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

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

countaleph.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 354 posts

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

#241

Post by nappy-doo »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #220
nappy-doo wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check my comment history. I work at Google. I stand on that.

What makes you think "I work at Google" provides sufficient data to an interviewer such that they should exempt you from their interviewing process? The fact that you have a job somewhere else says very little.

I'm not saying I'm immune from interviews. I'm saying it's proof I have chops.

Technical interviewing in a broken process. I've given almost 200 technical interviews at Google, and I've seen all kinds of results. But, I believe Google's results. Having worked at Google longer than anywhere else I've ever worked, I can say that the people are incredible, and it's a direct result of the interviewing process. We interview someone for a set number of interviews (N≤8 nowadays) and we make a decision. I can count on one hand the number of people I think are deadwood.

All I'm saying is the "interview" process of having people do projects for you is broken. You will filter out a lot of people with jobs they are kicking butt at.

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

#242

Post by jpgvm »

When I hire programmers I try to favour ingenuity, knowledge and as best as I can gauge it, work ethic. For instance I might ask them about a theoretical task, possibly something like a scheduler or packet filter etc and give them domain specific data about how it will be used and ask them if there are any optimization they could make if they had this data about the systems use case.

Or I might ask them to describe how an event loop works.. or what the I/O path between their program and the disk looks like in as much detail as they can.

Someone that loves the field is going to have a decent idea about these things even if they never had to build one before.

caveat: these examples are very system level but you can substitute them with appropriate web, financial etc domain specific knowledge.

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

#243

Post by jpgvm »

When I hire programmers I try to favour ingenuity, knowledge and as best as I can gauge it, work ethic. For instance I might ask them about a theoretical task, possibly something like a scheduler or packet filter etc and give them domain specific data about how it will be used and ask them if there are any optimization they could make if they had this data about the systems use case.

Or I might ask them to describe how an event loop works.. or what the I/O path between their program and the disk looks like in as much detail as they can.

Someone that loves the field is going to have a decent idea about these things even if they never had to build one before.

caveat: these examples are very system level but you can substitute them with appropriate web, financial etc domain specific knowledge.

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

#244

Post by jpgvm »

When I hire programmers I try to favour ingenuity, knowledge and as best as I can gauge it, work ethic. For instance I might ask them about a theoretical task, possibly something like a scheduler or packet filter etc and give them domain specific data about how it will be used and ask them if there are any optimization they could make if they had this data about the systems use case.

Or I might ask them to describe how an event loop works.. or what the I/O path between their program and the disk looks like in as much detail as they can.

Someone that loves the field is going to have a decent idea about these things even if they never had to build one before.

caveat: these examples are very system level but you can substitute them with appropriate web, financial etc domain specific knowledge.

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

#245

Post by Killswitch »

I'm absolutely horrible at math... I think I graduated high school (my only schooling) with the equivalent of just above grade school in math... I can code no problem though. I'm very good at it. Anybody asks me math puzzles I say thanks for your time, but I am done with the interview.

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

#246

Post by sdoowpilihp »

mattjaynes wrote: post #202
tokenadult wrote: post #150

There are many discussions here on HN about company hiring procedures. Company hiring procedures and their effectiveness is a heavily researched topic, but most hiring managers and most job applicants haven't looked up much of the research. After reading the blog post kindly submitted here and some of its comments, and then reading most of the comments here on HN that came in while I was asleep in my time zone, it lo…

I can confirm this works in my own experience of trial-and-error interviewing over 2000 applicants and hiring over 200 for my clients and myself (since ~2006). Nearly 100% of the applicants were remote, so I think that helped me from falling into traps of poor "traditional" hiring practices. The point of hiring these remote folks was to help accelerate whatever team I was on. It can be a great way to scale your exist…

You used the term "gently fire". I was wondering if you could elaborate on how you "gently fire".

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

#247

Post by base698 »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #181
alinajaf wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I asked him why the PHP code he sent me didn't have any comments. "I don't believe in comments because they slow the PHP interpreter down." Sorry, he can be smarter than Einstein but I ain't letting him near production code. This one wasn't smarter than Einstein. It's been a while since I've been near a live PHP installation, but IIRC running with an opcode cache like APC probably means the comments will be parsed…

This true - but without the opcode cache the slowdown would be minimal since all the comments are ignored. Plus, the comments are there for future developers to use as a reference. Nothing worse than having something break, cracking open a file and have to spend hours having to untie someone else's code. I'd rather have copious amounts of comments, then a minimal speed gain due to not having them at all.

Comments like: // Adds two numbers

// method takes Object argument and returns list

Are useless.

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

#248

Post by rhizome »

tokenadult wrote: post #237
bradleyjg wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems awfully rude to cut and paste this gigantic comment, which is now virtually pinned to the top of a discussion thread of a blog post to which it barely responds. There's nothing in this that indicates it is at all customized for the article it is attached to. Especially given that you and the author seem to have some things in common (connection to small-town Minnesota & love of mathematics) it seems like you…

The currency of upvotes suggests that many readers have appreciated my comment, perhaps because it provided them new information about an important set of issues. That set of issues has been discussed in many of the comments here, and was discussed in the original article. The currency of actual cash money, which is not provided in our information-sharing environment here on Hacker News, would free up time for me to…

Quite the glib and misanthropic response, not to mention the value you measure is based upon imagination and a strawman. If you're not interested in engaging the community except in terms of price, why participate?

Most of the time one's hopes are not as valuable outside that person's head as they are inside.

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

#249

Post by axc123 »

mcphilip wrote: post #74

After much experimentation giving interviews for server side positions, I've come to favor questions that involve routine real world problems that can be handled in increasingly sophisticated ways. One example I use is getting the candidate to write crud, list, and search controller actions for a simple category data structure. Given a basic category data model (e.g. Name, Parent), the candidate starts with the crud…

I am not able to understand any of the questions because the jargon used is unfamiliar although the concepts look simple. Are all these terms specific to a particular framework ? Genuine question, thanks.

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

#250

Post by evacuationdrill »

sdoowpilihp wrote: post #246
mattjaynes wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confirm this works in my own experience of trial-and-error interviewing over 2000 applicants and hiring over 200 for my clients and myself (since ~2006). Nearly 100% of the applicants were remote, so I think that helped me from falling into traps of poor "traditional" hiring practices. The point of hiring these remote folks was to help accelerate whatever team I was on. It can be a great way to scale your exist…

You used the term "gently fire". I was wondering if you could elaborate on how you "gently fire".

Stop sending paychecks, they figure it out eventually.
Post reply on HN