OPEN LETTER
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Hi,
I had a reading of the conclusions you made and I felt as if you defined a process of hiring machines to code rather than humans. So I took a few moments to read your manifesto(https://triplebyte.com/manifesto) (the premise on which your entire conclusion is made), and here is my take on it.
1. /"Whiteboard coding and algorithm questions aren't good predictors of how effective someone will be at writing real code."
Whiteboard coding show how someone really thinks. It illustrates the though process of the person and that helps the interviewer to judge him on his rational thinking and his logical approaches. Algorithms add to this by illustrating the problem solving ability. A person may not be able to solve an Algorithm actually, but the attempt on a whiteboards speaks more than his implementation on a online platform.
2./ "Candidates deserve a consistent experience and consistent evaluation".
The entire USP of an interview is the diversity which allows the interviewer to judge if someone is able to adapt to new situations and come out of his comfort zone. What you are suggesting is to change the interview process into a GRE exam which will only in-turn develop the culture among developers to prepare for that exam for 2 years.
3./"Hiring decisions should be made using a clear scoring system, not gut feelings"
Most of the companies have a 3round or 4 round interview process. It is obvious enough to remove the gut feeling factor. If you wanna argue that it may be possible that a candidate got selected based on the gut feeling of all 4 interviewers then my counter argument is that he is worth being selected if he could generate that gut feeling in so many people.
4./"The hiring process should be focused on discovering strengths, not uncovering weaknesses"
Agree to the point. However, the irony is that you are trying to define a particular process to hiring. I wonder if it could actually perform the "discovery" part.
5./"Candidates should be told exactly what to expect in an interview, and be allowed to prepare in advance. "
So basically you want to hire the guy who has studied the most over the smartest guy in the room. From my experience, I can surely say if companies like "Google" and "Fb" used to follow that practice, I wouldn't be even writing their name here.
6./"truthful feedback on how they did so they know how they can improve"
Agreed. Something that should be adapted by all companies in their recruiting process.
7./"Good programmers come from all types of background."
You enforce my point with this statement. Good programmers need not be just people who could quickly write a program for a search in a large of data using hash maps but can also be people who have brilliant problem solving ability and are slow in transforming that into code, or people who are amazing in thinking software design and scalability and probably cannot remember code syntax so well. A company needs a good blend of all these people. Then only a good ecosystem to growth is created rather than just making a team of 10 machines who could transform a pseudo code into Java in 10 minutes.
8./" The software industry needs to experiment more with hiring processes and figure out what really works."
I think many are already doing that by doing Tech Hackathons, online challenges, weekend projects, open source contribution references etc.
So, not something new which you guys figured out.
9./"Candidates are at a fundamental disadvantage in salary and equity negotiations"
Not sure what kind of companies you have surveyed. I think most well known companies maintain clear standards of salary and compensation plan. Though people will surely be flattered reading this. :)
10./"Companies should not have to make recruiting a core competency"
Now you are just trying to open the market for yourself by yourself. No comments. :P
Would love to hear your counter arguments. Mail me. :-)