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Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

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Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#91

Post by thomasz »

jacobgreenleaf wrote: post #70
morgante wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant that mostly rhetorically in that I think that was a poor decision, or at least applied poorly. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you can show a high IQ is necessary for the job, isn't an IQ test acceptable?) Still, asking for SAT scores is still legal and they correlate decently with intelligence.

Actually the primary correlate of SAT scores is not intelligence but wealth.

I'd guess that there exists a causal relationship between "intelligence" as measured by standardized tests and the sum of dollars poured into someones education.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#92

Post by smsm42 »

jacobgreenleaf wrote: post #70
morgante wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant that mostly rhetorically in that I think that was a poor decision, or at least applied poorly. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you can show a high IQ is necessary for the job, isn't an IQ test acceptable?) Still, asking for SAT scores is still legal and they correlate decently with intelligence.

Actually the primary correlate of SAT scores is not intelligence but wealth.

I suspect the actual correlation is not with wealth (i.e. giving money so somebody with low SAT scores would not actually improve their scores - unless he would have enough money to bribe whoever is overseeing the test of course ;) but with some things that correlate with wealth.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#93

Post by nerfhammer »

redschell wrote: post #50
morgante wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think (1) is probably the primary reason, along with the fun factor I mentioned above. But honestly, why can't we just start giving IQ tests? Or at least asking for SAT scores? We shouldn't have to run through training puzzles just to prove we're smart enough to build a site.

Management consulting firms and Wall Street banks have employed somewhat strict GPA and SAT/GMAT cutoffs for quite some time, but even they can't resist the allure of brainteasers during the interview process. Google, on the other hand, appears to have done away with them, and now prefers to evaluate potential hires without giving too much weight to GPA or test scores: http://qz.com/96206/google-admits-those-infamous…

GPA and SAT correlate well to IQ. With those two pieces of information you could estimate IQ pretty accurately.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#94

Post by collyw »

uniclaude wrote: post #69
jph wrote: post #9

> Breadth-first search from both ends. I believe this is deeply valuable. For some roles, I would much prefer to hire someone who can quickly see the value of breadth-first search from both ends. If he/she doesn't happen to know the syntax of Ruby, or Java, etc. it's less important to me.

This is great. Now what would you do if after three months, your new hire can still not ship code that benefits your business? Fire the person? Keep teaching? I also believe algorithmic knowledge is important, and tend to give algorithm questions to my candidates, but it matters more for those who will write databases and game engines than for those who will write CRUD apps.

I was good at the algorithms and data structures part of my university course, but as a developer with ten years experience, I find it is very rare to actually use these now.

Far more important is how / when to index an database table, how to design the tables in the first place.

If I need an efficient algorithm, in most cases someone has written (and tested) it and put it in a library.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#95

Post by doppel »

kelnos wrote: post #88
auggierose wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you don't get the point. Learning a new language after you programmed for 5 years in a variety of paradigms like assembler, object-oriented, purely functional, will take you between a couple of hours and a week. But if you have NOT had those 5 years of varied programming experience, then the new language is not your problem. Learning the concepts is, and that will take time.

Learning a new language is fairly easy. Learning the language's standard library to the point that you don't have to look at the reference docs every 30 seconds takes a bit more time.

The author clearly showcases how this is not true in his (and probably others') case. Anonymous functions, function pointers, etc. are not language-specific features, but rather something you learn when learning to program.

I think the point of the article is that being smart at puzzles is not enough. It may not matter whether you have 3 or 10 years of programming experience, but if you have 20 years of puzzle solving experience with only 6 months of (real-life) programmering experience you have a lot of non-trivial learning left to do.

Being in a startup setting where everyone (usually) is expected to be a bit of jack-of-all-trades, I would argue that having programming experience trumphs being smart, at least for the first period. You may be the master of finding smart algorithms to design your application, but if you can't build the first CRUD website it does you little good.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#96

Post by barrkel »

smsm42 wrote: post #92
jacobgreenleaf wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the primary correlate of SAT scores is not intelligence but wealth.

I suspect the actual correlation is not with wealth (i.e. giving money so somebody with low SAT scores would not actually improve their scores - unless he would have enough money to bribe whoever is overseeing the test of course ;) but with some things that correlate with wealth.

It sounds like you heard "causation" when parent said correlation. Correlation is observed in past samples; what you describe is a mechanism for trying to disprove causation, but it won't remove any correlation from the past samples, and it probably won't remove the correlation with historical wealth of the family etc.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#97

Post by nostrademons »

jacobgreenleaf wrote: post #70
morgante wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant that mostly rhetorically in that I think that was a poor decision, or at least applied poorly. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you can show a high IQ is necessary for the job, isn't an IQ test acceptable?) Still, asking for SAT scores is still legal and they correlate decently with intelligence.

Actually the primary correlate of SAT scores is not intelligence but wealth.

Aren't intelligence and wealth correlated with each other, and both are correlated with SAT and IQ tests? I thought the explanation for the mysterious "g-factor" in intelligence that IQ is supposed to measure isn't that it exists in and of itself, but that a number of measurable outcomes (income, wealth, test scores, GPA, job prestige, etc.) are all positively correlated, and then that correlation is called g.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#98

Post by Xylakant »

kelnos wrote: post #89
Xylakant wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you don't get my point: I expect a domain expert to be a domain expert, but I don't expect a trainee to know anything and I'll structure my interview accordingly. I'll ask the domain expert questions about his domain. But I don't expect a domain expert to know the programming language that we work with just because he's a domain expert. And seriously, I'll prefer the eager-to-learn math graduate with little c…

I think you vastly underestimate the time it takes to learn these sorts of things. Sure, you can teach someone to write a simple, passable iOS app that does a few basic things in a couple weeks. But they're still going to be a raw-novice iOS developer. Maybe the app you need them to build is super simple, but if not, you're doing yourself and your company a disservice by not hiring someone who's done iOS before. I'm…

I think you vastly underestimate the value of "other knowledge" for any kind of complex undertaking. Unless you get a domain expert who happens to be a rock star programmer and a ninja architect and top-notch devops, you'll have to compromise somewhere. Take an iOS game: Depending on the game it can be vastly more value to have knowledge of game programming and game AI than having knowledge about iOS frameworks. If there's a team on the project I'd even go as far and say that I would pick the domain expert over the framework expert as team lead, given that all other capabilities were on par.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#100

Post by dagw »

microtonal wrote: post #82
michaelpinto wrote: post #26

After reading this I have a dumb question: The person behind the post is a CS major but only played a little bit with the C programming language in college — is this pretty common these days?

Yes, I have seen many CS graduates who couldn't write C or C++ if their life depended on it. In fact, I have seen CS graduates who could explain the theory behind, say, parallel computing in detail, but could barely write scripts. Knowing everything about painting doesn't make you a good painter :).

Knowing everything about painting doesn't make you a good painter

Then again no one automatically expects an art history major to know how to paint (even though there no doubt is quite a bit of overlap).

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