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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

#351

Post by pbhjpbhj »

gentleman11 wrote: post #244
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really how interview processes work. If factorio interviews fill all roles with competent personnel, reduces hiring of incompetent people, etc., then it could be "good enough". Sure, you miss a lot of people who would also be good [enough]. They're not saying people who can't play factorio can't develop; it's the opposite. The hypothesis is surely that the can't+can't group has a large overlap.

Why not use starcraft instead and filter by apm and multitasking? You are sure to miss out on a few good candidates but you will filter out a lot of people who cannot manage 3 bases really effectively while watching the minimap, while designing custom build orders that can survive in the current meta. It’s like interviewing boxers on their blitz chess playing ability because you want “people who can think ahead under…

I don't think an arbitrary choice of test is "like not hiring women", but other than that yours is a valid criticism (personally I'd suspect it to bias for wealth).

I somewhat buy the anticipatory response elsewhere that essentially it's no worse than some of the other arbitrary choices -- basically, every style of assessment will miss some good candidates.

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

#352

Post by Pamar »

plank_time wrote: post #73
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…

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.

I have two questions here:

- what is the shortest time they keep you before firing you? 1 week? six weeks? 2 months...?

- I suppose that the level of internal documentation must be stellar. Can someone comment on this?

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

#353

Post by johnsmith4739 »

geoduck14 wrote: post #324
johnsmith4739 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!

I hope it is ok to share this here: https://freyasense.com/recruiting/

Give me a sign and I would be happy to give you a tour

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

#354

Post by pocketgrok »

lordnacho wrote: post #297
brightball wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've honestly simplified my approach to interviewing over the last few years and I'm pretty happy with the results. I just have a conversation and ask them to tell me about a favorite code project they've worked on. Could be school project, previous job, whatever. And just let them talk about it. I'll prod for more detail if I need to give a little nudge. Ask about problems they solved when doing it, etc. The _only_…

Same here. There's no silver bullet question, and no high pressure situation with me. My approach has just been to have a conversation, and try to move it along naturally. What do you think of concepts? What useful STL did they add? Why did you go with this design? Ask me something. If the person doesn't really have the level of interest required, they will run out of things to say. Like a cave left unexplored. The g…

I’ve been job searching lately and it is brutal. I’m fairly social normally but interviews terrify me. I freeze up, lose my train of thought and I don’t think my enthusiasm for my work really comes though. It’s probably not as bad as I imagine but it’s really frustrating.

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

#355

Post by pbhjpbhj »

colpabar wrote: post #219
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got to the "I probably need to leave my starter solar system in order to increase my DS production rate" stage, and honestly I think that's my limit. I find I can't recall where everything is (I think that can be fixed to some extent) and I'm not about to start writing documentation for a game!

> I'm not about to start writing documentation for a game! Ha, I have a dsp.yml file for exactly that :D

I'll hand in my geek card at the next AGM. :D

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

#356

Post by Workaccount2 »

MPSimmons wrote: post #54
Workaccount2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm D tier programmer who would easily land a programming job if factorio was the skill metric.

If you're actually D tier, and you're good at Factorio, why are you a D tier? You clearly have the mindset for problem-solving. What is holding you back?

I'm not a programmer, I only know enough C to do simple embedded micro designs. Electronics is my jam, so I probably could get much better if I took the time.

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

#357

Post by qw3rty01 »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #254
qw3rty01 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can absolutely refactor in factorio...in fact you have to refactor as you get access to better technologies. Just like software, refactorability is largely dependent on how well you design your base at the beginning. If you leave plenty of room for expansion and compartmentalize different production areas, it makes it extremely easy to upgrade with minimal disruption to the factory. And also like software, if you…

Ultimately how well your base is designed is completely based upon what things you need to produce in the future, what their inputs are, what their outputs are, what those outputs will be inputs into, and in which quantities you need to produce all of this stuff. These are all things a new player has no clue about. All you're really saying is an experienced player that has done enough researching and equation balanci…

Ultimately how well your program is designed is completely based upon what features you need to develop in the future, what their parameters are, what their return values are, what those return values will be arguments into, and in what scales you need to run all of this stuff.

These are all things a new programmer has no clue about. All you're really saying is an experienced programmer that has done enough researching and equation balancing (X algorithms feeds Y threads and a processor can support Z cores) ahead of time should be able to design a program that doesn't require too much changes in the future. And presumably, not overdesign in unnecessary micro optimizations.

It assumes perfect knowledge.

The closest to refactoring in programming is the ability to use IDEs to remove dead code and do code generation. But programers learn about IDEs long after they would first be useful - that would be around when you get to integrations, which easily triples the code base of your program.

Everything you mentioned is also true about programming

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

#358

Post by bitexploder »

pocketgrok wrote: post #354
lordnacho wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. There's no silver bullet question, and no high pressure situation with me. My approach has just been to have a conversation, and try to move it along naturally. What do you think of concepts? What useful STL did they add? Why did you go with this design? Ask me something. If the person doesn't really have the level of interest required, they will run out of things to say. Like a cave left unexplored. The g…

I’ve been job searching lately and it is brutal. I’m fairly social normally but interviews terrify me. I freeze up, lose my train of thought and I don’t think my enthusiasm for my work really comes though. It’s probably not as bad as I imagine but it’s really frustrating.

If you will permit me some trite but genuine advice: I have been interviewing and hiring people for well over a decade and it's not much more fun as the interviewer. Just pretend you are having a conversation with a friend about a project you really enjoy. It's kind of like worrying about how you will perform in a race. The training is already done when you show up to the starting line. The race is the easy part. You know what you know, just demonstrate it. Let the chips fall where they may, as they say. If you fall short, so be it. It's kind of the Zen approach to interviews. Don't try to hard, just do what you know how to do and find that place where you can be genuine.
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