The dystopian world of software engineering interviews

Post by aidenn0 » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:37 AM UTC

bulatb wrote: post #123

Analemma_ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the problem was oversupply, we wouldn't be getting the cushy salaries and benefits we do. I think the issue is more that it's pretty easy for people with no programming ability to appear competent on a resume, especially to a clueless HR rep or headhunter. There are a lot of people out there whose backgrounds look good on paper who can't solve FizzBuzz...

Hypothesis: There's such a flood of qualified labor that employers can afford to arbitrarily shrink the pool of applicants without significantly worsening their outcomes. Their behavior indicates that just the top N% of the market is enough to fill the needs of all selective companies. "Top" can be a semi-random filter, since the pool of basically competent people is much deeper than N. (There's also a much larger fl…

Post by wces » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:38 AM UTC

Post by heartbeats » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:38 AM UTC

platz wrote: post #29

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I think every time I see one of these articles but tech companies still have a permanent door into every congressional office to plead the exact opposite while seeking to import more labor into the market.

When they say that, they want phds, not entry level candidates

Post by ramraj07 » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:39 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…

Post by gentleman11 » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:40 AM UTC

MAGZine wrote: post #68

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…

> Google might not need you to code some efficient algorithm to search a b-tree every day, but they pay top dollar and can rightly expect that their software engineers can come up with efficient and creative solutions to hard problems without dragging the rest of their team down. This is a non-sequitur. Being able to write good software has nothing to do with reading cracking the coding interview and practicing leetc…