I've always preferred to give very serious candidates some technical homework. Make an API that does this particular thing. You have two days. Then we look at what they built and talk about it. It's way more realistic because that's how we actually work-- nobody is coding algorithms on a whiteboard. To any extent, it has worked very well. The people that have done great ended up being great employees and the people that did just enough to pass also did that once they were hired.
“I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”
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Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”
#12Unless you've made it to your "endgame" company that you're happy to stay at for a while, I feel investing anything more than the bare minimum to get your assigned work done is worth less than just grinding leetcode and otherwise studying for interviews. Doing an actual good job, above and beyond, is not going to be worth much when you're looking for your next job.
Thus we're now seeing the rise of Professional Interviewers or Professional Leetcoders. I am ashamed to admit that I too, am one, and probably will continue to be one until I make it into such an "endgame" company.
Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”
#13> Once in a while, though, I'd find someone exceptional who could approach problems differently, and those people would always turn out to be the best hires. They would have been filtered out by these systems. This is the goal. When you’re a large org, you do not need exceptional people, you need foot soldiers who do what they’re told. Yes even in engineering. Most of the day-to-day work boils down to JSON bureacracy…
> code archaelogy
I've never heard this phrase, but it's so apt to most of every dev job I've had. I love it.
Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”
#14Unless you've made it to your "endgame" company that you're happy to stay at for a while, I feel investing anything more than the bare minimum to get your assigned work done is worth less than just grinding leetcode and otherwise studying for interviews. Doing an actual good job, above and beyond, is not going to be worth much when you're looking for your next job. Thus we're now seeing the rise of Professional Inter…
What's your endgame ?
Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”
#15I've always preferred to give very serious candidates some technical homework. Make an API that does this particular thing. You have two days. Then we look at what they built and talk about it. It's way more realistic because that's how we actually work-- nobody is coding algorithms on a whiteboard. To any extent, it has worked very well. The people that have done great ended up being great employees and the people t…
The problem with the rise of the homework approach though, is that unlike you, most companies don't treat it as an alternative to whiteboard leetcode interviews. They treat it as an addition to the whiteboard leetcode interview.
It also doesn't scale. The assignment is for one company alone, so if you get rejected, that's time spent down the drain. As heinous as leetcode interviews are, the effort spent grinding leetcode can scale massively horizontally.
Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”
#16A rather tired conversation in my opinion. Everybody likes to complain about interviews, but every single alternative I've heard is even worse: Take-homes are biased toward those willing to work hours for free, a "track record" is biased toward those who inflate their resume, a casual conversation is biased toward the likable and native english speakers, high-level whiteboarding is biased towards people who are good…
This shouldn't be downvoted, it's exactly right. For every "do this instead" I've ever seen in articles bemoaning the state of tech interviewing, I've seen a dozen people attacking that other thing just as vehemently. There's nothing even remotely approaching a consensus viewpoint on what we should do instead.
Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”
#17Hear, hear!
I've got a PhD in statistics and consider myself a pretty good data scientist, but I am not a computer scientist. The last job I applied for asked me to perform a coding challenge prior to a possible in-person interview. The challenge was heavily focused on algorithms and data structures, almost nothing about statistical inference, causal inference, experiment design, model fitting, etc. I didn't bother submitting my answers.
Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”
#18As someone who has been on both sides of the table, I don't really know what some 45 minute HackerRank test is supposed to demonstrate that can't be learned in a 10 minute modified FizzBuzz. Probably 95% of software development jobs don't need the kind of algorithmic expertise that these HackerRank problems try to test. There just needs to be confirmation that this person's resume isn't a complete lie and they actually have the skills it states.
Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”
#19> Once in a while, though, I'd find someone exceptional who could approach problems differently, and those people would always turn out to be the best hires. They would have been filtered out by these systems. This is the goal. When you’re a large org, you do not need exceptional people, you need foot soldiers who do what they’re told. Yes even in engineering. Most of the day-to-day work boils down to JSON bureacracy…
I think someone who can approach a problem differently and effectively, can also follow orders just fine.
I like to try new things and approach things differently, I don't do it with every task and recognize there is value in doing it the same old way at times too.
Way too many tests and etc assume that people can only do X, or Y or Z.
Re: “I've had to relearn coding to get through the new interviews”
#20> Once in a while, though, I'd find someone exceptional who could approach problems differently, and those people would always turn out to be the best hires. They would have been filtered out by these systems. This is the goal. When you’re a large org, you do not need exceptional people, you need foot soldiers who do what they’re told. Yes even in engineering. Most of the day-to-day work boils down to JSON bureacracy…
I wonder if the smaller companies that buy into this bullshit realize the talent they’re losing to save a few hours.