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We analyzed 100K technical interviews to see where the best performers work

blog.interviewing.io

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Re: We analyzed 100K technical interviews to see where the best performers work

#151

Post by b20000 »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #134
smrtinsert wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Props to the honesty

Just to argue against myself, I do think that if enough interviewers interview a candidate, you will get an aggregate score that will give you a pretty good sense of how well that candidate is likely to do on other interviews, and I have found that candidates that do well on these interviews tend to make good employees, although that's based only on the fact that everybody I work with has passed one of these intervie…

I've been in interview rounds where if ONE interviewer doesn't like how you did on the stupid coding test, you're out. So what you are saying is pretty much BS.

Re: We analyzed 100K technical interviews to see where the best performers work

#152

Post by alskdjflaskjdhf »

subsubzero wrote: post #77

Dropbox was known as a hard place to interview since 2014, the tech companies that had the hardest technical interviews are Quora, Palantir and Dropbox(honorable mention fog creek)(this was from a few years back so things may have changed). Just because the company makes it extremely difficult to get in does not mean the company is generally all around awesome or pays great or employs the greatest engineers. It optim…

Since a good bit before 2014, even. They used to recruit very heavily from MIT (while Palantir was overrepresented at Stanford and Quora at Harvard--all of these reflecting the almae matres of the founders). Note that this was before the popularity of Leetcode and the whole cottage industry around trying to game algorithmic-type interviews. I'm not sure if similar companies founded today would push these algorithm-heavy interviews as hard, since they've probably lost some signal now & prevailing attitudes have changed a bit.

At any rate, it doesn't surprise me at all that Dropbox engineers do better than FANG engineers on these technical metrics. The average Dropbox engineer is almost certainly a bit smarter and a bit better at algorithms than the average FANG engineer. Of course those attributes don't automatically translate into being a better engineer, though, nor do they automatically translate into company success or anything.

Re: We analyzed 100K technical interviews to see where the best performers work

#153

Post by b20000 »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #134
smrtinsert wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Props to the honesty

Just to argue against myself, I do think that if enough interviewers interview a candidate, you will get an aggregate score that will give you a pretty good sense of how well that candidate is likely to do on other interviews, and I have found that candidates that do well on these interviews tend to make good employees, although that's based only on the fact that everybody I work with has passed one of these intervie…

also, what you do with interns, could be done with any developer you hire. you just hire them for a few months and pay them. if you like their work, keep them. otherwise let them go. no need for coding interviews.

Re: We analyzed 100K technical interviews to see where the best performers work

#154

Post by tomp »

kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #44

I'm glad to see this getting roasted in the comments, as it's a really good example of how companies put out self-serving pseudo-statistical nonsense in an effort to promote themselves. There's no effort to quantify what "technical" or "communication" skills are - these are left to the interpretation of a the interviewer. It makes no effort to show where these engineers are going, what the interview process they're c…

um are we looking at the same graphs?

the second best performing company on "technical" and "problem solving" was Bloomberg, literally the opposite of Silicon Valley

Re: We analyzed 100K technical interviews to see where the best performers work

#155

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

junon wrote: post #131
leeny wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. Yes, the skills are left to the interpretation of the interviewer, but most of our interviewers are senior engineers at FAANG. We've done quite a bit of work internally to make sure your interviewers are well calibrated, and we have a living calibration score for each one (calibration is based on how the interviewees they interview end up doing in real interviews). The interviews in question are a mix of…

> senior engineers at FAANG This means absolutely nothing. It's a well known fact that SV titles hold next to no weight.

> "It's a well known fact that SV titles hold next to no weight."

Except at FAANG; the rewards are so great that the competition is fierce. Whether they gained their levels through engineering ability or savvy politicking, you can be sure they are adept in at least one of the two.

Re: We analyzed 100K technical interviews to see where the best performers work

#156

Post by overrun11 »

tmp_anon_22 wrote: post #31
seabriez wrote: post #28

"best performers work" With a title like that you really just cannot take this study seriously lol. Not to say it's not interesting but that is one crazy claim, at best title should be "most effective interviewees." Also, I work in FANG but signed up for this website and can't even participate, so how you chose all these candidates is also questionable.

The logic being "They work at Google/Dropbox/etc... therefore they are the best performers" really irks me.

I don't see this claim being made anywhere. The article claims the opposite: the best performers on their technical interview happen to be from Dropbox/Google etc.

Re: We analyzed 100K technical interviews to see where the best performers work

#157

Post by driverdan »

gcheong wrote: post #92

Does this happen in any other field? If I was a doctor and wanted to work at some other company, would I need to study the MCAT every year in order to pass a screening interview based on one possible question? What's the equivalent in other fields? Closest I can think of is an acting audition but even then they give you the script beforehand. I'm beginning to think that the industry somehow settled on this approach n…

Welders typically have to demonstrate their welding skills. That's the only one I can think of though.

Re: We analyzed 100K technical interviews to see where the best performers work

#158

Post by overrun11 »

b20000 wrote: post #35
WYepQ4dNnG wrote: post #6

I think people put too much effort and time in this whole interview business. My suggestion, based on my experience, is to spend a reasonable time like a month, brushing up on most common data structures and algo. Then just take your chances. Rinse and repeat.

the process is incredibly inefficient and disrespectful. people have already paid for university degrees and getting a degree is no joke, certainly not at a european university. graduating without programming skills is impossible. what companies should do is ask you to walk them through a piece of code of your choice and discuss that and/or hire you for a month as a contractor and pay you a fair market rate.

> hire you for a month as a contractor and pay you a fair market rate.

Huge risk for anyone who currently has a job. I'd much rather the technical interview.

Re: We analyzed 100K technical interviews to see where the best performers work

#159

Post by hiq »

paxys wrote: post #47
WYepQ4dNnG wrote: post #6

I think people put too much effort and time in this whole interview business. My suggestion, based on my experience, is to spend a reasonable time like a month, brushing up on most common data structures and algo. Then just take your chances. Rinse and repeat.

> people put too much effort > spend a reasonable time like a month Spending a month on interview training is exactly what I would consider unreasonable effort. Here's a scenario – I have worked at big tech company A for a decade writing backend code. Big tech company B has many openings for senior backend coders, and is desperate to fill them. B's recruiters are hounding me every day to consider a switch. The job lo…

If B is desperate, they'll just increase salary and benefits until enough people able to pass the interview start applying. Adjectives like "desperate" don't reflect what actually happens: they priced the cost of possibly not hiring soon, of using a different hiring method and of changing the benefits, and they computed (badly?) the optimum to be where they are.

If they become more desperate, things could change, but they don't and things stay the same.

Re: We analyzed 100K technical interviews to see where the best performers work

#160

Post by overrun11 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #130
prepend wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> graduating without programming skills is impossible I’ve encountered many who graduated from bachelor and even PhD programs without programming skills (even from European universities), so your statement is false. It also seems pretty weird to assume that a degree or certificate is foolproof for demonstrating programming skills. That seems like a lack of critical thinking skills.

I can only speak for myself, but I've never met a (CS) candidate from an accredited Scandinavian university / college that simply could not write code. There are obviously candidates that struggle with performing under pressure - even those that have gone completely blank, but through some simple guiding have bounced back. To be frank, at the schools I studied at, it would be impossible to fake your way through a who…

Maybe Scandinavian countries have more rigorous degree programs. If so they are fairly unique in that regard. I don't see how we can use that during hiring thought. What are tech companies supposed to do: only hire from these universities? That seems less fair than the current process.
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