The technical interview is an ego trip • Hacker News Board

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#51

Post by allenu » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

I really like the interview process the author lays out here. As someone who has been working for about 20 years in the industry, this feels like a better, more direct gauge of how well someone will fit in the role than of seeing if they know how to invert a binary tree. I do think it's still worth doing some sort of coding question, but it doesn't have to be some intricate algorithmic puzzle. It can be as simple as, "How would you design X?" for design and some data structure algorithm question, but something that does not take up the bulk of the interview. (Perhaps one interview in the loop could be devoted to hands-on coding.)

One of the best interviews I had, and I'm biased here since i hit out of the park, was one where the interviewer literally gave me a laptop and told me to code a simple iOS app. I was applying as a senior iOS developer with many years experience, so it was totally fair to ask it. Having written several apps on the side, I got straight to work and knew exactly how to set up data structures, algorithms, and trade-offs. Even with my experience, I was not able to finish the complete app in the time allotted, but I was able to breeze through all the elements of of what go into designing an app from scratch.

I had a few more interviews and later they offered me a job, but I ended up working elsewhere. Interestingly, the place I did take a job at had more traditional tech interviews, which I actually found too easy compared to larger tech companies, however there was more long-term growth available there and the pay was much better.

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#52

Post by sushshshsh » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #27

darth_avocado wrote: post #6

Can we also add to the list of things that we don't need 8 interviews AND a tech screen to figure out whether a person can code?

I don't think I've ever done more than 5 interviews plus a phone screen in a single loop. Who tried to put you through 8 hours of on-site interviews?

Not them but for my last job at a mid tier company i did 6 hours of onsite total, and amazon/fb both were 4 hours each not including the screen(s)

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#53

Post by finnthehuman » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 10:02 PM UTC

callmeed wrote: post #30

TheCapn wrote: post #10

This was my take on interviewing with Amazon at one point a long while ago. The initial interview itself was pretty straight forward, but it seemed like every answer I gave was "wrong" because the interviewer was looking for key phrases instead of understanding of the concepts. We talked about hashing, and when he asked if I knew what hashing was I said sure, its a one-way function to create a unique identifier. He a…

Sorry about that bad experience. It sounds like the interviewer wasn't good at communicating. To be fair, it also sounds like you were conflating popular hash functions like md5 with the general concept of a hashing data structure and underlying function. Knowing that modulus operation is one approach and knowing common approaches for dealing with collisions are part of that. See: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/hashin…

>Knowing that modulus operation is one approach and knowing common approaches for dealing with collisions are part of that

Yes, expecting them to know that is reasonable. Expecting them to regurgitate that factoid unprompted is bullshit.

Don't inquire on a topic and expect a canidate speaking in generalities and off the cuff to overlap with your toy facts.

I'm fighting the urge to rant in the comments here on how to competently conduct a useful technical interview; but I'm more and more convinced it's a competitive advantage.

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#54

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 10:04 PM UTC

smabie wrote: post #43

pmiller2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what the interviewers expect, but, generally, your "reward" for admitting you've seen the problem before is a harder question to answer. It seems more in the candidate's interest to pretend to work out the solution than to be honest.

Yeah, I've been asked a lot of leetcode questions and always pause for a couple minutes before the answer hits me in a "brilliant" stroke of insight. This con works really well.

[deleted]

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#55

Post by aeternum » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 10:05 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #35

TheCapn wrote: post #10

This was my take on interviewing with Amazon at one point a long while ago. The initial interview itself was pretty straight forward, but it seemed like every answer I gave was "wrong" because the interviewer was looking for key phrases instead of understanding of the concepts. We talked about hashing, and when he asked if I knew what hashing was I said sure, its a one-way function to create a unique identifier. He a…

I don't take crap like this from interviewers. One time an interviewer asked me "how would you go about counting the ridges of a US quarter?" I rattled off some ideas about counting the ridges in an arc and then multiplying to get total ridges but the interviewer kept prodding and eventually ended the question and said he was looking for me to say "google it" (I didn't realize it was a known, fixed number). I just ro…

When he inevitably asked you to code an algorithm as the next question I hope he also accepted using Google for the answer.

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#56

Post by roflc0ptic » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

Man. I interviewed somewhere last week for a Scala position, advertising myself as a functional programmer.

In the interview, they asked me, "What's the difference between fold left and fold right?" I said "Um, one of them starts on the left side of the data structure, one of them starts on the right. I never remember which is which." They said essentially: "okay. The answer I was looking for was that fold right is not stack safe." I protested weakly, and they dug in, so I graciously let it go.

But it's patently not true. A naive implementation of fold right in Scala isn't stack safe, but the actual implementation is stack safe. It's been stack safe since like 2010. So rather than interrogating my knowledge of functional programming, they're just asking me bullshit language trivia, and dinging me when I don't come up with their arbitrary wrong answer.

I wanted to work there before that, but the interview made me a little ambivalent, and then they just ghosted me. So I guess I dodged a bullet. But man, that was frustrating.

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#57

Post by commandlinefan » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

ng12 wrote: post #16

Articles like this always underestimate how many bullshit artists there are out there. The technical interview is not perfect but it is still far more meritocratic than many fields.

Not only that, but the only concrete example the author gives is that they asked him about red-black trees. Probing knowledge of data structures is very relevant to day-to-day software development work: even if you don't actually implement them (or haven't since college), having a good knowledge of how they work is the only way to make intelligent decisions about tradeoffs involving them.

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#58

Post by pmiller2 » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

glangdale wrote: post #47

Ego Trip is the right phrase. A lot of the traditional algorithms puzzler interviews amount to the material being covered in an adversarial, closed-book fashion for the interviewee, after the interviewer has themselves gotten to master the material in a "at your leisure" fashion with an open book. I wouldn't mind getting asked nasty questions about red-black trees or Krushkal vs Prim or something if I knew the person…

> I wouldn't mind getting asked nasty questions about red-black trees or Krushkal vs Prim or something if I knew the person sitting across from me had taken a "pass this test under these same conditions or you're fired" type scenario. It wouldn't make these interviews a good idea, but it's the reek of hypocrisy about them that puts it over the top for me.

The only equivalent I know of this is a PhD oral comprehensive exam. I get your point regarding the hypocrisy of it all, but I don't think I would be into it, even if my interviewer had a PhD and had done something similar.

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#59

Post by yodsanklai » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

emerged wrote: post #28

TheCapn wrote: post #10

This was my take on interviewing with Amazon at one point a long while ago. The initial interview itself was pretty straight forward, but it seemed like every answer I gave was "wrong" because the interviewer was looking for key phrases instead of understanding of the concepts. We talked about hashing, and when he asked if I knew what hashing was I said sure, its a one-way function to create a unique identifier. He a…

Sounds like my Google interview. By the end I had absolutely no interest in working there. Such a toxic environment. The guy they had take me to lunch also seemed completely miserable. Dunno if that was representative of Google or big companies in general but it turned me off forever.

I don't think this is representative.

I did about 20+ technical interviews at Google/Facebook over the last 2 years.

Overall, the interviewers were competent. Sometimes you could tell that they didn't really enjoy interviewing people but it was ok. I only had one interviewer I'd consider bad (gave confused advice to lead me to his solution), but maybe it was just a personality mismatch.

I had better experience with more senior interviewers too, and I found Facebook better than Google (although similar), on every respects (choice of questions, team matching process, more interesting projects...).

My main complaint is that I've found the whole process random. Right now I'm in the team matching phase at Google, but not sure it'll go through (and it's not the best time).

Re: The technical interview is an ego trip

#60

Post by phkahler » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 10:12 PM UTC

jbay808 wrote: post #49

umvi wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't take crap like this from interviewers. One time an interviewer asked me "how would you go about counting the ridges of a US quarter?" I rattled off some ideas about counting the ridges in an arc and then multiplying to get total ridges but the interviewer kept prodding and eventually ended the question and said he was looking for me to say "google it" (I didn't realize it was a known, fixed number). I just ro…

I don't think googling is even a valid answer. If he asked "how would you find out how many ridges are on a quarter" then yes (and I think Google it would be everyone's first answer). But counting, as a verb implies the act of measurement, not just obtaining the final number. Assuming that he used that word, it sounds like a trick question.

I was once asked how many golfballs could fit in a school bus. I blathered on about measurements of the bus, volume of a ball, the average due to gaps between balls, are the seats still there, etc... bottom line we could spend a lot of time getting an ever more precise estimate. The guy seemed satisfied. Later at home I realised that my test engineer friend may have suggested doing an actual experiment - rent a bus and a few tons of balls. The later would be easy since there is a local company here that recovers lost balls from golf courses (even from the water), repaints the and sells to driving ranges. You can buy them in bulk.

Which answer is better? Which were they looking for? Who knows.