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P(we hire you) =~ 0.0016

davidlynch.org

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Re: P(we hire you) =~ 0.0016

#51

Post by randomdata »

latch wrote: post #17
justin_vanw wrote: post #3

P(I'm impressed) ~= Nope Turning down a lot of candidates is not the same as finding good candidates. If you are turning down that many applicants, all it means is that your applicant pool is almost entirely bad candidates. That merely implies you are failing where it matters most, getting awesome candidates interested and excited about working for you. I bet you could drive the P down even more. You could write wors…

Interviewing process is something which, to my astonishment, companies don't tweak or experiment with. They have a process and they stick with it...this is as true of large corporations as it is of small startups. There's no attempt at being better or trying something different, even though everyone acknowledges how difficult and important it is. Part of the problem is people don't realize that they are doing it poor…

Part of the problem is people don't realize that they are doing it poorly.

You would think the 0.16% success rate would be a pretty big indicator.

Based on my own experience, there were a number of points in the article that I have found to be not effective ways to hire programmers. And that is fine. They are free to hire people as they wish. But placing all of the blame on 99% of programmers being unqualified seems to miss the mark. It is more likely the hiring process causes them to miss out on the really good programmers.

Re: P(we hire you) =~ 0.0016

#52

Post by jwegan »

kemayo wrote: post #29
cletus wrote: post #8

You have two steps round the wrong way: 1. Do the phone screen first. Frankly, in my experience, you can filter out a lot of people in the first minute; and 2. Then do the test. Speaking of the test, I had a quick look and it takes time. How much time? I'm not sure as I didn't look at the starting code, just the list of tasks. Maybe it only takes 30 minutes. Maybe it might take hours. I really don't know. Either way,…

There's a certain amount of selection bias here, given that I've obviously already gone through a similar sort of process to get hired there, but I don't think it's terrible to ask an applicant to do a small proof-of-competence task before you tie up a bunch of time in talking to them. For what it's worth, it's somewhere in the half hour range for that exercise, and I've certainly spent longer than that tweaking a re…

I think the consensus on HN is that your company's hiring practices are not normal. While some percentage of good developers will put up with your practices; I think a much larger percentage pass on you before you ever hear from them. As you alluded to, everyone working at your company has self selected themselves to work there and must fall into the "some percentage" category. Of course all of you think this hiring strategy is a great idea, since all of you put up with it. However, if you really want to increase P(we hire you), it might be time to break out of the groupthink and try something new.

Re: P(we hire you) =~ 0.0016

#53

Post by wavephorm »

rorrr wrote: post #49

I've been doing interviews for a large corporation. I can tell you right away that your process is designed to weed out the best of the best. You see, the best candidates stay on the market for maybe a week. You'd be lucky to interview them once. Nobody who is truly good will jump through your hoops. You're just hiring the best of the ones willing to subject themselves to this ridiculous process, pretty much some des…

  You're hiring... the ones willing to subject themselves to this
   ridiculous process, pretty much some desperate developers
That's EXACTLY the employees they want.

Re: P(we hire you) =~ 0.0016

#54

Post by drwxrwxrwt »

JoeCortopassi wrote: post #6
kemayo wrote: post #2

I wanted to submit this, because in the recent hiring thread [1] I got some responses complaining that we'd been posting for ages now, without apparently hiring anyone. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3060406

Just tossing this out there, cause I was one of the people making those comments. I don't think anyone is frustrated with not getting hired, I think it's just weird seeing the same monthly "We really want to hire people" post, but zero response to (what seems like)a lot of people that apply. I feel like this is indicative of one of three scenarios: 1) For whatever reason, there is a high turn over rate at your compan…

1 and 2. we are a tech company, yes we are growing, and like most serious places in this industry we never stop hiring qualified developers. this is not a monthly ad for same single job. we are growing the team, and have been successful doing that.

3. we get very few off-topic applications. most who apply do have some level of experience to qualify for the position. yes, the first screen is subjective, and we clearly make mistakes if all we have to go on is the CV without a single link to one's work. Thats why the position description suggests submitting code samples like a link to the github account would be very beneficial.

we do respond with an automated message acknowledging the receipt of the application and it spells out what to expect. We contact again to request code sample and exercise of those who pass initial screen. unfortunately sometimes those emails get trapped in spam filters. We did used to send rejection messages in the past, but this also did not work very well because many applicants expected very personal response and coaching on what went wrong. As all of us are also full time developers, we just dont have bandwidth to do that. but based on your guys's comments we'll see how we can do it again.

Re: P(we hire you) =~ 0.0016

#55

Post by getsat »

wavephorm wrote: post #53
rorrr wrote: post #49

I've been doing interviews for a large corporation. I can tell you right away that your process is designed to weed out the best of the best. You see, the best candidates stay on the market for maybe a week. You'd be lucky to interview them once. Nobody who is truly good will jump through your hoops. You're just hiring the best of the ones willing to subject themselves to this ridiculous process, pretty much some des…

You're hiring... the ones willing to subject themselves to this ridiculous process, pretty much some desperate developers That's EXACTLY the employees they want.

I went through this application process before I had this test dropped on me. I simply didn't have time to complete it. I was desperate enough to actually warrant writing PHP again, but I was able to find a better position elsewhere. One without a "trial" period.

Re: P(we hire you) =~ 0.0016

#56

Post by ramchip »

cperciva wrote: post #28
cletus wrote: post #8

You have two steps round the wrong way: 1. Do the phone screen first. Frankly, in my experience, you can filter out a lot of people in the first minute; and 2. Then do the test. Speaking of the test, I had a quick look and it takes time. How much time? I'm not sure as I didn't look at the starting code, just the list of tasks. Maybe it only takes 30 minutes. Maybe it might take hours. I really don't know. Either way,…

...a relatively efficient (at worst O(n) space and time) factorial function... If you can do that, you'll win a Nobel prize. (Yes, I know there isn't a Nobel prize in computing: You'd win a Nobel prize in physics, for showing how to store Θ(n log n) bits in O(n) space.) Heck, if you can compute n! in O(n (log n)^(2-x)) time for any x > 0 you'll probably win the Turing award. Such an algorithm would be really really b…

I don't understand your comment. Take a simple definition of the factorial: http://codepad.org/GTBdCKin

The space usage for this function is obviously constant, and the number of multiplications will be linearly dependent on the number.

If you mean to refer to the 'factorial function' as a mathematical object, and point out that bignum operations have different complexity... well that's true, but irrelevant to OP's post, and there are less snide ways of saying it.

Re: P(we hire you) =~ 0.0016

#57

Post by gergles »

EmployedRussian wrote: post #48
cperciva wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure I had 7 interviews when I visited Mt.View five years ago. Maybe Google's standards are slipping? ;-)

Google has experimentally determined that interviews 5 through 7 provide negligible additional signal, and so they've been eliminated from the process. Contrary to latch's comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3062001 , Google does tweak the process from time to time.

But don't worry, they've kept the random noise "hiring committee!"

Re: P(we hire you) =~ 0.0016

#58

Post by [deleted] »

ramchip wrote: post #56
cperciva wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...a relatively efficient (at worst O(n) space and time) factorial function... If you can do that, you'll win a Nobel prize. (Yes, I know there isn't a Nobel prize in computing: You'd win a Nobel prize in physics, for showing how to store Θ(n log n) bits in O(n) space.) Heck, if you can compute n! in O(n (log n)^(2-x)) time for any x > 0 you'll probably win the Turing award. Such an algorithm would be really really b…

I don't understand your comment. Take a simple definition of the factorial: http://codepad.org/GTBdCKin The space usage for this function is obviously constant, and the number of multiplications will be linearly dependent on the number. If you mean to refer to the 'factorial function' as a mathematical object, and point out that bignum operations have different complexity... well that's true, but irrelevant to OP's p…

[deleted]

Re: P(we hire you) =~ 0.0016

#59

Post by cperciva »

ramchip wrote: post #56
cperciva wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...a relatively efficient (at worst O(n) space and time) factorial function... If you can do that, you'll win a Nobel prize. (Yes, I know there isn't a Nobel prize in computing: You'd win a Nobel prize in physics, for showing how to store Θ(n log n) bits in O(n) space.) Heck, if you can compute n! in O(n (log n)^(2-x)) time for any x > 0 you'll probably win the Turing award. Such an algorithm would be really really b…

I don't understand your comment. Take a simple definition of the factorial: http://codepad.org/GTBdCKin The space usage for this function is obviously constant, and the number of multiplications will be linearly dependent on the number. If you mean to refer to the 'factorial function' as a mathematical object, and point out that bignum operations have different complexity... well that's true, but irrelevant to OP's p…

Yes, when I say "factorial function" I mean the factorial function, taking an integer input n and returning the integer output n!.

If cletus meant "factorial as long as the result is a 32-bit integer", I don't know why he would accept an O(n) solution to that: I wouldn't hire anyone who didn't immediately produce the obvious O(1) algorithm using a 13-element lookup table. (If he meant "factorial modulo 2^32", a 34-element lookup table suffices.)

As for being snide... yes, but I'm tired of the myth that Google is full of (and only hires) algorithms gurus. I have yet to see any indication that Google requires any more than a minimal undergraduate level of algorithmic competency.

Re: P(we hire you) =~ 0.0016

#60

Post by cperciva »

[deleted] wrote: post #58
ramchip wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your comment. Take a simple definition of the factorial: http://codepad.org/GTBdCKin The space usage for this function is obviously constant, and the number of multiplications will be linearly dependent on the number. If you mean to refer to the 'factorial function' as a mathematical object, and point out that bignum operations have different complexity... well that's true, but irrelevant to OP's p…

[deleted]

the # of bits required to represent the numeric argument

That's usually what we mean, yes. When we talk about algorithms for computing factorials, exponentials, or other rapidly-growing functions, we change terminology. It's one of these "we all know what we mean so we don't need be clear about what we're saying" things. ;-)

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