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Please stop the coding challenges

blackentropy.bearblog.dev

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Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#171

Post by braza »

fluoridation wrote: post #90
braza wrote: post #45

I had a very bad experience at a company that did not conduct any coding tests; there were just 2 or 3 interviews, and that was it. The issues began when we started working together in a Data Engineering team. Most of our stack was based on Hadoop, Kubernetes, Ruby, Python, and several other technologies that required a basic understanding of cloud computing. However, since we had such a wide range of work experience…

When you say they "couldn't even handle basic tasks" do you mean they were completely unfit to complete their assigned tasks, or that they were getting hung up on simple tasks, while otherwise being independent and capable? The other key question is whether you had to explain the same things to the same people again and again. Being ignorant is excusable, but being unwilling to learn isn't.

> they were completely unfit to complete their assigned tasks, or that they were getting hung up on simple tasks

They were unfit to complete the tasks. But again was not their fault, I think was the hiring that failed.

One concrete example was the fact that our pipelines was quite straightforward for data engineers: packaged Ruby and Python CLIs that runs commands. The runtime was k8s. One of the biggest issues were when something broke in production, none of the people couldn’t go to the container, check the logs and understand the failure.

There’s one situation where I think makes sense to hiring without a test: if the company has the resources and money to provide levelling training for all new hires with no exceptions. I do not know how practical it is.

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#172

Post by agentultra »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #93
keiferski wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the interview is testing for the ability to learn new difficult things quickly, then it would seem to be successful.

Is "cramming" the same as "learning"? Is knowing the chemical reaction between an acid and baking soda the same as being a world class patissier? Many of these exercises are like "demonstrate that you can make this dough rise" but not actually considering "can you make an artful and delicious pastry"; the two are totally different. The most surprising thing when asked about their experience was that most of the detai…

You can only get so far as a pastry chef knowing the recipes. Understanding the chemistry does take your craft to a higher level.

I’m never really surprised that there are so many security vulnerabilities out there. Tons of software is completely half-assed: slow, error-prone and inefficient. The market supports it because VCs keep pumping out companies that throw spaghetti at the wall until something sticks. And it has had an influence on the kinds of skills we optimize for at the hiring level.

The problem I see isn’t that we’re trying to hire better developers. It’s that the tests we use are misaligned. Getting into a MAANG with all these hazing rituals and then you get stuck resizing the corners on buttons or editing XML configuration for some ancient system is a waste of time.

But so is hiring programmers that only understand frameworks.

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#173

Post by kolbe »

evnix wrote: post #126

As someone who interviews i support these tests, my reasoning is very different 1. Applicants getting hired because the manager and the candidate is from the same institute or they like the same team or band. 2. Bias based on age or race. I try to remove my own sub conscious bias as best as I can but most don't. 3. HR thinking you are not good enough and rejecting because you did java 18 and not java 19. Or you can w…

I think the reality is that it's too costly to put together a process that filters better. This has been deemed "good enough" and they can fire you if the filter didn't work properly.

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#175

Post by ecshafer »

sanderjd wrote: post #167
ecshafer wrote: post #161

> These high-stress, solo coding assignments don’t reflect the actual job. Instead, they put developers in situations they’d never face in the workplace, where collaboration and support are standard. When was the last time you had to debug an ancient codebase without documentation or help from a team? I have had to do this, on numerous occasions. Sometimes there is a system that no one who built it is left, the docum…

When I interviewed at Stripe, they had a "debug this!" question ready to go in a number of languages. (I think the list was something like: ruby, java, python, javascript, go, maybe one or two more.) I thought this was pretty great, but also seemed pretty labor intensive.

That is the way to do it, good on Stripe. Its definitely labor intensive, but I think that you either need to outsource it or be big enough that you can source the talent to build a half-dozen plus idiomatic and kind of big applications to make it a good test.

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#176

Post by AnotherGoodName »

ddq wrote: post #169
0xmarcin wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there were in the past, currently there is entire industry there to help you game the system. - Cracking the coding interview. - Elements of programming interviews in Java|Python|whatever... - leetcode & other sides with paid premium subscriptions... - mock interview bootcamps... It's no longer about skill, it's only about gaming the system.

The ease with which interviews allow the unscrupulous to inflate their abilities has been well-known for long enough for it to be metagamed and exploited for profit and now the effects have become abundantly apparent. Imposters institutionally infested in this manner across industries have reached a critical threshold where their fundamental lack of competency can no longer remain hidden.

Have you got the high paying big tech job then?

If you do the above prep work and pass the multiple interview loops you’re pretty smart honestly. The vast majority couldn’t do it even with all the study possible and even the smartest couldn't do it without any study at all. The bar is pretty high.

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#177

Post by fluoridation »

exitb wrote: post #83
factotum wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why is that? Do you not agree that time is our most valuable asset?

Interviewing is a time investment for both sides. Should the company charge you to evaluate your skills?

When the interviewee is asked to complete an assignment, they have to invest substantially more time than their counterpart.

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#178

Post by marcosdumay »

epicureanideal wrote: post #133
portaouflop wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me answer your unknowable question with another one: Which doctor would you prefer do surgery on your brain - the one that jumped through all the hoops and went to 15yrs of med school - or the one that learned brain surgery through a YouTube tutorial? I think you know the answer. The problem is not gatekeeping in general it’s the detail and nuance of how gates are being kept and how to find the right amount of ga…

We could theoretically have the best of both worlds, right? No unnecessary gatekeeping, but maximum necessary quality standards (which I distinguish from gatekeeping).

Yeah, what is hard is actually implementing this.

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#179

Post by [deleted] »

sanderjd wrote: post #162
agentultra wrote: post #154

> When was the last time you had to debug an ancient codebase without documentation or help from a team? All the time. 300-400k SLOC in C++. Legacy in the sense that there were no tests of any kind. Little-to-no documentation. Solo developer at the tiny company. Fix bugs and add features while keeping the system available to the tens of thousands of users. A more recent example: here’s a patch for a critical feature…

Yeah I thought that was a weird thing to highlight. The "debug this!" kind of interview is pretty much my favorite, because it's by far the closest to what I do for like 90% of my time at work (when I'm not doing communication tasks...).

[deleted]

Re: Please stop the coding challenges

#180

Post by _DeadFred_ »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #72

A small anecdote. A partner of a friend quit their job earlier this year. They then took 4-6 weeks to prepare for each interview with Big Tech companies (4-6 weeks for Meta, 4-6 weeks for Stripe, etc.). Along the way, they also took random interviews just to practice and build muscle memory. They would grind leetcode several hours a day after researching which questions were likely to be encountered at each Big Tech.…

Back when I had a job hiring people we created problems we could walk people through and see what they figured out on the fly/what they knew but didn't know they knew. That was what I was taught whiteboard problems were, not this lame leet code. But I grew up with both parents in 1980s/90s Santa Cruz tech. The current scene adopted the practice but made it exclusive when it was intended to be inclusive (because there wasn't a huge talent pool back then so they were looking for people they could grow into developers).

One of my hires was a physicist who didn't know any of the jargon and had a look of terror when she first started on our whiteboard problems. Once we led her to a comfortable spot and she got into it she started talking about tools she made to help with her physics work with zero dev knowledge (she was shocked when we called her tools software, she was like, but it wasn't REAL software, we were like hate to break it to you, but that was not only real software you wrote, but crazy impressive). The white board problems were a tool to highlight potential.

I get that these big companies just want drop in widgets not people and that is what they are searching for, I just think it's funny they are using something that was created for the exact opposite purpose.

Part of me is kind of glad I'm too old to be one of the cool kids and have no hope to land a job that does these sorts of code challenges.

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