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A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

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Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#111

Post by taneq »

usloth_wandows wrote: post #66
pauljaworski wrote: post #21

This is literally the only way I've gotten job offers. I'm a very competent programmer, but when I'm asked to solve some silly puzzle with someone staring over my shoulder, I freeze under pressure and can not think at all. Luckily not everyone thinks solving leetcode problems is a good way to hire.

If you can't code under pressure, you aren't a very competent programmer. Real world projects come with high pressure scenarios for software engineers. Code monkeys may be able to get away with low pressure, minimally impactful projects.

You're getting hammered for this, but for some jobs you're absolutely right. If you can't handle being put on the spot for a simple interview question, how are you going to go when a production line is down and it's costing your client $100k/hr, and the foreman's standing looking over your shoulder wanting to know when it'll be working?

Not all jobs give you all the time in the world on a test server without interruptions.

Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#112

Post by totalZero »

67726e wrote: post #67
usloth_wandows wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't code under pressure, you aren't a very competent programmer. Real world projects come with high pressure scenarios for software engineers. Code monkeys may be able to get away with low pressure, minimally impactful projects.

I can't code with people staring at me, talking to me, asking me questions. If you can more power to you, but if that reflects the nature of the job then they can take that one and shove it. It simply doesn't reflect reality.

How about when you're alone, it's 3am, you haven't slept much in the past three days, and you have a 10am deadline to meet?

Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#113

Post by moron4hire »

throwaway4job wrote: post #59
zachd1_618 wrote: post #49

This. 100% this. As many others are saying, I find that this is the most comfortable way for me as an interviewee to demonstrate that I do in fact know what I'm talking about. Put me in front of a room full of people and a whiteboard and throw something at me, and I'll freeze. Freezing in that situation and being a bad engineer are wholly separate things. Anecdotally, when I get one of these problems, I spent 20 minu…

This isn't a viable approach for much of the hiring pool, as a majority of working engineers have contracts which explicitly forbid work for contract for other employers. As such, if you hire any of those, you're hiring somebody with a proven willingness to ignore their contract, which is a strong anti-pattern.

>> a majority of working engineers have contracts which explicitly forbid work for contract for other employers.

Well that was very, very dumb of them. Maybe we engineers ain't so smart after all.

Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#114

Post by aianus »

nolite wrote: post #104
pauljaworski wrote: post #21

This is literally the only way I've gotten job offers. I'm a very competent programmer, but when I'm asked to solve some silly puzzle with someone staring over my shoulder, I freeze under pressure and can not think at all. Luckily not everyone thinks solving leetcode problems is a good way to hire.

I've been in situations together with clients deploying a product, them presenting it for their managers, orpreparing for a big demonstration, and something goes wrong due to some unforeseen environmental factor you couldn't have imagined or predicted, and breaks in a way you don't expect, despite the weeks of testing you've done. You've got your main client staring over your shoulder, arms crossed saying fix it, and…

Most tech jobs aren't like that. If the job you're hiring for is one of the few that involves high-pressure coding in front of strangers, then by all means test for that.

Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#115

Post by eseehausen »

phillro wrote: post #99

I know its only a small fee, but legally wouldn't this require issuing a 1099?

It's under the limit ($600): https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

But even if it wasn't, a company of any significant size (enough to pay even 1 person's salary, say) should have a low effort and cheap way of tracking contractor payments and issuing 1099s.

Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#116

Post by keithnz »

nolite wrote: post #104
pauljaworski wrote: post #21

This is literally the only way I've gotten job offers. I'm a very competent programmer, but when I'm asked to solve some silly puzzle with someone staring over my shoulder, I freeze under pressure and can not think at all. Luckily not everyone thinks solving leetcode problems is a good way to hire.

I've been in situations together with clients deploying a product, them presenting it for their managers, orpreparing for a big demonstration, and something goes wrong due to some unforeseen environmental factor you couldn't have imagined or predicted, and breaks in a way you don't expect, despite the weeks of testing you've done. You've got your main client staring over your shoulder, arms crossed saying fix it, and…

if that's common then it's a reasonable criteria for the position, sure. That hardly ever comes up in my work environments, so I'd be happy with an engineer who is awesome 99.999% of the time when they aren't in this position.

Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#117

Post by Noseshine »

nolite wrote: post #104
pauljaworski wrote: post #21

This is literally the only way I've gotten job offers. I'm a very competent programmer, but when I'm asked to solve some silly puzzle with someone staring over my shoulder, I freeze under pressure and can not think at all. Luckily not everyone thinks solving leetcode problems is a good way to hire.

I've been in situations together with clients deploying a product, them presenting it for their managers, orpreparing for a big demonstration, and something goes wrong due to some unforeseen environmental factor you couldn't have imagined or predicted, and breaks in a way you don't expect, despite the weeks of testing you've done. You've got your main client staring over your shoulder, arms crossed saying fix it, and…

I can present to audiences pretty easily, I actually enjoy it. I also don't mind at all having a client watch what I'm doing. And yet, while I have no trouble doing interviews - having worked as a freelancer that would have been pretty bad - the situations are not comparable even for me. I loathe interviews. Fortunately a lot of clients, and I've had several major companies, had people hiring me without any of the usual stuff based on a gut feeling, I had to answer silly irrelevant technical questions only twice. And once I even failed "explain a right join" - something surely everybody would be expected to know, and of course I do, but at that moment I blanked. I go the job anyway but it goes to show that even to me interviews are a very different and greater kind of stress than anything normal work can throw at me. Even if it looks the same, it isn't, not at all! The brain knows context.

An interview situation is much more adversarial: They are looking out for reasons not to hire you, you are competing with others for the job and only one can get it! No such consideration on the job, unless the work environment is completely and ridiculously broken. When are you ever in a work situation where several people work on competing solutions and everybody else but the person who made the winning one is fired? At work you are working together, and to solve a problem, not to week you out of the pool.

Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#119

Post by closeparen »

taneq wrote: post #111
usloth_wandows wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't code under pressure, you aren't a very competent programmer. Real world projects come with high pressure scenarios for software engineers. Code monkeys may be able to get away with low pressure, minimally impactful projects.

You're getting hammered for this, but for some jobs you're absolutely right. If you can't handle being put on the spot for a simple interview question, how are you going to go when a production line is down and it's costing your client $100k/hr, and the foreman's standing looking over your shoulder wanting to know when it'll be working? Not all jobs give you all the time in the world on a test server without interrup…

In my experience, high-pressure "fix it now" scenarios are about leaning on what you know about the system, interpreting metrics and log messages, understanding how it's going wrong, and deploying a (usually very simple) fix. Sometimes just blindly hitting the "rollback" button as a first step fixes it, too.

Performing well in this kind of scenario is much less about algorithms and data structures, and much more about systems thinking and the level of your understanding of your system.

Re: A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

#120

Post by nixme »

redwards510 wrote: post #14
lacampbell wrote: post #11

I wish more companies would give example problems to solve in your own time. I did one for a fairly large Australian company, and they rejected it. By the time they got round to letting me know (very long turn around time) I had already found other employment. But still, their reasons for rejecting my solution - the output was not formatted to their liking, and they didn't seem to know what an anonymous function was…

I don't mind homework, but companies need to start specifying their salary range up front. I've been having a lot of time wasted lately by getting through Tech Interview #1 or Homework #1, only to find out their max salary is laughable for San Francisco. "You should just find that out upfront" I hear you saying. Well that is not always possible. Recruiters either don't know the range, or lie about not knowing, or you…

Have you tried hired.com ?
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