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Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

kevin.burke.dev

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Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#101

Post by wiseowise »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #55
properdine wrote: post #5

I conceptually like the idea of dropping coding screens, etc - but how do you objectively identify what you're looking for in a candidate without adding bias to the process? I.e., at least with a coding question, you can set up objective criteria. If you ask someone about their work, it might be a good experience but you're also setting yourself up to bias towards people who talk/think like you.

I think that staying employed as a software developer for 10+ years is a good indication of skill, far better than any random coding assignment. Put another way, if someone has 10+ years of experience, in an ideal world there isn't much point in quizzing them on algorithms or giving them homework. They've done all of that before, passed, were promoted, etc. You can see that on their resume, and you can verify that wi…

> I think that staying employed as a software developer for 10+ years is a good indication of skill, far better than any random coding assignment.

As someone who has been doing interviews for as long as 2 years, wrong. I've seen at least 15 candidates that had 5-15 years of experience and we're complete shit. As in no redeemable qualities in terms of tech assignment.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#102

Post by eklavya »

kevinventullo wrote: post #73
eklavya wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not their point. Point is, it’s really subjective and there is no standard answer. As much hate as leetcode style interviews get, you at least have a standard interview process as that point but yeah don’t overdo it and make sure the loop is varied in the areas it covers.

I believe “Writing to disk one byte at a time will be slow” is the standard answer, with varying levels of detail depending on the role.

I am being misunderstood, let me elaborate, point is, there is no standard answer to the question “what to ask in an interview”. They are just giving an example of how somebody will always have problem with the questions being asked and they could be right in their perspective which is just different.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#103

Post by yongjik »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #7
Justsignedup wrote: post #4

I have 15 years of experience, and seem to woo teams every time we do screening calls. Could be how he describes the problem. Most of the time during code screens they don't want you to perfectly solve it. Talk it out. Someone who feels that perfect or bust is the only way to go will fail most of the time. Idk feels like something is missing. He's right, feedback loops suck. Question is... Can he practice doing a pho…

> Talk it out I personally hate this approach. Solving programming problems requires my full focus and vocalizing while trying to think is a challenge (partially due to my stutter). I can either focus on communicating clearly and professionally or I can stfu and code, not both. I’m happy to solve a problem silently and talk about it after I’m done, but I won’t do a phone screen that asks me to word vomit in the middl…

Can't speak of others, but when I'm doing interview I never "take points off" for not talking while coding - as long as they're building the answer in the correct direction, that's all I want.

I think "talking while coding" is, at least in theory, for the benefit of the candidate - if they're "thinking aloud" and about to make a mistake which may take 20 minutes to recover, the interviewer can gently nudge them in the correct direction.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#104

Post by wiseowise »

jackblemming wrote: post #58
adamzerner wrote: post #23

> I'm not fast at reasoning about code, and I often make trivial mistakes just trying to get a "first draft" of a program out. If I get behind or the interviewer starts interrupting to ask about the bad code I'm writing I get very stressed and have trouble both listening to the interviewer and trying to address the issues with the code. Sounds to me that the author likes to program by "sketching". I do too! Paul Grah…

>IMHO, it doesn't matter. The goal is to predict who will perform well on the job, and if having a large favorite number does this, it should be incorporated. What if it was skin color, how ethnic your name is, or your gender? Did you know the majority of developers are men? Should we throw all the female applications in the trash because they're statistically not as likely to be developers? Yeesh. Sorry if I sound h…

How is skin color, ethical or gender are related to their point?

> Should we throw all the female applications in the trash because they're statistically not as likely to be developers?

What do you mean?

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#105

Post by klipklop »

wiseowise wrote: post #96
vanusa wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the receiving end it weeded out a huge number of bad candidates. Along with (as was the main point of the original blog post) probably quite a few false negatives, Like the author of that post, for example. Meanwhile, you can achieve the same filtering benefit by far less obnoxious and more accurate means (a cursory glance at their repo, fore example).

I'd rather filter out good candidate than let bad in. It's a domino effect. You let one bad, he will hire more in the future.

I always hear this but never seen proof. If they are bad how do they get into a position that lets them make hiring decisions?

Everyone likes to think they are the good candidate and not the bad one that slipped through…

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#106

Post by adamzerner »

jackblemming wrote: post #58
adamzerner wrote: post #23

> I'm not fast at reasoning about code, and I often make trivial mistakes just trying to get a "first draft" of a program out. If I get behind or the interviewer starts interrupting to ask about the bad code I'm writing I get very stressed and have trouble both listening to the interviewer and trying to address the issues with the code. Sounds to me that the author likes to program by "sketching". I do too! Paul Grah…

>IMHO, it doesn't matter. The goal is to predict who will perform well on the job, and if having a large favorite number does this, it should be incorporated. What if it was skin color, how ethnic your name is, or your gender? Did you know the majority of developers are men? Should we throw all the female applications in the trash because they're statistically not as likely to be developers? Yeesh. Sorry if I sound h…

Things like skin color are different from things like leetcode ability. Looking through a veil of ignorance, I definitely would not want hiring decisions to be made based on the former. But looking through the same veil of ignorance, I would be ok with hiring decisions being made based on the latter.

Well, actually, thinking about it again now, I'm not so sure. But this now becomes an ethical question. Which is certainly important. But I want to be clear that the ethical question is a different question from the question of what a purely self-interested company should do. To that self-interest question, I think the OP and lots of people argue that the answer is "leetcode-style questions having nothing to do with the job and are thus a bad idea".

My claims are that 1) this is the wrong way to think about that self-interest question. The right way is to ask whether it is predictive of job performance. And 2) although I also suspect that leetcode-style questions aren't predictive, it's hard to be confident in that without good data.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#107

Post by WalterBright »

Gigachad wrote: post #72
spoonjim wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well he could also be pissed off that he’s interviewing someone who claims to be an expert in something he can’t even install.

I have been doing React development for 4 years now and I have never set it up from scratch and only have a rough idea how it’s done. I still apply for react jobs and do fine. Installing something from scratch is one of the least important tests because it’s something that companies typically do once every few years, they can afford to flounder for a few days on that.

I reinstall Linux from scratch about once every 5 years, long enough that I totally forget how to do it. So I keep a file with all the commands to do it.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#108

Post by ngc248 »

cwp wrote: post #94

Heh. I have 25 years experience and I fail phone screens too. :-D It's fine, though. TFA goes into ways to improve the hiring process such that this sort of thing doesn't happen. But I don't mind it at all. I want to fail fast; if the company decides I'm not the right candidate, great, I'm glad it happened before we wasted time with more extensive interviews. There are two possibilities. If they're right and I'm not…

Totally agree with this. One may want a Job at a prestigious FAANG or a hot startup but may not clear for culture fit whatever even tough you answered all technical questions. I say don't despair. just as you mentioned even if you got in it may not have been a good team/good manager. We should strive to find teams/managers who can appreciate what we are and do and vice versa.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#109

Post by ngc248 »

gilbetron wrote: post #28

Interviewing is really tough. The OP replaced some coding questions with other questions and if he were to interview a bunch of people with them, we'd get another set of blog posts complaining how ridiculous his interview questions were. "Why is it bad to write a file to the disk one byte at a time?" What are they interviewing for, low level disk experts? "Here's a stack trace from an open source project, can you tel…

True .... However maligned l33tcode questions are you can at least prepare for them and there can only be one correct answer.

The questions you enumerate are more subjective and depends on the interviewer's experience/maturity on how well they can gauge someone's answers.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#110

Post by klipklop »

mrkentutbabi wrote: post #92

I think it is fortunate that great engineers like OP are rejected in Leetcode style interviews. The benefit is twofold: - It makes fresh graduate noobs (or even just noobs in general) able to compete on equal ground on high-paying job prospects. Think about it, if every high paying jobs out there value experience over leetcode style of interviews, then young noob programmers won't be able to rake great salary because…

Not so great if you are jobless and got bills to pay. “Create more innovation” is a good thing, but sometimes people need to cash those big tech giant’s checks to care for their family.

Experienced engineers and college noobs should not be competing for the same jobs.

Tech co’s seem to prefer the college grads for rank/file for many reasons. Maybe because they are easier to exploit?

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