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

Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

blog.triplebyte.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 248 posts

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#181

Post by fsk »

mwfunk wrote: post #177
fsk wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only there was some way that people could spend a couple of years proving they had basic competence, so they didn't have to prove basic skills on every interview. Why did I get a CS degree if every interview starts with the assumption that I'm an unqualified loser?

Because lots of people with CS degrees don't have basic programming competence?

Why are those people getting CS degrees? Shouldn't they get flunked out?

When schools allow students to do coding projects in groups, it's possible to graduate with ZERO ability, provided you can find someone competent to partner with.

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#182

Post by foldr »

lockes5hadow wrote: post #133
tomtang0514 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen several companies giving out such homework to me or my friends back in college. And to be honest, none of the are among the "great culture company list" people are talking about. Beside all the issues you mentioned above, those tests don't have a clear PASS line. You spent hours on that and can be rejected for no reason. Back in college I've done a code challenge from Box and my solution ranked No.1 in thei…

Even in C I would point out that the compiler will likely make such a trivial optimization for you. That was clearly a company full of morons.

In fact GCC will virtually always produce optimal code for multiplication by a constant. Targetting AVR, for example (which doesn't always have hardware multiply), GCC produces more compact code if you use '*' than if you use '<<'. Similarly, any attempt I made to multiply by non-round constants using bitshifting and addition led to less compact code.

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#185

Post by fsk »

bjt wrote: post #162

It's very nice to see hiring advice based on data rather than anecdotes. But I wonder if the process described in the article is pre-selecting for people who are out of work and desperate, rather than currently employed and casually looking for something better. From the article: > Our process has four steps: > 1. Online technical screen. > 2. 15-minute phone call discussing a technical project. > 3. 45-minute screen…

>> ...we can't afford to send people we're unsure about to companies

>Does every applicant in this system really have to go through four rounds of screening before even talking to someone who works at the actual company? I can't imagine doing that unless I was desperate.

And from the candidates' viewpoint: That headhunter made me waste 3 hours on screening and didn't even get me a phone interview. Why am I wasting time on this?

I realized another problem. You're trying to predict WHICH PEOPLE WILL GET HIRED BY YOUR CLIENT. That's a completely different outcome than trying to pick the people who are the best workers. If the employer's process is defective, your pre-screening is just reinforcing that bias (albeit improving your "efficiency" as headhunters).

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#186

Post by russelluresti »

protonfish wrote: post #6

It's great to see some objective research being done on this, and I am very interested in following the results. They mention evaluating the effectiveness of giving a candidate a project to do "in their own time." I recently had a interview that included this and I can share the result: I accepted an offer from a different company that didn't require it. I doubt my life is that different than anyone else's, with a fu…

I think the take-home project can be successful, but not as most companies implement it.

A basic rule of courtesy is that a company shouldn't ask the candidate to invest more time in the process than they are willing to invest.

Most companies will spend an hour or half an hour talking to you on the phone and then give you a project that takes at least 8 hours to do. That's a ridiculous ask. It assumes that the candidate already knows they want to work for your company and is willing to invest that much time to get the job.

They forget that an interview is a 2-way street. The candidate is also deciding if the company is the right fit for them, and being asked to invest a ton of your own time when the company doesn't seem willing to invest theirs is a huge turn off.

There are a lot of advantages to a take-away task - such as being able to write actual code with a computer on your own stack as opposed to just writing on a white board (which some people have problems doing).

However, this type of ask should only come after both the company and the individual have already invested significant and equal amounts of time - enough time for the candidate to be sure (or fairly confident) the company is a place they'd like to work. This means the take-away may only be useful after the on-site, or possibly right before it but after a few rounds where the candidate gets to understand the company better.

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#187

Post by mwfunk »

ammon wrote: post #156
mwfunk wrote: post #152

Preamble: not middlebrow dismissal, I really like what they're doing here and will pay attention to them going forward. This is just picking a nit that my hypersensitive self just can't resist: "Fizz buzz style coding problems are less predictive of ability to do well in a programming interview" I'm sure this is 100% true, but I thought the point of fizzbuzz-type problems were to weed out people who couldn't program…

Yeah, we're just using it to mean a asking a simple programming problem (of fizzbuzz difficulty).

I just can't imagine any hiring process in which someone could fail fizzbuzz (or something of that level of difficulty) and still be considered a good fit for any sort of programming job. Failing fizzbuzz means someone can't program professionally, but passing it doesn't mean anything other than meeting the lowest possible standard. Likewise for anything of that same level of difficulty.

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#188

Post by ibejoeb »

ammon wrote: post #18
notacoward wrote: post #12

Here's the part that really seems to matter the most. This does create some danger of circular reasoning (perhaps we're just carefully describing our own biases). But we have to start somewhere, and basing our evaluations on how people write actual code seems like a good place.The really exciting point comes when we can re-run all this analysis, basing it on actual job performance, rather than interview results. Abso…

Author here. We do do the interviews blind to earlier screening results. That's clearly vital. But you're totally right that job performance is the real thing that matters

Hi Ammon. I'm certain that we talked on both the 45-minute and 2-hour video conferences, so those are not blind. Do you mean that you and Harj didn't discuss applicants throughout the process?

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#189

Post by mwfunk »

ammon wrote: post #95
dagw wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing well on the fizzbuzz problems was not very correlated. I think you're mis-using fizbuzz. You cannot really 'do well' on it. You can basically pass it or fail it. Failing means you're probably no good, but passing it doesn't prove anything.

Yeah, I just mean "short programming problems of a difficultly similar to fizzbuzz"

That's the same thing though. If it's the same level of difficulty as fizzbuzz, it serves the same purpose: you can fail at it, but you can't really do well at it. All you can do is not fail.

Re: Three hundred programming interviews in thirty days

#190

Post by mwfunk »

fsk wrote: post #181
mwfunk wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because lots of people with CS degrees don't have basic programming competence?

Why are those people getting CS degrees? Shouldn't they get flunked out? When schools allow students to do coding projects in groups, it's possible to graduate with ZERO ability, provided you can find someone competent to partner with.

Right, exactly. That's what I'm saying, I don't know what you're disagreeing with. Having a CS degree does not guarantee programming competence. Some people get CS degrees who shouldn't get CS degrees. Some students probably should get flunked out who don't flunk out. Some students graduate from perfectly fine colleges with good grades but zero ability. It happens, hence fizzbuzz. Some people are just naturally good at marketing themselves, and show up with multiple degrees from top-tier schools, vast lists of publications, with years (if not decades) of industry experience on their resumes in important-sounding positions doing impressive and difficult-sounding tasks, and can't code their way out of a paper bag. Hence fizzbuzz.
Post reply on HN