291–300 of 651 posts
I have 26 years of solid experience, been writing code since I was 8.
There should be a ton of companies out there just dying to hire someone with that kind of experience.
But I'm not perfect, no one is; and faking doesn't work very well for me.
What a BS article. As they say, just do the interview in person. Problem solved. Not sure about the US but 99% of jobs here in Spain are hybrid or onsite ("presencial"), not fully remote. They're acting like all jobs are remote and it's impossible to do an interview in person. Also, does it really matter? If a person is good at using AI and manages to be good at creating code with that, is it really so much worse tha…
The best interview process I've ever been a part of involved pair programming with the person for a couple hours, after doing the tech screening having a phone call with a member of the team. You never failed to know within a few minutes whether the person could do the job, and be a good coworker. This process worked so well, it created the best team, most productive team I've worked on in 20+ years in the industry,…
I've (unfortunately) been interviewing the last two months and the main pattern that I've noticed is that a) big companies have terrible interview processes while b) small companies and startups are great at interviewing. Big companies need to hire tons of people and interview even more so they need some sort of scalable process for it. An early stage startup can just ask you about your past projects and pair program…
Small companies have the benefit of the pressure to fill a role to get work done, the lack of bureaucratic baggage to "protect" the company from bad hires, and generally don't have enough staff to suffer empire-building.
Somewhere along the line the question changes from "can this candidate do the job that other people in this office are already doing?" to "can this candidate do the job of this imaginary archetype I've invented with seemingly impossible qualities".
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> i.e. if you wag your tail chasing a bad end for 15 mins, this is a fail in an interview That’s an assumption. Perhaps following a dead end for a while, realizing it, pivoting, etc is a valuable, positive, signal?
I agree. But what I mean is: that's not how it's perceived in the current interview structure, which lasts maybe 45 minutes or so. Ultimately, going down a dead end means you'd now have 30 minutes to find the right solution and code it up. So the oracle (the interviewer) would probably help you realise sooner that it's a bad idea, so you don't waste your time. That's assuming they know the problem and solution well;…
If the candidate will communicate with me, I will offer them a LOT of guidance. It is still very, very easy to tell who knows what they are doing and who does not. You give them a basic but domain-specific task, you give them whatever extra context they need to do it, and you watch them hammer out the code.
It should be a task that is sufficiently familiar to the person applying to the role that they do not need to do -much- looking at docs, and as the interviewer you should be prepared to help them quickly find the docs you already know they will need -- you designed the task after all -- so that they don't waste time with that.
What's important is that they ask for docs when they need them, and that they can understand them, quickly, and use them. It will be obvious if they are using AI because of how long things will take. It will be obvious if they don't know when to reach for documentation, and it will be obvious if they cannot understand the documentation.
Then, they should write a test for their solution. This weeds out 95% of candidates. Talk to the other 5% and you'll find someone who can both actually write code and also discuss design.
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Most people have still written code for school or a hobby project. Maybe I'm missing empathy, but I cannot understand how some developers have no code to show. If that's the case however, just let them make a small project over the weekend and then do another interview where you ask stuff about what they've made. It's not that deep
> Most people have still written code for school or a hobby project School was years and years ago, and has nothing to do with my current skills. From the people i personally know, most do _not_ have a hobby project, even fewer have hobby projects that showcases their technical skills. Nor should they be expected to. Most people have non-programming hobbies. > I cannot understand how some developers have no code to s…
It's like asking a dentist interview candidate to show you examples of fillings and crowns they did at home as a hobby. I don't understand why there is this automatic assumption that people who program at work also do it outside of work.
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.…
It's because coding interview questions aren't so much assessing job skills as much as they are thinly veiled IQ tests. I think if it was socially acceptable they'd just do the latter.
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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?
Sucks for you, then. Why are you on a thread about Google-style interviews?
Code reviews. Teams are really sleeping on code reviews as an assessment tool. As in having the candidate review code. A junior, mid, senior, staff are going to see very different things in the same codebase. Not only that, as AI generated code becomes more common, teams might want to actively select for devs that can efficiently review code for quality and correctness. I went through one interview with a YC company…
I did this once and it was obvious the interviewer wanted me to point out his pet "gotcha." Not a great experience.
Each code sample should have multiple things wrong. The best people will find most (not necessarily all) of them. The mediocre will find a few.
The current job market is so messed up that I honestly can't see myself getting a job until we hit a wall and people start using their brains again. I have 26 years of solid experience, been writing code since I was 8. There should be a ton of companies out there just dying to hire someone with that kind of experience. But I'm not perfect, no one is; and faking doesn't work very well for me.
However, I won't do leet coding. I want to hear about why I should come work for u. What about my works makes u think I could help ubm with your problem. Then let's have a talk about your problems and where I can create value for you.
My experience in hiring is that leet coders are good one trick ponies. But long term don't become technical peers.