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My spiciest take on tech hiring

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Re: My spiciest take on tech hiring

#71

Post by anon22981 »

kgeist wrote: post #50

That's how we do it: - 30 minutes of basic theoretical questions: SOLID, design patterns, DDD, clean architecture etc. just to get an overview of what they know and what their experience is, and if we'll have to assign them some courses later - 30 minutes of a practical task: they're given a very bad piece of code (1 screen), and their task is to review it. Things like: SQL injection, lack of transactions (data consi…

I’d love to see an example on the bad code and also the ”correct” notes. I have a couple years of experience and it’d be nice to see what I can spot.

Anyone know a good resource for something like this?

Re: My spiciest take on tech hiring

#72

Post by sublinear »

busterarm wrote: post #67
sublinear wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Experience also tells me that most peoples' life partners are extremely intolerant of career uncertainty, unless as a couple they are both very young. I can only laugh at this statement.

You can but it's pretty naive. The effects of layoffs and non-fulltime employment on families have been well studied with all of the conclusions that one should expect. I know multiple guys with wildly successful side-hustles, years-long backlogs of clients and more than enough income to exceed their day jobs and their wives absolutely will not allow them to leave their fulltime jobs because they're fearful of the ri…

I'm not hiring kids. This is the world we've come to. I understand your perspective, but have you considered that times have changed? Your most recent reference to this idea is over 20 years ago. The nuclear family, and especially wives aren't relevant anymore.

This isn't even an about inflation. There's an entire cohort you're not looking at and they're about to eat your lunch and so is your wife :D

Re: My spiciest take on tech hiring

#73

Post by wink »

tptacek wrote: post #2

This is not a very spicy take. A spicier take is that you can hire people without administering any interviews at all. Hire like an orchestra: through an audition process, which, in a work setting, is also known as "work-sample testing". It works a treat.

I suppose you've heard this argument a lot, so the short version: Can't compensate people in many countries, and probably some other legal problems when they are still employed, so what are they supposed to do? Take a vacation day? Does it even still count as an interview if you're doing real work?

I'd love this, because I have a feeling I'm better at working with people than whiteboarding, but realistically unless I'm on furlow or out of a job it seems really hard to pull off, especially if it's longer than one day, even if I ignore the compensation, which would not be a pet peeve of mine, but I've heard it as a valid argument from others.

Re: My spiciest take on tech hiring

#74

Post by jaymzcampbell »

anon22981 wrote: post #71
kgeist wrote: post #50

That's how we do it: - 30 minutes of basic theoretical questions: SOLID, design patterns, DDD, clean architecture etc. just to get an overview of what they know and what their experience is, and if we'll have to assign them some courses later - 30 minutes of a practical task: they're given a very bad piece of code (1 screen), and their task is to review it. Things like: SQL injection, lack of transactions (data consi…

I’d love to see an example on the bad code and also the ”correct” notes. I have a couple years of experience and it’d be nice to see what I can spot. Anyone know a good resource for something like this?

I've found the Code Review Stack Exchange to be pretty good for this sort of upskilling: https://codereview.stackexchange.com/?tab=month

Re: My spiciest take on tech hiring

#75

Post by kreetx »

anal_reactor wrote: post #70

> A lot of companies think that dragging out the interview process helps improve candidate quality, but what they’re actually doing is inadvertently selecting for more desperate candidates that have a higher tolerance for bullshit and process. Is that the kind of engineer that you want to attract as you grow your organization? OP has never worked in a corporate environment

Yeah, in a way this "spicy" take is somewhat idealist (naive?). Bigger companies, even the ones that are not all that bad, can have quite a lot of process due to the fact that there are non-technical people involved, often in controlling positions for the hiring process. Although I can't say I enjoy it, I actually don't mind it that much either.

Re: My spiciest take on tech hiring

#76

Post by psanford »

foobiekr wrote: post #58
LVB wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never tried it, but it doesn’t sound terrible. As I approach 25 years in industry, what does sound terrible is more rote studying for interviews, and I don’t mean just leetcode. The idea of just giving the work a go in situ, and we either like each other or not, sounds sort of refreshing should I find myself job shopping.

I don't know your life circumstances, but as I am slightly beyond 25 YOE, it has been over two decades since I found myself job shopping, just job choosing. There's no way I'd be working my current job and also doing whatever weird contract-to-hire gig some company that can't vet employees would ask. For most senior people, a new job is leaving an existing cushy job. We're not going to do that for some nonsense like…

You have to take at least 1 day off for a standard tech interview, often more. I don't see how this is much different from a demand on your time.

Re: My spiciest take on tech hiring

#77

Post by kasey_junk »

wink wrote: post #73
tptacek wrote: post #2

This is not a very spicy take. A spicier take is that you can hire people without administering any interviews at all. Hire like an orchestra: through an audition process, which, in a work setting, is also known as "work-sample testing". It works a treat.

I suppose you've heard this argument a lot, so the short version: Can't compensate people in many countries, and probably some other legal problems when they are still employed, so what are they supposed to do? Take a vacation day? Does it even still count as an interview if you're doing real work? I'd love this, because I have a feeling I'm better at working with people than whiteboarding, but realistically unless I…

A common hack around this is to donate the “compensation” to a charity of the persons choosing.

Re: My spiciest take on tech hiring

#78

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

corimaith wrote: post #52
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your solution is "change society" because you think that's easier than fixing your hiring process???

I agree it's hard, but it is A solution rather than no solution. I just don't think you can "fix" the process with a purely isolationist approach. You either change the world or the world changes you.

Well, frankly, I think your diagnosis is woefully incorrect. Google made 2 very straightforward conscious decisions regarding hiring that are responsible for their current problems:

1. They quite obviously put the bean counters in control. Google famously originally said "they were a different kind of company", and early on, they were. But it was a leadership decision to forever squeeze each additional penny out of their ads systems. I think some people may put the "turning point" as to when Ruth Porat joined, but I think it's colossally unfair to blame her - after all, she did a phenomenal job raising the stock price, which is basically the job of the CFO. But setting the vision and goals for the company comes from the very top.

2. Regarding their lack of ideological diversity, that was also a very conscious decision. I went to a Google hiring event about 8 or 9 years ago, and the hiring manager was very clear that her number one goal was increasing diversity by raising levels of underrepresented groups, and it was stated as a source of pride. Not technical excellence, not innovation, etc. If anything I think that mindset was inculcated at some of the elite tech companies before society at large.

Re: My spiciest take on tech hiring

#79

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

The_Colonel wrote: post #45
CommieBobDole wrote: post #11

This is a mayonnaise-spicy take as far as I'm concerned, in the sense that I agree with it entirely. Once you've read someone's resume you should have a pretty good idea whether or not you want to hire them. The interview should confirm that they can discuss their relevant experience and address any potential concerns that you might have without raising red flags. Beyond that, if they have deep flaws that you didn't…

> Once you've read someone's resume you should have a pretty good idea whether or not you want to hire them. I disagree. The experience in resume is basically a name-dropping, it doesn't tell you much about how much they know / what are their abilities. As an interviewer, what interests me is whether they have non-surface knowledge about something . I'm looking for a T-shape - getting a broad, but surface level knowl…

Totally agree. One of the best discriminator questions I've found is to have a candidate talk about a technology they've used in the past, and then talk about the pros and cons of that tech, and also to compare that tech with a competing tech they're familiar with.

Poor candidates say something like "it's all great!" or "it's all awful", which is almost never true. They're unable to go beyond a very surface level "I called this library and it worked" kind of analysis. Good candidates are able to compare and contrast the pros and cons of lots of underlying details.

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