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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

#221

Post by pc86 »

kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #187
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that interviewing.io interviews are specifically designed to be anonymous. This is even stated on their website. The interviewers do not see a resume or job history. As a candidate who's done a couple of interviews through them, the interviewers never asked anything about my background either. I don't recall even uploading a resume.

Yeah, but there's in-group jargon and technical approaches that FAANG and FAANG-adjacent engineers will pick up on. Just because you're anonymous doesn't mean you aren't unconsciously signaling your background to your interviewer.

Do you honestly believe this jargon is so unique to FAANG and "FAANG-adjacent" (that's a new one) SDEs that it can be used to pick them out, yet so secret it's not yet become industry-wide jargon?

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

#222

Post by drc500free »

chewbacha wrote: post #42

Oof, non-zeroed charts are very deceptive in enlarging differences that might be within the error margins.

In this case, is 0% passing really a meaningful bar? You could flip the chart upside-down and do it on fail rates, and the differences would look like this.

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

#223

Post by FranksTV »

paxys wrote: post #108
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…

Yeah "we are more selective and exclusive than Google and Facebook" was Palantir's whole schtick when they originally took off. And a lot of very smart engineers bought it. Turns out it takes a lot more than a high leetcode bar for your interviews to run a successful company.

When developers change roles so frequently, being an employer with a reputation for being full of smart people is a good recruiting tactic.

Not because you get good work done, but because people will apply because you look good on a resume.

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

#224

Post by bryanrasmussen »

kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #184
b20000 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is this downvoted?

Fragile FAANG-ers

Well I'm not a FAANG-er and I didn't downvote, but it seems weird that the ones at FAANG would be so obviously less skilled than the others, It would be believable that they were the same skill level but otherwise seems weird.

Unless of course the weighting of his groups is off somehow, which should have been noted.

Actually it doesn't seem like the statement was very informative.

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

#225

Post by hiq »

WYepQ4dNnG wrote: post #210
hiq wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> increase salary and benefits until enough people able to pass More often than not, BigCo don't need A players, but average devs to keep the wheels spinning and that's where the struggle with hiring is.

The point is that there's no struggle; if there were, they'd just raise benefits.

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

#226

Post by b20000 »

selcuka wrote: post #214
b20000 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sure, why not? companies collect info about what school you graduated from and your grades anyway already. they can associate that data with who they fired to decide if they want to hire out of that school.

That would be an even more fragile metric. It only takes one or two bad professors to skew the stats.

i don’t see how that would skew the stats as it would affect only a few courses you take and you can still do decent and self study if the professor is crap.

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

#227

Post by prepend »

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…

I suppose you’re very fortunate, but I wouldn’t generalize anything from your experience. Just like I wouldn’t generalize from mine.

I’ve worked with programmers from Scandinavian university degrees and some sucked. Not sure how they passed, but the degree was 15 years old and this was the early 00s.

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

#228

Post by prepend »

b20000 wrote: post #206
overrun11 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did maybe 5-10 hours of preparation for my current job's interview and most of my colleagues didn't grind either. I'm skeptical of this idea that the only people who work at FAANG are Leetcode machines that have sacrificed their lives to grind questions.

then maybe you are an outlier and were asked the exact questions you prepared for. most people here mentioned 2-3 months of grinding and that is what i also experienced firsthand.

Part of the interview process is to find positive outliers. I don’t want average people. I want great people.

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

#229

Post by b20000 »

prepend wrote: post #228
b20000 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then maybe you are an outlier and were asked the exact questions you prepared for. most people here mentioned 2-3 months of grinding and that is what i also experienced firsthand.

Part of the interview process is to find positive outliers. I don’t want average people. I want great people.

the interview process does not optimize for great people with relevant experience but for those who repeatedly grind leetcode problems irrelevant to the job.

i interviewed a while ago at a FAANG where they had a long standing problem related to their OS. i knew the solution because i recently brought a product to market built on top of a similar OS and had to address the same problem.

but it was more important to them i passed their coding test within a few minutes, and that i choose the optimum solution, which can only be found if you can spend an hour thinking about it. i bombed the interview due to not being used to coding interviews and having to talk while i think, and having to do all this in a few minutes.

they are probably still wondering how to fix their problem.

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

#230

Post by ctvo »

overrun11 wrote: post #164
ctvo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, but this is a gradient. Struggling startup may ask a question that 80% of engineers are capable of answering (through luck, exposure, experience -- whatever dimensions). Dropbox asks difficult questions, and it's hard to discern why. I don't believe the problems at Dropbox are particularly difficult relative to its peers. I don't think they innovate at a clip that's outsized, etc.. But they do this, and th…

It's easy to criticize the current state of tech interviews but I've never really heard anyone propose a better solution. Startups ask questions 80% of engineers can answer because they don't have many applicants. Dropbox might have 50 decent applicants who could all probably do the job for every opening. How do you decide who gets it? Ask an easier question and you end up with way more passes than you have openings.

To be clear: not criticizing the current state of hiring. I agree nothing better exists, and it's a narrow mindset to think companies do this when there are better approaches.

My point is Dropbox asks questions that are beyond what its peers ask, even companies not its peer (FAANG, which we don't think Dropbox is apart of).

This is an explicit decision by the engineering leaders at Dropbox. It's interesting, and I'm wondering if it works for them.

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