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Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

erikmcclure.com

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

#191

Post by rcxdude »

SilasX wrote: post #63
lvice wrote: post #22

This winter break I spent an embarrassing amount of time on Satisfactory on Steam, which is essentially a nicer (and probably easier) modern refresh of Factorio. While I played, I came to similar conclusions to the article. Building factories in this game is very very similar conceptually to building software. I ran into exactly the same problems that I ran while I build software like: - If I don't plan ahead enough…

Disclaimer: I've only played the Factorio demo. If that's the analogy, then I don't think it captures the core difficulty of software, which is unknown unknowns. That is, you write something that depends on an external system working a certain way, you follow its spec and depend on it working that way, and then it just ... doesn't, and you have to find exactly where it deviates, possibly making up some complicated kl…

There's not a lot of unknown unknowns in factorio, but one thing which it really captures about software development is your own decisions coming back to bite you, or emergent complexity from notionally simple rules. As your factory grows you'll find yourself wishing you'd built things differently because suddenly something needs to expand beyond what you expected or some part of it is right in the way of a train network. Train networks are really tricky to make work effectively, it's very easy to have deadlocks appearing if you make a mistake, and you might not notice until you suddenly don't have any power because the trail with the coal is stuck waiting at a fouled up junction or something like that. There's a lot of opportunity to debug problems as they appear even in something you designed entirely yourself (and in a multiplayer game it's even more so because you might be detangling someone else's build).

A lot of the process of learning the game is basically learning patterns to reduce this. At the higher level of megabase design it's basically about designing a modular system so you can scale things out as efficiently as possible (and there's lots of possible variations of this).

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

#192

Post by omginternets »

tstrimple wrote: post #152
omginternets wrote: post #2

It seems like Factorio itself doesn't matter here, and that any programming language can be used instead. So really, this article is saying "live, self-directed coding is the best technical interview", which isn't very original.

There may be an anxiety factor which negatively impacts live coding interviews which wouldn't manifest as often in demonstrating similar skillsets in a game. It would be interesting to see how much of a difference something like this makes.

Yeah ... maybe...

There might also be anxiety around playing a game you don’t know well, which wouldn’t manifest in a language you were familiar with.

Honestly, this article is pretty superficial.

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

#193

Post by lacksconfidence »

ericbarrett wrote: post #132
lacksconfidence wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you enjoyed Satisfactory you might also want to try out Dyson Sphere Program. It doesn't provide the veritical building but it is a different take on the factorio/satisfactory style of gameplay.

I tried DSP, very fun game but the performance is terrible. i7-9700K and RTX2080 and I get 20 FPS before using even 1/10th of the first planet. Can't recommend it currently.

Interesting, while i haven't built a sphere yet I have factories going on multiple planets and haven't noticed any performance issues. I'm on a a 2700k with a 970GTX. Not suggesting you don't have issues, but perhaps there is a fix?

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

#194

Post by klyrs »

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…

Big agree to everything here. I've seen my fair share of office romance, and wow, folks, it sucks. When your work is your family, friends, your whole life, it's gonna be a dating pool for people, too. When you start sleeping with one of your "family" members, that's fine, whatever. But when you inevitably split, work becomes a soap opera, everybody feels the need to pick a side, banal decisions (like attending a meeting or not) become political. Shit.

And to think, I've been told by a department head that the way to get business done with a certain co-worker is to go out for beer with him. So that's my fault for not knowing / doing that. No matter that I don't drink. No matter that I'm not cool enough for this dude to want to go drinking with. Big ol' fuck off, loud and clear. Wouldn't it be better if he could just respond to my emails like everybody else is expected to?

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

#195

Post by cloogshicer »

InitialLastName wrote: post #143
cloogshicer wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you show correlation of two concepts that are inherently not measurable? Do only statements that are measurable have value in your opinion?

Even if something isn't measurable, you can provide anecdotal evidence that a correlation exists. If you're going to say "Methods X and Y pale in comparison to Method Z for evaluating W" and expect anyone to draw conclusions from it, one would hope for even just a little bit of evidence.

Ok, that's fair, I agree.

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

#196

Post by SamBam »

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.

Makes me feel lucky to be in my job, and a jolt of gratitude every-so-often is a welcome thing, so thank you.

I work with 8 other senior or senior-ish engineers, we are all basically taking a slight paycut (not too much, maybe 80-90% of rates we might get elsewhere) to work for a non-profit making interesting stuff for kids, and everyone is genuinely nice and fairly hard-working.

I wonder if the "taking a paycut to do something actually interesting and worthwhile" is part of it.

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

#197

Post by golemiprague »

How does it work in other professions? I think in most professions once you have some experience you don't get tested in every job interview, people just rely on your history and their impression. I have decided to hire like that, just look at people history of work and talk to them in an interview and I think the rate of success was not worst than any other method. People got pretty good intuition in general for other people capabilities.

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

#198

Post by MrKristopher »

tehjoker wrote: post #177

Looking forward to this becoming the new standard with an ecosystem of bootcamps, an infinite stream of blogs, youtube videos, and personal tutors teaching you how to play optimal factorio while candidates sweat bullets and cry.

Also don't forget all the blog posts about how hiring is broken, particularly because high school dropouts are able to put hundreds of hours into the game while senior swe are busy with their jobs and families.

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

#199

Post by johncessna »

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…

> But then, I don't know of any approach to interviewing that I think is fair

The companies that think deeply about interviews are aware that their interview is biased, and they do so intentionally. At a certain point watching 5 good engineers not meet the bar is better than having 10 bad engineers get through.

Maybe the 'right answer' is to let your needs drive the bias of your interview. Do you have a position that needs to deal with immense pressure with management breathing down their neck? Bias your selection with whiteboard interviews. Are you looking for a principal engineer that can drive adaptation and change in a large org? Bias your selection process to get that.

tl;dr Maybe the issue is the one size fits all thinking to the tech interview.

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

#200

Post by mixmastamyk »

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.

These arguments are silly. If you’re competent you’ve got nothing to worry about. If not, then something to work on.

Incredible hiring risk aversion is what makes finding a job for everyone a shitshow. Definitely not an efficient market as it stands.

If it weren’t for an easy to hire organization that gave me a chance, I’d likely be homeless.

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