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An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

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Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#51

Post by tamimio »

sirwhinesalot wrote: post #29

I don't get why companies waste time with this sort of interview that just turns into this stupid cat and mouse game. Even ignoring this sort of software, someone cramming leet code exercises is the same thing in my view (they won't remember or use in their work 99% of that stuff). Just talk to the person, talk about the sorts of problems you expect them to solve. Can they understand the problem? Do they have ideas o…

Yep, it’s why I stopped looking for software development jobs long ago. It's this die-hard criterion that’s based on very isolated problem-solving issues rather than the big picture or the concept at least. This has resulted in the current outcome of software development nowadays, where you need a ‘wrangler’ (aka product manager) and all sorts of useless methodologies to deliver a product that’s literally identical to hundreds of products out there.

It gets even worse than that, with hiring based on arbitrary values. One of the companies I worked for before had an engineering manager who chose one candidate over another simply because he had a repo with thousands of stars.

Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#52

Post by sangeeth96 »

jasode wrote: post #23

Just in case this repo isn't a joke and some job seekers are seriously thinking of this tactic... Companies already know about cheat methods like this and candidates still have to demonstrate skills in-person on a whiteboard in a 2nd round of tech interviews. A high-paying FAANG job isn't going to hire candidates based on just one remote Zoom tech interview. That still may not deter some folks and they'll try to cont…

The in-person whiteboard interviews isn’t always a thing for all SDE rounds, but def there for SDE-2 and above I guess. Still, it’s just a matter of time before this is also solved.

Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#53

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

xandrius wrote: post #22
colinb wrote: post #10

I’m reasonably certain that I interviewed someone using this or something like it in the last few days. Lots of eye scanning while looking above the window they’d been typing into. Pauses. Big pastes. One of my excellent colleagues noticed that the candidate made use of exciting C++ casts before ever defining the variable’s types. Complete inability to explain or debug the code just written. So. Frustrating in two di…

It sounds like you want sympathy but it just shows that some people just don't understand the power dynamics of an interview. I believe live coding is a scourge and we should get rid of it altogether. Get a tiny open ended project, which requires more design/architecture skills than actually finishing the solution. You do it at your own time and shouldn't take more than 1-2h. You submit it and provide your mental pro…

> Get a tiny open ended project, which requires more design/architecture skills than actually finishing the solution. You do it at your own time and shouldn't take more than 1-2h. You submit it and provide your mental process in writing.

I used to really like the idea of take homes, then I had kids and discovered just how hard it is to find time to do these (particularly for multiple applications while working).

Don't get me wrong, I think that they're generally a better test for the actual role, but they're not perfect, and they're game-able by spending way more time on them.

Interviewing is hard. Like, ideally, we'd just centralise the administration of these tests and you'd do a few every year (so formal CPD rather than an expectation that people do it in their off time) but that is never gonna happen in the tech industry for various good and bad reasons.

Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#54

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

CastFX wrote: post #46
pavlov wrote: post #16

Why bother with this style of interview where the candidate is under extreme time pressure and isn’t allowed to use any of the research tools they would normally use in their job? What is this controlling for? It barely made sense when these were conducted in person, and it’s completely inane over video meeting. Instead of grilling people, talk to them. Give them meaningful take-home exercises that you can discuss to…

I agree but a big problem remains. How do you make it scale for 100k applications?

Filter people out by requiring them to count the number of s's in sensational.

Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#55

Post by szastupov »

xandrius wrote: post #22
colinb wrote: post #10

I’m reasonably certain that I interviewed someone using this or something like it in the last few days. Lots of eye scanning while looking above the window they’d been typing into. Pauses. Big pastes. One of my excellent colleagues noticed that the candidate made use of exciting C++ casts before ever defining the variable’s types. Complete inability to explain or debug the code just written. So. Frustrating in two di…

It sounds like you want sympathy but it just shows that some people just don't understand the power dynamics of an interview. I believe live coding is a scourge and we should get rid of it altogether. Get a tiny open ended project, which requires more design/architecture skills than actually finishing the solution. You do it at your own time and shouldn't take more than 1-2h. You submit it and provide your mental pro…

> I believe live coding is a scourge and we should get rid of it altogether.

I would take an hour of live coding any time over a take-home task that is one hour only on paper and takes you three in reality.

Engineering is collaboration, and it's fair to expect candidates to talk, solve problems, and explain their solutions.

Where we could do better as an industry is the type of problems we give to people. I'm not a fan of LeetCode-style questions, especially when multiple ones are asked. Something closer to Earth would be better. But even if you have to ask something algorithmical, I'd prefer the style of "Advent of Code" exercises where the same problem has variations and multiple levels of complexity.

Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#56

Post by sangeeth96 »

Someone beat my lazy ass to it XD

Had something in the works when I first got to know about multimodal GPT and electron made it super simple to prototype something. Refined it a bit to even do the invisible window thing after feedback from my peers. Didn’t have the ahem courage to do it.

Also recently noticed there are actual companies around this space who are marketing this off as “interview assistance”. Two of them I’m aware of:

1. https://www.senseicopilot.com/

2. https://www.finalroundai.com/

——

I’m sure the knee-jerk reaction from the tech industry to these tools would be:

1. Return to in-person interviews

2. Force install spyware/vanguard like crap to scan your whole personal computer before doing the interview

If you are a tech leader/senior engineer with influence on these matters, I *HOPE*, that this is not the path you take. It’s high time FAANG and others stop gatekeeping with these useless rounds that are equivalent to forcing people to hand-solve complex math equations instead of using calculators. I also partly blame the YT influencers who keep peddling this BS but they will stop if the companies themselves take a stance.

You can rather use the same 1 hour slots to have a conversation, pair program on a realistic problem required for the role you’re hiring for where you and the interviewee can both benefit from the knowledge transfer. I’ve tried this in many of the interviews I’ve conducted and always went away learning something from an excellent candidate or a candidate who didn’t meet the expectations, going out knowing where they fall short.

Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#57

Post by colinb »

7734128 wrote: post #43
colinb wrote: post #10

I’m reasonably certain that I interviewed someone using this or something like it in the last few days. Lots of eye scanning while looking above the window they’d been typing into. Pauses. Big pastes. One of my excellent colleagues noticed that the candidate made use of exciting C++ casts before ever defining the variable’s types. Complete inability to explain or debug the code just written. So. Frustrating in two di…

> Lots of eye scanning while looking above the window they’d been typing into. Are you expecting people to not reference external material, such as documentation or syntax, and only code from memory?

Absolutely not. In my standard intro material I explicitly say otherwise, tell them that actual work involves checking external references, and that I want the interview to be as near to a collaborative experience as it can be in the odd circumstances.

I also tell them that they should tell me when they're checking external resources (the CPP reference is what I mostly have in mind, but StackOverflow or whatever is fine with me) so that I understand how they go about solving problems. Because that's the actual important bit. All the coding and the questioning is a proxy for that.

Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#58

Post by sirwhinesalot »

geraldwhen wrote: post #49
sirwhinesalot wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people who can talk their way out of trouble for sure. That is why I suggested the take home exercise followed by a discussion. It's only when there's niche knowledge involved that I think it isn't necessary, because you won't be able to answer any hard questions properly without having actually worked on code for that niche at one point or another.

Most applicants fake the take home problem or have someone else or ai do it for them. You have to watch someone produce a compiling for loop to prove they’ve ever built software before. Fraud is rampant.

I've been lucky to never have to deal with that. Sucks for everyone that has.

On the other hand, I personally cannot code properly while someone is conceptually "breathing down my neck". A for loop sure, but I'd probably fail at writing a hash table or whatever despite nearing 10 years of experience on many different projects, including compiler frontends and a simple garbage collector I wrote for the fun of it.

Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#59

Post by rvz »

sangeeth96 wrote: post #56

Someone beat my lazy ass to it XD Had something in the works when I first got to know about multimodal GPT and electron made it super simple to prototype something. Refined it a bit to even do the invisible window thing after feedback from my peers. Didn’t have the ahem courage to do it. Also recently noticed there are actual companies around this space who are marketing this off as “interview assistance”. Two of the…

> If you are a tech leader/senior engineer with influence on these matters, I HOPE, that this is not the path you take.

On-site interviews should be the standard path to take to detect the frauds and cheaters before they become potential bad hires.

Online technical assessments now have little added value given that AI tools like finalround.ai, etc just make it easy for frauds to cheat the technical interview.

This is actually a strong argument to a return to on-site interviews and should just draw the line on this and detect the frauds altogether.

Re: An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews

#60

Post by bilvar »

wojciechpolak wrote: post #50

How often do doctors have to prove they can still recall every obscure medical fact when changing hospitals? When a lawyer moves to a new firm, do they have to retake the bar or answer weird hypothetical cases all over again? Aren't their credentials, past cases, and reputation usually enough? Why do we in tech keep forcing experienced professionals to jump through these puzzle-like hoops instead of trusting their tr…

Because it's much easier to get-by faking it as a software engineer compared to a lawyer or doctor. We've all have had these colleagues - and I've seen them jumping to other companies easily.
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