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Becoming a dungeon master for an interview

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Re: Becoming a dungeon master for an interview

#141

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

one_buggy_boi wrote: post #33

> When interviewing as a software engineer, for example, you’ll run into places that lean heavily on algorithms interviews. And don’t get me wrong, those interviews can be fun (in the same way that Project Euler can be fun), but it’s not very relevant for most jobs I'm curious what changed around 2015-2016 that led to the current interview process. In the before times the interview was more of a technical conversatio…

You could always learn the solutions once and put them into a set of Anki flashcards, so that you occasionally get reminded to practice them just before you forget them. You really don't have to keep repeating the 3 months "from scratch" experience. That's what I have done, pretty badly to be frank, and the prep time is now closer to 2 weeks.

Compared to many other industries where people are required to go get expensive and time consuming "continuing education", I don't think keeping a timed flashcard deck of maybe a couple hundred items total in rotation is all that onerous.

Re: Becoming a dungeon master for an interview

#142

Post by captainkrtek »

one_buggy_boi wrote: post #33

> When interviewing as a software engineer, for example, you’ll run into places that lean heavily on algorithms interviews. And don’t get me wrong, those interviews can be fun (in the same way that Project Euler can be fun), but it’s not very relevant for most jobs I'm curious what changed around 2015-2016 that led to the current interview process. In the before times the interview was more of a technical conversatio…

I recall being on a software engineer interview loop (faang), my topic to interview for was around practical problem solving. The candidate performed poorly, unable to write any solution to a basic log parsing problem in the language if their choice. In the debrief, apparently the candidate did very well in the algorithmic interview part of the loop. I dissented on the decision to hire, because of their inability to solve basic real world problems, the group proceeded anyway..

Re: Becoming a dungeon master for an interview

#143

Post by meowtimemania »

marcellus23 wrote: post #56
meowtimemania wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently started interviewing again and haven't encountered many leetcode style questions this time around. I'm noticing lots of contrived questions that relate to some feature the company had to build.

What does it mean for an interview question to be contrived?

Maybe contrived wasn’t the best word, but I’ve been asked to implement a simplified feature of the company’s product. So at one company I was asked to create a simplified model for their product with support for undo/redo.

Re: Becoming a dungeon master for an interview

#144

Post by Izkata »

thdc wrote: post #58
one_buggy_boi wrote: post #33

> When interviewing as a software engineer, for example, you’ll run into places that lean heavily on algorithms interviews. And don’t get me wrong, those interviews can be fun (in the same way that Project Euler can be fun), but it’s not very relevant for most jobs I'm curious what changed around 2015-2016 that led to the current interview process. In the before times the interview was more of a technical conversatio…

I like to think it went like this 1. Interviewer: If you're a good software engineer, you can answer basic algorithmic questions. 2. Interviewees: Practice algorithmic questions so you appear to be a good software engineer. 3. Interviewer: People are just studying leetcode to get jobs, what can we do? Ask harder leetcode questions. 4. Other companies: Let's copy them since they're successful. In short, the questions…

FizzBuzz as an example of 2/3: people used to occasionally talk about how interviewees were just memorizing the answer, and when they tweaked it slightly (like adding a 3rd number), a bunch of them could no longer solve it.

Re: Becoming a dungeon master for an interview

#145

Post by namaria »

dmoy wrote: post #37
one_buggy_boi wrote: post #33

> When interviewing as a software engineer, for example, you’ll run into places that lean heavily on algorithms interviews. And don’t get me wrong, those interviews can be fun (in the same way that Project Euler can be fun), but it’s not very relevant for most jobs I'm curious what changed around 2015-2016 that led to the current interview process. In the before times the interview was more of a technical conversatio…

> I'm curious what changed around 2015-2016 that led to the current interview process. In the before times the interview was more of a technical conversation, sure they had some gotcha questions, but nothing too brutal. If you had real experience that you co... Places just copied big tech companies that were already doing that for many years prior to 2015. I had leetcode style interviews well before 2010 even.

After subprime interest rates went to or near zero, prompting a huge influx of cash available for VCs with heightened FOMO due to increasing complexity of software. Marginal quality of talent decreased while remuneration went through the roof, drowning out valid signals in cvs and interview processes with so much noise that any complicated enough system was seen as valid. Extremely high rate of failure, which was made acceptable due to the potential rewards of funding a unicorn early further degraded the ability of anyone involved to conduct clear assessments.

Re: Becoming a dungeon master for an interview

#146

Post by RugnirViking »

Geisterde wrote: post #125
Spivak wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually great on the hiring side — you can skip all that bullshit and because tryhards are all prepping obscure CS questions just having a conversation about technical topics has become signal again. Measure something people aren't trying to game and you get a better assessment, go figure.

The highest correlation I see to success in my field is a background of PC gaming. They tend to do better on interviews in the technical regard, all the flashy certificates go out the window of you cant tell me what you would do if a computer wont post.

absolubtely! One of the best jobs I ever worked at asked me what CPU I had in my computer at home, I talked about how i'd built my own pc and the parts that went into it and why, and they (much) later when I was settled at the role said they could see I was a good candidate from that point onward. I think its useful to show a curiosity about your tools, about the boundaries of your world, which is useful when things arent going to plan

Re: Becoming a dungeon master for an interview

#147

Post by Scarblac »

bee_rider wrote: post #14
AlotOfReading wrote: post #4

On average, I enjoy these kinds of interviews much more than leetcode. The quality of the prep work and the ad libbing makes a huge difference to the quality of the interview though. One particularly memorable interview involved verbally debugging intermittent crashes the interviewer had recently seen. Unfortunately, they had no information about the software stack, unique symptoms, or access to status registers so i…

That seems like an interview that you passed (the company learned that you know a lot more than them about the resources available for debugging).

More likely the interviewer was some internal recruiter type who had been given some example questions to ask but didn't know about development themselves.

Re: Becoming a dungeon master for an interview

#148

Post by Tade0 »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #31
Tade0 wrote: post #26

In interviewing I try to avoid approaches that in any form or shape resemble riddles, so ostensibly open problems but with predetermined acceptable answers. I've found that it's both frustrating for the candidate and doesn't give me much insight. Such a back and forth to me is too close for comfort, even though I used to be into role-playing games back in the day. Currently I try to use the little time I have to dete…

Could you just have them sign an NDA and pair with people on some non-trade-secret real issue that needs addressing? If you start by giving a little bit of context and then jump into some reasonable end of the backlog, then you get to see how they think of priorities, they get to ask you lots of contextual questions, you get negotiate with each other a thing to do, you get to investigate and/or develop a solution, an…

Unfortunately I'm a corporate drone, so I don't have even nearly enough control over the process to make anyone sign anything.

Re: Becoming a dungeon master for an interview

#149

Post by jayceedenton »

This sounds like a good exercise, and kudos for thinking differently and at least trying to create a fairer and more useful process.

Two comments I'd make, that I hope you are already thinking about:

1. Role playing is a cringe-inducing experience for many (most?) adults. Please credit the interviewee with intelligence and don't try to actually role-play this. These are hypothetical scenarios, so discuss them as such.

2. As interviewers we are incredibly prone to seeing the things we know as obvious. When you devise an exercise, you can start to believe that everyone should easily see what you consider to be the 'right' way forward. In fact, seeing it may rely on your many years of experience in your company's culture, or your many years of experience with the interview exercise! So please, always remain skeptical of your assumptions about what is obvious, and avoid the trap of expecting candidates to see or follow the path that you think it's best. If any of your support scenarios are actually devious riddles that require one perfect question or leap, then whether candidates 'get it' or not will be random rather than indicative of better performance in-post.

Re: Becoming a dungeon master for an interview

#150

Post by sverhagen »

RugnirViking wrote: post #146
Geisterde wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The highest correlation I see to success in my field is a background of PC gaming. They tend to do better on interviews in the technical regard, all the flashy certificates go out the window of you cant tell me what you would do if a computer wont post.

absolubtely! One of the best jobs I ever worked at asked me what CPU I had in my computer at home, I talked about how i'd built my own pc and the parts that went into it and why, and they (much) later when I was settled at the role said they could see I was a good candidate from that point onward. I think its useful to show a curiosity about your tools, about the boundaries of your world, which is useful when things…

Do you really think it made you a better candidate, or did this person just feel a connection due to a similarity in interests or in your approach to computing? Was it even relevant for the job?
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