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Interviewing in Silicon Valley

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Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#31

Post by mc-lovin »

I think there is a lot of negative bias here, because people who do badly in algorithms and data structure questions, or dislike them for some other reason, are more likely to speak on the issue.

I think that these questions are good because they are difficult, and a smarter more capable person is much more likely to get them right. Notice that big tech companies have stopped with the "brainteaser" style questions like how many potholes in Manhatten, but there is no move away from algorithms and data structures questions. And I don't consider the format to be high pressure. Apart from the pressure inherent in having to answer the question on the spot, I never felt any pressure from the interviewer, they tended to be very polite and mild mannered. At worst they didn't understand or agree with my solution.

Telling people that these interview questions suck and they should look for jobs where they don't have to answer them, is really bad advice. Some of the best jobs (for most people) require them. If you face such an interview, the very best thing you can do is study. I probably did 100 interview questions in preparation for my job interviews.

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#32

Post by dirktheman »

stevewilhelm wrote: post #16
dirktheman wrote: post #3

Well written piece that shows what to me is the SV recruiting paradox: there is a massive demand for programmers, yet companies make it really, really hard to get a job. It's easier to start your own company without the interview hassle and condescending attitude of some HR managers. I might be out on a limb here, but it seems it's almost easier to raise money for your startup than to get a job. Of course it gets a l…

>> yet companies make it really, really hard to get a job. It is much better to filter out some perfectly good candidates than accidentally hire the wrong candidate. The wrong hire can be very disruptive, and in some cases fatal for a company. Firing the wrong hire is very, very hard. >> but it seems it's almost easier to raise money for your startup than to get a job Raising money is like interviewing for three jobs…

Hiring the wrong person is potentially dangerous for your business, there's no denying that. However, the tendency today is the demand for hiring 'rockstar' programmers for essentially pretty mundane jobs. This poses two problems: an artificial shortage of qualified programmers, and if you manage to find one, you hire an overqualified programmer who is likely to get bored and unmotivated within a couple of weeks.

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#33

Post by codecool »

I have also encountered this while interviewing for the couple of jobs. I thought I did not study well and that's why could not solve the problems in front of the interviewer! In fact, when I am able to solve bigger problems while developing live projects. Nice post and it echoes something which has happened to all of us at some point in time.

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#34

Post by ecdavis »

reikonomusha wrote: post #28
estebank wrote: post #27

> I emailed them back asking if they had any feedback from > my interviews, but I’ve failed to receive a response. I've been bothered by this as well, because we want to improve ourselves, and the best way to do so is through feedback. At the same time, you have to understand that not everybody is like us, and enough people that where given that feedback in the past have used that opportunity to "argue" that they rea…

> Well, that's one problem right there. [...] Of course it depends. Getting the ball rolling is probably not best done by giving an NP-complete problem (subset sum) as a first exercise. When presented with an interview question, I usually say "well, it can be solved by doing $NAIVE_SOLUTION, just to get that out there, and I know you're looking for a better one." By doing this, I've established that there is a naive…

> "well, it can be solved by doing $NAIVE_SOLUTION, just to get that out there, and I know you're looking for a better one."

I'm at the very beginning of my career, having just accepted a new grad position, but I thought I'd offer my opinion on this: just implement the naive solution. If you're really unsure, ask them if they're OK with you doing that. In my very first interview I took the approach you just described and the interviewer actually stopped me as I was brainstorming other ideas and said, "Just work on the basic solution and we can talk about ways of improving it later." In subsequent interviews I've implemented the basic solution first then talked about the drawbacks of that approach with the interviewer, possible improvements that could be made, etc.

Now, most of the problems I was given were far simpler than what was described in the OP. I do think I was very fortunate to get interviewers who weren't just looking for an outside-the-box solution to some brainteaser they'd concocted. Nonetheless, I think it might be worth considering just taking the naive approach (and telling them what you're doing any why) rather than spending a lot of time trying to come up with a perfect solution.

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#35

Post by nandemo »

stevewilhelm wrote: post #16
dirktheman wrote: post #3

Well written piece that shows what to me is the SV recruiting paradox: there is a massive demand for programmers, yet companies make it really, really hard to get a job. It's easier to start your own company without the interview hassle and condescending attitude of some HR managers. I might be out on a limb here, but it seems it's almost easier to raise money for your startup than to get a job. Of course it gets a l…

>> yet companies make it really, really hard to get a job. It is much better to filter out some perfectly good candidates than accidentally hire the wrong candidate. The wrong hire can be very disruptive, and in some cases fatal for a company. Firing the wrong hire is very, very hard. >> but it seems it's almost easier to raise money for your startup than to get a job Raising money is like interviewing for three jobs…

> It is much better to filter out some perfectly good candidates than accidentally hire the wrong candidate.

If the companies OP cites were operating under that principle, they should be able to say Hire or No Hire after the last interview. Waiting over 1 month to decide won't make the candidate improve; the only reason to do so is to look for a better candidate, or hire OP if no better candidate is found, but in that case they aren't exactly using the principle above.

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#36

Post by manish_gill »

mc-lovin wrote: post #31

I think there is a lot of negative bias here, because people who do badly in algorithms and data structure questions, or dislike them for some other reason, are more likely to speak on the issue. I think that these questions are good because they are difficult, and a smarter more capable person is much more likely to get them right. Notice that big tech companies have stopped with the "brainteaser" style questions li…

The fact is that the companies failed to communicate when he explicitly asked for feedback. That has nothing to do with his performance in the interviews, unless these are people who simply don't reply because they thing the candidate is bad.

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#37

Post by dirktheman »

mc-lovin wrote: post #31

I think there is a lot of negative bias here, because people who do badly in algorithms and data structure questions, or dislike them for some other reason, are more likely to speak on the issue. I think that these questions are good because they are difficult, and a smarter more capable person is much more likely to get them right. Notice that big tech companies have stopped with the "brainteaser" style questions li…

Interesting point of view, which I don't share by the way. I think the right person for the job is not per definition the smartest or the best at solving equations during an interview.

Finding the right person for the job is more about getting a good fit with the rest of the team. Being the smartest guy/girl on earth doesn't help you when you have a shitty personality or can't work together with the rest of the team. If I were to recruit a programmer, I'd look for past work (Github repos, online projects), accomplishments and personality, rather than test results that don't reflect the reality of the job in any way.

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#38

Post by ecuzzillo »

dirktheman wrote: post #3

Well written piece that shows what to me is the SV recruiting paradox: there is a massive demand for programmers, yet companies make it really, really hard to get a job. It's easier to start your own company without the interview hassle and condescending attitude of some HR managers. I might be out on a limb here, but it seems it's almost easier to raise money for your startup than to get a job. Of course it gets a l…

It definitely isn't easier to raise money than to get a job. People just expect it to be nigh-impossible to raise money, and that everybody deserves a job, because that's how it used to be.

Also, there is a massive demand for code that works, but most people seem aware that just hiring whatever the cat drags in seems not to result in code that works, so they make these barriers.

I honestly have no idea whether said barriers do a good job, and it seems like basically nobody is trying to measure it. You'd have to record the outcomes for hires and no-hires, i.e. admitting that you wish you never hired someone, or that you wish you had because they went on to invent sliced bread, and that requires testicles of carbon fiber.

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#39

Post by mc-lovin »

dirktheman wrote: post #37
mc-lovin wrote: post #31

I think there is a lot of negative bias here, because people who do badly in algorithms and data structure questions, or dislike them for some other reason, are more likely to speak on the issue. I think that these questions are good because they are difficult, and a smarter more capable person is much more likely to get them right. Notice that big tech companies have stopped with the "brainteaser" style questions li…

Interesting point of view, which I don't share by the way. I think the right person for the job is not per definition the smartest or the best at solving equations during an interview. Finding the right person for the job is more about getting a good fit with the rest of the team. Being the smartest guy/girl on earth doesn't help you when you have a shitty personality or can't work together with the rest of the team.…

Well it's hard to quantify the relative importance of personality and cultural fit vs intelligence and programming ability. You can turn what you said around, and say that you can be the nicest, coolest person in the world, but if you are a fucking moron who can't code, you won't be very useful.

But the big tech companies seem to have settled on the current process, and are therefore probably fairly happy with the people their interview process is giving them. As to looking at previous projects, that makes sense but it might be more time consuming to properly evaluate someone like that.

Re: Interviewing in Silicon Valley

#40

Post by bengillies »

This echoes my experiences about a year ago almost exactly (although I was looking in London). The obscure programming problems are largely a waste of time, but fairly non-threatening and generally ok (there were a few companies that did group problem solving exercises instead which really impressed me).

The biggest issue that I found by far was communication. Especially in the Silicon Valley based companies that were looking to hire in London at the time. Communication times of a few weeks seemed fairly commonplace (with contact still extremely positive after such a long wait). One company (I suspect the same as the non-profit mentioned in TFA) took more than a month to get to my second interview, during which time one interview was cancelled about an hour before it was due, and one interviewer simply failed to turn up with no explanation.

My limited experience is obviously no indicator of any wider issue, but if that's generally how companies interview, then I'm really not surprised at all that they find it difficult to hire talent.

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