The Hiring Post • Hacker News Board

Re: The Hiring Post

#31

Post by cableshaft » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 10:12 PM UTC

msoad wrote: post #14

calcsam wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use HackerRank, which has an in-browser IDE that can runs pretty much every language, has highlighting, etc. I can't believe anyone would use Google Docs. Even if you don't care about your interviewees' experience, huge waste of dev time.

I just interviewed with Google and they use Google Docs.

Can confirm. They used Google Docs with me as well. I didn't find it to be all that bad, actually. Their back-to-back whiteboard interviews later on were much more nerve-wracking.

Re: The Hiring Post

#32

Post by drewcrawford » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 10:12 PM UTC

As a vote of confidence, this article moved me from "I would never ever interview at Matasano" to "I don't want a full-time job at a security firm, but if I did, I would probably start looking here."

Re: The Hiring Post

#33

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 10:13 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #2

This is a great writeup on a similar process: https://push.cx/2015/hiring-apprentices

[deleted]

Re: The Hiring Post

#34

Post by joshrotenberg » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 10:13 PM UTC

Zikes wrote: post #15

steakejjs wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be carful not to forget reading off a semi-colon. Syntax counts!

Just imagine if it were a whitespace sensitive language like Coffeescript. "Newline. Tab. Tab. Tab. Tab."

Heh. "Wait, was that 'Tab. Tab. Tab.' or 'Tab. Tab. Tab. Tab.'?"

A Lisp would be nasty, too. "... Close paren. Close paren. Close paren. Close paren. ..."

Re: The Hiring Post

#35

Post by moron4hire » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 10:13 PM UTC

All of the good developers I meet already have jobs and they don't want to leave them. So I'm experimenting with "taking what I can get", i.e. subcontracting out a few hours a week. The hypothesis is that X great developers for Y hours a week will provide higher quality results than Y mediocre developers for X hours a week.

It seems to be working out so far. I don't have a lot of data to go on, but I haven't had to completely throw out code yet.

Re: The Hiring Post

#36

Post by tibbon » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 10:13 PM UTC

I've been interviewing for the past month or so and its been terrible from many perspectives; I'm fine with the interviews content-wise (silly questions excluded), but the entire process is such a time-sink.

I have a current position (full-time job) and really just don't have time for (with each company) 30 minutes of emailing, an hour phone call, a short coffee meeting, an offline coding challenge and then a 3 to 6 hour on-site interview. Additionally the weather in Boston has been dreadful, and getting to places just takes longer than normal.

Again, I already have a full-time position, and finding ways to schedule these into my work day just doesn't really work well. The interviews I've had have gone well, but I'm counting down the days until I find the perfect company that makes me an offer that I like, because the entire process is just eating into my life.

Re: The Hiring Post

#37

Post by aristus » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 10:13 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #27

Author. I can talk in a pretty good amount of detail about how exactly our process worked, if anyone has any questions. And, to head off a concern a reviewer gave me: from 1997-2005, I was a full-time software developer; I shipped shrink-wrap boxed software on Windows and Unix in the 1990s, then appliances deployed at tier 1 ISPs. I'm a "software person" more than a "security person".

This is a good post, Thomas. From this I think I could make an efficient test for the kind of person who'd make a good performance engineer. Developing a more general work-sample for developers is a harder problem, but still feels doable.

This may not be an issue for you yet, but what about plagiarism? And can you expand on your hints about how you changed your pipeline at the front of the process? You don't interview every resume that comes your way, right?

Re: The Hiring Post

#38

Post by dsp1234 » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 10:14 PM UTC

SamReidHughes wrote: post #3

As somebody who agrees in theory with tptacek's posts and now this blog post, what I find very funny is how I perceive typical technical hiring, with the interview gauntlet, to still be way better than what some other industries must do. How the hell does anybody hire a teacher?

A recent interview for a teaching position involved being given the name of a class to teach. At that point, generating sample classroom materials (a simple worksheet, powerpoint, etc), and a sample lesson plan. Then the interview consists of teaching the sample lesson plan to several interviewers.

In other words, a work sample test.

Re: The Hiring Post

#39

Post by tptacek » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 10:15 PM UTC

drewcrawford wrote: post #32

As a vote of confidence, this article moved me from "I would never ever interview at Matasano" to "I don't want a full-time job at a security firm, but if I did, I would probably start looking here."

Thanks! I hope that carries over to the new firm we started, too. :P

Re: The Hiring Post

#40

Post by BinaryIdiot » Fri, Mar 06, 2015, 10:16 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #21

jowiar wrote: post #18

This article seems to put forward a good theory on interviewing someone who you want to lock in room with a problem and have code come out the other end. Unfortunately, most of us work in the real world, where that's a very limited portion of the engineering job. When the author says selecting for: "people who have the social skills to actively listen to someone else’s technical points, to guide a discussion with que…

I know how to turn someone who can't code into someone who can. If you can do that reliably, you should be making zillions of dollars. My experience is the opposite: if someone is very impressive in an interview but a zero on the team, they're an intractable management problem. In any case: there is a difference between being cripplingly antisocial and being able to deftly handle an interview. The social skills requi…

> If you can do that reliably, you should be making zillions of dollars.

I disagree to a degree; I've met many people who were simply fantastic with figuring out problems but didn't know much software development and they ended up being awesome software developers.

It's certainly doable and I don't think it's so difficult that someone who can do it should be making an obscene amount of money but they are not cheap either; that's usually a really good development lead.