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Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

darrenkopp.com

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Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#281

Post by quantum_state »

kstenerud wrote: post #221

My approach to interviews over the past decade has been as follows: 1. My preparation for an interview involves researching the company, not technical matters. I don't brush up on coding interview questions. I've never done leetcode. 2. If I find the interview questions to be ridiculously off-topic (such as silly algorithm questions), I end the interview. You're not the kind of company I want to work with. 3. If I fi…

It’s the right and honest way to go about it: good fit from perspectives of both sides … that’s the original purpose of interviews.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#282

Post by xandrius »

surfingdino wrote: post #77

I have 30+ years of experience on my CV and I still am being asked to do coding interviews... I flatly refuse every time, because they have no connection to the actual job. The hiring process disregards experience and treats everyone in the same way. Ours is a stupid industry.

What phrasing would you use to refuse? I'm curious :D

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#283

Post by hintymad »

xandrius wrote: post #257
hintymad wrote: post #239

Assuming that a company does not look for candidates who are naturally good at ICPC-type of questions or geniuses who can come up with amazing algorithms in a matter of minutes, there is actually a different way to do coding interview: just give a high-level description of a sophisticated enough algorithm to a candidate and ask the candidate to turn that into code. I think it strikes a good balance between depth in C…

I still don't get why such questions are even asked as most jobs I've ever had not even remotely touched those and I've touched quite a few industries, technologies and types of companies. To me, the value of a software engineer is to ask questions, make hypotheses and be able to iterate quickly. Balancing trees, leetcode and other algorithmic stuff on the spot sounds like bringing the dreadful education system struc…

Personally I think such questions have three values:

- Future proof. Unless I work for an outsourcing company, sooner or later I will want to push the envelope, or so I hope I do. And to push the envelop, one needs good CS fundamentals (maybe there are some exceptions in some specialized field). Think about React. It's a JS framework, yet to invent it one needs to understand at least compiler and graph.

- Geekiness/talent filter. The same reason that the nascent Google and Microsoft and any elite companies like Jane Street asked Putnam questions, Martin Gardner questions, ICPC questions, and clever probability puzzles. Whether it's a good idea is debatable, but at least those companies want to have such type of people and they were hugely successful. Note the word filter: people who pass the interview may not be good, but failing the interview means the candidate may not be smart or geeky enough. Again, I'm not endorsing the idea but just exploring the motivation of the interview policies.

- Information density. Assuming a company does want to time box a coding interview in an hour, it will be hard to come up with realistic question without spending too much time on the context. On the other hand, it's relatively easy to come up with a data structure/algorithm question that packs enough number of abstractions and inspection points to examine one's programming skill.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#284

Post by xandrius »

jytechdevops wrote: post #225

i wouldn't give much weight to somebody who's resume shows a work history of starting out after college as a "CTO" to two "Principal Engineer" positions...

Why not?

I would still talk to them, it they actually were a CTO for a period and then got hired as Principal Engineer, they might be extremely talented.

I find these meaningless reasons bullshit, just tell me that you spinned the roulette and 5 red came out and I needed a 7 black to be chosen to be talked to. At least I don't start self doubting myself just because someone didn't like my formatting or the choices I made after university.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#285

Post by paulddraper »

xandrius wrote: post #257
hintymad wrote: post #239

Assuming that a company does not look for candidates who are naturally good at ICPC-type of questions or geniuses who can come up with amazing algorithms in a matter of minutes, there is actually a different way to do coding interview: just give a high-level description of a sophisticated enough algorithm to a candidate and ask the candidate to turn that into code. I think it strikes a good balance between depth in C…

I still don't get why such questions are even asked as most jobs I've ever had not even remotely touched those and I've touched quite a few industries, technologies and types of companies. To me, the value of a software engineer is to ask questions, make hypotheses and be able to iterate quickly. Balancing trees, leetcode and other algorithmic stuff on the spot sounds like bringing the dreadful education system struc…

> I still don't get why such questions are even asked

The thesis is not that these exercises are representative of work but rather predictive of performance.

Sales has a similar phenomenon with sports. While there is no athleticism involved in selling, many believe history in competitive sports to be a positive predictor of sales success.

---

You can reasonably argue whether leetcode accomplishes this well or poorly, but...

Always remember that purpose of an interview (for an employer) is to predict performance. So you are looking for the resume screening+interview process that most accurately assesses that.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#286

Post by Thrymr »

arcticbull wrote: post #81
speeder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of job pay 400k? Even when I worked as C++ guru at BMW and was hired as very senior my before taxes compensation was 40k (year).

You can make double or triple that in total compensation at the staff or principal level in the Bay Area. I'm not saying these jobs are easy, or easy to get, but yes, they exist, even in this market. The reality is the biggest drop-off in recruiting is at the very top of the funnel. Your basic phone screen and first technical screen -- before you get to a full panel. Once there you have way more, qualified, applicant…

> You can make double or triple that in total compensation at the staff or principal level in the Bay Area.

Sure, it is possible, but that is a small number of roles at a small number of companies, and the vetting process will be more intense. I think the coding interviews we're talking about in this thread are going to be at the junior to mid-level for the most part.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#287

Post by xandrius »

secondcoming wrote: post #69
reaperman wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been having trouble finding the scientific papers behind this theory, but one I’ve latched onto is that “filtering against known strong signals is helpful” but also that “additional filtering beyond that is more harmful than random choice of the remaining pool”. Basically, it can probably be shown that if you hire a group of completely random sample of resumes vs. hiring a random sample of people who can produce…

I don't agree. One part of coding tests is getting the right output, the other part is how they went about it - which is relevent even if they didn't solve the problem. You can tell a lot from the second part. I'm not a huge fan of coding tests, and I have a lot of sympathy for those who refuse to do them, but it's a case of "It's not you, it's everyone else"

I believe it to be much better to see a candidate write some code quickly, have them write unit tests for it, discover that some cases were not handled properly and then they were.

This is how 99% of developers work, I don't believe anyone who says they write their code perfectly and under stress every single time.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#288

Post by devbent »

xandrius wrote: post #257
hintymad wrote: post #239

Assuming that a company does not look for candidates who are naturally good at ICPC-type of questions or geniuses who can come up with amazing algorithms in a matter of minutes, there is actually a different way to do coding interview: just give a high-level description of a sophisticated enough algorithm to a candidate and ask the candidate to turn that into code. I think it strikes a good balance between depth in C…

I still don't get why such questions are even asked as most jobs I've ever had not even remotely touched those and I've touched quite a few industries, technologies and types of companies. To me, the value of a software engineer is to ask questions, make hypotheses and be able to iterate quickly. Balancing trees, leetcode and other algorithmic stuff on the spot sounds like bringing the dreadful education system struc…

>I still don't get why such questions are even asked as most jobs I've ever had not even remotely touched those and I've touched quite a few industries, technologies and types of companies.

I've had to work on tree traversal stuff multiple times in my life, anything low level GUI related will work with trees a ton.

I've also had to work with hash tables directly, and with memory caching layers.

I really should learn to write a proper parser, as I've had to write parsers multiple times now and they are always an ugly hack job.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#289

Post by xandrius »

paulddraper wrote: post #285
xandrius wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't get why such questions are even asked as most jobs I've ever had not even remotely touched those and I've touched quite a few industries, technologies and types of companies. To me, the value of a software engineer is to ask questions, make hypotheses and be able to iterate quickly. Balancing trees, leetcode and other algorithmic stuff on the spot sounds like bringing the dreadful education system struc…

> I still don't get why such questions are even asked The thesis is not that these exercises are representative of work but rather predictive of performance. Sales has a similar phenomenon with sports. While there is no athleticism involved in selling, many believe history in competitive sports to be a positive predictor of sales success. --- You can reasonably argue whether leetcode accomplishes this well or poorly,…

So you're saying that someone wasting their time studying leetcode to pass a stupid game is a good indicator?

I would almost believe the opposite: if you actually pass those tests with flying colours, it shows me that you believe you needed to do that to be hired, while someone who's actually experienced would never in a million years step down so low.

Re: Coding interviews are stupid (ish)

#290

Post by varjag »

ryandrake wrote: post #174
Paul-Craft wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in the US, "$400k" is almost certainly an outlier and not the typical case. Ever notice how people making these claims never provide data about actual comp distributions? I've been an engineer for almost 10 years and never had an offer come close to $400k per year.

Everyone on HN knows someone whose brother's uncle's girlfriend's nephew's former roommate works at Facebook and made $400K as a developer. And they'll point to that one person and say "See, it is possible to make $400K in tech." Yes, it is technically possible , just like it's possible to do plenty of difficult things. That doesn't make these salaries common. For every 1 person making $400K-800K at FAANG in the Bay…

I dunno man. A good third of my class seems to be working at FAANG and we're all from an unremarkable university in Eastern Europe. I'd imagine the prospects are much better if you start in the States already.
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