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We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews

interviewdb.io

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Re: We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews

#41

Post by michaelt »

mavelikara wrote: post #22
pc86 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggled early in my career with interviews. Granted this was 2008-2010 era so the job market was not great, especially in a not-quite-urban non-coastal city where I was for a junior developer. But something did change when I stopped treating interviews as "convince them to like me" / "convince them to hire me" and started treating them as "find out if I want to work (in order) 1) at this company, 2) on this proje…

What makes those questions ok for Tier-1 companies to ask, in your opinion?

At a tier 1 tech company the work will be ads/tracking on a global scale. You know that before you enter the door, and if you didn’t like it you wouldn’t be interviewing there.

So much less need for time to decide if you’re interested in working there.

Re: We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews

#42

Post by Etherlord87 »

TheBigSalad wrote: post #13
INTPenis wrote: post #4

Kinda sad that it has come to this. Maybe I'm naive but I think an interview should be an honest exchange of what you actually know, not what you crammed for before the interview.

I agree but I companies like Meta/Apple/Amazon hire so much that they probably have full time statisticians just to analyze interview process and map that back to performance. So you have to assume this maps to real world success. Even if you are just testing an employee's preparation, maybe that means something.

The "Big corporation analyzes everything thoroughly and arrives at the most optimal solution" is a ridiculous myth, and I don't think I even need to give examples. Maybe not Apple, but Amazon surely has a lot of embarrassing failures.

Re: We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews

#44

Post by moregrist »

scrapcode wrote: post #34
pc86 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggled early in my career with interviews. Granted this was 2008-2010 era so the job market was not great, especially in a not-quite-urban non-coastal city where I was for a junior developer. But something did change when I stopped treating interviews as "convince them to like me" / "convince them to hire me" and started treating them as "find out if I want to work (in order) 1) at this company, 2) on this proje…

I've had two "Online Assessments," as they're called, in the past couple of weeks and they're even weirder than that now. The request access to my desktop, webcam, microphone, akin to a proctored exam. They don't let you use your own editor, or even leave the window. There is no one there to interact with, ask clarifying questions, etc. It then plays everything back with keystrokes sync'd to video/audio for the revie…

I think that would be a hard pass for me.

Why would I allow some rando company’s corporate spyware onto my personal computer?

If you’re that worried about me using AI, maybe the interview should be on-site. And maybe it should be relevant to the work I’d be doing, not solving a bunch of leetcode questions.

Or maybe the dystopian future of tech interviews just involves a burner laptop tethered to a burner cell plan.

The future is absolutely flipping fantastic.

Re: We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews

#46

Post by pc86 »

michaelt wrote: post #41
mavelikara wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes those questions ok for Tier-1 companies to ask, in your opinion?

At a tier 1 tech company the work will be ads/tracking on a global scale. You know that before you enter the door, and if you didn’t like it you wouldn’t be interviewing there. So much less need for time to decide if you’re interested in working there.

This is a great point. Nobody interviewing at Facebook is unsure if they want to work at Facebook.

Re: We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews

#47

Post by jollyllama »

swiftcoder wrote: post #33
INTPenis wrote: post #4

Kinda sad that it has come to this. Maybe I'm naive but I think an interview should be an honest exchange of what you actually know, not what you crammed for before the interview.

> Maybe I'm naive but I think an interview should be an honest exchange of what you actually know, not what you crammed for before the interview. All the way back in ~2012, Amazon's own recruiters were recommending candidates cram "Cracking the Code Interview" (to the surprise of the actual interviewers, who didn't want you doing that). This is the way things have been for a long time now.

Maybe it's time to question it. I don't think there's anything wrong with the now traditional whiteboard interview as such, but the notion that the same questions are all just as relevant to disparate teams is highly questionable. Technical questions should be based on the actual codebases or systems, IMO. I would also question the Hogwarts style approach of interviewing the candidate as a generic dev and then sorting them to the right team.

Re: We built a crowdsourced interview question database for tech interviews

#49

Post by rvz »

mavelikara wrote: post #22
pc86 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggled early in my career with interviews. Granted this was 2008-2010 era so the job market was not great, especially in a not-quite-urban non-coastal city where I was for a junior developer. But something did change when I stopped treating interviews as "convince them to like me" / "convince them to hire me" and started treating them as "find out if I want to work (in order) 1) at this company, 2) on this proje…

What makes those questions ok for Tier-1 companies to ask, in your opinion?

The problems FAANG companies and an exceptional group of frontier AI companies are solving are leagues different to the problems regular startups think they are solving.

So it only makes sense for those Tier-1 companies to be asking questions that are related to the a vast amount of problems they face on a regular basis.

Your startup is not Google.

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