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AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

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Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#251

Post by michpoch »

jakubmazanec wrote: post #187
askonomm wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so that self-selects for people who already are unemployed then, right? Most developers I know (including myself) look for a new job while still having a job, as to not create a financial hole in-between. I'd be curious if that doesn't then end up with lower quality candidates who ended up unemployed to begin with?

> self-selects for people who already are unemployed then You can say that about all forms of hiring process. If you're unemployed, you obviously have more time: to spend more time on the take-home assignments (which I hate, see another thread [1]), to add more stuff to your GitHub profile, to go to more interviews, etc. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40200397

> You can say that about all forms of hiring process

Yes, but there's a significant difference between spending a few hours on a take-home assignment and dropping your current employment to spend 4 weeks potentially in another city working full time.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#252

Post by shermantanktop »

TransAtlToonz wrote: post #233
shermantanktop wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your “unless” covers a huge swath of this industry, at the low end and at the high end. Excluding places that do that leaves you with what exactly? Boutique shops filled with 20 year veterans?

What do you mean by the "high" end? I would consider this sort of interview style necessarily precluding such a place from being considered a high-quality work-place. Not only is it a miserable way to interview, it's not an effective signal for engineer quality beyond rapid code snippet production. > Excluding places that do that leaves you with what exactly? Boutique shops filled with 20 year veterans? We are on a V…

“High end” was meant as shorthand for FAANG …high comp, not necessarily high tech complexity.

You are correct about the deficiencies of the whiteboard interview. It is not a sane way to hire an individual. It makes sense as a way to hire someone in the top 20% from a large unfiltered pool. So wrt high/low, that’s what FAANG companies have to do, and for many nontechnical companies they outsource this work or emulate FAANG practices for no good reason.

My point was that there are very few places that don’t do this.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#253

Post by janoc »

I miss one option from the list of non-solutions the author presents there - ditch the idiotic whiteboard/"coding exercise" interview style. Voila, the AI (non)problem solved!

This sort of comp-sci style exam with quizzes and what not maybe somewhat helps when hiring junior with zero experience fresh out of school.

But why are people with 20+ years of easily verifiable experience (picking up a phone and asking for references is still a thing!) being asked to invert trees and implement stuff like quicksort or some contrived BS assignment the interviewer uses to boost their own ego but with zero relevance to the day to day job they will be doing?

Why are we still wasting time with this? Why is always the default the assumption there that the applicants are all crooked hochstaplers that are lying on their resumes?

99% of jobs come with probationary period anyway where the person can be fired on the spot without justification or any strings attached. That should be more than enough time to see whether the person knows their stuff or not after having passed one or two rounds of oral interviews.

It is good enough for literally every other job - except for software engineering. What makes us the special snowflakes that people are being asked to put up with this crap?

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#255

Post by abhijeetpbodas »

hamuraijack wrote: post #247

I'm someone who hated leetcode style interviews for the longest, but I'm starting to come around on them. I get that these style of questions are easy to game, but I still think they have _some_ value. The point of these style of questions was supposed to test your ability to problem solve and come up with a good solution given the tools you knew. That being said, I don't think every company should be using this type…

> reserved for companies that are pushing the boundary of the industry

In a world where every company beleives (or wants to beleive) that they are doing some ground-breaking, bleeding edge work (see any tech company blog and you can only find hyped technologies in there), I do not think one can expect companies to do a fair assessment of if they really are doing such work.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#256

Post by janoc »

michaelt wrote: post #217
perlgeek wrote: post #132

Company A wants to hire an engineer, an AI could solve all their tech interview questions, so why not hire that AI instead? There's very likely a real answer to that question, and that answer should shape the way that engineer should be assessed and hired. For example, it could be that the company wants the engineer to do some kind of assessment whether a feature should be implemented at all, and if yes, in what way.…

> Company A wants to hire an engineer, an AI could solve all their tech interview questions, so why not hire that AI instead? Interview coding questions aren't like the day-to-day job, because of the nature of an interview. In an hour-long interview, I have to be able to state the problem in a way the candidate can understand, within 10 minutes or so. We don't have time for a lecture on the intricacies of voucher cal…

>Interview coding questions aren't like the day-to-day job, because of the nature of an interview.

You have missed his point. If the interview questions are such that AI can solve them, they are the wrong questions being asked, by definition. Unless that company is trying to hire a robot, of course.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#257

Post by pjmlp »

dingnuts wrote: post #168
pjmlp wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

School was a few decades ago, and the code I have on Github is mostly toy stuff I do in rainy weekends, most of us have a life without room to code outside work most of the time. Friends, family, stuff to take care of.

So? That's all that's on our Githubs, too. Show us, talk about it. Let us see we're the same.

I am lucky, that closing 50 years old, still get to code out of work.

Not everyone gets to do so.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#258

Post by Shorel »

endemic wrote: post #186
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Languages are largely teachable, it's just syntax and keywords. This is like "learning a natural language is just 'cramming vocabulary and grammar' - voila, you've become a fluent C1 speaker". :-) Seriously: if you argue this way, you have only seen a very biased set of programming languages, and additionally, your knowledge of these programming languages is very superficial (i.e. you have never gotten to the "inte…

I think the argument is that for a good chunk of business work, you don't need to use the "interesting"/"deep" concepts. Sure, you'll need time to adapt to the idioms of the language you're using, but following examples you can be just as productive as others in a relatively short time.

> I think the argument is that for a good chunk of business work, you don't need to use the "interesting"/"deep" concepts.

That's what the MBA people want to believe. To lower costs, or if they see writing code as an operating expense, instead of R&D.

If this is true or not, it depends on many, many factors, and it can change over the course of the business life.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#259

Post by janoc »

piyuv wrote: post #210
brainwipe wrote: post #71

I was asked by an SME to code on a whiteboard for an interview (in 2005? I think?). I asked if I could have a computer, they said no. I asked if I would be using a whiteboard during my day-to-day. They said no. I asked why they used whiteboards, they said they were mimicking Google's best practice. That discussion went on for a good few minutes and by the end of it I was teetering on leaving because the fit wasn't go…

You should’ve asked them “do you also mimic google’s compensation?”

This zinger I have to remember for the next time someone tries this whiteboard BS on me!

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#260

Post by janoc »

pockmarked19 wrote: post #240
absolutelastone wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The goal isn't to "solve the puzzle" but instead to demonstrate you can reason about it effectively, communicate your knowledge and communicate as part of problem solving. ...while being closely monitored in a high-stakes performance in front of an audience of strangers judging them critically.

That’s a skill you do need at Google if you’re going to survive. At least nowadays.

Except that 99% of engineers aren't being hired by Google nor being paid on comparable levels.

So why is Google relevant to this in any way?

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