An invisible desktop application that will help you pass technical interviews • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by fitzn » Sat, Dec 07, 2024, 5:04 PM UTC

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…

Doctors, lawyers, teachers and other licensed professionals do continuing education every two or three years. Software engineers are not licensed professionals, so there is no legal standard of quality that all software engineers are guaranteed to have met (and continue to meet). Hence, the interview is an assessment along with all other parts of the application.

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

#142

Post by dahart » Sat, Dec 07, 2024, 5:05 PM UTC

stego-tech wrote: post #76

davedx wrote: post #6

Feels like in some sections of the US like big tech, the talent vetting process has evolved into some adversarial battle of attrition where the idea is to grind down the pool of candidates until only a few are left rather than find some potential new colleagues. Tools like this have emerged as a direct response to that process. What a bizarre way to begin a working relationship.

Sadly, these sorts of “practical interviews” aren’t just limited to Big Tech. There’s been an arms race for thirty years now between applicants and employers, the latter creating new hurdles to overcome and the former finding new ways to bypass unnecessary hurdles. Employers demanded applications instead of resumes, so candidates used copy machines. Then they wanted block lettering, so candidates used type writers. A…

This is all fully explained by salaries going up, and the pool of young applicants getting bigger faster than the number of jobs available, while the pool of highly qualified applicants remains small. Jobs at Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, are all legitimately competitive, and because more people are applying, those companies have the freedom to be choosier and the incentive to compete for the good ones. Because salaries have gone up (or even simply the perception of salaries), and because salaries are high compared to other jobs, more and more bright-eyed kids are hoping to punch above their weight in interviews, which is why companies are flooded with low-quality applications and don’t have a choice about needing to sift them efficiently.

This is the natural state of a competitive environment, and interviews will get “better” for candidates when there are more jobs than good candidates. But be careful what you wish for; if the job market gets less competitive for candidates, salaries and benefits and working conditions go with it.

While there might be some truth it to, framing it as an arms race is a mentality that will not help the average candidate, and might do them harm. Employers always have and always will want to pay as little as possible, obviously, that’s the definition of a company. But they do actually compete with each other for good talent, and they do pay a lot relative to other jobs, and some companies’ definitions of pay as little as possible is still to pay enough that employees are well compensated and don’t leave.

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

#143

Post by codedokode » Sat, Dec 07, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

I wonder: if a LLM can answer typical interview question better than a human, what kind of questions should we ask so that using a LLM becomes worthless? Something that LLMs are forbidden to talk about? Something that LLM doesn't know well?

In my experience, LLMs are pretty bad with low-level languages like Rust/C when you need to deal with pointers and ownership, avoid extra copies.

Another option is to ask for something impossible, as LLMs usually do not admit inability to solve the problem and prefer to hallucinate a fictional solution.

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

#144

Post by mdaniel » Sat, Dec 07, 2024, 5:09 PM UTC

deadbabe wrote: post #123

davedx wrote: post #6

Feels like in some sections of the US like big tech, the talent vetting process has evolved into some adversarial battle of attrition where the idea is to grind down the pool of candidates until only a few are left rather than find some potential new colleagues. Tools like this have emerged as a direct response to that process. What a bizarre way to begin a working relationship.

Literally all the engineers at the company went through the same process. For all the bitching and complaining an interviewee does, there’s probably a hundred people who just went through the process and got hired. Suck it up, it’s part of the job. If you can’t do it, you don’t belong. Simple as that.

> who just went through the process and got hired.

You say that as if there's The One True Interview Routine™ and it doesn't change from team to team, person to person, month to month. I actually would bet that no single organization interviews with the consistency you're describing, not even FAANG with their holier-than-thou grinders

If it wasn't such a monster drain on human productivity, I think it'd be funny if there was "rolling interviews" where each new hire got to send prior hires though "the process" on the yearly anniversary of those prior hires

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

#145

Post by Zak » Sat, Dec 07, 2024, 5:12 PM UTC

tamimio wrote: post #51

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 t…

Creating and maintaining popular open source software seems like a reasonable criterion for deciding between two otherwise-similar candidates for a software development role.

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

#146

Post by sirwhinesalot » Sat, Dec 07, 2024, 5:13 PM UTC

tokioyoyo wrote: post #115

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…

Every single big corpo knows about it. We just haven’t been able to come up with a better filter for the amount of candidates that are going through the interviews that isn’t extremely subjective. Small companies that I interviews with had a very simple process (2x talks with upper management, mostly technical talks, also a semi-coding related talk about systems). There are a lot of very well paying (maybe 15-20% les…

I guess FAANGs in particular have rather messy recruitment due to the amount of applicants, but my experience is from a giant multinational, talking hundreds of thousands of employees globally here, not "small" by any stretch.

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

#147

Post by ryandrake » Sat, Dec 07, 2024, 5:16 PM UTC

aithrowawaycomm wrote: post #94

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…

Doctors and lawyers are licensed, software engineers are not. If a doctor or lawyer screws up they will often face sanctions and lawsuits, whereas a software engineer can just jump ship to a different company and let their resume do the talking. In general it is way easier to get 3 years of experience as a software engineer than it is to go to law school and pass the bar. I am sympathetic to the argument that softwar…

> I am sympathetic to the argument that software engineers should be licensed, which would reduce the need for dumb technical interviews. But I imagine HN wouldn't like that very much.

Oh yea, HN hates this idea, but I'm sure it would cut down on all the screening, FizzBuzz, hazing that happens during interviews. If you had a - basic, barebones - certification or exam, that all software engineers must pass, that at least says "This candidate can function at a very minimal level" it would at the very least filter out the 50-75% of candidates who literally cannot code or even speak coherently about the basics of programming.

I think people here are really in love with the romantic ideal that someone with no college, no credentials, no formal-this or certified-that can (in theory) jump right into a senior FAANG job. Yea, that's great I guess, but in practice does it really work? It seems to me that in practice, it just means every company gets thousands of totally unqualified candidates every time they post a job offer, and this helps nobody.

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

#148

Post by snozolli » Sat, Dec 07, 2024, 5:16 PM UTC

ttyprintk wrote: post #89

qwer1234321 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not under pressure so it's easy to say this, but I'd rather not get a job than lie during interview.

I encourage anyone to stand their ground on this. Competing with liars is an enormous soft-skill challenge. But it doesn’t exercise critical thinking. Structuring a personal plan that builds those soft skills is really annoying. Especially if you just want to solve complex problems all day. That said, - the interviewer likely embellished or lied to get his job. Be careful. - a lot of this thread is about avoiding a b…

In engineering, someone technical who can detect deception is too valuable to put in the interviewer role. Send them to conferences to “poach”.

Those are wildly different skill sets and/or personality traits.

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

#149

Post by OutOfHere » Sat, Dec 07, 2024, 5:19 PM UTC

bartread wrote: post #15

thesaintlives wrote: post #3

So cheat to get a job then get fired when they see you are useless? Genius..

I’d say chances of getting busted are high as well. The invisibility of the window to common interview software won’t do anything mask candidates’ own suspicious behaviour. I was doing a 45 minute screener interview with a guy the other day who I could see kept glancing over at another window or screen as he was typing in code. Every couple of characters or so he was pausing looking over, then he’d type a handful mor…

Given how poor and assumptive your logical reasoning is, the candidate is lucky for not working with you.

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

#150

Post by mdaniel » Sat, Dec 07, 2024, 5:20 PM UTC

herghost wrote: post #19

bartread wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say chances of getting busted are high as well. The invisibility of the window to common interview software won’t do anything mask candidates’ own suspicious behaviour. I was doing a 45 minute screener interview with a guy the other day who I could see kept glancing over at another window or screen as he was typing in code. Every couple of characters or so he was pausing looking over, then he’d type a handful mor…

Gong back about 20 years we had to introduce a "pre-screening" interview for infosec roles because of the calbire of candidates we were getting through. They'd made it through the HR "sift" by having the right words on their CVs but we found that a huge majority of these candidates didn't know even entry-level basics. There was initially a "quick fire" round where we did some real basic definitions - Confidentiality,…

> /tap tap tap tap

Another fine reason no one should be using mechanical keyboards :-D