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Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

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Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#151

Post by VLM »

collyw wrote: post #94
uniclaude wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great. Now what would you do if after three months, your new hire can still not ship code that benefits your business? Fire the person? Keep teaching? I also believe algorithmic knowledge is important, and tend to give algorithm questions to my candidates, but it matters more for those who will write databases and game engines than for those who will write CRUD apps.

I was good at the algorithms and data structures part of my university course, but as a developer with ten years experience, I find it is very rare to actually use these now. Far more important is how / when to index an database table, how to design the tables in the first place. If I need an efficient algorithm, in most cases someone has written (and tested) it and put it in a library.

"If I need an efficient algorithm"

Bringing it full circle, a puzzle is just a peculiar form of algorithm, most of the time. You don't want to hire someone who will sit around thinking about graph puzzles and how to measure 4 liters when you only have a 5L and 3L beaker. Google it and get on with the job.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#152

Post by giergirey »

baddox wrote: post #71
uniclaude wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking math questions might exclude some good candidates. I know more than a couple very productive programmers that did not go through a formal CS education. Asking math questions to those candidates could even scare them for no reason. I hired people who had no idea about Lagrange Multipliers but were able to ship code in various languages and even learn new paradigms when necessary. There are not only smart people…

Everything might exclude some good candidates, right? With the possible exception of a lengthy internship or "trial period."

I agree - whenever interview processes come up, commenters mostly criticise the interview processes for excluding good candidates.

But that's only one part of the equation - the number of unsuitable candidates that slip through is normally more important.

Suppose that somehow we magically know that 20% of candidates would be good hires - and the other 80% are unsuitable. But we don't know which are which!

As an interviewer, I'd be very happy with an interview process that discards 50% of the good candidates and 99% of the unsuitable candidates, because that leaves me with 10 good hires and 1 unsuitable hire for every 100 candidates.

On the other hand, if a different interview process discarded 20% of the good candidates and 80% of the unsuitable candidates, that would result in 16 good hires and 16 unsuitable hires - which would be disastrous!

Even from the point of the interviewee, one probably wouldn't want to work somewhere where 50% of your colleagues are not suited to their jobs!

Summary - it's a shame to discard good candidates, but it's worse to let too many unsuitable candidates slip through ...

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#153

Post by sokoloff »

enterx wrote: post #134

You speak wise, my friend. Isn't XY years of records in the same field of interest working for a successful companies a good sign that I can code?! Ask me theory - pay me to code.

Sadly, it's not. I can't tell you the number of 5-8 years' experienced candidates from respectable companies who couldn't solve very easy interview problems.

Yes, I get that a whiteboard isn't an editor, and you don't have google/SO, and some people just freeze in an interview, but I've long ago stopped assuming people can code just because they've got coding on their resume for successful companies. (For all I know at the interview moment, they didn't have a coding role, or may not have even worked there.)

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#154

Post by VLM »

Something I've always wanted to ask, are contractors hired the same way? I've never contracted although my father did in his retirement years. I'm curious if modern contractors have to put up with this kind of behavior at interviews, or if its a more professional atmosphere oriented around the actual job requirements.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#155

Post by vasilipupkin »

dpiers wrote: post #29

Hiring engineers is hard, and companies haven't really figured it out yet. Even the best companies rely on puzzles and gimmicks that often have little to do with day-to-day programming. At one company I interviewed with, I was asked to implement a queue using two stacks. At that time in my programming career, I had worked with C, C++, Obj-C, Lua, Python, JavaScript, SQL, and a handful of DSLs developing games, game d…

The problem is, you often want to know what they can build for you in the future. And old projects where someone worked on something very specific for 5 years and exercised a small subset of a particular language or general algorithmic tool kit may not be predictive of their ability to work on YOUR project

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#156

Post by lucasnemeth »

I believe there is some kind of inferiority complex, we don't believe software engineering is actually worth it. Probably, it is the result of an academic mindset that is taught at colleges, where the applied fields are seen as less important than the "pure" ones. But good software engineering, that is, writing complex systems, with a lot of requirements, maintainable, scalable, nice APIs, etc. it's very, very hard. And we know it! If we applied our hiring methods to writers, we would be asking them to improvise a rap rhyme, when we wanted to hire a novelist.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#157

Post by nappy-doo »

epo wrote: post #148
nappy-doo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have experienced "interviews" like this from the other end. I told YC funded founders I'm not interested in their job if this is how they interview. In my opinion, it shows inability to make a decision. I am an excellent developer, with years of experience in the industry. I know lots of technologies, and already have a great job. There is no reason for me to spend personal time writing your projects, when I would…

"I am an excellent developer, with years of experience", but seemingly unable or unwilling to complete a small practical test. Sounds to me like they are good at weeding out the wrong people.

Check my comment history. I work at Google. I stand on that.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#158

Post by mrcactu5 »

It looks like Emma's math prowess is working against her. It's ironic the app developers - who need her help the most - are pushing her away.

OK, so there is a difference between computer science and programming. that's why there are two different stack-exchanges:

  cs.stackexchange.com
  stackoverflow.com
And we can make even finer distinctions if we wanted to.

it's actually really fucking INCREDIBLE that

* you can know tons of CS without being able to build a decent app * you can a decent facebook clone without having any idea how it works

I feel really bad for Emma. I was a math major, but app developers won't even look at me b/c I'm not a full-stack whatever. So now I'm a Data Scientist at an advertising firm in Puerto Rico.

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#159

Post by sebkomianos »

nappy-doo wrote: post #77
tbassetto wrote: post #32

Our current hiring process at my startup: - After a first non-technical call, we ask the candidate to create a very small project based on our SDK. We send him the documentation and a very small sample. He can almost use every tools he wants to create that small project and, of course, we do not set any deadlines. It allows us to see how the candidate architecture his applications and it gives us a project to discuss…

I have experienced "interviews" like this from the other end. I told YC funded founders I'm not interested in their job if this is how they interview. In my opinion, it shows inability to make a decision. I am an excellent developer, with years of experience in the industry. I know lots of technologies, and already have a great job. There is no reason for me to spend personal time writing your projects, when I would…

If you have a great job there is no reason for you to spend personal time participating in any kind of interviewing process.

Also, who says "I am an excellent developer"?

Re: Dear Startups: stop asking me math puzzles to figure out if I can code

#160

Post by nappy-doo »

sebkomianos wrote: post #159
nappy-doo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have experienced "interviews" like this from the other end. I told YC funded founders I'm not interested in their job if this is how they interview. In my opinion, it shows inability to make a decision. I am an excellent developer, with years of experience in the industry. I know lots of technologies, and already have a great job. There is no reason for me to spend personal time writing your projects, when I would…

If you have a great job there is no reason for you to spend personal time participating in any kind of interviewing process. Also, who says "I am an excellent developer"?

You should always be looking for jobs. I got my present job at Google even when I was quite happy with my previous work.

Also, please avoid ad hominem attacks.

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