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Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

erikmcclure.com

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Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#141

Post by sshumaker »

plank_time wrote: post #73
kentonv wrote: post #58

We used this a couple times at Sandstorm back in the day. At the end of the interview the candidate would play Factorio cooperatively with the team for a while. I think it is remarkably effective at identifying the kinds of skills and personality traits that a software engineer actually needs to have in day-to-day work. You can find out if someone is self-directed, how fast they work, whether they produce clean desig…

Hire quickly and fire quickly with a generous severance. That’s the only method that I’ve seen works effectively. Netflix does more with 2000 engineers that companies with 10-20x that. This also lets you take chances on engineers that weren’t “perfect” but had a lot of positives to offer.

This approaches biases against those whose residency status is dependent on employment (e.g. H1Bs).

There’s no silver bullet when it comes to hiring.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#142

Post by Bjartr »

hobs wrote: post #90
danaris wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has played a bunch of Factorio but only heard about Satisfactory: Can you elaborate on that?

Factorio is very much like programming on a good team, automation, expansion, refactoring, tooling used to solve your problems. Satisfactory is cool, but at no point do you get the "ok so I built this entire factory and now I can just replicate it modularly" - no, just place every, single, block, by, hand. To me factorio is a rethinking of the RTS game, satisfactory is like a really nice minecraft mod.

> satisfactory is like a really nice minecraft mod.

Which is ironic considering a big part of the original inspiration for Factorio was factory building mods for minecraft.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#143

Post by InitialLastName »

cloogshicer wrote: post #119
InitialLastName wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone is going to argue that Factorio is a useful tool for technical interviews, it's only reasonable to expect that they will present a visible correlation between in-game performance and real-life performance. Otherwise, how is this anything other than a novel just-so story?

How do you show correlation of two concepts that are inherently not measurable? Do only statements that are measurable have value in your opinion?

Even if something isn't measurable, you can provide anecdotal evidence that a correlation exists.

If you're going to say "Methods X and Y pale in comparison to Method Z for evaluating W" and expect anyone to draw conclusions from it, one would hope for even just a little bit of evidence.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#145

Post by kentonv »

billfruit wrote: post #139
kentonv wrote: post #58

We used this a couple times at Sandstorm back in the day. At the end of the interview the candidate would play Factorio cooperatively with the team for a while. I think it is remarkably effective at identifying the kinds of skills and personality traits that a software engineer actually needs to have in day-to-day work. You can find out if someone is self-directed, how fast they work, whether they produce clean desig…

While I get some of this sentiment, wont some sort of social deduction game like 'Throne of Lies' be better at identifying potentially good team members?.

I'm not familiar with that game, but the point of using Factorio is it is a game where you have to build complex systems and maintain them, which has many parallels with real-world software engineering. "Throne of Lies" doesn't look like that kind of game.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#146

Post by driverdan »

sshumaker wrote: post #141
plank_time wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hire quickly and fire quickly with a generous severance. That’s the only method that I’ve seen works effectively. Netflix does more with 2000 engineers that companies with 10-20x that. This also lets you take chances on engineers that weren’t “perfect” but had a lot of positives to offer.

This approaches biases against those whose residency status is dependent on employment (e.g. H1Bs). There’s no silver bullet when it comes to hiring.

Which is fine because H1Bs shouldn't be used for most positions. If something actually requires an H1B candidate then you use a different process.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#147

Post by pbhjpbhj »

ericbarrett wrote: post #132
lacksconfidence wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you enjoyed Satisfactory you might also want to try out Dyson Sphere Program. It doesn't provide the veritical building but it is a different take on the factorio/satisfactory style of gameplay.

I tried DSP, very fun game but the performance is terrible. i7-9700K and RTX2080 and I get 20 FPS before using even 1/10th of the first planet. Can't recommend it currently.

I've only played the demo of factorio, but on the same computer (AMD Ryzen 5, RX540) DSP runs much better for me - there's a noticeable slowdown on save now that I've covered about half my starting planet but other than that it's stutter free.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#148

Post by yodelshady »

On a related note, feature request for factorio - comments/labels/documentation.

For instance, I like to group chem plants together as a block, that I can move around easily, set up remote bases, or duplicate easily. That, of course, means a common input "format". I'd love for in-game blueprints to be able to label that (or am I missing it?).

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#149

Post by prepend »

kentonv wrote: post #58

We used this a couple times at Sandstorm back in the day. At the end of the interview the candidate would play Factorio cooperatively with the team for a while. I think it is remarkably effective at identifying the kinds of skills and personality traits that a software engineer actually needs to have in day-to-day work. You can find out if someone is self-directed, how fast they work, whether they produce clean desig…

> Some people will just sit and watch and do nothing unless instructed... that's bad. Some people will build stuff, but with obvious efficiency flaws and "bugs"... also bad. Some people identify what needs doing and get it done effectively but without trying to be perfect... that's good.

Some personalities are better suited for programming, although I think hard work can overcome anything.

I remember an old blog post [0] of mine that used Hammerstein-Equord personality quadrants of smart/industrious, smart/lazy, stupid/industrious, stupid/lazy and describing it for how that effects tech team planning.

[0] http://www.prepend.com/2009/05/programmer-classifications-by...

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#150

Post by xiphias2 »

kleinsch wrote: post #118
plank_time wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hire quickly and fire quickly with a generous severance. That’s the only method that I’ve seen works effectively. Netflix does more with 2000 engineers that companies with 10-20x that. This also lets you take chances on engineers that weren’t “perfect” but had a lot of positives to offer.

The Netflix model makes a ton of sense, but doesn't apply to most other companies, bc Netflix is a unique case. They pay top of market, all cash. They have massive name recognition and obvious longevity. Probably most uniquely - they only hire senior people who have a track record of experience they can look at. When you're a startup that nobody's heard of, half your engineers are going to be junior, and half your co…

Start ups need different kind of people than big companies. With a startup the biggest mistake someone can make is not moving fast enough, and the startup dies. In a big company the code base always gets too big, so a person who works slower, but is able to improve the code base while shrinking it is worth more than a person who finishes fast, but blows up or slows down the code base. Interviews have to search for the right style of people.
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