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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

#201

Post by blacktriangle »

douglaswlance wrote: post #158
blacktriangle wrote: post #41

I have a question about whiteboard interviews. I have used and continued to use whiteboard coding in interviews. However I emphasize to the person that I am interviewing that there is no expectation that what they write on the whiteboard compile, or even be a real language. I'll usually do a quick demo and joke that my own white boarding looks like the bastard child of Python and FORTRAN. The point of the exercise is…

The problem is that algorithms were discovered by mathematicians/computer scientists doing proofs for 40 hrs / week. It isn't something that can be reasoned about. It must be learned and memorized. This forces people to study that which is already embedded in the tools they use to perform their job. If you ask people to whiteboard out a system at a high level that accomplishes some task, then that can be reasoned abo…

See that's what I do mostly. Most often it's "here's a table of data I have, how would you compute this report." Not things like inverting binary trees or implementing hash maps.

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

#202

Post by burntoutfire »

jontas wrote: post #125

I am a senior engineer and have been programming for close to two decades. I picked up Factorio a few months ago and felt overwhelmed. I couldn't finish the tutorial. I think my problem is spatial relations--it is something I've always struggled with (how to arrange furniture in a room, solve a jigsaw, etc). I don't think this is a detriment to my programming ability at all--spatial relations really never enters into…

Also a senior engineer. I tried factorio demo out for maybe 30 minutes, but hated the fact that I actually have to walk the engineer around and do menial tasks like resource collection myself. Why can't I just do stuff with mouse cursor like in most other top-down strategy games? Maybe the game changes in later stages, but the demo seemed to be full of nonsense busywork that is prevalent in survival games.

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

#203

Post by tofuahdude »

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.

It isn't a company's responsibility to create a well-functioning nation.

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

#205

Post by stale2002 »

plank_time wrote: post #70
boomfus wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that a common criticism of every interview style? Whether it's whiteboard questions, take-home projects, soft skill questions, lots of people will lie and say they've never seen the question before.

At this point, you would be foolish to admit that you’ve seen a question before. Everyone is faking it, and if you be honest, you’ll just keep getting harder and harder questions from the interviewer. The only time you should not fake it is if you’ve been asked that question at the same company. I think they would keep track of that and if you didn’t mention it, they would look deceitful on your part if they catch yo…

> you’ll just keep getting harder and harder questions from the interviewer.

Well, there is a counter strategy that works even in this situation.

The counter strategy would be to just know way more interview questions than the interviewer, and know the answer to every question that they have, so that they run out!

When I was full time applying for jobs, a couple years ago, it got to the point with me. It turns out that people interviewing others, only have a couple questions that they use for interviews, and it is not that hard to know all of them.

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

#206

Post by colejohnson66 »

EveYoung wrote: post #140
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.

You can only do this if you have the name recogition and compensation to attract enough candidates who are willing to take this risk. Plus, if you have long on-boarding processes this could become quite expensive.

Yeah. I used to know someone who worked at a call center once. The onboard training was like 40+ hours. They had a problem with people who only got hired so they could be paid to watch videos before quitting on the first day, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it.

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

#207

Post by sangnoir »

> A senior developer should be able to explore the UI and figure out a goal, then establish a plan for accomplishing that goal.

I'm confounded on why the author thinks being a senior developer (say, in embedded systems) would make someone better at exploring a game UI compared to an intern-candidate who puts 20+ hours into gaming per week...

I would probably walk out of the interview if someone suggested I play factorio as part of the hiring process - I have been intentionally avoiding it - you might as well offer me a free hit of crack cocaine while you're at it.

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

#208

Post by kilroy123 »

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…

You really hit the nail on the head here. I couldn't agree more.

However, I think playing this game would be a fun and interesting interview.

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

#209

Post by MrKristopher »

erichdongubler wrote: post #57
arcturus17 wrote: post #10

An amusing thought experiment but obviously it would have catastrophic consequences in real life... Pretty much anyone can get good at the game by watching Let’s Plays or reading guides.

Honest question: is that fundamentally any different than building skills by imitating StackOverflow solutions or studying principles and patterns to build knowledge? I would view those as respective software development analogues, though there's definitely room for disagreement, particularly for very deep problem and solution spaces.

The difference is that what you can learn on StackOverflow might actually be useful on the job.

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

#210

Post by ummonk »

tryonenow wrote: post #163
goddess33 wrote: post #156

As good-intentioned as this is... it's the type of behaviour that just adds more barriers for women trying to break into tech. When hobbies like these - video games made exclusively by white men [0], played (almost) exclusively by men - are used to assess a candidate's ability as a software engineer , who do you think benefits? [0] https://factorio.com/game/about

Isn't it racist and sexist to presume that women and POC won't play a game just because it's made by white men? How is that relevant? Is anyone else concerned over this kind of overt, casual, anti-white racism and misandry that has become socially acceptable as of late?

Don’t be disingenuous. It’s almost exclusively played by mostly white (and some Asian) men, often on the spectrum. And you know this is true and that it isn’t sexist or racist to point it out.
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