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AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

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Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#601

Post by adastra22 »

scarface_74 wrote: post #311
idispatch wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like you professionally sold 30 years of your life for money with no fun. You could have done something for fun all this time, and got payed for it, too. Much better that way.

I did no such thing, I spent the first 15 years as a part time fitness instructor mostly for the social aspect, hanging out with friends and training for and doing group runs and a little travel. I spent the next 8 years married (still married) and raising two step sons and spent the last two and half years traveling extensively including over a year doing the “digital nomad thing”. We have been averaging getting on…

Great for you. You are almost certainly not the type of candidate these companies are looking for.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#602

Post by enricojr »

How about paid internships as a way to filter candidates? As in, hire a candidate for a small period of time, like 2 weeks or something, and have them work on a real task with a full-time employee and use their performance on that to decide whether or not to hire.

I realize it's not easy for smaller companies to do, but I think it's the single best way to see if someone's fit for a job

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#603

Post by FirmwareBurner »

gedy wrote: post #120
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are these "most people"? School was over 10 years ago for me when schoolwork was not posted on GitHub nor is it relevant to my current job anymore, and I don't do hobby coding since I have other hobbies and responsibilities. WTF is this hobby coding bullshit expectations? What other professions expect you do more work after work as a hobby and show it? Do bus drivers film themselves driving busses after work as a…

> WTF is this hobby coding bullshit expectations? I can empathize with your position if you are also against expecting candidates "prepare for the interview" by leet code grinding or "brush up on CS concepts". Hobby coding is million times better than that crap.

At least leetcode is something somewhat standardized (algorithms don't change). Hobby coding is not, it's something subjective and varying between the interests of each candidates and often have nothing to do with a job.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#604

Post by FirmwareBurner »

ttyprintk wrote: post #161
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe The word maybe is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. What if you never had to do that? Not everyone's work is public. Inf act I'd say most people's work is not public. Sometimes even the product is not public since it's B-2-B.

But if you’ve worked on something mature and nontrivial, you’ve forked a dependency and are able to tour it. Looks like I’ve done it on average twice per year.

I never had to for anything public.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#605

Post by K0balt »

So, when AI can pass the tech interview seamlessly, I guess we can just hire it?

Maybe the future will be human shills pretending to be job candidates for shady AI “employment agencies” that are actually just (literally) skinning gpt6 apis that sockpuppet minimum wage developing nation”hosts”?

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#606

Post by rightbyte »

serial_dev wrote: post #417
Dylan16807 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In a small company, you can tell your buddy “just have a chat with the candidate and if you like them and you think they can do the job, hire them”. If the person interviewing your candidates messes up, you’ll know soon enough. In a large company, the bad people will take over and your company is dying a slow death. That approach doesn’t work on a large scale. Some interviewers are too nitpicky, elitist, others appro…

> In a large company, the bad people will take over and your company is dying a slow death.

Why is this the assumption. I would rather say any big org. is converging towards the average talentwise by necessity. It is like Hawaii can't have 100 olympic level swimmers no matter the recruiting proces.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#607

Post by rightbyte »

swatcoder wrote: post #565
hirvi74 wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite conflicted on this. While I do not think one needs to remember/memorize a bunch of brainteasers or past computer scientists'/mathematician's PhD discoveries in order to build CRUD applications. However, I do feel like there is perhaps some amount of truth to the thought behind the interview questions, no? As in, I would imagine someone that could invert a binary tree in 15 minutes on a whiteboard could prob…

No, it's not actually about mastery of binary trees or other abstract computer science concepts. leetcode is really a culture fit test and success points to the combination of "smarts", diligence, and conformity to some acceptable degree. It shows you have some baseline of familiarity with computing, can focus on an arbitrary task to pursue a goal, and will conform to an arbitrary process when it's asked of you. Thos…

"Leetcode" style tests were probably good when almost no one did it.

Now it selects for the very very very bad trait of high ambition and knowing to play the system.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#608

Post by Hasnep »

jghn wrote: post #234
CharlieDigital wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do code review exercises without larger context. An example from the interview: the code included a python web API and SQL schema. Some obvious points I noticed were 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 lo…

Yes, ish. In a previous job we did code review interviews. And went the route you said due to the problem I said. And yes, it's a lot better. But what also happened over time was that the bar slowly raised. Because over time the "harder" pieces of that session started to seem rote to interviewers, they became viewed as table stakes. Mind you this is true of any interview scheme that has a problem solving component to…

I think the way to avoid the interviewer's expectations being raised over time is to write down some guidelines for what a successful candidate should be able to do. Even if you don't know how high to set the bar at the beginning, once you've hired someone you'll have at least one example of a good answer.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#609

Post by kasey_junk »

callingbull wrote: post #575
kasey_junk wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you ever heard or read a newspaper article, or can you cite an actual example of any company actually suffering reputation harm for administering iq tests? Your citation suggests candidates view GMA tests _favorably_.

Most hiring managers believe experience matters in hiring as well, perhaps that’s the belief that keeps them from using iq tests.

For what it’s worth, IQ tests are biased (see duyme’ adoptive studies for a drastic economic impact). That largely is orthogonal to if they are predictive in the ways your citation outlines.

Re: AI killed the tech interview. Now what?

#610

Post by kasey_junk »

adastra22 wrote: post #597
tptacek wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow these reputational risks accrue to the median hiring company, but not to the global brands like PepsiCo and Proctor & Gamble that do GMA testing already. I maintain: this is a message board trope.

Surely you can understand that the hiring needs and reputational risk of a tech startup and Pepsi are different?

Can you cite Pepsi suffering any reputational risk based on the practice?
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