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AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

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Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#381

Post by Dylan16807 »

joshdavham wrote: post #275
karaterobot wrote: post #184

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…

What exactly does "scalable" mean here?

If a startup can spend 20 man-hours filling a single position, why can't a big company spend 1000 man-hours filling 50 positions?

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#382

Post by wiejriljw »

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?”

I work for a faang subsidiary. We pay well below average salary and equity. We finally got one nice perk, a very good 401k match. A few months later it was announced that the 401k match would be scaled back "to come in line with what our parent company offers". I thought about asking "will be getting salaries or equity in line with what our parent company offers?" but that would have been useless. Management doesn't care. I'm job hunting.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#383

Post by ghaff »

samr71 wrote: post #376
solarmist wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear this all the time, but I have yet to experience it. It may be because the small companies that I interview with are all startups, but I have yet to be able to get a call back from any other kind of small company. And the startups I do interview with have a full FAANG interview loops. There seems to be a weird selection bias that if you're FAANG or FAANG adjacent these small companies aren't interested.

Yup. You can check out of FAANG anytime you like, but you can never leave. Was path dependency for careers always this bad?

It's a more mature industry.

I'm guessing the majority of people now in their 50s and 60s in computer-related careers had very eclectic jobs before settling down in computer-related stuff. After all, many never used computers at all until college or beyond.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#384

Post by beezlebroxxxxxx »

tuan wrote: post #264

I feel like we, SWEs, have been over-engineering our interview process. Maybe it's time to simplify it, for example, just ask questions based on the candidate's resume instead of coming up with random challenges. I feel like all the new proposals seem overly complicated, and nobody, interviewer or interviewee, is happy with any of them.

Definitely over-engineering. But I also think the industry is just extremely bad at hiring anything above junior or entry-level. Job postings are so generic and interchangeable between companies that they don't actually tell you what the role is or what the company is looking for. Everyone wants to cast the widest possible net so that they catch some wunderkind genius out of thousands. Then, they wonder why they can't find the exact person they're looking for to solve the problem they're filling the role for.

In reality, job postings should be incredibly specific, with specificity rising as the role requires more experience and problem solving. You'll get less applicants (or will be able to clearly screen out the people who don't meet the specific requirements) but you'll get ones that actually match what you are looking for and can actually solve the problem your company is trying to solve with filling the role. Then the conversation/interview is much more important and both sides feel like they have some "stakes in the game".

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#385

Post by erikerikson »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #342
apwell23 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also hard on introverts who already get punished in workplaces that promote ppl based on proximity and visiblity.

Believe it or not, extroverts also have to develop professional skills, sometimes even things that don't come naturally to them.

No question. Yet, social connection seems worth 10x or 100x competence in any particular circumstance and the effects compound. There are some real benefits from and needs to be prosocial and socially competent but I've regularly seen social competent but technically incompetent people advance far over technically competent but less socially agenda driving people (that are nonetheless socially competent). This only gets worse at scale and as you progress.

I love coding and do it reliably well with joy but as my career has progressed I've struggled more and more with getting a company to let me work at a "low level" or to navigating what seem like sociopathic behaviors to really contribute at my capacity.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#386

Post by apwell23 »

ghaff wrote: post #349
scarface_74 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dealing with people and communication can be learned. I get it. By nature I was very much an introvert except for certain scenarios when I was in my comfort zone until at least my mid 30s. I was an only child, the stereotypical short, fat kid with a computer growing up in the 80s (still short, became a gym rat, part time fitness instructor and only stopped the latter as my other obligations became greater). Horrible…

Well put. I'm an introvert, I can't do math, I won't travel, etc. are all things that some people claim as if it's the unchangeable nature of things. If that's their chosen path, so be it. But they should understand it will probably be pretty limiting because the world they live in.

Yes they are unchangeable. I've tried many many times to break out of it; it works for a while but i revert back to my base behavior.

We know what kinds of temperament a dog has within few months of it being a puppy ( and who the puppy's parents are). Why would it be different for humans.

Claim that Our temperaments ( and our likes/dislikes for travel) are all learnt is a bizzare blank slate claim that doesn't track with my life experience and what i've seen in the world.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#387

Post by drdaeman »

scarface_74 wrote: post #244
apwell23 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also hard on introverts who already get punished in workplaces that promote ppl based on proximity and visiblity.

Dealing with people and communication can be learned. I get it. By nature I was very much an introvert except for certain scenarios when I was in my comfort zone until at least my mid 30s. I was an only child, the stereotypical short, fat kid with a computer growing up in the 80s (still short, became a gym rat, part time fitness instructor and only stopped the latter as my other obligations became greater). Horrible…

> But you can only add so much value to an organization typing on a keyboard.

In my understanding, non-junior software development jobs never were about typing on the keyboard. Senior software engineer is a fancy name for a problem solver, and code is just a specialized tool they can build to possibly achieve the goal. It always was about talking to stakeholders, figuring out what the heck they actually want today, how it fits with what they think they want tomorrow, learning more about those stakeholders so you can guess what they will think they want next week. Only then it's thinking about it all it for a while, and only after that it's getting to press the actual buttons.

But I'm not sure those things require "soft skills" aka - in my understanding - being a people person. For me, it was a very simple learning process - I (as a junior) coded something, a manager came next month and said I have to rewrite everything again because things have changed. I hated it, so I started to think how to possibly avoid or minimize it and optimize my own processes.

And in my mental model, it's not about people (save for tiny companies where a whole department/role is a single person, so I have to account for their mental chaos monkeys), it's all about business. That's why I wrote "stakeholders", intentionally dehumanizing (with no negative connotations) the model.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#388

Post by nickff »

solarmist wrote: post #336
nickff wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ”There seems to be a weird selection bias that if you're FAANG or FAANG adjacent these small companies aren't interested.” Many smaller companies have noticed that former and wannabe FAANGers are looking for FAANG-type jobs, and are not good fits in their niche. Small companies often have more uncertainty, fewer clear objectives, less structure, and often lower pay. They’re not a good substitute for megacorps.

And then there's people like me who have been at startups, midsize companies, tiny small businesses and FAANGs. Not everyone at a FAANG is purely motivated by the amount of money that they can get. I’m looking for a smaller company because I’m tired of the FAANG mentality personally.

The problem is that many smaller companies have hired people from FAANG, and had them quite after a short tenure, so they're unwilling to try their luck again, as it's just not worth it. You may be different, but they've heard that story before, and had it not work out.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#389

Post by IshKebab »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #230
williamdclt wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no input validation, string concatenating for the database access (SQL injection), no input scrubbing (XSS), based on the call pattern there were some missing indices, a few bad data type choices (e.g. integer for user ID), a possible infinite loop in one case I'd say all this stuff is junior-level (maybe ~mid for things like user ID integers). It's just a checklist of "obvious bad practices", it doesn't require ex…

You can do all of that in a code review; the point is that it actually allows for better stratification because you can incorporate different challenges in a reasonable time frame and without having to do take homes and get working environments (you'll end up reviewing their code anyways in a followup session).

You can do it in a real code review. I think his point was that you can't do stuff like "instead of loading a YAML file at runtime this should be generated during build time using the existing infrastructure we have here" type stuff.

But I'm not sure you really need to in a job interview. It's not like you can do that with any other interview method anyway - leetcode also doesn't really touch high level architecture type stuff, and take home problems are also too small (or they should be anyway!)

In my experience you only learn how good developers' architectural taste is by working with them for a long time.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#390

Post by solarmist »

ghaff wrote: post #383
samr71 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. You can check out of FAANG anytime you like, but you can never leave. Was path dependency for careers always this bad?

It's a more mature industry. I'm guessing the majority of people now in their 50s and 60s in computer-related careers had very eclectic jobs before settling down in computer-related stuff. After all, many never used computers at all until college or beyond.

My understanding is even in the early 2000s it was pretty much just firmware versus desktop software with a small niche for Mac developers.

Edit: my point was not that specialized software applications didn’t exist. It was that people were expected to be able to jump from stack to stack when they change roles in a way that has disappeared from modern job applications.

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