The dystopian world of software engineering interviews • Hacker News Board

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#141

Post by courtf » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:29 AM UTC

proximitysauce wrote: post #3

In addition to all of the very dystopian examples given in this post, there are other non-technical, super-dystopian things that have been popping up as "trends" in the tech industry. Ever heard of top-grading? It's the most oppressive interview technique of all time. A series of grueling multi-person interviews. A retrospective of all work experiences since high school . You also have to get multiple prior employers…

Not sure if they were using this exact method, but I did interview at a place that had a long, grueling process (series of interviews, coding challenge, etc). They also asked for every employer back to high school, as well as contact info for supervisor for all of those jobs, which of course was ridiculous. I did enjoy seeing them taken aback when I provided that information and, despite being in my early 30s, having 20+ jobs listed that included things like "fruit picker," "janitor" and "waiter at gay bar". I blew away the algorithmic coding challenge, mostly because it was a take-home test (I have flubbed some white-boarding ones pretty badly).

The company was almost entirely men, many with quite obvious and malignant ego issues. Their method for making technical decisions was to get all ~20 of them into a conference room and argue about how things should be done, with the loudest, most forceful arguments tending to win. The entire time I worked there, the socially dominant clique was primarily concerned with moving their stack into Kubernetes, despite having almost no traffic that I could discern. I wouldn't say I was impressed overall, people who didn't fit the mold had little chance of making career progress, and I personally felt I had more experience and could code circles around the majority of them.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#142

Post by Papirola » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:29 AM UTC

allovernow wrote: post #11

In my admittedly limited experience, there's one way to avoid such nonsensical interviews - run away from bureaucracy. Seek smaller organizations (startups in particular) and if you're lucky enough to have a minimally cross-disciplinary background, you can seek out niche organizations where you'll interview with technical specialists who'll ask reasonable questions that are actually related to your work and your inte…

> you get to spend your best years infecting society with the cancer that is adtech.

spot on.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#143

Post by Igelau » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:30 AM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #94

glofish wrote: post #45

In my personal experience, having interviewed dozens of candidates (data science), I believe that asking "easy" and "simple" questions is the most effective way to probe the problem-solving skills of a candidate. Fun and interesting solutions to easy questions are hallmarks of great individuals. The question would go like this: Suppose I have a column-oriented file and I want to print out a column in a reverse-sorted…

A column orientated file? What format? Excel? CSV? What is cut, sort or head? Are you only accepting Linux candidates then, a tiny percentage of users? This sort of utter nonsense question, heavily loaded to your "standard" experience, which is anything but, is even worse than the questions cited in the article. All you're doing is filtering for people who are in your tribe, who followed the same path as you and thin…

> Pretend all you want, but you're filtering not by "experience" but by trying to find people in your tribe, which is naturally heavily weighted in chauvinism, racism and elitism.

I didn't realize Linux Users counted as a race now :D

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#144

Post by ummonk » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:30 AM UTC

throwlaplace wrote: post #69

codingslave wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are completing 500+ problems on leetcode before heading into interviews at google. Don't believe me? Go read the teamblind forums. People might spend six months studying, after which they pass a bunch of interviews and get good comp. Getting just one offer from a FAANG company often doesnt pay well enough, you need multiple competing ones. If you think this has anything to do with incompetent people complainin…

having just recently (in the last 2 weeks) completed >100 problems on leetcode i can affirmatively tell you that it's not actually that difficult to game this system. i read elements of programming interviews (took about a month of a couple of hours a day) and then just blitzgrieged leetcode. this was all in prep for a FAANG internship tech screen i had yesterday. it went well (not perfect but well). but it is true t…

The people complaining are usually the ones who can't just prep for algorithmic interviews with a couple hours a day of effort for a month.

Which makes the algorithmic interview a relatively good filter - ability to learn something difficult quickly is a very important skill at high performance software companies.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#145

Post by bitexploder » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:30 AM UTC

ramraj07 wrote: post #129

bitexploder wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few words on top grading. We are use a top grading like process, and are pretty flexible on the references part of it. It is just a long conversation. I think it is a structured and simple way to talk about a person and where they have been. Yes, it is comprehensive, but it works well. We hire almost all candidates that have made it to the top grading stage of our hiring process. We don’t use it to find liars and d…

To someone wanting to learn what this method means (the good parts), what resources would you recommend?

We used their website/web app for a while but didn’t get enough value out of it. We had a hiring consultant / coach teach us about top grading after going through many other books.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/915182.Topgrading Is the best book on it. I would just say to use common sense when reading it and think about how you would feel in the interviewees shoes. There is also top grading for sales which has some good stuff in it too. We don’t collect detailed salary info (legal minefield anyway these days). We usually just do one interview and not multiple. There are decent videos in YouTube. They try to sell you on their website and branded materials, but it’s pretty simple for a small company to keep it light and in text documents or whatever you prefer.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#146

Post by Apocryphon » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:31 AM UTC

berdon wrote: post #132

Apocryphon wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with an unyielding, fairly uniform obsession with interview problems unrelated to actual day-to-day development is that you're institutionalizing Goodhart's Law. Eventually the interviews will encourage false positives as candidates grind on CTCI and LeetCode and pass interviews without actually being able to excel at actual work responsibilities.

I don’t think so. That’s why you’ll have candidates passing the questions but not the interview. We’re not looking got rote answers, we’re looking for comprehension, problem solving, and discussion.

It’s perfectly possible to drill and take preparatory courses to finesse communication skills specifically for answering and explaining whiteboarding algo/ds questions. These resources are perfectly aware that rote memorization is insufficient but being able to communicate is also required to game these interviews.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#147

Post by aidenn0 » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:31 AM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #32

I honestly don't know why anyone gives FAANG recruiters the time of day anymore. I have yet to meet anyone who feels good about the prospect of working for them, anyone who works there who's super proud of their mission, and the competitors who are looking to hire at that level of talent pay roughly similar wages from what I've seen. My advice for this poor kid is to look around at startups and do more networking. FA…

I looked into moving to the bay area and FAANG were the only companies paying sufficiently high wages for me to break even after the difference in my mortgage payments. I don't want to work for FAANG, so I didn't move.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#148

Post by JMTQp8lwXL » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:32 AM UTC

codingslave wrote: post #55

parsimo2010 wrote: post #33

Comedian Daniel Tosh had a bit about people that claimed to be smart, it's just that they were just bad at taking tests. He said, "oh, so you struggle with the part where we find out what you actually know?" I hear a lot of complaints about the "typical" software engineering hiring process, and it usually comes from the people that don't do well within the current system. Could the process be improved? Almost certain…

People are completing 500+ problems on leetcode before heading into interviews at google. Don't believe me? Go read the teamblind forums. People might spend six months studying, after which they pass a bunch of interviews and get good comp. Getting just one offer from a FAANG company often doesnt pay well enough, you need multiple competing ones. If you think this has anything to do with incompetent people complainin…

I'm imagining it's going to bite these people on the backend later in life when they sacrificed everything for their careers and potentially missed other major life milestones: cultivating a relationship, starting a family, etc. I know not everyone spends 6 months getting into Google, but there are so many other companies that will take you without 6 months of preparation. If career is the only thing that gives you meaning in life, sure, but I'd rather not put all my eggs in one basket.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#149

Post by petagonoral » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:33 AM UTC

parsimo2010 wrote: post #114

kyllo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to acquire and apply technical knowledge, and ability to demonstrate random technical knowledge under time pressure, in a foreign environment, while other people are watching and judging you, are orthogonal skills and many engineers are great at the former and terrible at the latter. There's also a ton of opinion and taste involved in software engineering, which can bias the interviewer's view of someone'…

Time pressure, foreign environments, and people watching/judging your work are all exactly the things that happen when you're developing stuff that hasn't been done. You run into problems. You find out that requirements or an API spec weren't perfectly written and have to deal with change. You have to work with other people, and they will judge you. Hard coding exercises with a time limit that have an answer that can…

You're speaking as if you have experience with this but looking at your LinkedIn and previous comments, you have zero years professional software dev experience?

Yet, you speak so authoritatively and decisively in this comment and your parent comment. The other people responding (including me) all have multiple years experience in actual software companies of all sizes.

Re: The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

#150

Post by bitexploder » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:33 AM UTC

sibeliuss wrote: post #113

bitexploder wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few words on top grading. We are use a top grading like process, and are pretty flexible on the references part of it. It is just a long conversation. I think it is a structured and simple way to talk about a person and where they have been. Yes, it is comprehensive, but it works well. We hire almost all candidates that have made it to the top grading stage of our hiring process. We don’t use it to find liars and d…

Top grading seems like a much more humane way to hire than obscure algorithm tests, even if it is more involved. Thanks for dropping in the defense here, I've never heard of this process.

No problem. Ultimately I think the hiring process and what it becomes at large companies will reflect their values, for better or worse. They often start off with good intentions, but unchecked hiring processes can become very cynical and, well, Dystopian, as the parent article points out.