If you think this is a good hiring method, please do it so I can avoid your company. I specifically hate games like Factorio because they remind me of tech busywork, with very little intelligence or creative thought required. If you want creative thinkers, try another method.
Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone
321–330 of 358 posts
Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone
#322Please 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…
I understand your frustration, but I somehow need to figure out who to hire and who not to even if it can't be done reliably. I need to ask some technical questions and I need to give simple coding exercise on a coderpad. You would be surprised how many people can smooth talk themselves through any non technical person but can't do shit when faced with an actual IDE and a small problem to solve. The real broken part…
I did mention that a one hour tech talk. I don't think you should willie nilly hire anyone just because they are a smooth talker.
Quick example, Hiring a mobile developer: You talk with them, if Android, ask how Kotlin interfaces with the JVM and what they think (good or bad) about type erasure. iOS? Ask/talk a bit about memory management/ARC. Anyone that has experience with these languages/os (unless hiring for very junior position) should have some thoughts and opinions about it. They may say something you don't agree with (ARC is crap because X or Y) but they will know what they are talking about. You can also dig in to know if it is something they read online (ARC is automated reference counting, meaning each 'allocation' increases a ref counter. Ok, that is good, so, why use `autorelease` or `release` and when to use each? etc etc kind of questions)
You can do the same with backend (framework vs libraries) or frontend (react + state libraries) or whatnot, but if in an one hour tech chat with someone, you can't understand if they actually know they can at least code similar to giving them a fizzbuzz or whatnot, it says more about the interviewer than the person being interviewed.
Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I made very, very few mistakes How do you know? How often did you follow up on rejections to see whether they should have been hires?
Actually, for the company that I worked at, and the level of folks we hired, I often heard about how they went. The only one that made me sad, was a chap who used to show up on the Adobe Photoshop splash page. We offered, he declined. In the aggregate, I think things turned out OK for all of us. There are some folks that I have to admit, probably did best by not accepting us.
>There are some folks that I have to admit, probably did best by not accepting us.
Yeah, I hear that. I remember interviewing someone who was _good_, but not at this narrow thing that we were hiring for. She seemed SO hopeful that we would give her an offer, I wanted to tell her directly "this job is going to waste 6 mo of your life and offer you nothing I return"
Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone
#324We 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 don't know of any approach to interviewing that I think is fair. That is true, because it was my motivation to build a wizard for behavioural interviews designed to remove biases and be objective. In practice, most of the time people are not even sure what they are looking for - I know it when I see it - and default to gut hiring. This leads to teams made of people that think like you, so you're basically paying…
> if this is relevant to you, I'd be happy to share this solution with you
Yes, please!
Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can personally confirm that there's at least one autistic person in a senior engineering role at Netflix.
n=1. In addition, that individual is likely wasting mental resources gaming performance reviews, or their manager has identified their struggle and is protecting them from the ceremony. Systematically, Netflix is not equipped to deal with them.
Everyone either wastes mental resources gaming performance reviews or ignores them as a sideshow to actually doing a good job. The better the performance review the closer these two approaches are. Unless you have experience of Netflix’s culture and management you are less qualified to opine on whether Netflix is equipped to deal with autistic employees than someone who knows an autistic Netflix employee who is successfully working there.
Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand your frustration, but I somehow need to figure out who to hire and who not to even if it can't be done reliably. I need to ask some technical questions and I need to give simple coding exercise on a coderpad. You would be surprised how many people can smooth talk themselves through any non technical person but can't do shit when faced with an actual IDE and a small problem to solve. The real broken part…
I did mention that a one hour tech talk. I don't think you should willie nilly hire anyone just because they are a smooth talker. Quick example, Hiring a mobile developer: You talk with them, if Android, ask how Kotlin interfaces with the JVM and what they think (good or bad) about type erasure. iOS? Ask/talk a bit about memory management/ARC. Anyone that has experience with these languages/os (unless hiring for very…
One technique I use is I ask them what are the things they know well. Hopefully, there will also be something that I know. I then start digging in the area they have already advertised they know well and try to judge what it means when they say they know something well.
Also if a candidate can master even one thing very well, it gives hopes they are at least somewhat interested in development and can learn other things, too.
What I found is that people who are not interested in development but rather do this because it pays well almost never learn anything very well. They just don't have drive and curiosity needed to dig one topic long enough after what they have learned was enough to complete the task they were assigned.
Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, for the company that I worked at, and the level of folks we hired, I often heard about how they went. The only one that made me sad, was a chap who used to show up on the Adobe Photoshop splash page. We offered, he declined. In the aggregate, I think things turned out OK for all of us. There are some folks that I have to admit, probably did best by not accepting us.
>There are some folks that I have to admit, probably did best by not accepting us. Yeah, I hear that. I remember interviewing someone who was _good_, but not at this narrow thing that we were hiring for. She seemed SO hopeful that we would give her an offer, I wanted to tell her directly "this job is going to waste 6 mo of your life and offer you nothing I return"
My most fond recollection was a young chap that was a "second choice." The first declined, and this guy had very little of the exact skills we needed, but he had a real eagerness.
He turned out to be an amazing hire. I think that he far outstripped the first choice, and he has gone on to do quite well, after leaving our company.
I like to think that I ran a fairly good shop. We kept people for decades.
When they finally rolled up our shop (after 27 years), the person with the least seniority had ten years.
Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone
#328Earlier 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.
Why? COBRA covers 3months of health insurance; ACA covers more, and unemployment insurance and severance pay gives you months to look for another.
The only major problem would be relocation, so I'd suggest working a few months at a new job before relocating for it.
Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 would absolutely work -- assuming everyone has access to healthcare (preferably universal coverage). Unfortunately this cuts at the moat that big corporations have set up not to mention health insurance industry and big pharma. Which is why it hasn't happened yet here (though it has in many other countries).
Everyone has access to healthcare in the US, under ACA and Medicare.
Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone
#330I've got 1,300 hours into Factorio... the factory must grow!
It is analogous to programming, the programming I learned in the 1980s, not modern software development.
On the plus side, once you level up a bit and get constructor robots there is a bit of copy/paste and undo capacity. You can load and save your work, and use more than 8.3 file names. 8)
On the down side, there is no source control, no commenting, very limited macro capability (blueprints). The debugging tools are limited.
On the analogy side, pollution as technical debt that causes bugs which will bite you, is spot on.
My favorite game style is to do Rocket Rush on an island... and see if I can get rid of the enemy and get self-sustaining nuclear power with Kovarex going... the it rapidly becomes boring.