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Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

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Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#151

Post by neurobuddha »

wott wrote: post #108
stegosaurus wrote: post #4

Is it even just hiring? Every employer I've worked for has made the experience farcical. If not at the start, then over time. You interview for one job, and eventually end up doing something else. A full time career that doesn't pay enough to buy a home. And they say software developers are overpaid. I think the end-game for me is to just go camping with a laptop or something. I'll code for fun, rather than trying to…

> You interview for one job, and eventually end up doing something else. LOL yeah, that's what happened to me for my last job. A recruiting process that lasted 4 bloody months for an electronic designer position, and when I was finally hired they put me on software testing; not only I had never done this, but I had never heard it was a thing. Anyway, after less than 2 months I was better as this than the CS graduates…

If you know how to make stuff, you'll be okay. Be punk about it. It's not about talent, it's about delivering a product people will buy.

If you want someone to talk to (someone who is doing this), my contact info is in my profile.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#152

Post by beeboop »

jmaley wrote: post #99
kkapelon wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why a front-end position requires computer science fundamentals? If you are a company and have to select between two front-end developers where one has a vast portfolio of production apps that you find impressive and the other knows BFS by heart (but has never shipped something to production), who would you choose?

Consider a scenario where the developer is required to write a custom directory tree. Each row contains a caret and a checkbox. When either of these are clicked, you'll need to perform some sort of tree traversal to ensure integrity of the view -- for example, checking the checkbox on a row may require that all children as selected too. Additionally, you may need an upward traversal to the root to ensure the parents…

From a front-end developer perspective, I would google "navigation tree jquery", download some library that does this for me, and be done with it. If all children of a checkbox need to also be selected, that's like a single like of jQuery. Worst case scenario, something custom is written, and yeah it's not the best way and yeah it takes 100 milliseconds instead of 4, but who cares?

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#153

Post by dagw »

beeboop wrote: post #152
jmaley wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider a scenario where the developer is required to write a custom directory tree. Each row contains a caret and a checkbox. When either of these are clicked, you'll need to perform some sort of tree traversal to ensure integrity of the view -- for example, checking the checkbox on a row may require that all children as selected too. Additionally, you may need an upward traversal to the root to ensure the parents…

From a front-end developer perspective, I would google "navigation tree jquery", download some library that does this for me, and be done with it. If all children of a checkbox need to also be selected, that's like a single like of jQuery. Worst case scenario, something custom is written, and yeah it's not the best way and yeah it takes 100 milliseconds instead of 4, but who cares?

Worst case scenario, something custom is written, and yeah it's not the best way and yeah it takes 100 milliseconds instead of 4, but who cares?

The person who has to try to understand what the hell is going on and how to add new features after the original developer has moved on to other things probably cares quite a lot. The difference between a good programmer and a mediocre programmer is not that one can solve the problem and the other can't, but that the good one can solve the problem in an easy to understand and easy to maintain way.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#155

Post by drinchev »

Wow! As a person that interviewed other people for front-end developers, here in Berlin, I would say that I will probably offend half of the candidates if I ask them to code on a whiteboard.

Not to mention that I would feel offended if I'm asked by a hiring team to solve complex logic task while visiting an office for a first time.

Usually what I do as an interviewer is to select a bunch of questions out of [1] github frontend developer interview questions and make a productive conversation, by asking for opinion on different ways of writing front-end code.

1 : https://github.com/h5bp/Front-end-Developer-Interview-Questi...

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#156

Post by kkapelon »

jmaley wrote: post #99
kkapelon wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why a front-end position requires computer science fundamentals? If you are a company and have to select between two front-end developers where one has a vast portfolio of production apps that you find impressive and the other knows BFS by heart (but has never shipped something to production), who would you choose?

Consider a scenario where the developer is required to write a custom directory tree. Each row contains a caret and a checkbox. When either of these are clicked, you'll need to perform some sort of tree traversal to ensure integrity of the view -- for example, checking the checkbox on a row may require that all children as selected too. Additionally, you may need an upward traversal to the root to ensure the parents…

In my example I did not say that the first developer is ignorant about performance. I only talked about knowing data algorithms by heart.

So let me rephrase this. Isn't it possible that a developer knows about computer performance but at the same time does not know by heart?

Do you really think that "knowing BFS by heart" equals "knowing everything there is to know about computer performance"?

In your scenario, a developer might just google BFS if that is really needed (when a custom component is needed). Is this so important that he/she has to know BFS by heart beforehand during the interview?

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#157

Post by splicer »

wott wrote: post #108
stegosaurus wrote: post #4

Is it even just hiring? Every employer I've worked for has made the experience farcical. If not at the start, then over time. You interview for one job, and eventually end up doing something else. A full time career that doesn't pay enough to buy a home. And they say software developers are overpaid. I think the end-game for me is to just go camping with a laptop or something. I'll code for fun, rather than trying to…

> You interview for one job, and eventually end up doing something else. LOL yeah, that's what happened to me for my last job. A recruiting process that lasted 4 bloody months for an electronic designer position, and when I was finally hired they put me on software testing; not only I had never done this, but I had never heard it was a thing. Anyway, after less than 2 months I was better as this than the CS graduates…

Would you be interested in another software (or firmware) testing role? Where are you located?

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#158

Post by unoti »

falcolas wrote: post #116
unoti wrote: post #93

Google and similar companies aren't for everyone. They're looking for people on top of their game and willing to go the extra mile. > To be fair, I already knew about Google’s idiotic interview process that is optimized for hiring book-smart academic candidates who know their algorithms and data structures cold, so my expectations were rather low to begin with. I also did not get much sleep that day, so my problem so…

With all due respect, being able to recite algorithms from memory is no actual indication of being at the top of your game. All it really indicates is that you are capable of memorizing algorithms.

It's well publicized what to expect at interviews for these firms. It shows that you're willing to put in the preparation to make it work. In addition to putting in the work of memorizing the algorithms, a candidate needs to know how to apply them, and to write code, and to accept feedback, and to collaborate and communicate.

If a candidate isn't willing to put in the work to prepare, it's not much of a cognitive leap for me to envision them telling me that implementing this or that feature is dumb, impractical and not needed. Many developers have this "start with no" defeatist attitude as their default position on most problems of moderate complexity, and it's a real problem. Given a chance to select for candidates that instead figure out a way to make it happen I'd rather take the winners.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#159

Post by louden »

I have been on the other side of the table and I'm sure I came off as indifferent. The problem is, I have been thrown into the interview as an interviewer multiple times with about 1 hour notice when I have many other things to focus on.

It is definitely a broken process in many companies.

Re: Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

#160

Post by ejsmith »

odonnellryan wrote: post #73
mrbgty wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The risk of choosing the wrong person is so great, that it's often better to not choose anyone" This risk can be great, but the team and company can be organized such that the risk is extremely reduced. A pairing schedule, for example, can be very effective.

So many things. The only times I can think that it'd be super damaging: 1) This person is talking directly to clients day one, solo 2) Their code is pushed without review... 3) They are making high-level (C-level, maybe a bit lower) decisions for your business Otherwise, yeah... a bad employee can do some harm. But, it's that employee's fault, and the other employees will realize this. It is the business's fault if t…

And what if you are a small startup and only have enough money to hire 1 person and you waste months of time and money trying to train the person? Hiring can make or break a small company.
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