Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

kanenarraway.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 651 posts

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#571

Post by codr7 »

ghaff wrote: post #533
codr7 wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fully convinced the way to make better hires is to invest more, which will be more expensive. Which wouldn't be a problem unless we expected something else. It starts with quitting pretending the current process is working, or even close to optimal.

Has hiring ever really worked, anywhere? Especially as roles and need evolve? I guess you could argue that it sort of did, apropos of a play I saw last night on the astronaut program--and maybe the military in many cases more broadly. But, in many cases, I'm not sure how I, as a candidate for a tech job, would feel about a company offering me $200K--no strings attached--with the proviso that I statistically only had…

My first startup did one interview per person and then a trial period, all good.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#572

Post by solarmist »

swatcoder wrote: post #558
solarmist wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this attitude baffling. In my time at tier one companies I have worked with the best engineers I have come across in my entire career (even the worst engineers were more than competent) who were working on deep issues that could affect the revenue of the entire company because they’re laser focused on providing value to the business, instead of doing engineering for engineering’s sake. I have grown by far more…

I mean, I'm just sharing the practical ground truth of how a resume like yours effects recruiting in certain contexts. Just like there are innumerable brilliant, effective engineers who would contribute tremendously to a FAANG but don't suit the modern interview funnel (leetcode, etc), smaller companies surely do miss out on strong, suitable FAANG engineers in anticipation of negative experiences they've had with oth…

I definitely used to. The work culture and attitudes, particularly of management, passed the breaking point for me a few years ago. I realized work was not my whole life nor did I aspire to that.

As I mentioned here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43121594)

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#573

Post by kasey_junk »

callingbull wrote: post #567
tptacek wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is a message board canard. IQ tests are used at a variety of large companies with deep pockets for discrimination settlements. If there were real legal risks, that wouldn't be the case.

There are real risks for companies without deep pockets (for settlements or public relations). People I know, responsible for hiring, have told me they won't use IQ tests because of how it would come across, so the concern at least exists but how widespread is the question.

Your citation addresses it. Less than 1% of employment lawsuits are about selection criteria and employers win over 90% of them. They suggest GMA tests are _more_ defensible than other approaches.

The most interesting thing in that paper is that years of experience performed so poorly. It’s in the lowest cohort. Worse than “interests” or more general “biographical data”.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#574

Post by onemoresoop »

trhway wrote: post #546
ghaff wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has hiring ever really worked, anywhere? Especially as roles and need evolve? I guess you could argue that it sort of did, apropos of a play I saw last night on the astronaut program--and maybe the military in many cases more broadly. But, in many cases, I'm not sure how I, as a candidate for a tech job, would feel about a company offering me $200K--no strings attached--with the proviso that I statistically only had…

>Has hiring ever really worked, anywhere? yes. Best place i worked at - we hired only by internal references and only people from our University. Up until the company grew around 200 people. We didn't do technical interviews, just a short talk. And we were among top employers, including salary-wise.

When you have high trust a lot of other processes become unnecessary. When that trust is broken, and surely a lot of grifters BSed their ways into jobs, that’s when all kinds of barriers were added.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#575

Post by callingbull »

kasey_junk wrote: post #573
callingbull wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are real risks for companies without deep pockets (for settlements or public relations). People I know, responsible for hiring, have told me they won't use IQ tests because of how it would come across, so the concern at least exists but how widespread is the question.

Your citation addresses it. Less than 1% of employment lawsuits are about selection criteria and employers win over 90% of them. They suggest GMA tests are _more_ defensible than other approaches. The most interesting thing in that paper is that years of experience performed so poorly. It’s in the lowest cohort. Worse than “interests” or more general “biographical data”.

There is still the reputational risk of using selection methods with widely known disparate outcomes. Other methods also have disparate outcomes, but most of the criticism is directed at IQ tests. I've heard "IQ tests are culturally biased" but never "work sample tests are culturally biased", and I'll guess that's the experience of most hiring managers too.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#576

Post by onemoresoop »

solarmist wrote: post #541
hirvi74 wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m tired of the FAANG mentality personally. As someone that never had a desire nor ever made an attempt to work at any of those companies, do you mind elaborating on the mentality of such places? I'm just your boring below-average to average dev, so I know I'm not cut for those types of places, but it never truly bothered me anyway. Any reason that I can personally think as to why I would work for such a company w…

It has turned into something similar to what people in trading companies on Wall Street deal with. Constant grind, unrealistic expectations, and projects done in order to get a promotion instead of because it provides value to the customers or the business. That said the amount that you make is insane some of the smartest engineers I’ve ever worked with have been at these companies and a lot of them have really stron…

Yeah, that sounds hypercapitalist. At least I hope those engineers make enough money to retire when they burn out.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#577

Post by ravikapoor101 »

trhway wrote: post #358
codr7 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring doesn't scale, period; deal with it.

it isn't about scale. It is about core principle of the tech hiring - all the companies hire only the best. Not only it is impossible to scale, it is plain impossible. Even if all the companies hired only "above the average" it would still be a pretty tall order :)

in the end it did not even achieve that. Those who spent 6 months at last job practicing leet code were not necessarily the best of the best

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#578

Post by dkkergoog »

m11a wrote: post #248
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 dislike pair programming interviews - as they currently exist - because they usually feel like a time-crunched exam. You don't realistically have the freedom to actually think as you would in actual pair programming. i.e. if you wag your tail chasing a bad end for 15 mins, this is a fail in an interview, but it's pretty realistic of real life work and entirely a non-problem. It's probably even good to test for at i…

[dead]

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#579

Post by neofrommatrix »

userbinator wrote: post #29
neofrommatrix wrote: post #28

I've been considering using a second webcam stream focused on my screen just to assure hiring managers that I don't have ChatGPT on my screen, or anywhere else. Kind of like chess players do it sometimes on online tournaments. I've been hearing people complain about cheating a lot.

Ask for an in-person interview instead of voluntarily encouraging more mass surveillance.

Company wide policy, apparently.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#580

Post by codr7 »

macintux wrote: post #513
eikenberry wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO interviewing is the biggest bottleneck and if interviewing was decoupled from hiring then it wouldn't be a problem. But this requires a Guild-like organization to manage interviewing/vetting and for companies to use said Guild for hiring. The companies could then do a single team culture meeting (if they wanted) before hiring.

I wish I could remember who, but there is a company out there who conducts tech interviews to create a pool of candidates for their customers. Pretty sure there was a post here about it, but it's lost in my ocean of unread favorites.

I personally think outsourcing hiring is the worst idea ever, and completely lose confidence in companies that do.
Post reply on HN