Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by 746F7475 » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 2:49 PM UTC

odonnellryan wrote: post #77

746F7475 wrote: post #37

Didn't care to read after first rant about hiring process. It just seems like you are not a fit for Google. People always try to find company which "culture" fits them, but it also works the other way around, even if you wish to work for Google, maybe just for the salary or other benefits, if you are poor fit for the company culture then you are a net loss.

I interviewed for Google. I didn't get the job, but they were 100% awesome people. Even followed up after asking if I had an complaints, or questions, or anything like that.

I would love to get to experience something like that, but I don't have the educational merits to even be considered by industry heavy hitters like that.

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

#162

Post by unoti » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 2:56 PM UTC

emerongi wrote: post #30

sagichmal wrote: post #11

Hiring isn't broken, dude. You just don't interview well, and you seem antagonistic even to the idea that your cachet and skills, insofar as they exist, aren't useful to the market. That's a problem -- for you. Interviews exist because employers need a way to quantify and qualify your ability. Typical computer science problems are a (flawed, but concrete) way of doing that. No reasonable interviewer expects you to re…

I don't think many software engineers deal with "computer science problems" in their everyday jobs. GitHub stars are worth much more IMO. It shows that other developers value your work. That says a lot. In the end, we have to realize that most developers are just average. Why go through the ridiculous process of finding average developers who by luck (or some homework) happen to solve the problems you throw at them p…

> Why go through the ridiculous process of finding average developers who by luck (or some homework) happen to solve the problems you throw at them perfectly?

Never underestimate the value of hard work, preparation, and a can-do attitude. It eclipses natural talent every time.

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

#163

Post by bad_user » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 2:57 PM UTC

stegosaurus wrote: post #138

bad_user wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure you replied to the right comment? :-) From my point of view, an interview really isn't an exchange between equals, but a meetup where two parties meet, state their demands and evaluate each other. It works in both directions of course.

Yes, I am. >> From my point of view, an interview really isn't an exchange between equals If you design it that way, sure. It doesn't have to be like that. The whole principle here is that there exists a growing portion of developers who can't be bothered with interview ping pong. If you don't want them, great! Everyone wins. You don't need to convince us, we won't be working at your company anyway.

So first of all, I'm not hiring :-P I see your point though and I don't agree.

First of all, the point of the interview isn't to determine whether somebody is bad, or improperly couched. Surely interviewers would love being able to do that, but it's not possible to do it in a couple of hours.

During the interview all you get to do is to apply a noise filter to get rid of the incredibly bad ones. Because without that filter you can get people that are a very bad fit and that can cost you the project and the morale of your existing employees. It's incredibly taxing to fire somebody. Every time it happened to see a colleague being fired, internal discussions, personal attacks and bad feelings happened internally, every single time and not just at one company. And then in big corporations, because of the risks involved in firing people, you get an even worse effect - you see them "promoted".

And with a noise filter you can naturally have many, many false negatives, as in people that are in fact good, but won't pass the test and interviewers are willing to have that risk, instead of risking false positives.

Of course, from what you're saying, I think you believe everybody can be great. Well, yeah, I think everybody can be great at something useful, but not everybody can be great at something specific. We software developers are too idealistic at times. I don't see surgeons going around telling other people that everybody can be a surgeon. That would be a preposterous thing to say.

On the other hand I do think that if companies want good people, they should invest in education.

> The whole principle here is that there exists a growing portion of developers who can't be bothered with interview ping pong.

I can agree with that. I'm not into interviewing myself. I'm not into switching jobs that often either. I can't be bothered with that because I've got satisfying things to work on already. Capitalism and the free market cuts both ways, right?

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

#164

Post by Aissen » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 3:02 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #131

paddy_m wrote: post #113

I hired Sahat as an intern three years ago while he was an undergrad. It was one of the best hiring decisions I have ever made. He was productive immediately and our (small) team felt the loss when he went back to school. This guy is good and gets stuff done, ask people who have worked with him. I wish Sahat had reached out to more of his network before responding to random recruiters. Tech interviews as Sahat experi…

> I wish Sahat had reached out to more of his network before responding to random recruiters. Has his network moved forward in what they do? I've found with my own network that so many of them are in the same (or equivalent) spots they were when I left to advance my career. Not precisely positions of power which I can take advantage of for the next step forward in my career.

You do not need to be in position of power to refer someone.

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

#165

Post by tobz » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 3:02 PM UTC

49531 wrote: post #80

Technical interviews became 10x easier when I realized that most companies aren't necessarily looking for the right answer as much as they are trying to look into your mind. As a self taught programmer things like binary search trees and linked lists are a foreign concepts (especially as a self taught frontend developer). When I am asked to solve a problem in a way I've never encountered before, people are pretty ope…

This sounds a lot like confirmation bias. You enumerated what you what you do when in these situations, and that your expectations of candidates are closely aligned to your own behaviors. There doesn't seem to be much room for understanding why a candidate's behaviors don't align with yours, or thought for bridging that gap.

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

#166

Post by tobz » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 3:05 PM UTC

unoti wrote: post #158

falcolas wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lea…

Do you not find it strange, or at least confusing, that you're arguing a point here that is predicated on studying for an interview, rather than the actual position?

"This person didn't study for the interview, so what did they expect to happen?" Oh, I don't know, maybe to be asked questions directly related to the position, amongst other things.

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

#167

Post by kkapelon » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 3:06 PM UTC

nouney wrote: post #62

"How many people can actually write BFS on the spot, without preparing for it in advance?" A lot of people. You should too, even if you're just a front-end.

What about the maze solving question?

Should all front-end developers be able to create a maze solving algorithm on the spot, during an interview, under time pressure?

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

#168

Post by Mysterix » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 3:06 PM UTC

>If you are going to test my knowledge, at least ask relevant questions for the role.

Even for a front-end developer, I think that algorithms matter, because developers have to understand what they do.

And the OP's solution in O(N2), as well as the other one with hash maps, seem quite bad (it can be done trivially in O(Nlog(N), and optimized to reach O(N))

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

#169

Post by kuschku » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 3:10 PM UTC

catnaroek wrote: post #106

kuschku wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often do code on Whiteboards – but not actual code, but diagrams, plans, etc.

Sometimes actual code too. For instance, if I'm designing an optimization pass for a compiler, I'll write toy IR programs and show how the optimization pass will rewrite them. And I'll do it on a whiteboard.

Yup. But the thing I meant is that you illustrate things, not actually code your application code.

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

#170

Post by tachion » Wed, Apr 27, 2016, 3:16 PM UTC

After reading author's post I've a feeling that its not the programming skills that the author has issues with, but instead the attitude, stress durability, expectations to the world around him. True, hiring can be broken, it often is, but as with everything, the persistence usually allows us to find the proper company with proper hiring process. He's getting frustrated pretty quickly, complains when is asked to perform math-heavy coding, complains when is asked to do proper front end coding, so on and so forth - this type of people are not very pleasant to work with and very often their feelings, unability to adapt to difficult situations and attitude is very visible, putting off the recruiters. That is, of course, my personal feeling after reading that piece and I might be completely wrong.