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Ask YC: Does interviewing developers leave you depressed?

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Re: Ask YC: Does interviewing developers leave you depressed?

#41

Post by pj »

sofal wrote: post #33
pj wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The questions the OP asked are all very easy. It'd be easy to describe a function to find the longest common subsequence of a set of strings as well. The reason such a question is asked is because it isn't something that we do everyday and how we solve problems that we don't immediately know how to solve is what sets good programmers apart from bad programmers. I find anyone who immediately blames the enviro…

Are you saying that the context and type of the problem in the interview doesn't matter at all? I think you'd understand how I can take your argument to its extreme conclusion and justify posing psychotherapy problems to candidates. You're seeing complaining where there isn't any. It's in the employers interest to ask questions that will narrow down candidates in a way that best fits the job. Putting candidates under…

Are you saying that the context and type of the problem in the interview doesn't matter at all?

I think it doesn't matter if it is consistent for all the candidates. A company can't change to suit every employee. Working for a startup like Youtube is high pressure. You have to be very self-aware and able to work under extreme circumstances. When your app crashes and millions of people are angry, you have to fix it! You can't create a special case scenario for your employees because they need to work in a stress free environment.

Of course that is a simple case, but high stress engagements occur at some point in almost every environment and how the candidate reacts to the high stress is very important, perhaps the most important.

IMO, it is more important for the employee to adapt to the environment than for the environment to adapt to the employee. Every candidate is going to want questions asked a different way. Every candidate is going to want their cube to be a different color -- that's why they are all gray or beige.

My point is, if you want A players on your team, you will be well served to waste as little time as possible on candidates that want you to ask them interview questions the way the candidate wants them asked and focus your attention on candidates that correctly answer the questions how the interviewer wants to ask them.

Re: Ask YC: Does interviewing developers leave you depressed?

#42

Post by pj »

lutorm wrote: post #30
pj wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The questions the OP asked are all very easy. It'd be easy to describe a function to find the longest common subsequence of a set of strings as well. The reason such a question is asked is because it isn't something that we do everyday and how we solve problems that we don't immediately know how to solve is what sets good programmers apart from bad programmers. I find anyone who immediately blames the enviro…

Case appealed. There are definitely people who are capable of solving problems but whose performance drops appreciably under pressure. Now, you may not want to hire those people, but that doesn't mean it has anything to do with external motivation or making excuses, and you can keep your contempt for yourself.

As an employer, I want employees who can solve problems whether they are under pressure or not. You really want an employee working for you, or even a team member in your group who can't work under pressure when your site is down and they are the only one who can fix it? If you can't work under pressure, you can't work. Or maybe you can work, but I'd rather work with someone who can work under pressure or who can't. That's my point. And I believe it has a lot to do with external motivation. I apologize for the contempt.

Appeal denied.

Re: Ask YC: Does interviewing developers leave you depressed?

#44

Post by blankity_blank »

tocomment wrote: post #3

Just out of personal curiosity, you should try to find out if any of these failed candidates are actually skilled developers but there's something about the questions or interview that's messing them up? For example I consider myself a reasonable programmer, I can certainly do any project put in front of me. But I failed a YouTube phone interview because they asked me to "say" a function for finding the longest commo…

because they asked me to "say" a function for finding the longest common subsequence of a set of strings.

That's rough, asking for a solution to an NP-hard problem over the phone? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_common_subsequence_prob...

Or maybe they were just expecting you to say "for each combination of subsequences of each string, check if they are equal ..."

Re: Ask YC: Does interviewing developers leave you depressed?

#45

Post by Davertron »

pj wrote: post #21
plinkplonk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"you should try to find out if any of these failed candidates are actually skilled developers but there's something about the questions or interview that's messing them up? hard to think of a halfway competent developer failing to answer "where I ask them to implement a simple function, implement a recursive function, write a simple SQL select (join across two tables), and create a simple object model (how would you…

I agree. The questions the OP asked are all very easy. It'd be easy to describe a function to find the longest common subsequence of a set of strings as well. The reason such a question is asked is because it isn't something that we do everyday and how we solve problems that we don't immediately know how to solve is what sets good programmers apart from bad programmers. I find anyone who immediately blames the enviro…

If you ask me, having someone say a function over the phone just sounds stupid. If you're going to have them say it, why not have them SING it instead? Would be more entertaining, and since the way they're doing it doesn't matter, what the hell?

I don't say SQL queries out loud, and trying to do so would probably screw me up; I don't know about you, but I don't sit down to write stuff and get it perfect every time. I often start writing a query, go back and adjust something, start working on another part, tweak this or that, and then finish. You can't do that when you're forced to say something over the phone. And I don't solve problems I've never come across by just starting to code on my own and see where it gets me; especially when it sounds like the kind of problem that someone else out there, probably smarter than me, has already solved. AND I wouldn't want to hire anyone who took that approach. Sometimes, it's fun to reinvent the wheel, especially when you're trying to learn things, but I wouldn't want my developers sitting around all day reinventing everything.

If you really want these people to do these things, plop them down in front of a computer, give them a time limit of x minutes, leave the room and come back and see where they are. This relieves the pressure of you standing over them watching them, gives them time and space to work the problem out, and is much closer to how they'll eventually be working...unless you work at some freaky place where the boss stands over your shoulder and watches you type all day long, in which case I feel sorry for you.

Re: Ask YC: Does interviewing developers leave you depressed?

#47

Post by maweaver »

stanleydrew wrote: post #26
soc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. When I first meet someone over the phone or in person I'm in a social mood and prefer to talk rather than do a code dance for them. Once I'm alone at my desk though it's easy to get down to business. Think it would be cool if companies just said show up to work, and you work for free for the first week. After that both parties can decide if they want to continue.

I know a bunch of smaller startups that do the "come in for a week and we'll decide" out here in the bay area. Peanut Labs, e.g.

I've also seen a lot of "contract for hire" jobs at larger companies that are short (3-6 month) contracts, with an understanding that they are evaluating whether to hire you full-time at the end of the contract. If not, you still got some contract work and can move on.

Re: Ask YC: Does interviewing developers leave you depressed?

#48

Post by plinkplonk »

vax_11 wrote: post #31

Part of it may be your questions, and part may be HOW you're asking (e.g. over the phone, or putting someone on the spot). 2) Not a lot of people write SQL by hand anymore. I used MySQL for years, long ago, and never wrote a join. Then ORMs came along and handle joins automatically, so I've still never written one. So not being able to do it without looking it up doesn't really tell you anything. I've written far, fa…

"I used MySQL for years, long ago, and never wrote a join."

Scary! I wonder about your definition of "used", if you used an RDBMS in a non trivial app "for years" and never wrote a join! The database design must be very ... unusual :-).

And this was in the days before ORMs :-D.

" Then ORMs came along and handle joins automatically, so I've still never written one. "

I've never yet seen a non trivial RDBMS based app where the existence of an ORM absolved developers from having a good grasp of SQL when they needed to drop below the abstraction layer provided by the ORM.

"So not being able to do it without looking it up doesn't really tell you anything."

It does, really! ;-).

"PG, RTM, and TLB would probably fail your test -- they don't use SQL, they use flat files."

The interesting thing about this statement is that it shows one way out of potentially being asked to code on a whiteboard/over the phone. If you have a PhD' from MIT and/or have a strong track record of writing Open Source software, creating and selling a startup, build robots (and electric unicylces ) for fun etc, in other words, if you can show , well before the interview, that you are as good or better than the job demands, you are very unlikely to face the "find the longest subsequence in a string" or "write a join" type questions. But then if you could do all that why would you look for a job?

In my case, after writing some open source software, (and posting an url as the first thing in my cv) I've found that these kind of elementary questiong simply drop away. When a few thousand people use your code everyday, people know you are good.

The OP's post is about when all you have is a cv that looks like the last 100 cvs you reviewed, and people who can't answer simple questions about how to write a join (hence his depression).

Re: Ask YC: Does interviewing developers leave you depressed?

#49

Post by mmc »

tocomment wrote: post #23
_pius wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm perfectly willing to write code as part of a job interview. just not on a whiteboard or over the phone. why not on a whiteboard?

Like I mentioned, I just get flustered when people are watching me, or want me to speak my though process aloud. Those skills, (being able to code complex problems when people are watching) have never been a requirement of any job I've seen so I've come out of many interviews feeling that they got an inaccurate picture of my skills.

With some preparation, you can transform the problem from one that may not be part of your job (solving completely new problems in front of an audience) to one that certainly will - explaining your solution clearly to an audience.

If you try hard enough, you can be familiar with likely interview questions and then the problem is how best to present your solution, which is an important skill, and one worth practicing.

Re: Ask YC: Does interviewing developers leave you depressed?

#50

Post by mquander »

blankity_blank wrote: post #44
tocomment wrote: post #3

Just out of personal curiosity, you should try to find out if any of these failed candidates are actually skilled developers but there's something about the questions or interview that's messing them up? For example I consider myself a reasonable programmer, I can certainly do any project put in front of me. But I failed a YouTube phone interview because they asked me to "say" a function for finding the longest commo…

because they asked me to "say" a function for finding the longest common subsequence of a set of strings. That's rough, asking for a solution to an NP-hard problem over the phone? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_common_subsequence_prob... Or maybe they were just expecting you to say "for each combination of subsequences of each string, check if they are equal ..."

We may be mishearing their intended formulation, which could have been asking for the longest common substring (described here: difference is that subsequences don't have to be entirely contiguous, just in the same order.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_common_substring_proble...

That's an interesting problem with some simple solutions worth understanding. I don't think it would be unrealistic to expect a high-quality programmer to be previously familiar with it, or, if not previously familiar, to be able to make progress toward the DP solution with some thought.

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