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Don’t do interviews, do discussions

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Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#391

Post by logfromblammo »

vsareto wrote: post #307
twic wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often administer a 45 minute version of this (talking about any/all past work, not necessarily side projects), as part of a half-day of interviews. We'd never be able to get into the depth you could in two hours, but we can get somewhere. My experience has been that a lot of candidates can't even fill 45 minutes. I ask "what was the most interesting part?", "what was most technically complex?", "what would you do d…

>and they just don't have nontrivial answers. Yeah, because you can have a career where you're just gluing stuff together to make business apps for, usually, simple business problems. You're looking for craftsmen but you're interviewing plumbers.

To extend the plumber analogy, prospective employers will frequently look for plumbers with specific experience in copper pipe, rigid PVC pipe, or flexible PEX pipe, as though fragmenting the plumbing space in this fashion has any bearing on whether or not the result will conform to building codes, ensure that all the drains and faucets work as expected, and generally solve any fluids transport problems that may come up without having to push the calendar to the right.

Most people look up the local business listings, pick anyone advertised as "plumber", and call to make a service appointment. Or they use a general contractor that already has a list of approved subs. Master plumbers don't have to answer little trick questions about brazing copper or about finding lead pipes in an old building. People somehow trust them to know what their job is, and do it.

Rarely, one might encounter an unreliable plumber. They might not get paid, and any other plumber is usually able to fix their botched jobs without hurting the budget much. Review sites exist to track building-trades business reputations.

But the analogy breaks, because no one trusts software and IT folks to do their jobs competently. The default assumption is that we are all know-nothing hacks who could destroy the company with one keystroke. All our knowledge is assumed to be tightly siloed, and does not transfer between similar technologies. C++ people can't do Rust or Go. Java people can't do C#. Desktop people can't do the cloud. Back-end people can't do UI. CMMI people can't be Agile.

It's madness.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#392

Post by jldugger »

ButtSpark69 wrote: post #298
jldugger wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It did. And even if it had not in this particular case, it will hurt the company in the long run. Honestly, having been on plenty of interview panels for a decade now for DevOps and SRE roles, I'm not sure structured interviews, no matter how awesome they are, can solve the recruitment diversity problem. The war was already lost the moment the job description was published, IMO.

I think it's also important to keep in mind that at minimum it would take a generation to truly solve in a root-cause way (one that won't just come back the minute you focus on something else). Many of these biases get built during childhood when your brain is so so much more plastic.

I'm not sure anyone in Kindergarten knows anything about having a job, let alone DevOps. =)

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#393

Post by cutthegrass2 »

cj wrote: post #358
david_allison wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> True, but would your employer care (if they found out) if you copy/pasted a small portion of code that’s not considered critical IP What? Yes. I expect I'd be in prison for a few years. Your interview approach selects for people who don't follow their NDAs Sergey Aleynikov went to prison over copying GPL code.

As mentioned in my original comment, if someone isn’t comfortable showing me the source code I simply ask for them to describe how it works, challenges in building it, how they built it, etc.

I could do this and would welcome this type of interview experience. I'd be able to talk in general terms about the problems I work on and their solutions but not the low level specifics.

To add some context, my work is in Financial Services, trading systems and whatnot.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#394

Post by cutthegrass2 »

soneca wrote: post #338
nostrebored wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it’s not, because take home assignments are not typically reusable. Learn leetcode and it is valuable at most companies you will apply to. It’s more respectful of your time.

I was comparing leetcode to sideprojects, not take home assignments. The parent company was also talking about side projects. Side projects will help you learn useful skills and it is the suggestion of OP that it should be used by more companies in place of leetcode interviews. Btw, a lot of companies don’t use leetcode for hiring. In my last job hunting season, I would guess than less than 20% of processes used leet…

Completely agree re the value of having side projects. I wish I had the luxury of time right now, maybe in a few years once the kids are older.

The leetcode dance is, at least for me at this point, much lower effort than starting a side project on the understanding the code I produce will be reviewed during interviews. It's like Sudoku, once you've done a "few", you get to the point where you're able to solve them quickly.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#395

Post by Clubber »

snickerer wrote: post #390
Clubber wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>half of the candidates (with master degrees and 'years of industry experience') fail. If half the candidates with a master's degree in CS are failing your test, that should be a pretty huge red flag to you that your test might have an issue. What question are they failing?

They don't have problems with the questions. They are not able to write a simple C++. And they are applying for a C++ dev job.

I would think that could get filtered out on the resume check with no relevant experience. Are they lying on the resume?

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#396

Post by wiseowise »

slingnow wrote: post #367
wiseowise wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you so upset that somebody considers themselves smarter than you? Serious question.

Interesting that you decided that the OP: 1. Is upset 2. Interpreted the parent comment as being smarter than OP Serious question: where did you infer these things from?

> Is upset

Nobody is going to write such a rant if they're not upset.

>> Typical FANG employee... Hates whiteboard interviews until they get into FANG, then thinks that anyone outside of FANG is actually delusional about their skills and must whiteboard to prove themselves worthy of handling the incredibly challenging world which is FANG- engineering.

> Interpreted the parent comment as being smarter than OP

>> More likely that you've drank the kool aid that you are somehow special and smarter for working at a FANG...

???

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#397

Post by kube-system »

kovac wrote: post #231
jfengel wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with "decent at programming" is that it's often only a fraction of the job. You rarely get formal specifications and clear orders. Nearly everything involves discussion of the user's needs or eliciting the circumstances of a bug. Real programming is very little like they teach in school and even less like coding competition. Being good at programming is great, and mandatory, but if you can't also have a c…

This right here is the kind of company any self-respecting engineer shouldn't join unless they are transparent about the fact that they have issues with their processes/don't have people to deal with these issues that they need your help. If they have a whole arsenal of project managers, architects, product managers, engineering managers, business/product analysts and still give this kind of lousy excuse, I'd probabl…

To the contrary, I avoid any company that has an arsenal of project managers insulating me from the problems I'm solving. I don't want to be trapped in a cubicle churning out code. We all have preferences about the types of teams we like to work with.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#398

Post by charles_f »

RNCTX wrote: post #266
charles_f wrote: post #94

Every few weeks someone comes back with the one true way of interviewing, or the X things wrong with how interviews are led. I have conducted a few hundred of these by now, and the most I know about it is that there's no good way, because you try to figure someone out in just a few hours based on stuff they tell you. The format that seems to work the least worse for me is when you get them to tell you about actual st…

> they all answered a variation of "it takes a while to get stuff to prod once it's built. We need someone who can help get better at that". Yet not a single question for that. I guess the lesson learnt is that if you are looking for a particular skilk, maybe focus on that as well. If they knew enough about the problem and its solutions for it to filter down to people doing interviews, they wouldn't need to hire some…

You don't have to be an expert to get an idea of whether the person in front of you is experienced on a topic ; as long as you remain in the realm of their experience rather than going philosophic/theoritical

- Can you tell me about a time when you had an issue delivering things to production quickly? What did you do to optimize? How did you know there was an issue? What alternatives did you consider? - Can you tell me about what you have done in the past to optimize they lead time to production? What strategies did you employ? How did you

While you won't be able to tell if what they did was optimal, that can at least tell you if the person in front of you has some concrete experience in the topic, and some depth in their understanding. While that's not perfect, it's certainly better than flying blind

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#399

Post by throwaway98az8 »

wiseowise wrote: post #256
throwaway98az8 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typical FANG employee... Hates whiteboard interviews until they get into FANG, then thinks that anyone outside of FANG is actually delusional about their skills and must whiteboard to prove themselves worthy of handling the incredibly challenging world which is FANG-engineering. More likely that you've drank the kool aid that you are somehow special and smarter for working at a FANG...

Why are you so upset that somebody considers themselves smarter than you? Serious question.

Nope, not upset. Just trying to make OP aware of their contradictory behavior.

OP might be smarter than me, who knows. I don't really care, I feel pretty good about my intelligence level even though I know there are plenty of folks smarter than me out there.

What I am is annoyed at the elitism that OP shows. I work at a FANG, have worked at a couple SV unicorns too. There is plenty of work happening here that is not as challenging as OP makes it out to be. I've seen a lot of people with the attitude OP has and I think it makes for a toxic and unwelcoming environment.

As someone who has used complex algorithms research in my work, I agree white boarding has some carryover to some FANG work. But my experience is that there is vastly more boring CRUD work to do and you must generally fight with others to get the interesting/challenging algorithmics work. No need to filter out a ton of qualified people because they can't perform a tiny fraction of the work happening here.

Re: Don’t do interviews, do discussions

#400

Post by confidantlake »

xyzelement wrote: post #96
jen20 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> culture-centric companies (which are the good ones) This depends on what you are looking for.

> This depends on what you are looking for. I am open to learning other sides here because this is so foreign to me. What are the cases where you don't want to work in a place where people care about the mission and culture and want coworkers who do as well? What are the cases where you're happy working for the company whose attitude is "we don't care who you are and what you value, as long as you have the basic skil…

Having worked on teams that super duper care about the mission it isn't always roses. Why are you leaving work at 5pm or taking a vacation? Don't you care about the mission? If you aren't drinking the coolaid you don't fit in. Also I have met a fair number of people who think the mission is so important that it gives them a license to be rude. After all what are a few hurt feelings compared to the MISSION.

Where as working at a bank or a retail company no one is there because they are super into banking or selling generic household items. They are there to do good work and leave at the end of the day. They are professionals.

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