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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

#301

Post by gentleman11 »

nijave wrote: post #71
vanusa wrote: post #2

This post ought to be the final nail on the coffin of the cult of leetcode/whiteboard style inverviewing. Just looking at this guy's repo and his writing style -- you'd be foolish to waste his time or yours on leetcode-style hazing. Your conversation should be strictly high-level. If you must, pick a file at random from one his larger projects, and ask a few straightforward quetions ("I'm new to Go - can you explain…

Im not a huge fan of leetcode or work samples but on the receiving end it weeded out a huge number of bad candidates. We'd get tons of copy/pasted together infra as code from top Google results that wasn't even close to runnable (usually being close to runnable with a few small bugs was a good submission and runnable with no bugs was a great submission)

> weeded out a huge number of bad candidates.

A lot of hiring managers have no concept of experiment design.

You can’t invent a measure (or copy it from a blogs about how other companies hire), look at who it rejects, and conclude they are bad. You don’t know if they were good or bad. You never worked with any of them. You only know that you applied your measure.

The only candidates you have any information about are the ones you hired, yet you are insulting the others on the internet today

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#302

Post by axxto »

nasalgoat wrote: post #8

I have 25 years of experience and I spent a year looking for a job, getting rejected after complex, time-wasting tests and endless voice interviews that went nowhere. At one point I had to take a cognitive test which I actually failed. I eventually found something but it was really discouraging there for a long time.

This feels encouraging to read. Thanks for posting it. I only have 5 years of experience, but I've gone through something similar and it's extremely disheartening to see yourself failing these convoluted, labyrinthine tests knowing full well that you'd be able to do the job you're interviewing for pretty well given half a chance.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#303

Post by JackMorgan »

Jensson wrote: post #283
JackMorgan wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former director of engineering who has hired many great developers and many terrible ones, I can safely say that grinding leetcode isn't a valid signal for smart, just for conformity, ego, and time. Some of the worst developers I know could crush leetcode all day. Yes, it's an easy signal, it makes an unpredictable and messy process feel neat and binary. However, it is a false signal, and no amount of personal c…

> Our best practices are a farce with absolutely zero data to back up their validity. Ask yourselves where are the studies that prove candidates who crush leetcode perform better than those who couldn't? Where is the double blind research? Google has data on this, when I worked there anyone working there could view it. Performance on their technical interviews is the strongest signal they have that someone will perfo…

I'm very interested in what else they tried. Also very interested to see the research, is there somewhere it is published?

I do believe that performance in a technical interview corresponds closely with overall performance, but I'm very curious how they measure job performance, considering tech job performance is mostly a subjective popularity contest. I'm not convinced that is a valuable signal either. This is what I was getting at, we can't measure productivity _of employees_ with any rigor, so how can we know if our interviewing process works. Since job performance is so subjective, it's not very surprising to me that people hired with a different process aren't as well liked. The one thing I know about people is they like people like them. People who can and will grind leetcode are a very similar group indeed, so a person who didn't do that likely sticks out like a sore thumb.

Perhaps all this is accounted for, in which case I'd love to see it.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#304

Post by bsder »

sdiupIGPWEfh wrote: post #196
bsder wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with recorded video, but I am now convinced that there should always be an random "observer" (interviewer does not get to pick) who does nothing but watch and take notes along with an interviewer. You can give whatever excuse you want "Adding a new person to the loops," "normalizing the loop level," whatever. But I am now convinced that interviewers cannot be trusted alone with candidates anymore. Maybe…

Isn't interviewing in pairs fairly common? When being interviewed, there's always been two people across from me for the technical rounds; anything 1-on-1 is limited to initial phone screens and final rounds with the bigwigs. When conducting interviews, I've always been one of two, with the exception of one time when no one else was available to join me, which I'd prefer not to repeat. I would go so far as to say a r…

> Isn't interviewing in pairs fairly common?

It wasn't at any point that I knew. Interviewing is an expensive operation--it ties up quite senior folks for a fixed amount of time. If you pair that, you double the expense.

And it seems like phone screens are exactly the point where you most need a pair from these anecdotes.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#305

Post by JackMorgan »

moneywoes wrote: post #276
JackMorgan wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former director of engineering who has hired many great developers and many terrible ones, I can safely say that grinding leetcode isn't a valid signal for smart, just for conformity, ego, and time. Some of the worst developers I know could crush leetcode all day. Yes, it's an easy signal, it makes an unpredictable and messy process feel neat and binary. However, it is a false signal, and no amount of personal c…

I agree wholeheartedly. However, what is the alternative? There are way too many developers out there and too few jobs

I think the opposite is true, we're doing the same thing doctors and lawyers do: artificially restrict the supply, driving up demand and pay. Not top down and centralized, but individually and decentralized. There's plenty of jobs, almost every company reports a 10% shortage, but the developers won't let in anyone.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#306

Post by vanusa »

gentleman11 wrote: post #301
nijave wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im not a huge fan of leetcode or work samples but on the receiving end it weeded out a huge number of bad candidates. We'd get tons of copy/pasted together infra as code from top Google results that wasn't even close to runnable (usually being close to runnable with a few small bugs was a good submission and runnable with no bugs was a great submission)

> weeded out a huge number of bad candidates. A lot of hiring managers have no concept of experiment design. You can’t invent a measure (or copy it from a blogs about how other companies hire), look at who it rejects, and conclude they are bad. You don’t know if they were good or bad. You never worked with any of them. You only know that you applied your measure. The only candidates you have any information about are…

You never worked with any of them. You only know that you applied your measure.

What's interesting is that the people doing all this "weeding out" seem so sure that they're bravely defending the fort against an onslaught of incompetent hordes... and yet they're missing this extremely basic point about the nature of the process they've chosen to use.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#307

Post by shiohime »

I truly despise the leetcode style of interviewing. It comes off as completely lazy and ineffective for most companies, and is a terrible indicator of how talented individuals are. I've been in the field for about a decade and have been on both sides of the interview table more than I can remember. I'm at the point where if I get asked these kinds of pointless questions at a screening phase, it is a signal I probably don't even care to work for them. If they don't care enough to actually create a meaningful interview process rather than copy+pasting the dumb Silicon Valley company pointless leetcode interviewing template, then they're clearly not somewhere I want to work.

The worst experience I had was applying for a couple of large companies like Peloton and Compass. They outsourced the leetcode interviewing process to some arbitrary company in Russia. Not only did I not have the chance to ask any questions of the company, but I had to do absolutely pointless trick questions for an arbitrary third party. It was an absolute waste of time that I only did once and told the other company basically to fuck off. Seriously, if a company can't even run their own interviews what is the freaking point?? It's an absolute absurdity and I cannot believe that this practice is so common.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#308

Post by rileymichael »

shiohime wrote: post #307

I truly despise the leetcode style of interviewing. It comes off as completely lazy and ineffective for most companies, and is a terrible indicator of how talented individuals are. I've been in the field for about a decade and have been on both sides of the interview table more than I can remember. I'm at the point where if I get asked these kinds of pointless questions at a screening phase, it is a signal I probably…

The outsourced interviewing company was Karat I assume. Pretty terrible experience as you said.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#309

Post by shiohime »

rileymichael wrote: post #308
shiohime wrote: post #307

I truly despise the leetcode style of interviewing. It comes off as completely lazy and ineffective for most companies, and is a terrible indicator of how talented individuals are. I've been in the field for about a decade and have been on both sides of the interview table more than I can remember. I'm at the point where if I get asked these kinds of pointless questions at a screening phase, it is a signal I probably…

The outsourced interviewing company was Karat I assume. Pretty terrible experience as you said.

Yep, that was the one.

Re: Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens

#310

Post by soneca »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #10
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

How do you feel about collaborative problem solving? A big reason talking-it-out is popular is because it provides signal on your communication, problem solving and collaboration skills. If you sit there for 30 minutes banging out a solution in silence, I get a bit of signal. If you sit there for 30 minutes in silence doing nothing, then you're stuck and you've failed the interview as I didn't get the opportunity to…

In every real world work problem that is solved collaboratively had some time before where people understood the context and the problem by themselves before. At least they know the codebase, the business goals, the colleague.

There is no situation where a boss call two random engineers, throw a completely new problem at their hands and ask them to solve it in 45 minutes.

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