Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone • Hacker News Board

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#181

Post by gnopgnip » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

inetknght wrote: post #86

plank_time wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hire quickly and fire quickly with a generous severance. That’s the only method that I’ve seen works effectively. Netflix does more with 2000 engineers that companies with 10-20x that. This also lets you take chances on engineers that weren’t “perfect” but had a lot of positives to offer.

> hire quickly and fire quickly This kind of mentality is not conducive to a well-functioning nation with people who have dependents and need stability.

In the SF bay area for these roles the job market is much more fluid than most places

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#182

Post by lghh » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

scpedicini wrote: post #172

lghh wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt jobs for urban planners ask what cities you design in your free time. I doubt jobs for lawyers ask what cases you've argued in your free time. Why do we ask what software you've built in your free time for software engineering interviews?

Why not ask? Programming is a craft, and having a showcase could demonstrate initiative, capabilities, and inventiveness. They're concrete samples of your work. Aside, there seems to be a swath of people who seem bizarrely resentful of personal projects. Yes, we get it, not EVERYONE in the universe has sufficient free time. Bla bla bla, maybe cut down on Netflix.

> Aside, there seems to be a swath of people who seem bizarrely resentful of personal projects

I wouldn't say anyone is resentful, just rightfully annoyed. It's not bizarre. I just don't think we as an industry should require everyone dedicate every waking moment to working. It's not healthy. Surgeons don't do surgery in their free time and are not asked about it in interviews.

> Yes, we get it, not EVERYONE in the universe has sufficient free time. Bla bla bla, maybe cut down on Netflix.

I think the implication of not having enough free time is that a person does not have enough free time to do things like watch enough Netflix to free up enough time to work more.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#183

Post by theptip » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

This is a great way to end up with a monoculture, with all of the fragility that’s associated with it. That might be a fun way to hire engineers 1-5 in a startup but it will hold you back in the end. Many good engineers have no interest in games, and won’t present well in that arena. You’ll get lots of false negatives.

“Fizzbuzz is all we have...” is a myopic take. Interviewing is hard but not as hard as the article makes out. There is a legitimate debate between take-home and on-site interview practices, but at the end of the day you want to see a work sample that is as realistic as possible from your candidate. Companies that are good at hiring understand this. Factorio has a tenuous (at best) correlation to the work you’re asked to do.

It’s like doing puzzle questions because you “can see how they think about problems”, but interviewers are really just selecting for people that think like they do.

(And for context I like Factorio.)

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#184

Post by collyw » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

kentonv wrote: post #58

We used this a couple times at Sandstorm back in the day. At the end of the interview the candidate would play Factorio cooperatively with the team for a while. I think it is remarkably effective at identifying the kinds of skills and personality traits that a software engineer actually needs to have in day-to-day work. You can find out if someone is self-directed, how fast they work, whether they produce clean desig…

I had a pleasant interview experience one time, that avoided a number of those problems.

I was asked to bring in my laptop with some code I had written. I did, we talked about it. The interviewer asked me to add a simple feature. It's code I was familiar with (as you would be after working for a company for a bit). So no stress. No gotchas.

No time wasted with yet another technical test with a throwaway app. Setting up a new project is always a bit of a faff.

Admittedly not everyone will have some code ready, but then a normal take home test would be the fallback.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#185

Post by Shish2k » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

billfruit wrote: post #178

kentonv wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with that game, but the point of using Factorio is it is a game where you have to build complex systems and maintain them, which has many parallels with real-world software engineering. "Throne of Lies" doesn't look like that kind of game.

Throne of lies and social deduction games like them are about finding out peoples real intentions from what they say and do, also aspects like using and understanding subtle signalling to collaborate with ones team.

In my software engineering work I do a lot more “writing documentation to be as clear as possible” than “social deduction and subtle signalling” ^^;;

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#186

Post by collyw » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #149

kentonv wrote: post #58

We used this a couple times at Sandstorm back in the day. At the end of the interview the candidate would play Factorio cooperatively with the team for a while. I think it is remarkably effective at identifying the kinds of skills and personality traits that a software engineer actually needs to have in day-to-day work. You can find out if someone is self-directed, how fast they work, whether they produce clean desig…

> Some people will just sit and watch and do nothing unless instructed... that's bad. Some people will build stuff, but with obvious efficiency flaws and "bugs"... also bad. Some people identify what needs doing and get it done effectively but without trying to be perfect... that's good. Some personalities are better suited for programming, although I think hard work can overcome anything. I remember an old blog post…

> Some personalities are better suited for programming, although I think hard work can overcome anything.

I am not sure about the hard work part. Some people don't seem to think the right way for programming.

I studied a one year IT masters conversion course back in the dot com boom, and chose the best / hardest course I could find. The first 3 weeks of the course was an intensive Java programming course. There was an exam at the end of this. They suggested that anyone who didn't pass this exam, don't do the rest of the course, but they didn't actually force them off. I was friends with at least two people that failed that exam, but continued anyway. They struggled and I don't think they passed the final exam despite plenty of hard work.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#187

Post by imbnwa » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

odshoifsdhfs wrote: post #171

Please don't. Better, I'll remove the please and go JUST DONT FUCKING DO IT. Hiring is broken because most people hiring aren't good at it and the people working in tech are pretty much idiots (I'm focusing more on SV-startup, 5hour discussion about aeropress, put people down because they chose vim or emacs - people kinds). From 'cultural' fit interviews (who the fuck cares if you are a sikh or an atheist, whiskey dr…

Thank you for writing this. It bothers me that the genealogy of leetcode has been completely obscured as it comes from competitive programming competitions whose primary demographic were who? Those smart people from Stanford or MIT. Once you realize the "who", it becomes even more clear for me why we're dealing with 'i have my social life at work, so I want people I can hang out with'-type people when we're preparing for interviewing. Not to mention that crowd is least likely to have any experience communicating with, say for example, Black folk, amongst other demos, as peers, you you get all these issues surrounding application of "culture fit".

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#188

Post by m0llusk » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

inetknght wrote: post #86

plank_time wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hire quickly and fire quickly with a generous severance. That’s the only method that I’ve seen works effectively. Netflix does more with 2000 engineers that companies with 10-20x that. This also lets you take chances on engineers that weren’t “perfect” but had a lot of positives to offer.

> hire quickly and fire quickly This kind of mentality is not conducive to a well-functioning nation with people who have dependents and need stability.

Past patterns can be an interesting contrast. During WWII generals were hired and fired quickly. Because the practice was pervasive there was no big stigma to being fired and there were always alternative positions to try. It also helped that there was a general structure which was not explicit or required but was broadly exhibited. That is, new hires were expected to show basic proficiency within two weeks and to make a significant contribution with in six weeks. Since a relatively quick test of skills was built in to the management structure there was less pressure on initial evaluation.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#189

Post by collyw » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

rhacker wrote: post #62

kentonv wrote: post #58

We used this a couple times at Sandstorm back in the day. At the end of the interview the candidate would play Factorio cooperatively with the team for a while. I think it is remarkably effective at identifying the kinds of skills and personality traits that a software engineer actually needs to have in day-to-day work. You can find out if someone is self-directed, how fast they work, whether they produce clean desig…

There really isn't. At the end of the day every company I have been in has: the asshole, the smart guy, the idiot, the guy everyone is scared of, the guy that can't be fired ("the originals"). Then you just kind of multiply them randomly depending on team size. These hiring articles are a huge pointless waste of time.

My company had all of those rolled into one. Thankfully he burned himself out with the technical debt that he had created and quit. He was smart and could probably beat me at hacker rank type challenges. I know to focus on maintainability over cleverness.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#190

Post by CamperBob2 » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

kentonv wrote: post #58

We used this a couple times at Sandstorm back in the day. At the end of the interview the candidate would play Factorio cooperatively with the team for a while. I think it is remarkably effective at identifying the kinds of skills and personality traits that a software engineer actually needs to have in day-to-day work. You can find out if someone is self-directed, how fast they work, whether they produce clean desig…

It seems like there's no right answer here.

I think you've done a good job identifying the most common options. Since none has proven decisively better than any other at aiding hiring decisions, how about letting the candidate decide which sort of interview to participate in?