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Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

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Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#101

Post by JamesBarney »

klntsky wrote: post #76
pps43 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't this value experience and knowledge (like everything you learned in university) at zero? Having switched professions twice, I now use practically nothing of what I learned in university from about second year forward. Math and to some extent physics are still relevant, but that's pretty much it. It might be painful to admit, but the practical value of that rather specialized knowledge that took me several…

> It might be painful to admit, but the practical value of that rather specialized knowledge that took me several years of hard work to obtain is pretty much zero now. It's sad that your professors didn't tell you beforehand that you were going to learn how to learn during that time, not just study a particular technology stack.

Learning how to learn is a specialized set of skills that weren't taught at the university level when I was in a school.(2010)

Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#102

Post by cloverich »

hunter23 wrote: post #90
dcolkitt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't agree with this enough. The most consistent finding in industrial psychology is that general cognitive ability is by far the best predictor of job performance in virtually every role ever tested. Even jobs that don't seem cognitively demanding, like janitors or infantry. Higher IQ candidates almost universally do better, even if they start with much less experience. The takeaway as it applies to modern software…

What is the correlation between IQ tests and algorithm interviews? Do people with better IQ scores do better on algorithm interviews?

The trick here would be separating high IQ people who have prior algorithmic experience from those who do not, because that's a much bigger influence on performance.

Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#103

Post by tschwimmer »

It's unlikely that any academic research will happen. Companies view hiring pipeline data as proprietary because they fear competitors may learn from it and gain and advantage. Even if researchers agreed to anonymize data I doubt BigCos would agree to share because it still could be used to benefit a competitor.

There is likely to be internal research at some companies.

Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#104

Post by perfunctory »

I don't think it's necessary. Good software engineers are so scarce you should just grab the first adequate one who comes your way. When I was in the position of interviewing candidates, 9 out of 10 couldn't solve the most trivial of programming tasks.

Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#105

Post by tlogan »

barry-cotter wrote: post #32

I doubt there’s been too much on software interviewing specifically but interviewing/candidate selection for jobs is a large part of personnel psychology. A recent meta-analysis of what they know is below. Basically general mental ability (g, IQ) is the single best predictor, work sample tests work well, structured interviews can increase the performance of IQ tests or work samples and unstructured interviews are a t…

That is so obvious - just hire people smarter than you.

But that is so hard: we have pride, we have "company culture", we are stubborn, we are talking about "A players", etc. etc.

So yes - try to make interviews structured and organized so that there is no random noise.

Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#106

Post by spatley »

andrewmutz wrote: post #17
umvi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are a lot of jobs really algorithm development though? Every job I've had just used existing algorithm implementations for sorting, FFT, etc. I feel like to do well at software interviews I have to brush up on dynamic programming, sorting, greedy, etc. algo development even though I've almost never had to develop a serious performant algorithm on the job.

Companies tend to use algorithms for interviews for new college grads not because that's what the job entails, but because that reflects what the candidate's background was about (college). If someone is fresh out of a 4 year program that was all about data structures, algorithms, operating systems, etc, then demonstrating mastery of those topics tells an employer that a person is smart and can learn large amounts of…

I agree that algo questions are useful for recent grads. I find it more frustrating when I see those questions given to candidates for senior positions with 10 or more years of experience. Keeping fresh on the big-O of a bubble sort and rebalancing a binary tree ends up being in addition to building enterprise software solving real-world problems day to day.

Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#107

Post by jameslk »

barry-cotter wrote: post #32

I doubt there’s been too much on software interviewing specifically but interviewing/candidate selection for jobs is a large part of personnel psychology. A recent meta-analysis of what they know is below. Basically general mental ability (g, IQ) is the single best predictor, work sample tests work well, structured interviews can increase the performance of IQ tests or work samples and unstructured interviews are a t…

IQ tests don't measure creativity. Can I assume these studies suggest creativity is not very relevant to job performance?

Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#108

Post by ma2rten »

hunter23 wrote: post #90
dcolkitt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't agree with this enough. The most consistent finding in industrial psychology is that general cognitive ability is by far the best predictor of job performance in virtually every role ever tested. Even jobs that don't seem cognitively demanding, like janitors or infantry. Higher IQ candidates almost universally do better, even if they start with much less experience. The takeaway as it applies to modern software…

What is the correlation between IQ tests and algorithm interviews? Do people with better IQ scores do better on algorithm interviews?

I work at Google, based on personal experience I would say it does a good job of setting a minimum bar in terms intelligence and coding ability. However, it might reject some people unfairly.

A little bit of preparation helps a lot, but beyond a certain point preparation doesn't help anymore. All interview questions require solving a new problem in the interview itself.

Depending on the interviewer and question, the difference between a hire and no-hire recommendation can be quite marginal. There is a huge luck factor involved.

Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#109

Post by ma2rten »

dcolkitt wrote: post #69
jfarmer wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The research says structured interviews and work-sample tests have similar predictive power and all together they have yet more. The takeaway shouldn’t be IQ über alles.

The research shows that structured interviews do have better predictive performance than unstructured interviews. But that effect is entirely mediated by their higher correlation with IQ. In other words, structured interviews are better because they're less noisy measures of intelligence. The takeaway very much is IQ uber alles. [1] https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?refer...

I am not familiar with the research, and don't have time to review it right now. However, it seems like common sense to me that there are some factors beyond intelligence that matter such as motivation, interpersonal skills and character traits.

Re: Ask HN: Has there been any academic research into software interviewing?

#110

Post by vecter »

jonfw wrote: post #83
klntsky wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It might be painful to admit, but the practical value of that rather specialized knowledge that took me several years of hard work to obtain is pretty much zero now. It's sad that your professors didn't tell you beforehand that you were going to learn how to learn during that time, not just study a particular technology stack.

This bears the question- are classes based around studying a particular technology track the most effective way to teach somebody how to learn?

Studying math is the best way to improve your logical thinking abilities.
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