #237

Here is how to do a tech interview that (I think) will work for everyone. I am sharing in the hope that this will become the standard, it was certainly the most pleasant technical interview that i have had, and somewhere where our industry is badly broken. I was asked to bring in my laptop with some of my own code - I had a side project at the time, so no problem. We talked about the code, decisions I had made. I was…

> I was asked to bring in my laptop with some of my own code - I had a side project at the time, so no problem. Seems like a good solution if the candidate has a side project. However, many candidates might have their majority of the "good" code they've written owned by their previous company. > I am sharing in the hope that this will become the standard Hopefully it can become a standard option . There's probably ne…

>However, many candidates might have their majority of the "good" code they've written owned by their previous company.

Which is a huge problem in this field that stymies wider innovation in technology by limiting discussion around technology through literal gag orders. You should be able to reuse whatever you write. It's silly. I'm not stealing cash out of the register, the company doesn't lose anything from me keeping a copy of my code snippet around for future reference. It's not the whole codebase, it's just what I've contributed. I swear, lawyers have ruined technology.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#254

Post by asdff » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 9:13 AM UTC

dbcurtis wrote: post #116

Personally, the anxiety of whiteboard “coding as performance art” makes my brain freeze. I see it as a broken process. It certainly selects against me. I think you can learn more useful stuff about a programmer by showing them a function prototype and asking how to black-box test it. Then show them complete code, and ask them to white-box test it. Test cases or a test plan, depending on scale. Then a discussion of te…

In higher education there has been a lot of walk back from tests like the GRE in most fields. It turns out, being good at the GRE only correlates to your ability to be good at taking the GRE, and doesn't correlate with actual graduate school performance or outcomes.

Performative interviews occupy a similar space. You spend all this time and effort studying for something at is ultimately irrelevant outside of the interview. Just a pure waste of brain cells and calories, with a few new gray hairs for you.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#255

Post by asdff » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 9:20 AM UTC

fazkan wrote: post #172

A. this is a good list. B. Lets not forget that whiteboarding is not all evil. If used correctly, it can filter out a lot of people that don't have good CS fundamentals. By fundamentals, I don't mean inverting a binary tree. At the end of the day, as a technical manager, the goal is to hire smart+hard working people.

But are you really hiring smart+hardworking people or just people who are really great at working on a whiteboard?

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#256

Post by fogetti » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 9:21 AM UTC

hejja wrote: post #205

crsv wrote: post #38

Here we go again perpetuating the stereotype of the whiney privileged engineer put in a position of mild discomfort by the villainous abusive white board interview boogeyman. I don’t mind whiteboard interview exercises. They’re not great, but they often give a very good and reasonable signal that often has a high corollary to work performance. I think there’s bigger fish to fry in refining fair and objective intervie…

100%. if properly trained, interviewers ask questions that build without throwing the kitchen sink at you. whiteboard interviews (when done holistically) assess for signal, not binary correctness - do you have a solid framework to build a solution? - are you considering multiple approaches / data structures / complexities - referencing similar problems, vocabulary, situations to illustrate breadth of knowledge sure,…

You can confirm the same using a take-home assignment and a code review together with the candidate. Or even with an on-site pair programming. Neither of those require whiteboards.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#257

Post by fogetti » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 9:23 AM UTC

logicslave wrote: post #88

rainyMammoth wrote: post #86

The issue with LeetCode style interview is that almost EVERYONE can solve those questions after studying a couple weeks/months. The only thing that LeetCode questions predict is if the candidate has been training for LeetCode questions. The fact that Google, Facebook etc still use it as a gatekeeping mechanism makes me believe they want to find cogs that will specifically spend hours studying for it. Making sure that…

Right but in some ways this is what they need. Someone who can stare at computer science material, that is probably boring, for long periods of time. Someone who has a good memory for details, can remember routines. Can "solve" problems that have been solved before by applying theory. Someone who is willing to follow the rules and go through the process.

I think you made a logical somersault. Leetcode doesn't imply any of those, neither good memory for details or that you can "solve" problems that have been solved before by applying theory.

You missed the whole point of the OP's post it seems. The only thing that leetcode implies is that you can solve leetcode tasks.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#258

Post by C1sc0cat » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 9:23 AM UTC

qchris wrote: post #184

perl4ever wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My former employer, a Fortune 500 company, wouldn't let me volunteer for a globally recognized charity because the boilerplate agreement the charity required volunteers sign, stated that IP created as a volunteer belonged to them, and my employer considered that everything within or outside work hours was theirs. Not that I was volunteering as a programmer anyway. My current employer doesn't have explicit rules that…

I was under the impression that this kind of interpretation of employment contracts was more or less illegal (or, at the very least, unenforceable) in many states (I'm assuming you're US, programming in Fortune 500, so maybe not applicable?). Sort of fits into the same kind vein as certain non-compete clauses, where companies put them in, but they'd be tossed out pretty quickly in court should things actually reach t…

Its whether its related work that is the issue, for example if your in a band and write songs they cant claim that.

And its not really the "employment contract" in Anglo Saxon legal systems its pretty much assumed.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#259

Post by asdff » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 9:24 AM UTC

langitbiru wrote: post #197

Maybe we should give options to candidates. If I were to hire software engineers, I would offer every option to them: 1. Whiteboard interview 2. Opensource contributions 3. Take-home assignment 4. Becoming contractors for a short period 5. Etc So if they fail whiteboard interview, they can redeem themselves with their opensource contributions. If they don't have opensource contributions, then they can take home our a…

Why is US-based computer science seemingly the only field with these strange nonstandard interview processes? It's like a fad that turned into an arms race and is now the default response for any american technology company's HR department, because these guys certainly aren't in HR for their creativity.

Re: Hiring Without Whiteboards

#260

Post by silasdavis » Wed, Jul 29, 2020, 9:24 AM UTC

usgroup wrote: post #252

It’s a funny cultural thing. Here is a caricature: Hiring managers have a real problem to solve: “how do I hire?”. They don’t have the time to conduct actual experiments and work out what actually relates to better hiring. So they trivialise the solution into some assumption about how the information captured in an interview generalises to overall suitability. They then proceed to defend the process and it’s results…

The ultra darwinian workplace is probably not a fun place to be. Also it sounds implicit in survival that there is some obviously fairer natural law that governs who survives. It's another judgement by someone with similar repeatability issues, albeit a judgement with more observation time (and more collateral damage to everyone else who is in fear of losing their job).